Refuse To Regain

Our Healthcare Industry: NOT

by Barbara Berkeley, MD It's in the headlines. It's on your mind. It's health care. As of December, 2016 the United States was spending 17.8% of its gross domestic product on health care. That's 3.2 trillion dollars or about $9,990 per person each year. The imbroglio over Obamacare is the direct consequence of our enormous health care problem. Proper coverage is too expensive for many of us and beyond any reach for truly sick people unless there is a contribution... Read more →

The Body Mysterious: Time to Lift the Veil

by Barbara Berkeley, MD We physicians live in the shadow of rising health care costs. Hospitals want us to cut length of stays and somehow become more efficient. Insurance companies ask us to accept less money for patient visits, forcing us to see more people in fewer hours. The government wants us to check a slew of electronic boxes to prove that we’ve performed what they deem to be “best practices”…. even though there is little evidence that any of... Read more →

Why I Hate the People "Half Their Size" Issue

by Barbara Berkeley, MD This is a bad week for me. I'm on a rant. In fact I feel (for those of you who are old enough to remember) like Howard Beale, the news anchor from the movie "Network", who went crazy and started screaming, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!" OK, maybe I'm exaggerating. But just a little. This week brought a double whammy. First, the USDA released its new eating guidelines. Why... Read more →

New York Soda Ban: Gone But Not Forgotten

by Barbara Berkeley, MD In the war for the way America eats, the most recent battle went to Big Soda. Citing "personal freedoms" the Coke and Pepsi folks raised their glasses to Thursday's court decision that overturned the New York City limit on soft drink size. How much would you like to bet that those happy executives were not toasting with the sugar-filled products they sell? Heck no. They want to live long enough to spend their fortunes. To be... Read more →

A Too Fat World: One Symptom of Systemic Cultural Illness?

by Barbara Berkeley, MD When I recently had the sobering task of visiting a friend in the midst of her severe clinical depression I was struck by one thing. My friend was visibly ill, not just mentally, but physically. Even before medications were started, her skin was sallow, her weight had ballooned up and she looked like someone with a devastating bodily problem. In western medicine, we are taught to view the body as distinct from the mind. Psychological illness... Read more →

Here's What We're Up Against: More on Obesity-As-Disease

by Barbara Berkeley, MD As I said in an earlier post, obesity is more complicated than we make it out to be. To say it is a disease defines only one part of what obesity is and its facets are legion. Having said this though, it is obvious to those of us who treat ob/ow patients that elements of modern life have left many of us "broken" and are continuing to destroy us via harmful pathways that are self sustaining... Read more →

Morning Joe: The Food Wars in Microcosm

by Barbara Berkeley, MD I am a big fan of Morning Joe, MSNBC's thoughtful and viewer-friendly morning news program. For those who have never seen it, this show is built on the sometimes warm, sometimes snarky relationship between its two hosts. Mika Brzezinski is the liberal daughter of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough is the eloquent staunch conservative and former Florida congressman. These two serve as effective foils for one another, each one looking as if... Read more →

An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore is Quite Large

by Barbara Berkeley, MD In the interests of political equity, I feel it only fair to observe that Al Gore has become oversized. I report this because I have written in the past about Mike Huckabee, a Republican who--during his political ascendancy---devoted energy and considerable lip service to the themes of healthy eating, exercise and weight loss. He lost around 100 pounds, wrote a book about his successful lifestyle change and became a cheerleader for health. Then he gained a... Read more →

Coca Cola Gets Concerned About Obesity....Hmmmmm

by Barbara Berkeley, MD So Coca Cola has taken to running a TV ad that waxes eloquent about their corporate concern with obesity and lets us in on all that they have done to combat the problem. Enough said. When voices who have been truly and consistently concerned responded to the ad, Forbes Magazine published a piece called, The Obesity Police Turn a Solvable Problem into a Needless War. In this way, the battle was joined yet again. If you... Read more →

Meatless Fruitless Mondays

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Cue the gorilla in the room. Can you please start roaring and waving your arms? What's that you say? Despite a killing rampage, still no one notices you? Attention America. You are dying of diabesity. You are living in a country where 46% of the adult population has some form of impaired sugar metabolism--either pre-diabetes or diabetes itself. Let me shout this. FORTY SIX PERCENT!!!! Adult diabetes is a disease that develops most commonly when people... Read more →