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 →
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 →
The same holds true from my extensive series of articles about puberty—I didn’t mention how it is effected or even altered by hyperactivity. Read more →
We’ve already talked about medical proverbs such as “cold hands, warm heart,” “feed a cold, starve a fever,” “drink eight glasses of water a day,” “cigarettes will stunt your growth” and that “apple a day”… thing.
But there are some we left out because the list was getting a bit long for one sitting. I’m going to take another shot at listing a few more, some from the “dawn” of medicine and others which are beginning to hit up against the way doctors are practicing medicine these days!
Read more →
If nothing else, doctors are a bit concrete. We love boxes, categories, lists and most of all… answers!
So, things a bit askew, catawampus, off kilter or out of place make the average physician a bit nauseous if not outright wonky and catapulted into a search for the rationale. You give us an aphorism and we’ll design a research study.
Read more →
In the U.S., old Ben Franklin published a series of articles in his Old Richard’s Almanac which, even if he didn’t come out right and say it, people took as the truth and became Medical Proverbs still with us today.
Perhaps, because a lot of these medical proverbs had their roots in vintage manuscripts like the bible and early writings of the pioneering healers/doctors throughout time.
How about it? Should we take sayings like: “early to bed…”, “an apple a day…”, “pay attention to seasons…”, “doctors’ best book is the patient”, “health checks don’t add anything meaningful…”, “eight glasses of water…”, “cold hands…”, “cigarettes stunt your…” and “feed a cold…” as truth or with a huge grain of salt?
Let’s do some proverb-busting!
I answered a question of a 16 year-old patient who had been the subject of some school-girls’ highly personal and intrusive questioning: “What kind of Underwear do you wear? boxers, briefs or commando?” He wrote into an answer-line: “Which is best?” and I told him I’d think about it and see if there was an informed answer that covered all the Tanner Stages.
Read more →
[An “almost 16” year old boy out on a church group date is set about by a girl he likes and a couple of her friends who ask him what type of underwear he wears, boxers, briefs or commando. Having a good relationship with his doctor’s office he texted their “answer-line” to see if there was a particular type that might be better. He really hasn’t given it too much thought and basically just picks “the top one out of the drawer that’s clean that still fits” out of many Christmas and Birthday gifts from the past.
His doctor, a friend of mine, was a bit perplexed about how to answer, so I offered to take a stab at it on the blog.]
Read more→
Although, as explained, personal issues prevent me from posting as regularly as I have always done; none-the-less, I still try to keep up with the new developments in pediatrics and one such area is Diabetes in childhood.
I’ll try and update several “discoveries” related to “Diabetes” in the pediatric population that should be posted in this site: 1 – New naming conventions; 2 – that adolescent diabetes is much more refractory to treatment than we had thought; and, 3 – that the FDA has now approved the “artificial pancreas” for use in children with “type 1” diabetes.
Read more →
Cicely Saunders, or as she would eventually be known: Dame Cicely, is a reaffirming and refreshingly different person entirely than the previous woman physician we listed in our quest through the top 50 most influential physicians of all time.
Both were born to privilege. Both had difficult, parentless upbringings. Both succeeded greatly against odds and difficulties. Both had altruistic desires; but, Dr. Saunder’s difficulties made her a person of great compassion and selflessness.
Read more →