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Latest Posts

Cartoon Caption Contest Winners!

Thanks for the many entries in Better Health’s first cartoon caption contest. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted some of them several days after they’d been submitted (I was too aggressive with my anti-spam efforts). But they were all included in the contest. Our judges really struggled with choosing a winner… so they narrowed it to 2 and made them both winners!

Would you agree that it’s a toss up? Both authors will receive a Better Health t-shirt. I hope it makes them as happy as this guy. Thanks for participating!

Winner #1: Kerri Morrone Sparling “Please sign here and here and then I can write about you on my blog.”

Winner #2: Rob Falconer “Yes, we do normally weigh patients naked, Miss Saggar, but I think we’ll make an exception in your case.”

And just for a bit of trivia - the artist’s (Dr. Val’s) original caption read: “Mrs. Chen’s medical questionnaire was unremarkable except for her fine print at the end of page 3: ‘allergic to geodon.’”

Science Fiction Writing Contest - Winners Announced

I had the honor and privilege of being a judge for the annual MedGadget science fiction writing contest. Please check out the winning entries here. We judges were blinded to the author names when reading the selections - though it came as little surprise to me that a professional writer (Charles Pappas) won the contest.

Charles’ story hit close to home - it was the diary of a food-lover slowly gaining weight and watching their health insurance premiums increase as a chip implanted under their skin reported increasing cholesterol and insulin resistance directly to their employer. His struggle with weight gain and its financial implications was both humorous and poignant. Please head on over to Medgadget to enjoy the winning entry. Great timing for those of us recovering from Thanksgiving…

Latest Interviews

Are Your Allergies Acting Up? Ragweed Pollen Season Is Here

I don t know about you but my allergies have really been acting up lately. Well maybe not this week since it s been cooler. But last week my eyes were watering my nose was running and my lungs were wheezing kind of But for the first two weeks of…

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Health Tips For Back-To-School

I was lucky enough to be asked by one of the local TV stations to talk about some back-to-school issues when it comes to health. I don t know about where you re at but most of the local schools around here started yesterday August rd Keeping up-to-date on immunizations…

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Latest Cartoon

cardiaccath

Here’s a cartoon I created a few years back. Enjoy!

- Dr. Val

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

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Latest Book Reviews

A Biomedical Look At Spaceflight

Book review by Dan Buckland Dan Buckland is an editor at Medgadget and an MD PhD student at Harvard Med MIT whose thesis deals with diagnosing back injury in spaceflight using ultrasound. Mary Roach author of previous entertaining books Bonk a history of sex research and Stiff a history of…

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UTI and “Eat, Pray, Love”

I really didn t expect to like Eat Pray Love. In fact since its publication in I’d been avoiding it like the plague. Typical new-agey Oprah-y girly-book I thought. Nothing in it to speak to me. Then I saw the trailer for the movie and I was hooked probably because…

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Will Science Succeed With An Anti-Aging Revolution?

Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way to prolong our lives and to keep us healthy right up to the end Ponce de León never found that Fountain of Youth but science is still looking. What are the chances science will succeed How’s it doing so far…

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