Tag Archives: love

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #118: Nicholas Kelly, RD – Hope, CF and an RD

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My guest today is Nicholas Kelly, a registered dietitian, speaker, and someone who has spent essentially his entire life navigating medicine from the other side of the exam table.

Nicholas was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in infancy. That diagnosis meant growing up with a chronic disease that required constant attention: medications, treatments, nutrition, hospitalizations, and an intimate relationship with a healthcare system that most children never experience.

But what makes Nicholas’s story so compelling is what he has done with that experience, a story that has inspired me.

He ultimately became a healthcare professional himself, giving him the unusual perspective of being both clinician and lifelong patient. And through his TEDx talk, Healing Through the Human Experience, and his broader work, he has challenged clinicians to think more deeply about something that can easily get lost in modern medicine:

What does healthcare actually feel like to the person receiving it?

Our conversation moves well beyond cystic fibrosis.

We talk about resilience, identity, nutrition, the evolution of CF treatment, the patient-clinician relationship, and the moments when healthcare gets that relationship right and when it gets it very wrong.

We also explore what happens when a child who has spent his life being defined, at least partly, by a serious disease grows into an adult and begins to decide for himself what that disease will, and will not, mean for his life.

Nicholas’s story is ultimately about much more than living with cystic fibrosis.

There is an amazing story within the story about his mother. Listen and find out what she did for him.

Beautiful.

It is about living fully in the presence of uncertainty, finding purpose through adversity, and reminding those of us who practice medicine that treating disease and caring for a human being are not always the same thing.

This is my conversation with Nicholas Kelly.

 

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 24 – Story and Mom

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The Story Your Brain Decides to Tell

Two people walk into the same room.

One has been told that she is there to make new friends. The other has been told that she is there to determine whether the people in the room can be trusted.

Same room. Same people. Same conversations.

But perhaps not the same experience.

That is the fascinating implication of emerging neuroscience exploring how the brain constructs the story of our lives. We tend to imagine that our senses work something like cameras. Light enters the eyes. Sound enters the ears. Information travels to the brain. Reality comes in, and we experience it.

Except that isn’t really what happens.

The brain is constantly deciding what matters.

Our goals, expectations, memories and beliefs create a frame through which incoming information is interpreted. This month’s Scientific American article by Ingrid Wickelgren describes research suggesting that when people approach the same experience with different goals, their brains organize that experience differently.

Their neural activity begins to reflect the narrative they are constructing.

In other words, we don’t simply experience reality.

We edit it.

This is even more complex because we all show up with epigenetic fingerprints of past experiences.

Think about walking through an airport.

If you are hungry, you suddenly notice restaurants.

If you are late, you notice clocks.

If you are angry, you notice people’s energy and anger.

If have a history of trauma, you notice similarities of past experience.

If you have lost your child for thirty terrifying seconds, you notice every small person wearing a similar shirt.

The airport hasn’t changed.

Your brain’s response and perception has.

Your orientation and current frame/goal determines which pieces of an impossibly complicated environment rise into conscious awareness.

Neuroscientists have been circling this concept for decades. Marvin Minsky described mental “frames” as structures we bring to new situations. Rather than building our understanding of the world from scratch every second, the brain pulls up a model based upon previous experience and asks, essentially: What kind of situation is this? What should I expect? What matters here?….. And a section on maternal story and the default mode network.

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #110: F3 Nation and Fatherhood


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Welcome to Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast. Today’s conversation is a little different.

Six men. One table. No scripts.

Just a shared commitment to something that doesn’t come with a manual—fatherhood.

We’re talking about what it means to show up as a dad when you’re tired, when you’re stretched thin, and when the stakes feel higher than anything else you do.

And we’re grounding that conversation in the ethos of F3 Nation—fitness, fellowship, and faith—where men gather early, push each other physically, and, more importantly, build something deeper: accountability, purpose, and community.
Because strong fathers don’t happen by accident. They’re forged—day by day, rep by rep, conversation by conversation.

Let’s get into it.
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 14 Issue 48

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Holidays and Connection

The Christmas and winter holiday season is a unique time to sit back reflect on the past year. To behold the timeless beauty of life. The shared time offers us an opportunity to pause and connect with those who matter or should matter most in our lives. I love the bathroom plaque that says at the end of life it won’t matter what you owned or what you knew, but rather the impact you had in a child’s life. Fortunately, for us, the holidays bring a chance to foster authentic human connections. To actually sit in conspiracy together. These moments are more than just traditions, they are essential for our emotional, mental, and even physical health. In the hustle of modern existence, where schedules dominate and technology often mediates relationships, we are losing this skill set, especially for the younger generations, making it more important to stay focused now.

Let us define human connection: Human connection is the act or feeling of being seen, heard, cared for and valued by another person or group. It is a most primary need for humans starting in infancy when a child needs a mother’s touch and milk. It arises from the countless meaningful interactions that foster mutual understanding, trust, empathy, and shared emotional experiences that ultimately lead to a child’s feeling of safety. The critical time period to establish attachment and connection is the first 2 to 3 years of life. Plus a section of literature review and a recipe of the week.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #76 – Ken Pelletier, MD, PhD – Choice and Love

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Kenneth R. Pelletier, MD, PhD is a Clinical Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine; Department of Family and Community Medicine, and Department of Psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine (UCSF) in San Francisco. He is Director of the Corporate Health Improvement Program (CHIP) which is a collaborative research program between CHIP and 15 of the Fortune 500 corporations including Ford, Oracle, Prudential, Apple, Dow, Lockheed Martin, Pepsico, IBM, American Airlines and NASA.

Dr. Pelletier served as Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona School of Medicine and Stanford University School of Medicine. He was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, studied at the CG Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland and has published over 300 professional journal articles in behavioral medicine, disease management, worksite interventions, alternative/integrative medicine, and epigenetics.

At the present time, Dr. Pelletier is a medical and business consultant to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Business Group on Health, the Federation of State Medical Boards, and major corporations including Cisco, IBM, American Airlines, Prudential, Dow, Disney, Ford, Mercer, Merck, Pepsico, Ford, Pfizer, Walgreens, NASA, Microsoft ENCARTA, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, United Healthcare, Health Net, the Pasteur Institute of Lille, the Alpha Group of Mexico, and the Singapore Ministry of Health.

Dr. Pelletier is the author of fifteen (15) major books, including the international bestseller Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer and Change Your Genes – Change Your Life: Creating Optimal Health with the New Science of Epigenetics.

Today we enjoy the amazing viewpoint that Dr. Pelletier has for humanity. We have control over our destinies individually and collectively. This conversation is the culmination of years of incredible study.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

 

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 14 Issue 3

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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. We all WANT to be healthy. We all WANT to be happy. The impediment to being is not changing…..plus audience questions answered and a recipe of the week.
Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #51 – Paul Smolen, MD – Parenting Class

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This weeks guest is my friend, Dr. Paul Smolen, also known as Doc Smo by his friends, is a pediatrician with 38 years of experience caring for children and families. He is a graduate of Duke University (1974), Rutgers Medical School (1978), and Wake Forest University-N.C. Baptist Hospital (1982). At Wake Forest University he completed a residency in general pediatrics, served as chief resident, and completed a fellowship in ambulatory pediatrics. For over 38 years, he was an Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill helping to train a generation of medical students and pediatric residents as well as author several research papers. He is also the author of two parenting books,  Can Doesn’t Mean Should (2015) and Great Kids Don’t Just Happen (2019). Doc Smo is a bona-fide expert in knowing what parents want and need to know about parenting and child health. Imparting practical and useful advice is the goal of every “Pedcast” that he produced over his podcasting career.
This week we discuss his book Great Kids Don’t Just Happen.
Enjoy,
Dr. M

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