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

Latest Posts

Diabetes, Jet Lag, And Adjusting To The 24-Hour Clock

I traveled by small, wooden plane.  The flight from Boston to London took just over six hours.  The time change was five hours ahead of Boston, so when we landed at 6 pm, I was only ready for lunch.  The trek from London to Dubai was almost seven hours, pushing the clock ahead a full nine hours from Boston, making my head hurt because how was it Wednesday morning when I was still on Tuesday’s timetable?

(I wrote about the impact of changing time zones for an Animas column last month, but I seriously had no idea what I was in for when I decided to take the trip to Dubai.)

That first day there, the Wednesday, everyone gave me the same advice:  “Don’t go to sleep.”  (It felt like A Nightmare on Elm Street.)  “Work through the exhaustion and just go to bed on Wednesday night on Dubai time, and you should be good the next day.”

For the first few hours after landing, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Paying Diabetes The Attention It Deserves

Diabetes?  Isn't any of this unicorn bullshit.Two weeks ago, I was in the emergency room for some severe stomach pain, down on the lower right hand side of my abdomen.  After consulting with Dr. Google, I realized that it could be appendicitis.  Knowing I was heading to Toronto the next afternoon, I didn’t want to take any chances with this pain.  So I headed off to the ER (conveniently, the one my best friend works at) to check things out.

Looooong story made Twitter-esque short, I didn’t have appendicitis.  I just had some rogue stomach pain.  However, while I was at the hospital, I asked to have my A1C run.  I figured I was there, they were already drawing blood, so what’s one more vial?

“Can you guys grab an A1C while you’re at it?” I asked.

“Is your diabetes under control?”  asked the doctor.

“Um … define control?  I wear a pump, I wear a CGM, and I’m very aware of my disease.  But I’ve been having a hard time juggling things lately, on just about every level, so I’m pretty sure my A1C is crap.”

The doctor shot me a very rude, very judgmental look.  I shot one back at him.

“I’m asking you to run an A1C because Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

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