One of my favorite films of the past few decades is the modern classic, Defending Your Life. The comedic story follows the life and death of a meek character played by Albert Brooks. After passing away, he enters a sort of afterlife in which key moments of his life are replayed for him and a panel of judges. If you magically had the opportunity to review my life you’d see that about 15 years ago I was caught up in a destructive eating pattern. The drive-thrus of fast food restaurants were my mainstay. However, on this day, I spent the better part of my afternoon working on a homemade dish that I’m presenting to you as a healthy recipe. This reality would have seemed impossible to me 10, 15 or 20 years ago. But in the present it feels as natural as can be.
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I recently had two positive experiences while visiting a couple of allopathic physicians. The first occurred when my wife and I went in for our yearly physical, convenient because we both see the same doctor. After a thorough, “old school” examination he proclaimed, “You guys don’t really need me. You already know all the right things to do and you’re doing them”. That’s a bit of an overstatement, but it’s a clear example of his approach to medicine. This is a physician who doesn’t like to waste money or time – his or ours. A couple of weeks later we made a surprise visit to the emergency room. My wife took a nasty fall and hit her head on a steel beam. Needless to say, we fully expected that a CT scan would be required to rule out a concussion or worse. But once again, the doctor we saw opted for a more conservative approach. He explained that he prefers to use CT scans only when forced to by the presence of certain critical symptoms. He simply does not like to expose the brain to large doses of unnecessary radiation. Read more »

Here’s an age old question: “Do you need to see something in order to believe it?”. The answer for some is “yes” and many require visual proof before they can accept something as legitimate or real. But there’s a whole other camp of thought. Some ascribe to the notion that you must first believe something is possible before you’re capable of seeing it. There isn’t a chance in the world that I can negotiate an agreement between these two schools of thought. However, a recent post on Twitter adds an interesting twist to this debate.
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