Healthcare policy

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #64 – Dan Shapiro, Ph.D. – Provider Burnout

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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 practice providers, and other staff.

Dan’s education goes back to my alma mater, Vassar College. He graduated with a BA in Psychology before going to the University of Florida for his doctorate in clinical psychology. He completed a post doctoral degree in Medical Crisis Interventions at Harvard University. He held faculty positions at the University of Arizona as well as at Penn State rising to the Chair and Professor of Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine. In 2017, he developed a systematic method for assessing and addressing burnout leading to consulting services focused on multi-hospital systems. In 2023, he left his role as Vice Dean and Chair to pursue the reduction of burnout full time with colleagues at Chartis.

Dan is a frequent contributor to thought leadership in the physician burnout space. In 2003, Random House published his landmark memoir about one physician’s burnout, titled, “Delivering Doctor Amelia,” which was required reading at some colleges and medical schools. He’s written two other books, also for Random House. Dan’s additional writings have appeared or been featured in, among others, the New York Times, Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Academic Medicine, and NPR’s All Things Considered.

As a hobby, he worked for ten years as a weekly consultant to the hit television shows Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, How to Get Away with Murder and on-camera for the Discovery, National Geographic, and FYI channels.

Please enjoy my conversation with Dan Shapiro,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #52 – Jacquelyn Paykel, MD – Whole Health Medicine

This weeks guest is my former classmate and good friend, Dr. Jacquelyn Paykel. Jax, as I call her, is a tour de force in the world of Integrative Medicine at the Armed Forces level. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee with a degree in Anthropology. She then obtained medical and residency degrees in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. To round out her degrees, she completed an Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona as well as an MBA at the UNC Kenan Flagler Business School.
She is the Chief of the Whole Health Service (WHS) at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, Florida, leading the first-of-its-kind VA WHS within the U.S. where they develop and implement novel patient-centered clinical and well-being services for patients and employees. A U.S. Navy Veteran, Dr. Paykel has mentored and consulted with VA Medical Centers across the country on implementation of Whole Health. She leads the development and national spread of THRIVE – a virtual Whole Health healing program.
This week we discuss her work with the Veterans Administration Department and Whole Health Service. This work is a model for the entire country.
Enjoy,
Dr. M

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Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #50 – Richard Johnson, MD – Fructose and Perinatal Issues

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This weeks guest is my favorite researcher, Dr. Richard Johnson.
He is the Tomas Berl Professor of Medicine and the Chief of the Renal Division and Hypertension at the University of Colorado since 2008. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a major in Anthropology, and a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, he is a physician and nephrologist whose research has focused on the role of sugar, and especially fructose, in driving obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease. Much of this work has explored the role of fructose metabolism, especially the generation of uric acid, in driving this phenotype, and his work has included studies ranging from molecular biology, integrative physiology, and evolutionary biology. He is the author of The Sugar Fix which introduced the first low fructose diet, and also The Fat Switch which explores the role of fructose in driving the obesity epidemic. His newest book, Nature Wants Us To Be Fat, is a tour de force of the entire pathway of survival via metabolic events in the body related to fructose and the polyol pathway. This is a must read book.
This podcast will follow up on the original conversation, podcast #14, and the exceptional work of Dr. Johnson this time looking at how we are mismatched metabolically for the environment of modern America and our food systems from the maternal health and perinatal perspective.
Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 13 Issue 24

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Breastfeeding Versus Formula
Science versus Opinion
I read with somewhat of a frustrated feeling a recent article in Scientific American entitled: It’s Okay Not to Breastfeed by Kavin Senapathy. In principle, the reality of this statement is reasonable. Then you read the article as to what makes this reasonable. She states: “Exclusive breastfeeding is not imperative, and the “breast is best” mantra can be harmful to babies and parents, especially among marginalized people.”(K. Senapathy 2023) Again, at first blush this may seem reasonable. Let’s dig into the science and the truth of breast versus cow milk based formula for optimal health for a child. Does formula in all of its forms work for infant nutrition in order to grow and survive in a reasonable way? The answer is a resounding yes, however, this does not tell the whole story, far from it…..
Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast – The Growing Brain and Autism

The Growing Brain and the Upstream Etiologies of Neurodevelopmental disorders – AUTISM
This weeks guest is me! I re-recorded a lecture that I gave in Florida this month at the Annual International Conference for the Institute for Functional Medicine. My goal in this lecture is to look at the upstream reasons that we are seeing more Autism and neurological diversity in children year upon year. It is a wide ranging look at the current state of the science and my thoughts on a unifying theory. As with Dr. Stone’s interview last week with Grow Baby, this is a follow up discussion that is a critical primer for “mother’s to be” regarding disease avoidance measures that can be taken for the best health of the maternal child dyad.
Enjoy,
Dr. M

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Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 13 Issue 6

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This week week look at a piece by David Katz: “I imagine -and in select cases know- that many of my colleagues were encouraged and gratified to hear that the NIH is allocating a sizable sum to the pursuit of precision nutrition. Some number of my colleagues will be directly involved in those research efforts, and others are simply pleased to see nutrition getting some small measure of the attention we agree it warrants. I can appreciate these reactions, but in my case, the response felt more like a wave of nausea accompanied by echoes of “here we go again, again…..”

We also look at some recent studies in the aging space. Two studies by Dr. Sinclair and Dr. Macip looking at age reversal ability. From the David Sinclair Lab at Harvard we see first of its kind data regarding the ability to identify epigenetic marks in mice as the etiology or biomarker of aging. This is nothing short of an amazing discovery. Listen to Podcast #2 with the father of epigenetics Dr. Randy Jirtle to gain a foothold in this world and then listen on.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 12 Issue 7, Covid Updates 54

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Coronavirus Update #54 – This audiocast is a deeper dive into policy and opinion based on the same for Omicron.

In my opinion, our children’s mental and physical health need to take primacy over pandemic fear at this time. They are in a very very very low risk scenario from COVID, however, they remain in a high risk scenario from a mental and metabolic health perspective. The scales do not favor current school based mitigation measures based on risk and health from Omicron and the downstream events relate to it. If you are a young person, boosting is questionable, especially if you are a male with myocarditis risk. The WHO and European Union are not recommending it at this time. The CDC is recommending down to age 12. Let us say that you are 18 years old and male. If a young adult receives a third dose of an mRNA vaccine which provides marginal to no transmission benefit for 90 to 110 days and minimal disease severity reduction because it is already almost zero after a 2 dose series, what is the point. Are our youth supposed to protect the unvaccinated? The vaccinated and boosted with risk factors? For how long? Then what? Do it again, and again every three months as immunity wanes rapidly? Has this ever been done before or well studied? Nope.
Be well,
Dr. M

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