Refuse To Regain

Pills Are Not Magic. You Are.

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Greetings from the land of semi-retirement. It has been just over a year since I left my primary practice--fully intending to continue patient care in another setting. But fate intervened in the form of a local dance contest and shifted my focus to pursuit of a lifelong dream of becoming a dancer. If not now...when??? Since that fateful moment, I have trained endless hours and have competed in three world salsa competitions (not very successfully!). I... Read more →

Do It!

by Barbara Berkeley, MD It has been a long time since I blogged here. I hope you are still out there working on staying healthy and finding your own way to reach your goals. I know how frustrating it can be and I know you sometimes wonder if it's all worth it. Let me assure you that it is. Things in my life have changed. In November, I became a grandmother for the first time and in December I decided... Read more →

Are You An Easy Keeper? Weight After Menopause (and Before)

by Barbara Berkeley, Do you feel like you can gain weight from eating air? Overweight individuals often feel that they gain weight just by looking at food, yet our culture disbelieves this. " No", it says, "the reason you are overfat is because you are weak and have no willpower. Look at that thin person over there, now there is a role model." This is utter nonsense as far as I'm concerned. While we debate about whether different people store... Read more →

Obesity and the Brain: Let's Talk

by Barbara Berkeley MD An email from a friend of mine started me thinking about this topic again and it's a fascinating one. I am interested in the fact that we spend so little time thinking about the territory above our shoulders. Why is that? Maybe because we can't see our brain so we are continually looking out from it, perusing other parts of our bodies, but largely ignoring the place where we truly exist: in the neural net that... Read more →

Why They Call It NEW Year: My Resolution for 2014

by Barbara Berkeley, MD So, I woke up on January 1 feeling a little restless. I'm about to turn 66 this year and while I feel completely unchanged physically (and mentally), I have begun to think about life with a new urgency. I'm sure this is familiar to anyone who has entered his or her sixties. Inevitably, the realization sets in that there is much less in front of you than behind you and that perfect days of mobility and... Read more →

Medical Contrarian: A Most Interesting Story About Fats and Science

by Barbara Berkeley, MD I couldn't get enough of this article on Dr. Fred Kummerow, 99 year old researcher who has spent his life studying dietary fats. As you know, I can be accused of science geekery. Essentially this means that I find articles on the neurochemical pathways in the appetite centers of the brain and studies on LDL particle number as compelling as most people find CSI Miami. But for me, this article on Kummerow held all the twists,... Read more →

Anti-Aging: Lower Weights May Keep You Younger

by Barbara Berkeley, MD One lovely side effect of weight loss is that it often makes you look younger. Sometimes significantly. Apart from the fact that weight loss makes women appear less matronly and men less stodgy, there seem to be other more profound links between obesity and senescence. As I wrote about in an earlier post called The Age that Counts, the type of fuels you choose to eat can affect cellular functions that age you. In particular, too... Read more →

The Age That Counts

By Barbara Berkeley Lots has been made of calculating your “real age”…an interesting device for assessing how old you may be on a cellular level. In reality, no one can tell you exactly how much older or younger you are when you change the way you live and eat. Nevertheless, these kinds of quizzes remind us of the fact that our lifestyle choices cause real life consequences and can reap honest-to-goodness rewards. I am more interested in another kind of... Read more →