Fear of Flying? What the Heck is that all About? First of all, I have no idea whether or not Brett Kavanaugh sexually abused Christine Blasy Ford. This sort of “he said, she said” situations are always difficult to sort out. As a physician with an interest in...

If I am going to write about everything that's wrong with the health care system in the United States, I would need to write at least a 2,000-part series, assuming that I stuck with only the major flaws. To keep things simple, I'll start by examining what our...

In a way, it seems like a silly question. With world poverty, trade wars, possibly nuclear war, environmental devastation and other disasters on the menu of current events, the fact remains that many people in the world don't have enough food to sustain a reasonable...

As long as I can remember, one of my favorite activities has been intense people watching. For me this has never been a casual activity. When my Greek wife and I first started dating almost 15 years ago, she sometimes accused me of “ogling” other women when we were...

That’s why I anticipated the recent Science journal article from the Brain Consortium. Huge, humongous, enormous, gargantuan, colossal—I’m not sure if any of these adjectives fully grasp the impact of this article. Even though the title “Analysis of Shared...

When I woke up Friday morning, along with the rest of the world I was shocked to learn of the apparent suicide of celebrity TV personality and chef Anthony Bourdain.  Most of you are probably familiar with his hit show Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown where he traveled...

Bipolar disorder (BPD) or what has historically been referred to as manic depressive disorder is one of the big 3 classic psychiatric disorders. Major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia round out this sad triad that has likely plagued humans since the dawn of...

Or  "Honey, I Just Blew up the Field of Psychiatry!" A “humongous” study was recently published in Lancet that supposedly laid to rest the issue of whether or not antidepressants are effective. The study was titled “Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21...

Because of my long-standing interest in nutrition, especially the connection between diet and brain function, I am constantly amazed at the number and variety of folks who claim to have some degree of nutritional expertise. It seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry...

Academic medicine has never been enthusiastic about the general public taking unregulated supplements. These supplements cover a broad range, from common vitamins and minerals to more esoteric targeted supplements. I suspect one big reason for their distain is because...

I’m not normally the type of person who focuses on the end of my life. In my opinion life is for the living, so this is where I like to spend my time and effort. That is until I was recently scheduled for a cardiac ablation procedure for my intermittent irregular...

You’ll have to excuse my pun but America, Mexico, Sugar and Trump do seem to be part of the same twisted and distorted tale. First things first. Unless you are deaf, dumb and blind or living on the moon, the science is in and sugar is out. If has been confirmed beyond...

Being from Boston, I like reading my “home town” medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine. This is likely the most prestigious medical journal in the world, yet I find it interesting just how often they get things wrong. NEJM—Master of Mistakes? In 1980...

Although stress seems to be on everyone’s mind, it is a surprisingly difficult term to define. The ancient Greek stoic Epictetus stated: “People are disturbed not by a thing, but by their perception of a thing”. Overall I think this statement is true, but it doesn’t...

Recently as we rushed through the Tampa airport I noticed in one of the bookstores a glossy “Special Edition” from Time titled “Mindfulness—The New Science of Health and Happiness.” On the cover was a picture of a blissful young lady who appeared to be totally tuned...

One of the first things I noticed after I purchased my condo in Mazatlan Mexico in 2003 was the massive amounts of Coca-Cola that were being consumed by virtually all Mexicans at virtually every income level. I later found out that per capita, Mexican’s are the...

Trust me, nobody wants to grow old without taking your brain along for the ride. I’m 68 years old and I have a three-year old daughter, so leaving my brain behind would be a very poor personal choice and trust me when I say choice. When it comes to protecting and...

I have had a very personal relationship with Alzheimer’s disease for many years. As a primary care physician I have treated hundreds of patients with this devastating illness for over four decades. My grandmother Amber succumbed to this horrible disease in her 60s and...

The Curse of Panic Attacks Just about all of us have experienced severe anxiety or panic at some point in our lives. You know, the feeling of absolute and uncontrollable anxiety and dread accompanied by cold sweats, rapid and labored breathing, a pounding heart and...

For over 40 years I have been preaching the wisdom of eating healthy whole foods and avoiding highly processed manufactured “fake” food. For decades many professionals, researchers, the government and the general public were caught up in the low fat debacle but today...

For over 40 years I have been studying the extremely complex connection between food and brain function. Many experts have recognized the connection between highly processed food and various common brain disorders. Their perspective goes something like this:  You eat...

A recent article in the Boston Globe titled “A Broken Covenant”  outlines the dismal failure of Massachusetts’s efforts to manage mental health over the past few decades.  A long line of Governors, politicians and bureaucrats has closed many of the state’s inpatient...

It seems like daily we are exposed to headlines implying that two variables are somehow connected. From there it is a short step to concluding that one variable is causing or strongly influencing the other variable. On the surface this is the “correlation suggests...

I certainly agree with most of the points in this recent New York Times Op-Ed article "Sugar Season. It’s Everywhere and Addictive." I communicate frequently with my friend Dr. DiNicolantonio and we share many views about the dangers of refined sugars. Pioneers like...

A recent study titled “Incidence of Childhood Obesity in the United States” recently published in the NEJM has sent obesity experts around the world scrambling. The study took a longitudinal view of over 7,000 kindergarten children and followed their weight and height...

We have come to a place where most people agree that hunger should be eliminated in our country.