Hello, and welcome to Pediatric House Calls. I am…
A Physician board certified in Pediatric medicine with Clinical experience including caring for infants, children and teens – well these days mostly children and teens up to twenty-one;
An Administrator experienced in top medical management for several national health insurance companies;
An Author of health care manuals, newspaper columns and even children's stories;
A Business Medical Consultant for drug companies, insurance companies and
physician practices;
A Veteran of the US Navy in the Vietnam era;
And…
I make House-Calls.
I wish the discussion about this topic had started at least 50 years earlier: Just when should school start for teens? Is there a guideline for how much a child/teen should sleep? What’s the difference? It can’t be that big a deal… can it?
Watch as Wendy Troxel explains to a TED audience how Teen’s brains and life-experience can actually be harmed by too little sleep and arising too early.
See the video…
Although April 11th is World Parkinson’s Disease (PD) Day, the entire month of April is Parkinson’s Disease Month with activities highlighting the progress against this debilitating disease robbing, at the very least, every one-hundredth child of their parent or grandparent.
Believe it or not, the absurdly-expansive claim about exercise in the heading even may be an understatement! No other study even comes close and it’s findings were unexpectedly clear: FIVE OF THE WORLDS TOP DISEASES ARE REDUCED BY PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. Simple physical activity!
Literally, the counsel given to Adam and Eve: “by the sweat of thy brow thou shall eat thy bread” seems to have been a commandment and not just gardening instructions!
Read more →
A TED prize winner, Josh Silver, explains how millions of glasses can be prescribed and produced then given to world citizens who need them. It turns out that many of the significant barriers to good eye health are system-created and thus can be overcome.
Glasses without the need for an optometrist; and for under 19 dollars a pair (shooting for under a dollar).
See the video…
Even though I’ve never met him, my brother from another mother Dr. Greg Barrett beat me yet again to writing another parenting article and literally took the words right out of my mouth: Telling truth or lies to children—being honest with your children.
So much so it’s going to be hard giving you my personal take on this important part of parenting without feeling like I’m just repeating what he said: whether or not to tell the truth or lie to your children.
Read more →
Some time ago I did a series of posts about medical proverbs but deliberately left one out: The Sleep Habits to be “Healthy Wealthy and Wise.” It deserved an entire post of its own.
We (and Wiki and Google) usually associate this aphorism with Benjamin Franklin and his “Poor Richard’s Almanack”—a collection of maxims published in the early 18-hundreds. But it sounds mighty Hippocratean or Socratean to me.
Read more →
He calls himself unremarkable which is obviously not so. He says he’s been blind since nearly birth but navigates up steps and onto the TED stage on his own without a misstep. He knows that others see him as unusually capable for a blind person and call him “batman” but calls it only living without fear and activating your brain.
See the video…