It was 2:21 a.m., and the pager exploded in my ear like I had forgotten to turn the volume down before plugging in my headphones. The nurses told me your heart rate was getting faster, and your oxygen was dipping lower. When I made it to your room, you were laying in urine because you were too weak to stand. Your breathing was rapid and shallow, like you were caught …
The art of medicine is born in the unforeseen
An excerpt from Living in the Moment: A Guide to Overcoming Challenges and Finding Moments of Joy in Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias.
When confronted with an injury or an illness in a loved one, it’s human nature to respond, “Do everything! Whatever it takes!” Pulling out all the …
Minimize medication. Treat pain. Relieve agitation.
May is National Stroke Awareness Month, and I want to share my story of my dad’s journey after his strokes.
Doors open and shut during the early morning hours. I hear the drip dispensing the next dose and some muffled chatter outside the room. Several phones are ringing in all directions, and I listen to alarms going off next door. This means the heart rate is too high.
Snoring beside me, I …
The baby formula shortage has morphed into a full-blown ongoing crisis. Many stores report that more than half of baby formula products are out of stock. Babies who are six months old or younger should only be fed breast milk or formula. Any substitute may be nutritionally incomplete and may cause babies to have permanent problems in brain development.
What are the essential brain ingredients in the leading baby formulas?
Docosahexaenoic acid …
The baby formula shortage puts your baby’s brain at risk
This spring, kids will be returning to extra-curricular activities and organized sports in the community, much of which was canceled over the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As these activities resume, now is a good time to learn what to do in the event of a concussion.
Concussions are one of the most common sports injuries in children and youth. Canadian data show there are nearly …
What to do when your child suffers a concussion
An excerpt from Preserving Brain Health in a Toxic Age: New Insights from Neuroscience, Integrative Medicine, and Public Health.
When my wife and I visited Salzburg Austria a few years ago, we stayed in a small boutique hotel formerly part of the Saint Sebastian monastery. In its famous church courtyard cemetery are buried both Mozart’s wife and his father, …
Paracelsus and the birth of toxicology
As a medical student working in East Harlem, I see inequities in access to care on a daily basis. These inequities are exemplified amongst children suffering from neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism. In 2000, about 1 in 150 children were identified as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That rate has skyrocketed to 1 in 44 today. For parents and their children, it is well appreciated that an …
Why telehealth will change the course of autism
I have been following the controversy surrounding the approval of the new Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab with great interest. Until a year and a half ago, I worked as a neurologist in an adult general neurology clinic. Many of my patients had dementia. While I thoroughly enjoyed seeing these patients and their family members, I often felt helpless when treating them. When I left clinical practice to explore a non-clinical career …
A neurologist grapples with aducanumab
Have you ever been to a new city and realized you’d been pronouncing a street or a town name all wrong? Have you ever been from one of those cities and has it broken your heart to hear someone call Copley Square Cope-ly? Or pronounce the Schuylkill River or Worcester how it is spelled?
This is how neurologists feel when you call a stroke a cerebrovascular accident, or a CVA. It’s …
A PSA from a neurologist to the medical community
Ellen DeGeneres is ending her popular TV talk show next year after 19 seasons. The need for the type of celebrity and crowdsourcing donations she is known for to assuage an individual’s health care needs to end as well.
This accepted norm is gaslighting at its finest.
As a fan of The Ellen Show, I don’t feel warm and fuzzy after seeing a patient facing cancer with a large medical bill moved to tears …
Fund this: Policies can fill medical funding gaps for all
Award-winning actress Christina Applegate revealed on social media that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). “It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going,” wrote Applegate in a tweet.
Multiple sclerosis is a neurological autoimmune disease that has puzzled patients and health care providers for decades. The disease was first described by the French physician Charcot in the 1800s in the original report “sclerose …
Christina Applegate reveals multiple sclerosis diagnosis
“How many lives did you save today, Dad?”
That is what my kids would ask me, rather sarcastically, many years ago, when they were young and when I arrived home late, missing our game of backyard basketball. They knew I was a neurologist. And, of course, they knew I didn’t exactly save lives since, as I had explained to them many times, my job consisted of giving folks lots of medications …
Where does the joy and meaning in medicine dwell?
In June, the FDA approved aducanumab (Aduhelm) to treat patients with Alzheimer’s disease using the agency’s accelerated approval pathway, despite significant concerns about the evidence regarding the drug’s safety and effectiveness. The agency’s approval decision contradicted the recommendations of its own advisory committee, which voted overwhelmingly against the evidence presented in support of the drug. Soon after approval, three members of the committee resigned in protest. …
Should Medicare pay for Aduhelm?
“When I was diagnosed as gene-positive for HD, just over ten years ago, there wasn’t anything promising on the horizon in terms of a cure. It has only been since new clinical trials were announced in the past few years that I have allowed myself to feel a tiny bit of …
Huntington’s disease and a patient’s perspective on genetic testing [PODCAST]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) negated the recommendation of its expert panel and approved Aduhelm to treat Alzheimer’s dementia (AD), contending that the possible benefit trumped the lack of evidence of efficacy. The FDA was inexcusably in error in making this decision. Aside from the likely lack of benefit, the use of this drug can result in many negative consequences that make its use ethically questionable.
The manufacturer submitted two …
The FDA was wrong about Aduhelm
I have dedicated 35 years of my life as a nurse: in the ICU for 33 years and behavioral health/intensive management for the last two.
I thought it would be time to take a break from ICU nursing. Surely behavioral health would be a lot easier — kind of a slide into my near-future retirement.
I entered into the land of psychotics and schizophrenics, bipolar, homeless, dangerous patients from prison, like those …
How a Zoom nursing interview killed my self-worth
In 2019, we (authors SM, LC) initiated a research study on the experience of care partners of people with Parkinson’s disease psychosis (PDP). Among other activities, participants wrote a letter to their care recipient’s doctor to the prompt: “Understanding that you know the most about this person, specifically their PD psychosis because you likely spend the most time with them (certainly more time than the doctor gets to spend with …
Before you jump on the diet bandwagon with your brother-in-law (who’s crowing about shedding all that weight with so little effort), think about the potential downside.
The problem with an ill-thought-out diet:
Fad diets are designed to take off weight as quickly as possible. They often ignore the long-term effects that might occur regarding both the brain and spine. Someone embarking on a radical weight loss …
Think about your brain and spine before you start that new fad diet
Brain science explains why visualization improves performance in the real world, helps make better decisions, and minimizes errors.
Before performing surgery, let’s say for a herniated disc, I stand in front of a white porcelain sink. Antiseptic bubbles cover my hands and drip from my forearms. The surgery takes place in my mind, playing like a movie on the inside of my eyelids: The setting of retractors, …
A neurosurgeon explains why visualization works
“I think I’m having a stroke.”
The words struggled to leave my mouth as I spoke to the 9-1-1 operator. Emotionally in disbelief, the words seemed so unusual to say in the first person. Ten minutes earlier, overwhelming nausea and drenching sweats woke me abruptly from sleep. Thinking it was something I ate, I immediately regretted the preceding meal that must have been responsible. My attempt to get to the bathroom …
After a stroke, a physician experiences true vulnerability
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