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Sedating Yourself With Food: Why?

Dr. Whoo and I seem to be in the same place at the same time — we both struggle with our weight because we’re using food for something other than sustenance. We use it to manage stress. Overeating is, after all, a wonderful sedative. It soothes the savage beast and all that. And it really works. I’ve probably saved my marriage and my job and kept from killing my kids and my husband by sedating myself with food. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Blog that Ate Manhattan*

Which Diet Fits Your Genes?

Why do some diets work better than others? Why can your best friend lose 10 pounds with a low-carb diet and your weight just hovers? Why can some people eat just about everything and still stay skinny?

It’s all in the genes. 

Mindy Dopler Nelson, Ph.D., of Stanford University reported the results of her study at the American Heart Associate Conference. She found that a single nuceotide polymorphism caused women to loose five times as much weight on the Atkins diet compared with women who didn’t have the gene. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Health And Life Insurance Companies Invested In Fast Food

A new article published in the American Journal of Public Health shows that U.S., Canadian, and European insurance firms hold $1.88 billion of investments in fast food companies like Jack in the Box, McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s/Arby’s Groups. Both health insurers and life insurers have substantial holdings in these companies.

A person just needs to read “Fast Food Nation” or watch the documentary “Food, Inc.” to understand the negative impact of processed foods on the health of our country.

The evidence is so compelling that the new health reform legislation is requiring fast food and chain restaurants to disclose calorie counts on their menus. Ironically, the new legislation will also add millions of customers to the health insurers. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Healthy, Active Kids Come From Healthy, Active Adults

First RunKids are like dogs — you can train them until they’re too old to train. Then they’re going to do whatever they want.

The key to getting kids to exercise is to make it fun for them. But they aren’t going to exercise if it isn’t made a part of their normal routine. It’s up to adults to train them.

Mrs. Happy and I had the joyous opportunity of inviting our 10-year-old niece to her first-ever running event. She had never ever run in a race before. We did the two-mile race and she loved it. And amazingly, she finished without stopping — not even once.

Our nation is raising a nation of fat and lazy kids because we’re lazy adults. We drive everywhere. We sit at our desks. We get food on the run. We watch a lot of television. We surf the Net a bunch. And we have stopped moving. We have literally stopped moving. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*

4 Super-Healthy Foods

Healthy shoppingRaise your hand if you want to eat healthy.

Healthy eating isn’t just good for cinching your waistline — it’s great for overall health.

From glowing skin, to heart health, to maintaining healthy teeth and bones; eating foods packed with certain nutrients can also protect your immune system and fight infections.  It can boost your libido and decrease that lousy (LDL) cholesterol and boost your good (HDL) cholesterol.

Healthy eating shouldn’t be a struggle. It’s easy to get sucked into the marketing trap when you’re food shopping and you encounter all those in-store specials. Sometimes, those specials are just bad for your health. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*

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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