I have been “taking” tap in the not too distant past. That means, I have been studying tap dancing, in a city just far enough from Los Angeles that we were pretty sure nobody in the class would go pro. I had a real problem trying to get enough “sound” out of my taps. I believe, without too much in the way of pretention, that I was able to get my feet in the right place at the right time. Other students, obviously younger, just seemed to have more slap in their tap.
The sound is part of the great fun in tap dancing; I mean, come on, Fred Astaire danced on the radio. My dance-teacher (I still have a tendency to call her “dance-Mistress,” in the European way told me that if I imagined my feet hitting one inch below the floor, instead of on the floor, that would treat the problem. It did not. After a day of psychiatrizing it seemed to be hard for me to find the force to stomp loudly. Read more on Dancing Outside The Box…
Filed under News, weight by on Mar 3rd, 2014. Comment. 
I have a lot of trouble feeling sorry for celebrities. I mean, I do applaud Tom Hanks for being open about his type II diabetes (adult onset, often associated with factors such as aging and being overweight). I have seen and heard too much about stereotypes of people as being overweight and lazy and old when they are type II diabetic.
I have always been concerned about people who have lives of such unrelenting boredom and mundanity that they choose to live through being fans of celebrities. Many beloved patients and one beloved husband think I should be a celebrity, for having done things. This, of course, would fly in the face of numerous celebrities who have done little or nothing identifiable, such as the Kardashians, but I am assured it is still possible. Read more on Did Yo-yo dieting Give Tom Hanks Diabetes?…
Filed under Celebrities, weight by on Nov 11th, 2013. Comment.
I thought that everyone knew by now that if something is a supplement that is supposed to help you lose weight by gulping down a pill, it is going to turn out to be a lie. One of the first things they teach you in debating is that your weakest argument is an appeal to authority. Everyone who follows Dr. Oz has noticed that his recommendations seem to “flip-flop.” Perhaps individual supplements come to him with some inducement to publicize them? Whatever. This stuff does not work terribly well. Garcinia cambogia is also tamarind, often used in different cultures to aid with weight loss. It is a wildly fibrous fruit, so it fills people up. This seems to be responsible for at least some of the alleged weight loss properties. It may be one reason that despite the use of this fruit in Mexico, it does not seem to have ever really caught on with American tastes. Read more on More Fake Diet Methods On The Market…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, News, weight by on Aug 8th, 2013. Comment.
I am an expert on this — Anti-overweight discrimination.
First, from my practice. I remember a woman in her forties I saw in Oklahoma for a routine antidepressant renewal who told me that she had a cardiac condition and had been to her primary physician (this is back in the prehistoric days when I took insurance) and he had told me it was her own fault she was overweight and she was risking her life by doing nothing about it.
She was not suicidal. She told me she would never see that doctor again. And she was not going to take any heart medicine. Read more on Anti-Obesity Discrimination and Obesity Treatment…
Filed under Diagnosis, Doctors, eating disorders, weight by on Aug 2nd, 2013. Comment.
I remember the first time I saw a young patient with older person’s diseases. I was in a public clinic, not far from the industrial waterfront in California. She was 24 years old, weighed 380 pounds, had already had what she claimed was a “slight” heart attack. She had type 2 diabetes which I thought was virtually impossible to get at such a tender age. She was able to do little other than to shrug her shoulders. She said something about health problems having been in her family. Me, the only thing I could think of was that I was only through 3 years of so of a seven year medical school at her age. I was quite overweight, but if I had been struck with her degree of obesity or her medical problems, I don’t think I would have had the stamina to get by. Sure enough, she was neither working nor going to school. When you are an adolescent, you think you are going to be strong and healthy forever. I remember looking at patients and never thinking I would be as ill as they were. I remember seeing patients in intensive care in comas, never thinking for a moment that I would have three of them in my life before I was able to figure out the hereditary metabolic that had caused them. Read more on Patients Avoiding Hospitals and Doctors…
When a marijuana patient visits me for permission to use that drug, I have to ask them, gently, how long they have used it. Most, if they are old enough, do not give me an answer that I can quantify. Instead, they start with something like, “It seems like yesterday I used it for fun. Now, I need it just to (fill in the blank).” Survive, live, walk, or keep from throwing up. They wonder about how and when it changed from a form of recreation to a form of drug treatment.
They never seem to believe it has already been a drug, for thousands of years, in other cultures. If I give them enough time, they count their own age and their own problems by how they use it. With a few thousand papers published every year, mostly in other countries, it would be crazy at this point to try to believe it wasn’t a drug. For an amazing number of folks, it seems to be the way they reckon the passage of their lives. Read more on The Passage of Time…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Family, News, weight by on Feb 6th, 2013. Comment.
It is not just that Fox missed “fair and balanced” with a recent headline about why women gain weight after menopause. This is out and out false advertising.
I am glad that someone is figuring out genetic predisposition to visceral fat in mice. I actually own a significantly overweight Minnie Mouse stuffed toy. She needs to know about this. Oversimplifications of science in order to get folks to listen to or read news stories is worrisome, tedious, and all sorts of things. Read more on Misleading Headline about Postmenopausal Weight Gain Lets Me Plug My Book…
Filed under eating disorders, Education, weight by on Jan 28th, 2013. Comment.
Like many others, I am of the type who has been made to feel less. Less than healthy, less than human; whatever, the kind of feeling that sells diet food and diet plans. Read more on A Few Extra Pounds Might Not Be So Bad…
Filed under eating disorders, Nutrition, Psychotherapy, Self-esteem, weight by on Jan 17th, 2013. Comment.
I think we’d all agree that kids have tough choices to make at every turn, and this includes what they eat and drink. A thick, sloppy sandwich served with fries and a sugary soda, or a salad of mixed greens and vegetables from every color of the rainbow with a side of vinaigrette. Yeah, I get it.
But c’mon, does anyone really think that creating junk food laws for kids is going to help? Read more on Making Criminals of Overweight Children…
Filed under eating disorders, Government, News, Research, weight by on Aug 30th, 2012. Comment.
To tell people who are overweight that they need to move around more and count calories is kind of like telling Yogi Bear to leave tourists alone and avoid eating the contents of picnic baskets. It ain’t gonna happen.
I have long ago surrendered to the fact that logic, reason, science and – yes, even the truth – have overcome the need to manipulate the population with misinformation in order to control them and to wring every bit of money out of them.
I give professional nutritionists the benefit of a doubt — even though two of them wrote this book. After all, every dietitian I have ever known was “recovering” from at least one eating disorder. And usually on the “lower serotonin” side of life, probably a little obsessive, maybe a little depressed.
Mostly, these are people who believe everything they are told without questioning, or exist on “wishful thinking.” Or they have a political or professional agenda. Read more on How Many Calories in B.S.?…
Filed under eating disorders, medicine, weight by on Jul 12th, 2012. 1 Comment.