This is a short intro to my latest column over at Trials and Fibrillations on theHeart.org Medscape|Cardiology. —- I am not sure why doctors so often look past the best medicine. It’s right there before our eyes. Yet somehow we get sidetracked by the culture of pills and procedures. Modern-day caregivers fail to master the […]
Category: Exercise
There are many reasons doctors suffer from burnout and compassion fatigue. One of the least-mentioned of these reasons is that much of what we do is so damn unnecessary. In the US, the land of excess everything, caregivers, especially cardiologists, spend most of our time treating human beings that didn’t need to have disease. Let’s […]
Do you exercise a lot? Have you been at it for years? Are you the type that rides around the neighborhood to make a 98-mile ride into a century? Do you get squeamish if you can’t exercise for 24 hours? Are you curious about that beautiful machine in your chest? You know, the rhythmic coordinated […]
If you like thinking and writing, few topics are better than the excess exercise and heart disease story. Indeed it is a matter for the curious. Two studies published last week in the British journal Heart addressed the relationship of exercise and heart disease. (See references below.) Although these studies garnered mainstream media attention they […]
Earlier this month I promised to put together teaching points from the Rich Peverley story. His was an interesting case of sudden collapse that likely occurred as a result of atrial fibrillation therapy rather than atrial fibrillation itself. This was my original report: Important lessons from the collapse of NHL player Rich Peverley (BTW: It […]
When the editors of Medscape asked me to write a Top Ten article on the best Cardiology stories in 2013, I jumped at the chance. I spent a lot of time thinking about Cardiology this year. I was invested. Plus, 2013 was a year for pivoting–big time pivoting. What made news in 2013 was not […]
Dr. Larry Creswell, of the Athlete’s heart blog, just posted an interesting debate from the Journal of Physiology. The question of whether longterm endurance exercise leads to heart damage is a hotly contested issue in cardiology. For those who are curious about this intriguing topic, his links lead to very readable prose. Larry suggests paying […]
This short video (4:02) comes from one on my favorite YouTube channels. I write on a whiteboard every office day. But I’m no Dr. Mike Evans. (@docmikeevans) in this clip, the Canadian doctor explains a health behavior that Europeans seem much better at than most Americans. JMM
Okay, I’m getting the hang of this. The Monday morning and evening commute in Amsterdam is something special. You talk about focus. It requires laser-like focus. You’ve got bikes, narrow lanes, buses, trams, pedestrians and tourists. Still though, traveling 6k by bike took 15 minutes; a cab from the convention center, more than 30. I […]
There was great commentary on my last post. Thank you all. I learned a lot from your words. This is how it’s supposed to work here. One comment in particular has stuck with me. It concerned the formation of a how-to be-healthy booklet. An information manual, if you will. I’ve thought about this many times […]
It’s going to be hard to anesthetize this one with compassion. I’m sorry, but the report card on US health is not good. We aren’t heading in the right direction, and everyone involved knows that it’s because of a failure to accept the truth. You have probably already heard the news concerning the state of […]