Tag Archives: health

I’ve Got a Whole Lot Going On

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Hi all: This week is going to be short and sweet.

I retired this past week from clinical practice. What’s next? Lots of rest and relaxation until I can say I’ve caught up on my sleep. Long overdue. The truth is that I’ve been sleep deprived since college. Enough is enough.

I will still be writing the blog, and have added a monthly column at the Cleveland Jewish News. When I am ready, I’m going to pick up my book again and work on seeing it through to the end.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by CNN about my thoughts on New Years’ Resolutions, and you can check that out here.

Lastly, I was totally blown away by all the comments, encouragement, kindness, and generosity of last week’s readers and for that and more I thank you very, very much. Wow. I’m still reeling over what each of you said.

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year, and will look forward to catching up next week.

Your Health is Where You Want it to Be

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Good morning, and happy Sunday! I want to tell you about a conversation I had with a patient this week. She was someone I’d never met before, and, like many before her, she was absolutely flummoxed about what to try next. She had already done everything she could think of to lose weight. I think you know this story. I’ve told it many times before, and you may even have experienced it yourself. Maybe you’ve been on practically every diet, eaten cabbage soup, denied yourself your favorite foods, carved out time you didn’t really have to get more exercise than was comfortable at the time. Of course none of this was sustainable. You can’t eat cabbage soup for breakfast forever. So what’s next? Next comes balance. Continue reading →

Trust Your Gut

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We’ve got a big problem in this country: we have lost the ability to listen to our own bodies. We eat things that make us feel sick, but we don’t make the connection. 

We discount how we actually feel in favor of how we think we should feel, at least according to the latest nutrition claims and advertising on that box of “Frosty-0 Jumbos” or “Specialized Healthy Nutrient-Brand.” [I made up these names in case you couldn’t tell.] Here we have an entire country filled with people who feel kind of sick, for one reason or another, and have no idea why. That’s pretty wild all by itself, but it’s just half the story. The other half of the story is that we continue to accept as dogma all kinds of food-related information, even in the face of significant evidence to the contrary. We experience distressing symptoms, and then ignore them. Continue reading →

Practice Makes Progress

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A few years ago, the computer guy showed up at my office for the first time in a long while. Let’s call him Gene. Right away, I knew something had changed. I said, “Gene, how are you? You’re looking very well!” He responded with an uncharacteristic grin, and answered with a statement that all of us know, but few believe. He said, “Diets don’t work.” I sat up quick. Continue reading →

The Commodity Compromise

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In life, one always has to choose between quantity and quality. If your goal is to obtain an item of the highest possible quality, then it doesn’t matter how much you get. Like a sample of uranium. When it’s quality you’re after, it doesn’t matter whether you end up with a microgram or a kilogram. The issue of its purity is not negotiable, so the amount is secondary. But when it’s quantity you seek, it doesn’t matter whether the end result is purity or perfidy, perfect or problematic. Continue reading →

Thoughts on mind and body…

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Many of us, particularly those of us from Western cultures, are in the habit of considering the mind and body as entities separate one from the other. Sir Ken Robinson, for example, in one of the most widely watched TED talks, describes an academic as an individual who employs the body to move their head from one meeting to another. In a less amusing example, this from medicine, mental illness is considered different, somehow, from physical illness, and the many aspects of care, coverage and chronicity reflect this. Has Descartes’s mind-body dichotomy outlived its usefulness? Continue reading →