Reflections on Gratitude

For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends

Thanksgiving By Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s been a difficult year for many of my patients. S...
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Yoga Or Stretching Helps Chronic Back Pain

Everyone hates stress, and for good reason. Stress makes us miserable. Perhaps for that reason, stress is blamed for virtually every disease for which the cause is still unknown. Later, when we discover the true cause, we find that it is unrelated to stress. We thought stress causes stomach ulcers before discovering the bacterium that is the true culprit. We thought stress caused heart attacks before a study comparing high-stress to low-stress individuals showed that this wasn’t true. Stress cau...
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Difficult to Digest Carbohydrates Implicated in Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic condition marked by abdominal pain, bloating, and alternating constipation and diarrhea. There is no specific test for IBS and other more serious diseases like celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease can cause similar symptoms. The good news is that when a doctor has ruled out these more serious diseases and diagnosed IBS the patient can be assured that her illness is chronic but not progressive or life-threatening. The bad news is that IBS sympt...
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Ivacaftor – a Breakthrough in Cystic Fibrosis Treatment

One of the implicit themes we were taught in medical school is that an understanding of the basic science of a disease informs and guides treatment of patients. The general philosophy that we absorbed was that an understanding of the molecular or cellular defects in a disease would explain the abnormal organ physiology which would explain the patient’s abnormal signs and symptoms. This understanding of the abnormality at a molecular or cellular level would also help discover medications that cor...
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