It must be the time change. Sound sleep is eluding me. The good news about waking at 0330 is you can get serious work done. The bad news is doing the (involuntary) nod during a nice lecture on molecular biologic causes of atrial fibrillation this afternoon. I really did want to get that whole intracellular […]
Category: Exercise
It’s been a while since I did a Cycling Wednesday topic. As I was skimming thorough the Journal of the American Medical Association last night, I came across this review article on spinal injection therapy for low back pain. It was a shocker. Two factors brought my attention to the article: First, almost all the […]
The idea that long-term endurance exercise increases the risk of arrhythmia should no longer be considered counterintuitive. The list of published studies confirming this association is long, and this week, it got a little longer. In a study published in the European Heart Journal, researchers from Sweden report a cohort study of more than 52 […]
Blood pressure and cholesterol problems affect millions. These are the bread, butter and sugary drinks of Internal Medicine and general Cardiology practice. It stands to reason then, that the treatment of these basic maladies would be well agreed upon. Guidelines and expert consensus statements would be clear and up-to-date. But this is far from reality. […]
Hi all, It’s a dreary winter day here. It seems a good time to ponder warmer sunny images and hopeful notions. I found a great article on a town in southern Spain. They did something remarkable there. Their transformation, if you will let me use such a word, inspired me to write a short note […]
On Wednesdays, I try to write on a topic of exercise and health. If you exercise but still have high cholesterol or other risks for heart disease, you may be interested in a new study from my old medical school proving ground–Hartford Hospital. The deftly named STOMP trial looked carefully at the effects of statin […]
This one is for you exercisers out there. You know me; I love to write about dogma-busters. I’ve got a good one for you tonight. For endurance exercisers, runners and cyclists alike, few myths have been more persistent. Imagine: We actually think taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) before exercise improves performance and relieves post-effort soreness. […]
Exercise is a white-hot topic. We must talk more. This comment on my Facebook page only strengthened my resolve to clarify things. Not to be flip, snarky (or for that matter even just plain dense) but part of me is asking what’s the point of this? It brings up far more questions than it answers. […]
Dear Endurance Athletes, More than a year ago, I suggested that Ironman-distance triathlons were not heart healthy. Little did I know that expressing the notion that chronically inflaming oneself might cause permanent heart damage would be so controversial. This post led to my first experience with ad hominem comments. Obviously, talking about the upper limit […]
Hi all, I wrote two posts this week for the Courier-Journal’s online health portal, In the Prime. The first was titled, Can an insurance company improve our health? In this post I use the tragic story of a patient who stopped taking an important medicine because of a high copay. Two recent medical studies have […]
(Sorry folks, I published this post last night but with the wrong date. As we say in the EP lab: “rookie mistake.”) For many bike racers, the end of summer marks the beginning of cyclocross season. So it was tonight, an unusually perfect August evening, that the Louisville (KY) cycling community enjoyed its first cyclocross […]