Comfort food is usually home made and carries some emotional significance with it. During times of stress or illness people often turn to “comfort foods” to feel better. Most everyone has a favorite comfort food and comfort foods are not necessarily one’s favorite food. Ask yourself…what is my favorite food? Then ask “At the end of a long day, when I’m tired and stressed or sick in bed, what food would I like a loved one (mom) to fix for me?
Comfort foods are often fattening or unhealthy…macaroni and cheese, chocolate cake, fried chicken, chocolate pudding. Foods that are high in carbohydrates and sugar are often connected to childhood and make you feel homey and good. And different cultures have different comfort foods. Rarely is yogurt or a handful of almonds a comfort food in any culture. Read more »
The coverage about Michael Blasil’s suicide raises important issues about how to really help depressed teens…and where to look for resources in our own communities.
In many ways, the coverage about the death of Marie Osmond’s son was excellent. The experts on all the news shows were spot on in discussing teen depression and suicide and all the news stations have posted important information for families on their sites. However, what was missing was the reality of how challenging it is to get care. All the experts I heard this morning made comments such as “if your child is depressed for 2 weeks or more, you need to get that child into treatment because treatment does work in over 90% of the time.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Gwenn Is In*
For decades, research has suggested that people with positive emotions may live longer and healthier lives. An analysis of the autobiographical writings of 180 Catholic nuns found those with the most positive feelings in their early twenties had the greatest chance of being alive sixty years later. Now, the first study of its kind has linked positive emotions to a lower risk of coronary heart disease. Read more »
If your teen is seriously considering a college, I now highly recommend setting up an overnight visit with the admissions department. Here is our experience: while on this college visit my daughter spent the night as a guest with two sophomores at the college we are visiting. We thought it would be a great way to get a feel for what it is like to live on campus in this little town and really get a feel for whether or not she “fits in.”
Upon arrival, we read and signed the paper about the rules, she was given her itinerary, meal tickets, appointment with a faculty member in the department she was interested in, and information about the class she was going to visit the following morning. The two young women who were hosting her introduced themselves and off she went – not a glance back – into the next grand adventure. The admission director smiled at me knowing I was holding back the tears – excited for her and knowing my life would never be the same. That evening my younger daughter, her friend and I saw a movie, had dinner and my younger daughter congratulated me when I did not text her older sister to say goodnight. Read more »
A year ago we wrote about a death of a San Jose teenager from poisoning by hydrogen sulfide gas, or H2S. At the time, I had hypothesized that the death might have been from an attempt at synthesizing methamphetamine gone awry.
But while one can mistakenly generate hydrogen sulfide gas from improper meth synthesis, I soon learned that intentional suicides with H2S is an increasing US trend imported from Japan. One can easily mix commonly-available consumer products to generate the gas and high enough concentrations can cause death. The gas acts in a manner similar to cyanide by binding to the heme in cytochrome c oxidase and inhibiting electron transport and ATP production by oxidative phosphorylation in the mitochondria. (Interestingly, small amounts of H2S are made in the body and is being investigated as a neurotransmitter and biological modulator.) Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
