My long term readers know that I’m not exactly a fitness fanatic, and my waistline has just jumped over a horrible milestone of over 100 centimeters. (maybe sharing my humiliation will motivate me…) I desperately need inspiration to keep me fitter, and I’m also a tech geek, so I’ve been very excited with the burgeoning quantified self movement.… Read the rest
Category Archives: Prevention
Holiday Travel: Is Your First Aid Kit Ready?
Another holiday season is rapidly approaching, and most of you made flight and hotel reservations months ago — but have you spent equal efforts preparing for good health on your hard earned holiday? Each holiday season I see a massive rush of patients in my hospital just a few days before their vacations, looking for travel medicines and advice.… Read the rest
Empathy: The Most Touching Video I’ve Ever Seen
In our busy lives, it’s all too easy to be short tempered with strangers, especially in crowded cities such as Beijing. A grumpy waitress; a busy doctor; a biker whizzing past you. Instead of our usual initial reaction of stress and anger, wouldn’t it be great to stop ourselves first and think, “maybe they’ve just had a long day.… Read the rest
Rehydration In Kids: Which Is Safest?
What’s the best treatment if you or your child have a stomach infection and get slightly dehydrated from a couple days of diarrhea and poor eating? I see a lot of such gastroenteritis in the summertime, mostly due to more bacterial food poisoning.… Read the rest
Don’t Like Dairy But Need Your Calcium? Eat These
Did you know only 10% of teen girls in the USA get enough calcium? That’s an astonishingly depressing stat from the American Academy of Pediatric’s fascinating position paper on calcium (available here for free). Let’s show that graph right now:
This graph clearly shows a couple points:
- Most infants are doing great with their calcium, thanks to breast and formula milks.
I Have Prediabetes: Now What?
If you are reading this, you or a loved one have probably been told by your doctor that you have abnormally high sugar levels. The doctor may have called it Impaired Fasting Glucose or Impaired Glucose Tolerance, but both of those are just fancy medical words for prediabetes.… Read the rest