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I have some close women friends who sometimes call me and ask me to analyze their relationships. Sometimes it is because I am a psychiatrist and I have the pretension of having seriously studied these things.  Sometimes I think it is more because I have been married to the same man for 25 years and I am still crazy in love with him.

Read more on Kissing With Your Eyes Open…

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What you have been through makes you who you are.
A man abused by his father told me he all too often finds that he has abused his own son.  He did not want to.  He did not mean to.  He realized he was becoming his father and he trembled.

Read more on Breaking The Chain Of Abuse…

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I never enjoyed driving.  I am grateful to my husband as he takes me wherever I need to be and I have the precious luxury of focusing on the classical music on the radio, or letting my spirit fly to dizzying heights as I try to figure out what somebody’s brain cells are doing.  Sometimes, I can even steal a nap.

Read more on The Joy of Cursing…

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Research marches on.

I have more than one patient now, and many patients in the past, who are women whose men have cheated on them.  It has run from the one night stand to the entire family kept elsewhere in the state or nation, unknown to these long-suffering women, who invariably come to me more than a little bit depressed.

I have been sometimes asked ahead of time if and how a woman can avoid this.  For many years I have been recommending pre-marital evaluations to friends as well as patients.  Many years ago women were shocked and shrugged their shoulders.  I was “ruining” romance.  I always told them that it was their call how they chose to live life.

Read more on You Can Change Your Jeans But Not Your Genes…

Filed under Family, News, Psychology, Research by on . Comment#

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All information should be free, especially to people like me who struggle, really struggle to find new information and interpret it and make people’s lives better.  But instead, people who write this highly structured non-fiction that is scientific research, get it published in difficult (if not impossible) to retrieve places.  Where authors might actually enjoy hearing from fairly enlightened readers such as I.

But some pieces of science are interpreted by university press offices who deliver them back to me.  Sometimes, the message is so strong that I am nevertheless impressed, and need tooooooooooooo tell my beloved followers.  Like an article I just read: “Modern Parenting may hinder brain development.”

As that kid in Peanuts says, “AAUUGGHH!” I had always believed that civilization progressed only forward. I became a history buff when I was a child largely because I believed a dictum (which was once attributed to Harry S. Truman; more recently, I think, to Winston Churchill and now, to George Santayana.)

Read more on Can past traditions be better than present ones?…

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I have been friendly with and received referrals from homeopaths. and taken care of patients who have sung the praises of that art.  Since I am known to most folks as an “alternative physician,” this is understandable.  All homeopaths have been gentle folks, and I supposed that they were doing people good, in some way, be it placebo or something else.  I had no reason to fight them. I cannot remember ever actually referring someone to a homeopath.  Some people have told me it did not work for them.  And even though I use alternative methods,  I do things that are scientifically proven to my satisfaction.

I have never told anyone to stop seeing a homeopath who was helpful to them.  I decide on the basis of safety and efficacy for every treatment, as best I can.  Even if I sometimes have wondered about efficacy, I will admit. But for safety, homeopathy is off the charts.  I know of no down-side. I remember looking at the “dilution” level of the remedies.  In general, they are so dilute that they could not possibly have any of the “substance” that was used to make them, not even a molecule.

Read more on The Current State of Homeopathy…

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One crucial turning point in my life remains a vivid experience, I know I will remember it always. I was five 1/2 years old and had just started the first grade at Yeshiva.  I didn’t last more than two weeks or so before I was propelled into second grade.  By then I read English perfectly well. Read more on Daddy And The Torah…

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You may never have heard of bromelain — but then again, we are in a land where big drug companies get all the publicity (and some say suppress their natural product competition). However this enzyme extracted from pineapple is a very powerful anti-inflammatory, and I say this because I have first-hand experience with it, and not because I read it on the internet somewhere. Best of all, it is readily available in most health food stores and pharmacies.

Read more on My Bromelain Experience…

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Natural treatment of obsessionality. “Estelle, you’re such a little worrier.  Yes you are.” When I was little, I never understood why my Auntie Charlotte always addressed me this way.  I did know that my family had “adopted” her which seemed to give her the right to “adopt” me.  Her orthodox Jewish family had rejected her because she wanted to marry a guy who had been married before, even though he was very Jewish. I was not supposed to know or care about such things.  But I did know she was the first person in my life to tell me I worried too much about things that didn’t need worrying about.

Read more on Obsessions…

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Everyday health advice. If I read any more “health advice,” mental or physical, that is supposed to be practical advice but is totally wrong and built on mythology, I might explode. Given the “mainstream” unproven drivel that gets reproduced in popular magazines, I think it is pretty amazing any Americans are still alive at all. A little relaxation (deep breathing and focused meditation) — I am doing a lot better.  After all, we still have freedom of speech, although it sometimes gets fragile and needs loving protection.  And you have me, the Renegade Doctor, to tell you what is truthful and right. I didn’t start out to trash “Reader’s Digest” (RD).  My parents of blessed memory had some kind of lifetime subscription, and kept it with a very few cherished books by their bedside, on top of my mother’s premarital “Hope Chest,” which she told me contained clothes she could only “hope” she would fit into again one day. She never did. Read more on Everyday health advice drives me nuts!…