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!…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, Disease, Doctors, medicine, News, Nutrition, prescription drugs, weight by on Oct 27th, 2016. Comment. 
She asked me to help with her weight problem. At 25 years old, she could not have been more than 25 pounds overweight.
“I need a pill to make me stop eating lasagna,” she told me.
I went into my maternal mode. “Oh no, my dear, that is not a really good thing to do.” I explained patiently that if she were hungry enough for her hunger to wake her at 6:30 in the morning and propel her to the preparation and consumption of microwave lasagna, she was probably hypoglycemic and she needed enough protein snacks in the evening to maintain her blood sugar in the morning. Read more on A Pill To Make Me Stop Eating Lasagna…
Filed under Addictions, Alternative Medicine, News, weight by on Feb 10th, 2016. Comment.
My family wanted me to see “Fiddler on the Roof: because it celebrated the “shtetl” — the little Russian village like the one where my “Bobie,” my grandmother of blessed memory, lived before she emigrated to the United States. I did not see it until it reached our local movie theater.
There was one line in that musical that burned upon my personal soul more than any other. It is from perhaps the most famous song from that production, “If I were a Rich Man.” Tevye, the poor little old milkman is daydreaming about what his life would be like if he were a wealthy man. Read more on When The World Encourages You To Gain Weight…
Filed under Addictions, Stress, Substance Abuse, weight by on Jan 28th, 2016. 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 am linking to so many places because I think something very clever happened.
No, I am not addressing the “objectifying” of women as physical beings. I still meet women who want to enter beauty contests. They are usually not counting the money from winning the scholarship.
Once upon a time, when I was between states and between licenses, I actually coached a beauty contest winner. I taught her how to answer the insipid questions beauty pageant hosts ask. Most of them were about what she wanted to do in life. It was not hard for me to research past questions (the internet was already alive and well) and figure out it was helpful to express an interest in helping retarded children. To my utter amazement, before I searched this, I had learned she was actually interested in — helping retarded children. Maybe this says something about beauty pageant contestants.
She was adorable, of course, and came in as first runner-up for Miss California. Read more on Holocaust Survivor Beauty Contest…
Filed under News by on Sep 2nd, 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…
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.
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.