Read more on Neuroprotective and Disease-Modifying Effects of the Ketogenic Diet…
Filed under Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, eating disorders, Education, News, Research, weight by on Aug 28th, 2016. Comment. 
It’s not that I don’t like folks who grow grains. I mean, I am related to some wonderful folks who grow wheat for a living, who are on my husband’s side of the family. I’ve been to their church bazaars and eaten their jello molds.
In France, I went to medical school at Amiens in the Somme, the breadbasket of France, and I took care of lots of stalwart folks who grew wheat for a living. Read more on Dump the Breadbasket and Turn That Food Pyramid on its Point…
Filed under Disease, Education, News by on Aug 25th, 2016. Comment.
This is an update of a previous post:
http://estelletobygoldstein.com/?p=50
Science keeps changing and moving forward so quickly that even an avowed knowledge addict like me can sometimes do little more than hang on for the ride.
Back when I wrote my earlier post, I already knew for sure that I wanted to live for as close to forever as possible. Calorie restriction had been touted as one possible way to do do so, and change in the gut flora was one possible mechanism. Read more on Update On Calories and Longevity…
Filed under eating disorders, Education, Government, medicine, News, Research, weight by on Aug 16th, 2016. Comment.
Okay, so my Continuing Medical Education Provider gave me every imaginable disclaimer on this one.
Abstracts at a meeting, so the demands were not as rigorous as for published articles. There could be confounding factors. A British study; maybe they aren’t wired the same way us yanks are. People who take a nap of at least a half hour during the day have lower blood pressure 4 mm. lower 24 hr. average systolic than folks who don’t. Espresso, on the other hand, raises blood pressure. This study was done on Italians. Are they wired like us? Drinking enough espresso may also be increasing the incidence of type 2 diabetes, by some kind of an effect on long term glucose (sugar) metabolism. Read more on Helpful Hints From A Former Caffeine Fiend…
One of the themes that keeps coming up in those little “newslets” for 15 minutes of Continuing Medical Education each is that systematic screening for several serious diseases, like cancers, is simply not as efficient as one wishes it were. At the very least, in terms of cost, it rarely pays. Sometimes people try to identify a subset of people who should be screened; but all too often, even that is a daunting task.
Some stalwart and doubtless realistic physicians sometimes suggest–screen patients who ask for it. This seems strikingly similar to the young doctor in Amiens who told me, that if he wanted to build a practice and feed his family, he had to give everyone antibiotics. It is that ancient trend of anti-intellectualism, patients who second-guess the doctor, people who are worried about their health– And yet, these people could argue that (they have paid their health insurance and earned what they think is good care), and they are individuals and not statistics. Read more on When To Screen For Things Medical That Could Kill…
How lovely that the first lady carries the banner high – save our children through nutrition, and deliver it through public schools.
How lovely that the United States as a whole and a first lady in particular can plead for the health and future health of children in a world dominated by politics and commercial interests that are simply not assailable with idealistic claptrap.
We may have actually achieved an amazing amount in the past few years, on this incredibly difficult task. Guess who has been saying, for a couple of years now, that any attempt to reform school lunches is in trouble? Coca-Cola, and other large food companies that make things like frozen pizza a French fries. Read more on School Lunches Are A Mess…
Filed under Education, Government, News, Nutrition, politics, weight by on Jun 3rd, 2014. Comment.
The Tower Hill School in Delaware is considered top of the rank of independent schools in Delaware. Maybe, some say, the best private college prep in the United States.
Their website looks a lot like the website for my old prep school — Beaver Country Day School For Young Ladies, Chestnut Hill, MA.
Yes, in the days of the class of 1969, it was girls only, and was almost a relic of bygone days, with mixers (with boys’ prep schools) where an effort was still made to keep couples a certain distance apart. I was one of the early token Jews in a system where all visible human skin was the color of a bleached aspirin tablet. Read more on School Sex Scandals Among The Rich And Powerful…
Filed under Education, Family, News by on Nov 21st, 2013. Comment.
I was wearing my best pastel multicolor weave suit as I walked up the stairs of a drab gray Victorian mansion converted into a medical office on the outskirts of large mid-western city. It was a bit cool, early spring, and I had been through all of the other principal personalities in a fairly large and well respected neurosurgery department. The emeritus chief of the department — older, semi-retired, wrote hunks of textbooks about 20 years before; was the last one I had to see. Although nobody seemed wildly excited, I had “passed” the interviews to make it this far.
The Victorian mansion was the office building of the neurosurgical group that was the residency faculty. I was ushered into a richly furnished Victorian style office with antimacassars and gigantic velvet wing-backed chairs.
The father-to-us-all type neurosurgeon spent over five minutes asking me about France and my passion for the brain before asking me if my period gave me any problems. Read more on Women In Science Sore And Soar…
Filed under Education, Government, medicine, News by on Nov 20th, 2013. Comment.
Wait a sec … there are more women applying to college than men, and more women in college than men, so we have to attract more men and women have tougher admissions standards, and nobody seems very worried about this?
I think sometimes anonymity is a damned good idea, especially when you are selecting for intelligence, which is not a terribly bad idea in higher education.
When I was in medical school in France, everyone was assigned a “code number” for anonymity, and there was a ceremony for the “raising of anonymity” when the French medical school at Amiens (now known as “Jules Verne University”) found out that #38 out of 650 students in the “elimination examination,” (as there were only 110 places for clinical students in the hospital) was myself, and they were lovely about all of this even though they were stuck with me for all of seven years. Read more on Gender Bias in University Admissions…
Filed under Doctors, Education, News by on Jul 25th, 2013. Comment.
Warning: Daily use of aspirin can lead to side effects which may include total loss of impulse control, man boobs, toe hair, and third nipples. Please consult your doctor before taking this and other over the counter medicine.
Well, not really. But your really should know the risks and benefits of anything you take, even if it’s over the counter, even if it’s aspirin. I have an early memory, and I cannot have been beyond high school or early college, for I was still going to Friday night services with my Parents-of-Blessed-Memory. My father would not let me in the choir with the other retired senior types with weak voices; but, it seemed to amuse him to no end when I out sang them and the cantor from the congregation. The cantor had some kind of a congenital dislocation of the hip and some kind of back pain and I don’t know what else. My parents had discouraged my still premature medical curiosity and told me not to ask him. Read more on To Aspirin or Not To Aspirin; That Is the Question…