sati medical blog

“Mindful eating is not a diet or about giving up anything...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:17:43 -0800

“Mindful eating is not a diet or about giving up anything at all. It’s about experiencing food more intensely — especially the pleasure of it.”

In today’s New York Times Dining section:

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought

I’m halfway through reading Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh and Lilian Cheung—so, of course, what did I do today?

I wolfed down my lunch in front of my computer, in between patients, while I reprimanded myself for doing so…

This looks interesting, airing locally on PBS soon: Los...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:12:25 -0800

This looks interesting, airing locally on PBS soon:

Los Angeles

KLCS

101 and 102 Tuesday, January 31 at 9pm; 103 and 104 Tuesday, February 7 at 9pmLos Angeles/Hungtington BeachKOCE OrangeTuesdays at 10pm beginning February 7

jayparkinsonmd:

This looks great and it’s one of the most important health issues in our country. Glad to see there is more attention being given to why our cities and economy were designed to make health so hard.

A provocative new 4-hour series soon to air on public television, Designing Healthy Communities, examines the impact of our built environment on key public health indices, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, cancer and depression. The series documents the connection between bad community design and burgeoning health consequences, and discusses the remedies available to fix what has become an urgent crisis.

Retrofitting Suburbia (by MPC)

via

Happy New Year!

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:04:03 -0800

Happy New Year!

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. If I could prescribe movies to my...

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:01:00 -0800

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.

If I could prescribe movies to my patients to watch, this one would make my list. I hadn’t heard much about this documentary before but after seeing it, I really wish it had gotten more press and more of a following.

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead is about—in a kind of reverse Super Size Me—two men who go on induction juice fasts and not only lose weight but are able to get off their chronic medications, feel better about themselves, and make lasting positive lifestyle changes.

Don’t let the trailer dissuade you, the movie is very entertaining and truly inspiring; I loved the snippets of interviews throughout and the health messages are straight forward and easy to comprehend. As a doctor, one of the most satisfying experiences I have is when I can safely get a patient off a chronic medication they no longer need—and this usually doesn’t happen until a patient makes some kind of positive lifestyle change. To see a story about people who are able to find a way to better health is a wonderful tale, and to me, a great lesson to be shared.

You can find the movie online for free on Hulu; it is also available on Netflix streaming and Amazon streaming.

“This is integrative medicine and everything that I am looking for in medicine. I can do it at home."

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:17:57 -0800

“This is integrative medicine and everything that I am looking for in medicine. I can do it at home.":

Good write up about Danville, NY physician Dr. Thomas Dwyer (father of one of my colleagues)…a retired family physician who now practices acupuncture out of his back kitchen!

How Doctors Die: It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:42:13 -0800

How Doctors Die: It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be:

Just got around to reading this…thoughtful and provocative. In my case too, it’s right on the money.

Insane

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:17:56 -0800

Insane

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/02/magazine/100000001149415/the-lost-secret-of-running.html

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:18:46 -0800

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/02/magazine/100000001149415/the-lost-secret-of-running.html:

From last week’s New York Times magazine…Christopher McDougall, who wrote the excellent book Born to Run, continues on the quest to teach a less injury prone way of running.

Even though I personally hate running, I find this a fascinating topic and article.

If you take a look at the attached video http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/02/magazine/100000001149415/the-lost-secret-of-running.html, you get a pretty clear sense that the most natural stride of running that they espouse is quite similar to a cycling motion with little upper body motion—an elliptical movement with minimal duration of impact in any direction.

The most telling is that kids already do this naturally. As quite often happens, as adults with our fancy shoes and loaded egos, we run from what’s most natural.

Abraham Verghese: A doctor’s touch “Rituals are...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:24:00 -0700

Abraham Verghese: A doctor’s touch

“Rituals are about transformation”

"The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said: “Man. Because he..."

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:33:00 -0700

“

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he said:

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

”

jayparkinsonmd: I bet celebrities and other VIPs (as they’re...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:52:46 -0700

jayparkinsonmd:

I bet celebrities and other VIPs (as they’re known in hospitals) get some of the worst healthcare in America. And, when I mean worst, I mean the most.

I did my residency in the West Village in NYC. There seemed to be a new celebrity in the ER every other day. “Oh my god, Lindsay Lohan is in bed 3!” I took care of my fair share of them— I won’t say who. But there was always this understanding from everyone in the hospital that “they were VIPs” and needed extra special treatment.

The problem with extra-special treatment in our healthcare system is that it almost always means more care than anyone else would get. For example, celebrities often get every test imaginable done on them in order to rule absolutely everything out. A hospital doesn’t want to be known as the one that killed Lindsay Lohan. This of course leads to more tests and sometimes, more procedures. More procedures can often equal more complications. You get the deal. One hundred thousand people in America die every year due to medical mistakes, unnecessary surgeries, hospital-acquired infections, and drug complications. And they’re not VIPs.

Everyone in the health community is speculating on what happened to Steve Jobs, so here’s the rough timeline:

Some time in the second half of 2003: Jobs undergoes some sort of scan which finds an incidentaloma, which actually later that evening, it was biopsied and found out to be a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, a slow growing kind of pancreatic cancer.

The next nine months: Jobs tries a special diet hoping to kill or slow the cancer’s growth. Either it doesn’t work and the cancer grows or the doctors convince Steve that there’s more evidence for a Western medicine intervention than a special diet.

July 31, 2004: Jobs undergoes surgery to remove the tumor.

June 2009: Jobs undergoes a liver transplant. It’s unclear why.

August 24, 2011. Jobs steps down as Apple’s CEO because he is unfit for his duties.

As a physician, it’s our job to do something. We can prescribe pills or we can perform some sort of procedure on you. When we find something abnormal, it’s in our nature to do something about it. Sometimes, it’s in your best interest to actually not do anything about it. The problem is, we don’t know when we should not do something because we don’t always know how you and your body will handle something abnormal. All we have are stats from population-level studies, an intuition, personal experience, and some labs or imaging. I learned from a professor in medical school that we all get cancer a few times a day. Out of tens of trillions of cells in our body, it makes sense that a few of them will occasionally go haywire. But, there are very elegant processes in our body that ensure these mutated cells actually kill themselves (see Knudson’s Hypothesis).

Steve Jobs’ had an incidentaloma. It may have taken this tumor 15 or 20 years to cause symptoms. However, it may have taken 1 month. We won’t ever know. We do know that incidentalomas sometimes simply go away without rhyme or reason. And we do know that, in Jobs’ case, the doctors intervened with two major surgeries and, now, 8 years later, his health is severely compromised. Maybe if his doctors actually did nothing for him, he’d still be just fine today. There’s no real way to know. I do think that his docs did the right thing as competent doctors, but, again, there’s no way to know if they were competent in Steve Jobs’ case nor will we ever know that if they just left him alone, he would have been just fine. He probably doesn’t have many years, if not months, to live. And that makes me very, very sad. He was one of our heroes. But I’ve got to wonder to myself, how were his doctors affected by the fact that they had Steve Jobs as a patient? We’ll, of course, never know. But I surely wouldn’t want to be his doctor.

For further reading, please read The Atlantic article, How American Healthcare Killed My Father.

Video

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:17:08 -0700

Rawesome or not rawesome? Heard this on the Madeleine Brand show...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:12:00 -0700

Rawesome or not rawesome?

Heard this on the Madeleine Brand show on the way in to work this morning. Very interesting and entertaining piece about Rawesome, a Venice food co-op, that got raided by the feds last week for “selling” unpasteurized milk without a license.

Here’s Stephen Colbert’s take on the raid that occurred last year:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cRawesome Foods Raid www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

I scored a new addition to the office this weekend. This...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:36:00 -0700

I scored a new addition to the office this weekend. This beautiful old hospital bedside cabinet was destined for Goodwill until I took it off the hands of a neighbor who was moving. Not sure how long it’s been sitting in his garage or how he even came to own it…

Made by the Hill-Rom company, this is what they mean by old solid American craftsmanship. A bit of Old English and WD-40 to the wheels and I got myself a lovely equipment cart for the exam room.

Check out the towel rack on the inside door, for back in the days when you really “stayed” in the hospital…

Only info I could find online about it here.

Still Counting Calories? Your Weight-Loss Plan May Be...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:41:00 -0700

Still Counting Calories? Your Weight-Loss Plan May Be Outdated

Well, it looks like the medical establishment may actually be catching up to the truth finally: it’s not just about the calories, it’s what you eat stupid. It’s also about getting your sleep, managing your stress, and staying active (mentally and physically). These are the real determinants of good health.

http://theconsciouslife.com/

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:21:34 -0700

http://theconsciouslife.com/:

Came across this blog recently…not sure what the author’s background is but most of his articles are simply excellent.

This will become a new patient resource for sure.

FDA’s new warning labels for cigarettes…will it...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:18:10 -0700

FDA’s new warning labels for cigarettes…will it work?

LAUSD may stop serving chocolate and strawberry milk

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:14:42 -0700

LAUSD may stop serving chocolate and strawberry milk:

This is a no-brainer, just do it. Looks like Jamie Oliver’s recent prowling around hasn’t been wasted…

Goodbye, Food Pyramid. Hello, Food Plate (along with a new...

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:03:22 -0700

Goodbye, Food Pyramid. Hello, Food Plate (along with a new government website www.choosemyplate.gov).

This is progress and a big step in the right direction. Of course, there remains things to criticize. I agree with this article…we’re missing healthy fats. Nevertheless, a big applause.

Now that the rain has stopped, it’s time to enjoy the rest...

Thu, 19 May 2011 10:19:00 -0700

Now that the rain has stopped, it’s time to enjoy the rest of Bike Week LA. Today is Bike to Work Day with free rides on the Metro with your bike! My short ride in today was very pleasant.

Tomorrow is Bike to School Day. Enjoy life.