Power Loss, Inconvenient, But Not Life Changing

You don't know what you have until you lose it, right? Well, where we live the power went out for well over 60,000 households for about a week due to an ice storm. We lost our power for 5 days. Some people are still out after 8 days or more. We were fortunate enough to borrow a generator and wire a 220 volt line into our fuse box in the house, but many other people moved out of their homes for a week. The timing was bad, being the week of Christmas. Our Holiday party was relocated from our home to my parents down the road, who were, fortunately, not affected. Small inconveniences came up.  Alarm clocks didn't work. Cell phones were hard to keep charged. No home telephone or internet made it difficult to communicate with friends and family. Some friends and neighbors burst pipes due to the cold weather.
We've lost power for a day or two in the past, but rarely during the winter and rarely more than a day or two. It was a bit of a wake up call for us to have more candles, coolers, flashlights (with batteries) and firewood in the future. A back up generator of our own would have made the early going easier.
It's times like these that pull people together. Our neighbors around us were very generous as well as family offering a warm place to stay and extension cords and gasoline. It will be a Christmas we won't forget for quite a while.

Vitamins or Medicine?

Why so many people are willing to take supplements instead of their medication is hard for me to understand. Sometimes I have patients taking as many (or more) vitamins and supplements as they are medications. You get everything you need from a good and balanced diet. Vitamins can help plug a few holes, but do not replace good dietary habits. And vitamins don't fix Diabetes or Hypertension.  Diseases like Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and Diabetes and Hypertension require medication, not vitamins and supplements. Medication plays a primary role in their management, while vitamins have a very limited/tertiary and unproven role in their management. I don't understand the general distrust of the pharmaceutical industry that the average consumer seems to have. Statins in particular have been villified by the media and lay people as causing more problems than solutions in the management of CAD, but several well designed and well controlled studies consistently show that lower Total Cholesterol, and LDL Cholesterol in particular, leads to less morbidity and mortality in adults. Controlling Hypertension with Betablockers, ACE Inhibitors and Diuretics leads to longevity, but people are still more willing to pop a vitamin C tablet in their mouths than take their Blood Pressure Medication. People are living longer than ever due to Vaccination programs, antibiotics and better medication for Diabetes and Heart Disease.  Vitamins are an unproven commodity, but we spend billions of dollars on then annually...buy more fruits and vegetables, Olive Oil, lean protein and drink more water.

Live well.
- Dr.Ronan

Your Are What You Eat

Who do you want to be this holiday season? The guy on top or the women below? Spend your calories wisely over the Holidays. Try adding some shredded vegitables to those recipes. Things like red onions, mushrooms and shredded zucchini add flavor without calories. Apple sauce and honey are good natural sweeteners for cakes and cookies. Wild Rice and Brown Rice go nicely with most meat dishes and don't forget about Qunioa and sweet potatoes!

Bon Appetite!

-Dr.Ronan

Read

I'm so proud of both of my daughters this summer for not letting their minds turn into mush. Both kids read several books over the summer, especially my 10 year old. Both kids also attended math and science camp too at our local university campus, Michigan State University. I know kids should play and swim and recreate, but reading is recreation in our family. Even my father and mother are both voracious readers in their 80's.

Who says people don't read books anymore?
Dr. Ronan

Paleo Breakfast

We were out in California and enjoyed the breakfast burrito at our hotel each morning. My wife came home and made up a Paleo Diet version of it that turned out pretty good. She cooks sweet potato fries in coconut oil until soft, then adds chorizo sausage and onions along with a couple of scrambled eggs cooked to completion. I added about 1/3 of an avocado to the top and just eat it out of a bowl, but you can wrap up in a low cal soft tortilla to go. This bowl is really breakfast for 2.
Beats a protein shake any day.

Eat well.
Dr.Ronan

Why do people stop their medication?

It's very frustrating to review lab work for someone and recommend treatment for either their cholesterol or sugars, start them down the correct path to health and find out months or even years later that they never did most, if not all, of what you told them they should do. I've read several studies stating that half of all prescriptions from a doctors office ever get filled and I thought that was ridiculous at the time, but now have come to the stark conclusion that is probably pretty accurate.
We took up a new initiative a couple of years ago to review a patient's medication list every time they come into the office. A lot of times people are annoyed that we don't know everything they are doing and state all their medications are the "same as the last time I was in." In reality, the list we have seldom reflects what the person is actually doing. They've stopped some medications because "they read somewhere that one was bad for them" or a well meaning friend or family member told them "not to take that one."
Sometimes, they "don't like to take so many pills" but one of my patients recently was discovered to have impacted his bowels with vitamins and supplements. He takes over 120 vitamins or supplements in addition to his medications each day.He felt this to be a more natural approach!!??!!
Most of these people don't thing twice to eating a hotdog or bratworst, soda pop or bag of potato/corn chips, whose ingredients I struggle to pronounce or comprehend... and I've taken Biochemistry and Chemistry in college and graduate school.

Most of my patients are simply eating and drinking themselves to death, not walking enough and not taking the 2-3 medications that would lower their risk of heart disease, strokes and kidney disease which are all know to be the leading causes of death in the United States. Don't worry, insurance companies know this and are already starting to cash in on your free will. They tell you that everyone will get insurance, but what they aren't telling you is that it's going to cost you A LOT MORE to be overweight, to smoke, to have high cholesterol, diabetes.  The more problems you fail to address, the more you pay and the older you get, the harder it will be to change.

I'm a doctor, but I'm a patient too, and I take my medication as directed, get my lab work done when ordered, try to eat healthy (chicken, green beans and some wild rice medley with skim milk after 45 mins at the gym). I know I'm not going to cheat death, but I'm hoping to put it off for a few more decades. My medication does not make me feel bad. I'll sleep better knowing my odds of a fatal MI are on my side tonight.

Live well.
Dr.Ronan

How to keep the pounds off on a vacation

This is my wife standing in front of our hotel's wine tasting parlor in Napa California. One of the things we struggle with during travel is keeping the pounds away when we are eating out and consuming wine or beer or whatever the locals provide. One way we battle the bulge is by taking a morning walk and then doing the same after dinner each night. We also try to split our portions and share. That way we get to try more things and not consume so much at each meal. Admittedly, I'm not very good at sharing my deserts. Most of our vacations are active, but you don't have to go over the top to enjoy yourself, stay safe and not put on 5 or 10 lbs that you'll regret next week.

Be healthy.
Dr.Ronan and family