Hello, everyone. I hope you are enjoying Ken’s discussion of Changeology. Even he admits his chapter-by-chapter posts don’t give you the full flavor to savor. So, remember to go to Amazon through the link on his blog page to get your own copy of it. In the meantime, I thought I would chime in with a question and comment of my own. Let me tell you the first question I ask patients when we start discussing bad habits they may want to consider changing. It’s, Continue reading “Why?”
Say Yes to Food- In Moderation
As I have often stated regarding most things- Moderation is the key.
With that in mind, let’s explore the newest nutritional guidelines just released (January 2015) by the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Health and Human Services. Those two entities release updated guidelines about every five years and are intended to mirror the latest evidence-based science about nutrition.
Before we dive into these recommendations, remember these are just GUIDELINES and not the final word. In fact, many organizations suggest the recommendations aren’t complete enough. But, they are certainly a place to start and a way to begin focusing on improving your lifestyle.
So here are the official guidelines. Continue reading “Say Yes to Food- In Moderation”
The Next Thing You Need To Be Happy
Are you just not a happy person all the time? Or worse, are you just not happy even a little of the time? Did you not read my last post when I told you, “Just work on being happy, the rest will follow”? Now l’m going to get more specific.
If you want to be happy, then you need to follow Dr. Mom’s first rule of happiness: Get and stay in touch with your Inner Child! — even if it’s even a bit embarrassing.
Let’s be frank here, life has a way of sending these posts to me. I hadn’t thought to write this one until Ken just chided me for doing something inner-childish — wasting time in Hawaii watching an English (I.e. imported from England) cartoon (Thunderbirds Are Go, if you just have to know), but it takes me back to a time when watching cartoons was fun and relaxing, so there you go.
I hear some of you taking his side now- “Cartoons! Really! We paid big bucks to vacation in Hawaii!”
“Fie upon you all,” I retort, in my old British nanny tone.
Why not watch Thunderbirds? We all deserve some down time to do what we want? And it doesn’t really matter if other people think it’s childish, silly, or whatever. I bet inside each of them, just like inside you right now, they are a little envious at my ability (or maybe even bravery) to get out there and do something fun, just for the heck of it!
And, if I can do it, despite Ken’s tongue clucking, then so can each and every one of you.
So, go! Enjoy yourself however you darned well please! Go see Star Wars for the twentieth time( in full costume if you want), go try out surfing, read a comic book, watch Thunderbirds Are Go with me, or do whatever else it is that calls you. Have fun, relax, and let go.
Don’t just get in touch with your inner child. But rather, grab her, hold her, and hug the stuffing out of her. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men can always put her back together again. Embrace your inner child! You’ll be the better, happier!, person for it.
In the meantime, you may as well do as the meaniehead (my loving husband) says, “You GOTTABGATT! so go out there today and be Great! All the time!
The One Thing You Need for a Healthy New Year!
While reading Ken’s year-end posts, I am sure you have noticed he has been talking about our annual end-of-the-year planning trip we take the last week of each year. In essence, this trip gives us a chance to take stock of where we were last year, where we are this year, and plan for where we want to be in the next year.
Being the “Dr. Mom” in our family, my part of this deal is your health. But, I’m not going to waste your resources now on specific “New Year’s Resolutions,” all those healthy decisions you need to make in order to become a better you. While resolutions, as affirmative goals, are important and definitely need to be discussed but that’s not how I want you to start this new year. Continue reading “The One Thing You Need for a Healthy New Year!”
4 Things To Make Yourself the Go-To Guy or Gal
We all want to be the “go to” guy or gal in life. The person other people go to for advice, assistance, or whatever else they desire. The person others trust, admire, and respect for our compassion, competence, confidence, and demeanor, regardless of what is being asked of us and regardless of whether we are acting as a family barrister or a family butler, which seem to be my two main roles in life.
People seem to want their doctors, lawyers, other advisors relatively well-aged, well-experienced, and well-regarded. So, if you are not old, haven’t practiced your profession for a score or more, and are not even known in your community, much less respected, what do you do to appear well done?
Many people tritely answer this quandary saying, “Well, you just have to fake until you make it.” This is neither, however, the well-aged, well-experienced, well-regarded, nor correct response.
If you want to be the “one” to whom others go, then you have to Continue reading “4 Things To Make Yourself the Go-To Guy or Gal”
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly About Medical Marijuana
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have legalized using marijuana. The federal government still maintains medical marijuana is illegal, but the Attorney General has decided not to prosecute registered doctors, patients, growers, and dispensers who are complying with their states laws. Still, many doctors, including me, do not like prescribing medical marijuana. Here’s some of the good, the bad, and the ugly about medical marijuana.
Like almost everything else in life and medicine, medical marijuana has its good parts and bad parts. Marijuana contains 60 different cannabinoids, some of which have psychoactive effects by interacting with cannabinoid receptors in your brain, spinal cord, and lymph tissue. Marijuana contains a lot of other substances that can hurt you.
A medical marijuana patient can ingest marijuana’s cannabinoids by inhaling aerosolized THC-containing liquids, smoking weed, eating THC-containing food, or orally taking cannabinoid extract.
There are two FDA-approved cannbinoid’s currently available in the United States for nausea and vomiting that results from chemotherapy and a third one that is used for muscle wasting accompanying AIDS and spasticity due to spinal cord injury. Chronic pain accompanying cancer and rheumatoid arthritis respond to marijuana use. Newer THC-containing drugs are being clinically tested to help with multiple sclerosis and neuropathic and cancer-related pain.
While they have been found to help some types of medical issues, as far as chronic pain is concerned, THC has not been found to be any more effective than diphenhydramine (Benadryl), codeine, or amitriptyline (Elavil). THC has not been proven effective for acute pain, glaucoma, Parkinson’s disease, tremor and many other diseases whom which patients suffer.
Marijuana will, no doubt, be found to help more medical illnesses as time marches on. Nonetheless, cannabinoids are not a magical silver bullet.
Both doctors and patients alike know the bad side-effects of marijuana. 9% of experimental users become addicted, especially in adolesence. Adolescents using marijuana may have larger dips in their IQs and may drop out of high school and college more than older users. Using marijuana during pregnancy has some negative effects on children later in life.
Even though marijuana smoke does not include nicotine, it does contain harmful toxins and may injure larger airways and result in chronic bronchitis. So, just like you should never smoke tobacco cigarettes, you should never smoke marijuana cigarettes either. In other words, “If you have to take that weed, take it orally.”
Doctors cannot prescribe marijuana for patients, but they can certify :
- the patient has a medical condition that can, to a medical probability, be helped with marijuana;
- the patient has not responded to other therapies;
- the patient has had a comprehensive assessment and a long talk about the risks and benefits of medical marijuana;
- the patient knows medical marijuana is not endorsed by many major medical organization;
- the patient does not suffer from substance abuse, psychosis, unstable mood disorder; and
- the patient lives in a state that allows the use of medical marijuana.
Many primary care physicians are declining to certify medical marijuana for patients who may in fact respond to it. The reasons include an aversion to beginning along the slippery slope of becoming pain management physicians. I, for one, choose to let the pain management consultants to whom I refer my patients handle all aspects of those patients’ pain management issue, including both marijuana or any other useful medication their pain-management specialists deem appropriate.
7 Steps to Be a Healthier You
Welcome back! In a previous blog I chatted about my philosophy of moderation in all things (except smoking). Now, I want to chat about how to change unhealthy habits for healthy ones and achieve that moderation thing.
So, you have thought and thought and finally come to a decision- it’s time to change whatever habit has been bugging you. The scientifically minded among us would cause that phase “Proaction”-deciding what you want to change.
But wait! How do you change? You know you have a habit you don’t like, but now what? OK, that’s the next phase-“Perception.” You have to get some data to figure out the details of what changes you need to make. First: perceive what your life is like now, then perceive what your life would be like without the habit you don’t like. Then, perceive how much of each of your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people you have available and will have to allocate to change from your unhealthy habit to a healthier one instead.
Next comes “Planning.” Take some time with this step and be absolutely certain you have a good design for almost all the steps you will need to take to use all your resources and change what you want to change. Note, I said a good design and not a practically perfect design and I said almost all the steps. Why, because I want you to keep moving and not get stuck in the paralysis of analysis that bogs a lot of people so far down in the planning phase that they never move on to the Preparation phase.
Once you have a reasonable plan in place, start getting things ready and prepare your resources as much as you need to move on to the “Practice!” phase. Here is where we separate the women from the girls. Now is the moment you put all that proaction, perception, planning, and preparation into practicing your new healthier habit moment to moment and day to day with full intensity.
This moment to moment and day to day stuff is the persistence phase.
Finally, to get yourself to the practically perfect performance of your new you , you have to promote to yourself and everyone around you the fact that you are changing for the better and you fully intend to make yourself Great! All the time!
So that’s it. 7 Steps to Be a Healthier You.
In my next blog, we are going to get specific about helping those of you who need it change that smoking habit of yours.
Eat All the Tilapia You Want
I’ve seen too many warnings lately claiming “TILAPIA IS WORSE FOR YOU THAN BACON!!!!” that I just have to step in with Dr. Mom’s voice of reason.
To these worry warts who have nothing better to do than try to attract readers by scaring the heck out of them, I say, “Hogwash and pig whistle.” (all pun intended). I haven’t eaten bacon since 1984, since I started limiting my diet to kosher food. Nonetheless, there are plenty of “experts” (however you define that word) who say bacon has as much a place in a balanced diet as raw fruits and vegetables. And, according to my two mantras, “Eat less CRAPF (the P is silent) and move your self more” and “Moderation in almost all vices (but never smoke),” I would probably agree with them. But all this “Tilapia is worse than bacon” stuff is really an overreaction by pundits misreading real scientists research.
Let’s take a look at the real facts on the whole “Tilapia vs. Bacon Scare” and then talk about real people eating real food for a change.
Back in 2008 (seven years ago, friends) Floyd H. “Ski” Chilton, Ph.D. and his team of researchers at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine released a study comparing fatty acid levels among popular fish. They found that tilapia contained far less omega-3 fatty acid than other American favorites, such as salmon and mackerel. According to the paper, salmon also has a “more favorable” omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.
I agree with with both of these statements and I recommend eating salmon more often than tilapia to get more omega-3s. While both fatty acids are important, omega-3 has anti-inflammatory properties that play a critical role in brain development and cognitive function and may prevent diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
But how did all these pundits who probably don’t know their gills from their pigtails end up comparing fish to bacon. Well, Dr. Chilton’s report also said something about the inflammatory potential of hamburger (80 percent lean) and pork bacon is lower than the average serving of farmed tilapia (100 g). What Dr. Chilton’s report really stated was farmed tilapia contains high levels of arachidonic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid that, while necessary to help repair damaged body tissues, has been linked to brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and may exacerbate inflammation.
That set off alarm bells among nutritionists. And being the media-savvy fire-in-a movie-theater-screaming group of opportunists they are, they started running around warning the world, “TILAPIA IS WORSE FOR YOU THAN BACON!!!!”
The truth, however, can be found coming from the horse’s mouth itself. Dr. Chilton, the professor of physiology and pharmacology who directed the Wake Forest study, says the comparison of tilapia to pork bacon was taken out of context.
“We never intended to paint tilapia as the cause of anything bad. Our goal was to provide consumers with more information about their fish,” Chilton said. “If your doctor or cardiologist is telling you to eat more fish, then you should look for varieties that have higher levels of omega-3 and avoid those with high inflammatory potential.”
Doctor Chilton’s own blog states, “The truth is, tilapia has as much omega-3 as other popular seafood, including lobster, mahi-mahi and yellowfin tuna. Tilapia is also very low in fat. A 4-ounce serving of tilapia has about 1 gram of saturated fat, 29 grams of protein and around 200 mg of omega-3. By comparison, a 1-ounce serving of bacon (about 4 strips) contains 4 grams of saturated fat, 10 grams of protein and 52 mg of omega-3.”
So people may not want to eat tilapia every day, but that doesn’t mean it has to be avoided altogether. It certainly fits well into my nutritional plan as not being CRAPF (the P is silent) and certainly has a place on my table in moderation, just as much as most other food does.
So, enjoy one reasonable portion of whatever fish you want at your next meal and then go live your life moving your self more to use us all you eat instead of letting it store itself as fat on your body.
Bye now. We’ll talk more later.
Moderation in Almost All Vices
When it comes to healthy lifestyle choices, unlike many gurus out there, I almost never speak in absolutes. Absolutely forbidding yourself something, especially something that gives you pleasure on some level, does nothing but set you up for failure when your willpower fails you and you eat the forbidden food, drink the intoxicating beverage, or engage in illicit behavior.
If you want to succeed in rightsizing your body and keeping it that way, completely giving up something you enjoy eating or drinking is almost always a pathway to disappointment on many levels. Continue reading “Moderation in Almost All Vices”