Practice Management
Here are some examples of headlines generated by a recent paper about alternative medicine. The headlines are quite imposing, and in some cases plainly misleading:
- “Cancer patients who turn to Alternative Medicine are 2.5 times more likely to die”
- “Alternative Medicine alone as a cancer treatment linked to lower survival.
- “You are more than twice as likely to die from your cancer if you choose alternative medicine. If you have breast or colorectal cancer, you’re more than five times as likely to die.”
- “Cancer is way more likely to kill you if you rely...
According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, allergies have become increasingly common affecting 30 percent of adults and 40 percent of children.1 Allergies are the third most common chronic disease among children under the age of 18. In this audio blog post, naturopathic physician Dr. Todd Born talks about the integrative treatment of inhalant allergies. He describes why inhalant allergies can sometimes be difficult to treat and what integrative medical tools should be considered when treating inhalant allergies.
Audio:
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Vitamin D3 and K2 are two essential, fat-soluble vitamins that together have a broad and intertwined impact on health.1-3 We all know that vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is light transformed and that it is technically not a vitamin because the skin synthesizes it on exposure to UV light. Vitamin D3 is the precursor to a class of D3-related hormones that have many functions in the body beyond calcium homeostasis. Receptors for this vitamin are ubiquitous throughout the body as they are found in more than 36 cell types.4 Recent research has shown the action of vitamin D...
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New York State finally got on board with offering another alternative to the chronic pain dilemma. Chronic pain is now a qualifying condition for the New York State medical cannabis program. New York’s program1 began in 2016 and has been grossly underutilized largely due to the glaring omission of one of the most prevalent conditions, chronic pain.
When the program was first announced, optimism loomed large as initial estimates for the number of people who would benefit from the program were somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000. To date only 15,000 patients and 911...
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Current physical activity guidelines recommend moderate intensity exercise for 30 minutes most days of the week for a total of 150 minutes/week, or vigorous exercise for 75 minutes per week, spread out over at least 3 sessions per week. In a report published in January 2017, researchers evaluated more than 63,000 men and women over age 40, inquiring about their moderate to vigorous physical activity.1 The research participants were classified into four groups:
- individuals who did no moderate or vigorous physical activity
- those who met the guidelines of 150...
My office is rife this month with patients exhibiting anticipation anxieties about what college accepted them or rejected them (their hopes are dashed forever!), what classes they failed, how well they performed, and how they are positioned for future success.
The sea of despair, the self-accusations, the diminution of inherent self-worth hangs in the balance of the student’s final report card. It appears that the cultivation of innate self-worth through other means has not been deemed worthy in our culture. The price tag on education is a functional reality and a concomitant...
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How we experience and interpret events in our lives is critically dependent on the context in which we frame them. This framing can be shaped by previous experiences, expectations, beliefs, social context, emotions and many other variables (see previous blog post). The experience of pain is not an exception.
As clinicians, we have numerous assessment scales for pain: the Wong-Baker Faces, 0-10 Numeric Rating Scale, Visual Analog Scale, Verbal Pain Intensity Scale, the McGill (where is your...
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"In what sense is it true, that my hand does not feel pain, but I, in my hand? How is it to be decided? ...if someone has a pain in his hand, then the hand does not say so (unless it writes it) and one does not comfort the hand, but the sufferer; one looks into his face." - Ludwig Wittgenstein1
Whether short or long-lived, the odds are you have had a memorable encounter with a patient experiencing pain or with your own experience with pain. As health care providers, we routinely look into the face of someone in pain.
So what is it that we are looking at? What is...
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As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m a big fan of behavior modification scientist Dr. BJ Fogg. Fogg’s behavior change model focuses on three steps: motivation, ability, and trigger.1
I had the opportunity to interview Fogg on a radio show that I do with my colleague Dr. Lise Alschuler.2 During that interview, Fogg went into detail about the three tenants of his behavior change model but that wasn’t the most interesting part of the interview...
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Healthcare practitioners continually work to crack the code when it comes to positively and sustainably changing patient behavior. While the true secret to success is likely highly individual and based on many nuances unique to each patient, there are some tenants to follow that may impact sustainable behavior change.
For years we were led to believe that all it takes to change behavior is motivation. Without motivation, patients were doomed to fail and with the right level of motivation, success was surely theirs. For example, if a patient really wants to quit smoking, then they...
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