Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Antidepressants To Treat Dementia: How Can They Help?

“Wow, Celexa?”

“Yeah, who knew?”

I overheard this conversation in the ladies’ room immediately after a session speaker advised treating agitation and aggression in dementia with citalopram. Indeed, there was a bit of a murmur in the audience when Dr. Aleta Borrud made the suggestion during her talk at the Mayo Update in Hospital Medicine 2011 course.

Part of the reason for the reaction may be– as a physician I spoke with noted– that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*

Dr. Val Tells ABC News How To Stave Off Memory Loss

Did you know that physical activity can reduce your risk for memory loss and dementia? I had the chance to speak to ABC’s Let’s Talk Live team about important lifestyle choices that can keep the mind healthy and active. The good news is that you really can teach an old dog new tricks, and those new tricks can stimulate growth of new brain cells. Watch the video and check out the Alzheimer’s Association website for more information about dementia prevention:

How To Detect And Treat Alzheimer’s Disease


Watch CBS News Videos Online

It’s said that everything comes with a price. The average American now lives almost thirty years longer than a hundred years ago. But for millions of people, the price of longevity has been Alzheimer’s disease. The greatest fear my patients express to me is, “I think I’m losing my mind.” Read more »

Controversy: Can Twitter Cause Memory Damage?

At this year’s British Science FestivalTracy Alloway, a psychologist from Stirling University, said the following:

Some examples of what can hurt or harm working memory include things like Twitter. When you’re receiving an endless stream of information when you’re a ‘tweeter’, it’s also very succinct, so there’s no need to process or manipulate that information, it’s not a dialogue unlike something like Facebook where you might be updating your status and so on.

british science assoc

Fortunately, Mark Henderson at Times Online puts things in the right place:

Most people I know who use Twitter see it as an interactive tool for conversing with wide groups, and for drawing like-minded people’s attention to information that might interest them. It’s interactive, full of links, and information-rich. It’s a misconception that the 140-character limit makes depth impossible. In fact, to me, Twitter seems to build social networks just as effectively as Facebook, which Alloway thinks might improve working memory.

Mark is right, and I have a few examples that can explain why I think so:

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

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…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles