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Latest Posts

Dosing Exercise: Choosing What’s Right For You

It is risky.

Stay fresh. Avoid repeating yourself. Don’t rant. Never preach. These would be the ‘rules’ of supposedly good blogs.

And, of course, doctors that dare to take a stance on health issues risk being perceived as pretentious. I get this.

So it is with trepidation that I write a follow-up to last week’s CW post about right ventricular damage immediately after an extreme race effort. Notwithstanding the pompousness concern, I also wish to avoid being labeled anti-exercise. Few believe more strongly in the healing powers of exercise.

But last Wednesday’s comments (both on the blog, Facebook and here on Dr. Val Jones’ BetterHealth blog) were just too good to let rest.

On the assessment of studies: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

Heart Rate: What’s Normal?

The “normal” number of heartbeats per minute is very much a frequently asked question. People, especially medical people, like well-defined lows and highs. Parameters which can be assigned an ‘L’ or ‘H’ makes life easier.

2009 National Championship Masters (45-49) Road Race

As a modern-day competitive cyclist, I am immersed in a sea of information. In our quest for weekend glory, minutia like speed, wattage outputs, RPMs, torque, elevation gain and of course, heart rates (highs, lows, and averages) get recorded, downloaded, and then studied intensively.

As a heart rhythm specialist, it is a frequent occurrence to see patients referred for low or high heart rates. More often than not, heart doctors are called upon to adjudicate patients who fall outside the “normal” values.

The old school teaching holds that the normal resting heart rate is greater than 55 and less than 100 beats per minute (bpm). Maximal heart rates are estimated by the Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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