Part one of Progress in Cardiology was a sober look at the current lull in innovation. In part 2, as promised, I tell you what is right and optimistic about my field. There is a lot. The post touches on the return of the basics. Basics in doctoring and basics in therapeutics are huge new […]
Category: Healthy Living
I love cycling. Being outdoors, pedaling, feeling the swoosh of the wind, these are all sensations that more people should enjoy. They are sensations of happiness. And oh, does the heart love happiness. I also love my country. America is an amazing place. If you take a moment to really look past the mundane of […]
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 […]
However you see the Reverend Al Sharpton, one thing is certain: you see less of him now. His Twitter pic tells you he is proud of his 167-pound weight loss. Good for him, he should be. If you care about health, the disappearance of the Sharpton-of-old is worth mention. His story teaches us a lot, […]
Reform of healthcare in the United States is infinitely complex. Millions of words have been written. The noise drowns out the signal. It’s rare therefore that one paragraph could sum up the problem so concisely. It came from Edward Davies, an editor at the British Medical Journal. He was quoting journalist Owen Dwyer who was […]
On day 1 of ObamaCare, the headline in our paper said “SHUTDOWN.” It’s here; it’s really here. You might be wondering what’s been going on in the hospital or office–the contact points where healthcare actually happens. The funny thing is: nothing seems any different. And…this is the problem with ObamaCare. It hasn’t, won’t, or perhaps […]
Perhaps writing about health matters from the perspective of a cardiologist/bike racer is a little like parenting: At times the message seems less than compassionate, even though it’s born out of concern for others, knowledge and a tincture of middle-age experience. The many excellent comments on my recent telomere/heart-health post stirred me to write a […]
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
A recent study on healthy lifestyle changes got me thinking about why heart disease remains the most deadly human disease. A small study of just a few motivated men with low-risk prostate cancer garnered attention because it contained two important key words: Ornish and Telomeres. Everyone knows Dr. Dean Ornish. And most of us know […]
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 were many good questions raised on my last post. Thanks. One particularly relevant theme concerned the relationship of atrial fibrillation (AF) and coronary artery disease (CAD). There’s a great deal of misunderstanding out there on how these two common disease relate to each other. I thought a few paragraphs might be useful. On the […]