Alex Lickerman is an internal medicine physician who blogs at ImagineMD. He is the author of The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self.
Figuring out what’s actually true is far harder than most people realize. Our brains are both hypothesis-generating machines and incredibly credulous. As a result, most of the things we believe to be true turn out to be false. We don’t just mistakenly believe that vaccines cause autism, that the flu shot can give us the flu, and that astrology can predict our future. We also mistakenly believe that the salad …
Not long ago, one of my elderly patients (who gave me permission to tell this story) began requiring blood transfusions for a condition known as ischemic colitis. Usually, it occurs because there are blockages present in the arteries that supply blood to the colon and, starved of blood, the inner lining of the colon becomes inflamed. But her arteries, it turns out, are normal. So we term her ischemic colitis …
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked my wife.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “What do you want?”
“How about hamburgers?”
“No, I don’t want hamburgers.”
“What do you want then?”
“I don’t know … pasta.”
“I’m a little sick of pasta,” I said. “How about pizza?”
“I’m really in the mood for pasta.”
Silence. Then: “OK, pasta.”
I’ve observed, both among my patients and my friends, that the issues which ultimately threaten to dismantle romantic …
Ebola has riveted our attention: It’s a deadly disease with no known cure, and as is true of most infectious diseases, it’s easy to imagine how it could become a global pandemic and threaten us directly. For what it’s worth, though, here is what the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us about Ebola:
1. The Ebola virus is not spread through:
My student’s voice trembled as she answered my question. “How do you think you’ve done so far?” I’d asked her. We’d been together on the general medicine inpatient ward for two weeks — the midpoint of the rotation — and as was my usual custom I was giving her feedback on her performance by first asking her to rate her performance …
In the North American hemisphere flu season is here. Influenza, as most people know, is a serious respiratory infection that can be life-threatening in the very young and the very old. Some strains, as we’ve all heard about in the press in the past, are more deadly than others and may threaten even the strong. Luckily, however, we’ve developed a vaccine. It doesn’t guarantee you won’t get the flu: the …
A few months ago my son asked if he could have a candy bar after dinner for dessert. My wife and I reminded him that he’d already had candy two days before and that we have a “one candy per week rule” in our house, so we said no. So he asked again. So we said no again. Then he asked yet again. And we said no again. Then he …
Imagine there was a practice that I could teach you that would reduce your relative risk of having a heart attack by nearly 40%. Imagine also that if you carried out this practice just once a week you’d find yourself feeling less anxious, more confident, better able to enjoy yourself socially, and in general significantly less stressed (at least while actively engaged …
Whether delivered by a boss regarding a work goal, by a coach regarding an athletic performance, or by a trusted reader regarding the quality of a rough draft, the feedback we get often powerfully influences our ability to succeed. Yet significant controversy exists in the scientific literature about which type of feedback, positive or negative, is most effective.
As researcher Ayelet Fishbach explains: ”Several motivation theories attest that positive feedback is more …
When I was in first grade, my teacher once called the class together and said, “Glen is feeling bad because no one will play with him. Will anyone here play with Glen?” Glen was new (I think he moved to the area mid-year) and awkward-looking, and I remember how bad I felt for him when she said that. So I raised my hand. “I’ll play with Glen,” I said. To …
When searching for a mate, most of us carry around a list of criteria or qualities that we tell ourselves we’re looking for. A brief perusal of any Internet dating site yields many such lists: “A sense of humor, a sense of adventure, and good teeth” says one. “Owns his own business, likes to travel, and works out,” says another. Curiously, however, we often end up with mates who seem …
Patients often come to me seeking advice about what they can do to live longer. The number of things that have been proven to extend life, however, remains shockingly small. What follows are things that have enough support in the scientific literature that I generally recommend them (though the strength of the evidence varies even with these):
The biggest mistake patients make isn’t what you think. It isn’t turning down tests or treatments their doctors recommend. Nor is it deciding not to take the medicines their doctors prescribe. It isn’t insisting on getting a test or beginning a treatment their doctors recommend against, either, and it isn’t failing to exercise, stay out of the sun (or use sunscreen), quit smoking, or lose weight. No, the biggest mistake …
As with most things in life, romantic relationships are, for many of us, a double-edged sword: while most find it wonderful to love and be loved, developing intimate emotional ties to someone makes us emotionally vulnerable—vulnerable not only to being hurt by our partner’s opinions of and feelings toward us, but also vulnerable to being affected by our partner’s bad moods. If a colleague or a friend gets depressed, we’re …
A few weeks ago my wife, my son, and I went out for dinner. My son, though usually well-behaved and pleasant, was boisterous and disruptive, alternately leaping off his seat to crawl under the table and banging his silverware on his water glass to see what different volume of sound he could make it produce. Our tolerance for disciplining him patiently having been exhausted in us both by our respective challenging …
The set-point theory of happiness suggests that our level of subjective well-being is determined primarily by heredity and by personality traits ingrained in us early in life and as a result remains relatively constant throughout our lives. Our level of happiness may change transiently in response to life events, but then almost always returns to its baseline level as we habituate to those events and their consequences over time. Habituation, …
Of all the different criteria people use when deciding for whom to vote in presidential elections, I’ve never heard anyone talk about the importance of a background in clinical psychology—but it’s always struck me as important for a president to have as for a clinical psychologist. Certainly, foreign policy experience, a firm grasp of the principles of economics, a bold and confident leadership style, and the ability to get people …
A common belief, even among doctors, is that almost no one succeeds in losing weight in the long term. And for almost two decades, I’ve counted myself among the skeptics, being able to tally on the fingers of one hand the number of my patients who’ve managed to do it—literally less than five out of multiple hundreds, if not a few thousand.
When I stumbled across the ideas put forth in …
Research shows numerous benefits to meditation: it reduces stress, increases positive emotion, and even treats acute pain. Commonly, meditation involves focusing on one’s breathing as a way to anchor one’s attention in the present moment. Practitioners are also frequently taught to separate their experiences (breathing, pain, thoughts) from their judgments about them. Thus, with respect, for …
Having to confront an indeterminate outcome that might be bad seems to cause more anxiety than having to confront an outcome known to be bad.
In one study, patients requiring colostomies (a rerouting of the passage of stool from the rectum to an opening in the abdomen) that were potentially reversible were actually found to be less happy six months after their operation …
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