Holiday Eating

Holiday Eating

Sharing food, or “the breaking of bread” with others is critically important to our relationships. Food is so important that diet is often the last thing to change when a person enters a new culture. By the simple act of eating, we learn (both implicitly and explicitly) from our social circle about how our food choices may transmit values and attitudes, not just about food, but many other topics as well.

The Flexner Report

The Flexner Report

Published in 1910 (and notably paid for by the Carnegie Foundation,1 though in the video below he incorrectly identifies the funding source as John D. Rockefeller), this will mean nothing to non-physicians but it affects all of us to this very day. In medical school we are taught about how this investigation-turned-report saved American medicine from the unstandardized Wild West that it was in the early 1900s, and turned it into the evidence-based Shangri-la that it is today (Wait, don’t we spend more yet have the worst outcomes of any western nation?2 But I digress…).

Sleep

Sleep

We vastly underrate this important aspect of our lives. I was previously one of those folks who thought it was impressive that I could get by on just 4 hours of sleep each night. Little did I know how much damage I was doing to my body, and the adverse impact that this was having on my brain specifically.

Hormone Replacement Therapy

Hormone Replacement Therapy

The term “hormone replacement therapy” (hereafter HRT) had always left a bad taste in my mouth, as I started medical school shortly after the landmark Women’s Health Study had come out in 2002, which showed that while we might be replacing hormones to alleviate symptoms of perimenopause/menopause, we were actually increasing the risk of breast cancer (26% increase), heart disease (29%), stroke (41%) and doubling the risk of blood clots.1

Forest Bathing

Forest Bathing

To me, the smell of pine-scented candles is wonderful all year round – not just at Christmastime. Apparently, I am far from alone in my scent preferences; they are universal and their health benefits are backed by numerous studies! Known in the medical literature as “forest bathing,” what is really just time out in nature is well-studied and has a multitude of benefits.