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Food Truths, Food Lies: Final Nutrition Advice For The Boys & Girls Club’s Fit Family Challenge

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Over the past 6 weeks, 5 families (selected by the Boys & Girls Clubs) have been working hard to develop new healthy eating and exercise patterns (part of The Triple Play Fit Family Challenge). Their ultimate goal is to maintain these habits for a lifetime, and teach their peers to follow in their footsteps. Next week I’ll be traveling to Los Angeles to meet the families and participate in the awards ceremony – where the winning family will receive an all expense paid vacation. (Maybe if I play my cards right they’ll take me with them? One can always dream…)

I myself have been challenged to encapsulate all the best nutrition research into simple guidelines for daily living. I gave it my best shot in this blog post, and today I’m going to review some final food philosophy, straight from one of my favorite books, Food Truths, Food Lies.

Food Truths:

  1. Calories matter most – food is like fuel. It is burned for energy, and when we have reached our daily calorie needs, the rest is stored as fat. Some food is more calorie-dense than others, but the bottom line is that to maintain our weight we need to balance calories in (what we eat) with calories out (what we burn through activities of daily living and/or exercise).
  2. You can’t exercise your way to weight loss. In other words, you can’t outrun your mouth. Just think about it Read more »

Pay Tribute To The Veterans In Your Life By Learning More About PTSD

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My ability to sit peacefully day after day and write about health or enjoy my family owes more than I’ll ever know to the hard work and sacrifice of generations of American men and women who served in the Armed Forces. On behalf of my colleagues at Harvard Health Publications: Thank you for your service.


One of the challenges faced by many servicemen and servicewomen returning from war is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

In a nutshell, post-traumatic stress disorder is a lasting and exaggerated reaction to a terrifying or life-threatening event. It makes a person feel like he or she is living through the event over and over again. PTSD shows itself in three main ways:

Re-experiencing. People with PTSD mentally relive the triggering trauma in daytime flashbacks, nightmares, or inescapable thoughts about the event. Sights, sounds, smells, or other stimuli can bring the event to life.

Avoidance. People with PTSD tend to Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*

DIY Plastic Surgery Is Becoming Popular: Is It Ever A Good Idea?

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It seems that DIY plastic surgery as a theme is becoming popular. A month or so ago I was contacted by a producer in the UK about submitting images of some DIY plastic surgery types who found their way into my office. Assuming, like much of my mainstream entertainment bits, that they don’t end up on the cutting room floor, they should be featured in a show sometime in the future.

Now the OC Register’s “In Your Face” blog is reporting on some new reality television shows looking for some fresh DIY plastic surgery talent…meaning you. A pretty scary post for Halloween.

This topic begs the question (scariness aside) as to whether or not there is ever any safe DIY plastic surgery?

The answer, of course, is conditional like most things in life: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Truth in Cosmetic Surgery*

The Whistling Nose: How Can It Be Corrected?

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Though most people like the professional nose whistler shown here require an instrument to enable the nose to whistle, in others it occurs naturally due to unique anatomic features within the nose.

Why might someone’s nose whistle?

Septal Perforation

The most common reason it may occur constantly is due to a hole in the septum (septal perforation). The septum is a wall that divides the right nasal cavity from the left side. Normally, it should be straight and without any openings.

However, when a hole is present in the septum and it is in just the right size and place, whenever air is breathed in and out of the nose, it will whistle. In this situation, the hole is the “window” of the whistle and the nose itself is the mouthpiece.

Correction of this problem is by Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*

Recognizing And Treating Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

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Immediately Post-op Carpal Tunnel release

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is common and is the result of the median nerve becoming squeezed or “entrapped” as it passes through the wrist down into the palm of the hand.  Because this is a sensory nerve, the compression causes tingling, burning and itching numbness in the palm of the hand and fingers. A different nerve goes to the little finger and the lateral half of the 4th finger so the sensation there would feel normal.  There is often a sensation of swelling even though there is rarely any true edema that can be seen in CTS.

The symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome  usually start at night when people sleep with flexed wrists.  As it progresses, the tingling and numbness can be felt on and off during the day.  It can cause decreased grip strength and weakness in the hands.

CTS can be worsened by medical conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, pregnancy or wrist trauma.  Women are three times more likely to develop CTS than men,  and it is rare in children.  Most of the time no cause is found.  The space that the median nerve traverses is very tiny and it doesn’t take much to compress the nerve.  Even small amounts of tissue swelling such as occurs in pregnancy can cause severe symptoms.

The treatment for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome starts with Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

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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