• HOW YOU GET YOUR GRANNY’S GAIT

    A youthful gait and posture contributes to the appearance of health and youthfulness, every bit as much as the appearance of things like your skin and teeth. I often saw patients between the ages of 50 and 80, who complained of walking like their Granny, and they didn’t know how or when it happened. Sometimes a family member noticed. “Dad, you’re walking like Peepaw!” Patients who develop a limp after an injury or the acute onset of a disease process are well aware of the source, but the rest of us can develop it insidiously…a slow creep…and then it’s there. I like to talk about recognizing the onset of your…

  • FEEL BETTER!

    We think of the holiday season as a “feel-good” time of the year. I look forward to November and December. But sometimes it’s a little like looking forward to a roller coaster ride. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved riding roller coasters. As a taller-than-average child, my parents were able to lie about my age so I could ride with them on the wooden roller coaster at Coney Island; the Cyclone. Despite hearing desperate screams echoing and whipping around the structure, I couldn’t wait to get on. I was not disappointed. Yet, every time I stand in line for a ride on a roller coaster, there is…

  • SIT LIKE A MAN (S.L.A.M.)

      I’ve been promising to put this blog on my site for a long time. If you’ve read some of my responses to blog comments in the past several months, you would have read references to my Sit Like A Man (S.L.A.M.) program. Now S.L.A.M. is not a feminist movement. It’s not a how-to formula for board room strategies. Nor is it a rejection of “lady-like” behaviors. It’s not a drive to encourage women to wear pants and shorts in the work place. However, all of the above might certainly be the result of it.   It’s a women’s’ health movement. And I’m starting it! I’ve seen an occasional reference…

  • WHAT I DO: CATCH IT EARLY

    We live in a culture which promotes the nobility of working through pain. This past weekend, I had the briefest moment of lateral elbow pain, and it reminded me of the experience I had with tennis elbow 10 years ago. I remember trying to work through it, and really thinking that it couldn’t happen to me. I would just tough it out.  A year and a half later, it beat me into submission. Shots didn’t work. Medications didn’t help. Braces helped a little, but what…I’m going to use a brace in the OR? But I can tell you I wore one when I rode my horse, or cleaned house. I…