Archives: October 2006
Fri Oct 20, 2006
Other Examples of Arrogance
More ways in which the U.S. government, behaving like the average American citizen, exemplifies gluttony in a broad sense. "Gluttony" technically means 'overeating', from the Latin gluttare 'to swallow' with the augmentative suffix -on. But the examples of gluttony I give reflect the same "me first, I'm entitled to more, the rules don't apply to me" attitude involved in overeating, an attitude universal among Americans and justly despised by the rest of the world. We think of ourselves as the most moral people in the world, but where is the evidence? We were outraged when a poll of foreign people found that the majority regarded the U.S. as "the most dangerous country in the world", and this poll was taken among our friends! Are they nuts? Let's see... More...
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Wed Oct 18, 2006
America's Other Flaw — Arrogance
A few messages ago I discussed the most common flaw with which foreigners charge Americans--gluttony. Our other problem according to them is arrogance, but they're wrong about that; it's really ignorance, willful blindness. Rather than discuss examples in which I am not an expert, I will discuss an area in which I am--the practice of medicine in the U.S. Politicians often declare that America has the best health care in the world. They say Canadians hate their "socialist" system and prefer the U.S. when they get sick. It's not true, and saying it does not make it true. More...
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Experience Teaches
Experience teaches that a patient is not dieting seriously if they... More...
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Fri Oct 06, 2006
Overeating Should Be Addressed First
After the sermon I gave at the church (see my "Message of the Week" from 10/2/06), in my synagogue on Yom Kippur my rabbi declared he would talk about three addictions. The first was the addiction to e-mail and computers, the second to food and obesity and the third was to wealth. His discussion of food-addiction started off well, but ran into the weeds when he speculated that people overeat because of loneliness and misery. They sought comfort-foods, he believed.
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Mon Oct 02, 2006
Sleep
Sleep is often an issue for people, on phentermine or not. People have unreasonable expectations for sleep because of an incorrect understanding of sleep. My Ph.D. work at Harvard was in the area of sleep, long before I became interested in medicine or obesity. Most people think the only normal pattern is eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, but in reality few people get so much or need it. Here is the key question the doctor must ask: "Are you drowsy in the daytime?" If the answer is "no", the patient is getting enough sleep. More...
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