Dr. M's Women and Children First Podcast

Dan Shapiro is a man on a mission to help physicians, other providers and the medical healthcare administrators understand the reality of healthcare provider burnout. He is currently the Director of the Chartis Center for Burnout Solutions, where he and his team assist leaders of multi-hospital systems with efforts to reduce burnout and the turnover of high-value physicians, nurses, advanced pract...

Resolutions? Do we need them? The simple answer for me is this - if it causes beneficial change, then yes we need them. Ideally, change should occur real time as the need or knowledge of benefit becomes apparent. New Years is traditionally a time that we introspect and set new goals for a better life. What that means to each one of us is as varied as the plants that exist, save for human health. W...

This weeks guest is Dr. David D. Clarke. Dr. Clarke is President of the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association where he teaches the science of the mind body connection as it relates to GI related diseases that do not fit a traditional diagnostic nor pathological framework. For three plus decades, he conducted detailed interviews with over 7000 people whose symptoms were not explained by diagnosti...

Literature Reviews have been very popular. Thus, 2024 will start with science update. 1) Time restricted eating patterns are known to help physiology and metabolism by initiating a pause in the action of mTOR and muscle synthesis as well as inducing autophagy. Autophagy is critical to the clearance of broken or damaged cells following injury or disease. How does circadian biology play into this re...

Christmas, Tradition and Holidays in General. When I think about the holidays, I think about large family gatherings, fake birds chirping in the Christmas tree, my Babcia cooking pierogis in butter, bacon and onions and serving me a huge plate, my cousin tripping and falling into the tree trying to turn off the chirping bird. I think of Christmas eve singing Polish and English carols. I remember t...

Podcast #62 Jeff Bland, Ph. D. This week I have the absolute pleasure to introduce you to Dr. Jeff Bland. He is in a word, incredible. Dr. Bland is supreme thinker in the field of medicine and biology. He is a teacher, product developer, thought leader, unifier of minds and so much more. He obtained his BS in Biology at the University of California at Irvine and then a PhD from the University of O...

What have I learned over the last 13 years? 1) That medicine is an onion peel that never ends! We keep learning and evolving into newer and more mature ways to understand the physiology of balance in all things human. When in balance, disease is stymied. When not so balanced, disease has a chance to start and flourish. After interviewing 68 guests, one common theme has arisen - that we have a laye...

Literature Review 1) High resting cardiac vagal tone or control, CVC, is associated with more flexible emotional responding to external stressful stimuli. With regard to vagal changes the evidence shows us that stress will decrease CVC . (Balzarotti et. al. 2017) Being relaxed and not stressed out is always associated with better cellular physiology. CVC is a marker of relaxation and thus emotiona...

This is the third story of hope for us as a species. We have a level of control over our outcome that is baked into our DNA. Bridget R. Briggs, M.D. and I sit down today to discuss the clinical approach to epigenetics in patients especially women. She is a physician who specializes in Women’s Health. Dr. Briggs received her undergraduate degree from the University of California Los Angeles in Psyc...

Literature Review 1) Pericytes are critical cells that sit around the tiny blood vessels called capillaries of the body especially in the brain. They are involved in regulating blood vessel activity. They communicate directly with the endothelial cells making them super important in the activity of the blood vessel and metabolism at the local tissue interface. From the journal Cell Death and Disea...

Respiratory Syncytial Virus RSV is a 150 nanometer RNA virus that comes from a human orthopneumovirus that circulates in the winter primarily. Young children and infants infected with RSV mostly have upper respiratory tract symptoms where a subset develop lower respiratory tract disease known as bronchiolitis with the primary infection. It is the most common reason for hospitalization in infants b...

Covid 19 Post Mortem Part II The story of the Standard American Diet and its directional connection to death from Sars2 - Covid. Post Covid population health data has shown us that humans that chronically consume more meat, sugar, animal products and highly processed foods were associated with more death and morbidity if they contracted early versions of Covid19. The effect of consuming sugar prod...

This week's guest is Professor Moshe Szyf. This is the second story of hope for us as a species. We have a level of control over our outcome that is baked into our DNA. Dr. Moshe Szyf joins the show today to discuss the social programming of the epigenome. Dr. Szyf and his colleague Dr. Meaney proposed over two decades ago the first set of evidence that the “social environment” early in life can a...

Covid 19 Post Mortem As you all know, after reading countless articles that I have posted about COVID and the policies that were put in place by "well meaning" bureaucrats, I have been highly critical of the events that took place and the US Government's failure on so many fronts. There are two seminal articles that have been written on these topics to date: 1) COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a “C...

Delaying Gratification and Dopamine When we think of our current societal view on raising children, we have a conundrum. We want our children to experience the world as it is progressing through a technological viewpoint, a growth mentality. What does that mean? . When technology enters the learning process, we progress at log rates. We can process more information and incorporate it into our memo...

Randy Jirtle, Ph. D. This week's guest is Professor Randy Jirtle. Dr. Randy Jirtle joins the show for the second time today to discuss his new research on the imprintome, the regulatory regions that at the earliest stages of fetal development control our epigentic and thus our genetic outcome. This is the Hope locus. Time Magazine nominated him for person of the year in 2007 and had this to say ab...

Nature Deprivation Disorder: As we are getting closer to the end of the year and the cold strikes us hard in the face, we have a tendency to hunker down indoors and avoid the outside. Video games and screens are omnipresent in many of our children's lives. They pervade their thoughts. They significantly limit their self-driven need and desire to explore, imagine and be present with nature, silence...

In a Nature study by Dr. Chassaing and colleagues we see a data set raising a legitimate concern regarding synthetic emulsifiers. Let us look at the title, dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome.....Emulsifiers are the topic today. Also, some information with a mini literature review and a discussion on power struggles.   Enjoy, Dr. M

This week's guest is Professor Mahmoud Ghannoum. For over four decades, Dr. Ghannoum has been exploring a critical but neglected inhabitant of the human body, the fungus. Born and raised in Lebanon, Dr Mahmoud Ghannoum is the current Director of the Center for Medical Mycology at Case Western Reserve University. He began his scientific journey at Loughborough University in England where he studied...

The Power of Suggestion Can our thoughts affect us at a biological level not just a subjective level? In a new study published in pre print in BioRxIV entitled: A thalamic circuit represents dose-like responses induced by nicotine-related beliefs in human smokers, we see some new research looking at the power of suggestion well beyond the placebo effect...... Plus a mini literature review as well...

Musk and Rand Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is a book worthy of your time. He is an amazing writer and the context and content are so timely for the happenings of today. The story of Elon Musk remains one to be completely written, but it is being partially displayed in this new book that I am in the early stages of reading. The truth of the matter remains that Elon suffered some significant traumas...

Literature Review: Over the past 15 years we have noted a connection between the intestinal microbiome and allergic/autoimmune disease activity in humans. This study continues to pull on this thread of knowledge. We see a direct correlation between a dysbiotic microbiome and human disease risk as young as 5 years of age. The upstream targets remain the same. Healthy food, avoidance of chemicals, c...

This week's guest is Chef Mark Allison, a highly accomplished culinary artist known for his innovative and healthy creations. Born and raised in England to a family with a deep appreciation for food, Mark developed a passion for cooking at an early age. He honed his skills by attending prestigious culinary schools and gaining practical experience in renowned restaurants around the world. He counts...

Maternal Microbiome Part II Mom has a gut microbiome that directly seeds her babies microbiome. This microbiome dictates human long term and short term health. Eating a diet loaded with fiber based fruits, legumes and vegetables will cause a highly diverse bacterial microbiome to exist and this existence is correlated with better long term health......plus a section on mate matching as well as the...

Maternal Nutrition and the Microbiome - Part I This was a tricky topic to drill down into one article - so I split it into two. Bear with me on this topic as it is so important in the grander scheme of maternal and child health. The microbiome by definition: the microorganisms that reside in a particular environment. Pregnancy is a dynamic event where a woman's body changes radically, including ep...