Killing Care Softly It’s official: doctors treat charts, not people. Harvard researcher Russell Phillips reckons physicians of many stripes are now “data entry technicians.” My preferred term is “checklist monkeys.” The results for your health care? Not good. How much time and energy are really wasted? Recent reports show ER physicians spending 44% of their time […]
Unsafe: Surviving the New Age of Anxiety
A different, new age of anxiety is brewing. To understand why, look around. One of the world’s favored centers of “chill” just burned to the ground. In the peacefully pleasant California wine country residents woke to winds whipping fire. Within minutes their homes reduced to ashes, their vehicles melted. They had no warning. In the morning light […]
Fighting Dementia Using Your Eyes and Ears
Dementia scares people. Rates are rising. New evidence shows decreased vision and hearing make dementia more likely. One study out of Stanford found people who had vision loss and did not seek treatment showed five times the cognitive decline rate, and over nine times the Alzheimer’s rate as those without problems, through a period of eight and a half […]
Exercise – A Great Way to Learn
We are often admonished to exercise. It’s anti-inflammatory – we’re told. You’ll get less heart attacks and strokes. Fewer tumors. Clearly less Alzheimer’s disease. And you might lose weight and look better. But what is it we do during exercise? We learn. Become more biologically intelligent. For if learning is the acquisition of knowledge and skills, exercise […]
When You Eat May Be As Important as What (Breakfast of Champions)
Reinventing Breakfast A patient asked me “I only eat one meal a day, a kind of late breakfast. Is that bad?” “No,” I replied. He’s a physically healthy man. Though pretty lean, he worries about his weight. I explained that in Army experiments where biddable privates were given only a single, 2000 calorie meal each day, […]
