Financial Health: • My chair (Dr. Dan Danzl) is impressively knowledgeable about finances. He recommends to subscribe to Money magazine and read every issue. Over decades, this one behavior will impart a huge amount of knowledge. Take home point is that you must read something regularly, whether it is a book, auditing a course, meeting with and…
Freedom: • Today we celebrate freedom, which can mean different things. So called negative freedom refers to “freedom from” interference with your liberties. The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments to the constitution) are all essentially about this freedom. But with the Civil War and the preposterous institution of slavery, it was necessary to incorporate…
Stay Fit for Life: • Written in the 80s, the book Fit for Life is full of accurate information about diet. Authors Harvey and Marilyn Diamond were far ahead of their time in describing many concepts. They emphasize eating whole, non-processed foods. They recommend avoiding most food prior to noon (“[only] fruit before noon”). They focus on circadian nutrition, highlighting…
The Best Medicine: • Hopefully you have all seen the movie Patch Adams. This was an accurate account of the physician Patch Adams, who continues to practice medicine.• My amazing wife was able to get us tickets to see him at the Omni last week. What a fearless healer Patch continues to be. Now in his…
Epidemic: • Several heroin overdoses this week. One kid who has been injecting for 5 years and has no complications. No infections. Good family that hasn’t given up on him yet. Chance for a truly clean slate, a new start.• It is such a reward to see the look on these patients’ faces when you treat…
Stress: • Interesting article from School of Life on finding something(s) to worry about daily as a proxy for unresolved past stresses. Freudian. Likely true in many cases, especially for our patients. Very brief read. Debt: • Think your student loan debt (or general debt) is bad, check out this orthodontist. He certainly took part in the accumulation, and he’s a…
Alive Time vs Dead Time: • This is a concept from Robert Greene. He has written many formidable books about mastery, war, power. This concept relates to how you choose to spend your time. It relates closely to what David Foster Wallace was advising on where to direct your attention (“This is water”). • This motivates one to use…
Making Faces: • Check out this fairly technical article about facial expressions as social tools. Plenty of sociologic jargon, talking about an “externalist, functionalist view of facial displays.” • The general idea is that the facial expressions we make could be more to induce feelings or behaviors in others than to actually express what is on our mind.…
Wisdom from the ER: • A patient told us that a very angry 5-foot-4 bald man would be looking for her. She was in a bad accident and she was thinking about her frantic husband. Minutes and even hours can fly by in the hospital, and this time feels like eternity to family members who are not informed. Usually…
Protect Yourself: • Sadly, in medicine we are at risk of violence from the people we are trying to help, and must be resolved not to fight back. This article has many pearls, the most pragmatic being the three positions you can stand in when encountering trouble: the thinker pose, the timeout pose, and the hands up. All poses…
