You Really Are What You Eat: Can Food Actually Have an Impact on Health and Disease? I get a lot of questions from patients about food. There’s a lot of interest lately in using food to treat disease. Now, we know that “eating right” is “healthier” in that too much of anything can…
Is it OK for doctors to refuse to take care of people who refuse vaccines? Last week, the journal Pediatrics published a study describing the characteristics of physicians who dismiss families for refusing vaccines. Perhaps most shocking was the finding that 83% of the over 500 physicians surveyed reported that in a typical…
Busted! Top 3 Myths About Vaccines In a previous blog post, I talked about a recent study describing the characteristics of physicians who refused to care for families who declined vaccines for their children. I talked about how I suspected it was about something much deeper than just misinformation, or misconception. But I also…
Childhood Obesity, A Heavy Burden As a pediatrician who treats children and adolescents with obesity, many parents have asked me, “Why is my child obese?” I have to admit that I don’t have a good answer to this question. It’s not as simple as an imbalance between calories consumed and calories burned. The…
Why Dr. Google Doesn’t Always Have Your Back Let me start by saying that I love Google. Just yesterday Google taught me how to distress a pair of jeans and fix my dishwasher. But Google didn’t go to med school. A few months ago, after spending about half an hour discussing a…
Understanding the WHO Statement: Are Red and Processed Meat as Evil as They Seem? Social media was alive with ravenous carnivores (and smug vegetarians) after the WHO released a statement on the carcinogenic effects of red and processed meat. This prompted many news outlets to run headlines comparing red meat to cigarettes. Some serious…
Screw the Flu: Help Protect Ramona Ramona is my oldest friend in the world – we’ve been friends since birth (seriously!). The pic above is one of us taken sometime in the 80s. And here’s a recent one of her with her family. Ramona is maybe the funniest person I…
Losing sleep over lost hair? Hair loss, also called alopecia, is one of the most troubling conditions for women. There’s so much social importance placed on a long and luscious mane. And alopcia can be really frustrating for your doctor, too. Unfortunately, because hair loss can go on for a while before…
Other than that it’s just plain gross for them not to… Most patients feel uncomfortable asking their health care providers to wash their hands. But here is why it’s really important to anyway: It saves lives. Nearly 100,000 deaths a year are linked to infections picked up in doctor’s offices, nursing…
Think you got the flu from your flu shot? Think again. Did you know that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the PHAC (Public Health Agency of Canada) now recommend the flu vaccine for everyone over 6 months of age? That means you. The flu vaccine is safe, even…
