I don’t particularly enjoy physical exercise, but I do it because it’s good for me. The “dopamine rush” that some people associate with exercise is something I have never experienced. Similarly, I don’t enjoy the work that goes into learning a new song on the piano, especially when it involves reading sheet music, but I do enjoy the satisfaction that comes from being able to play it smoothly. Even if it’s weeks or months later.
Practice and Rewards Read More »
Throughout my adolescence, I yearned to be a member of the in-crowd. However, as a self-defined nerd who preferred hot Ovaltine over a cherry Coke or typing my school notes over watching American Bandstand, I wondered if I would ever meet the criteria for being cool: mastering the jitterbug; being pretty, perky and petite; and smoking.
Dear Pulse readers,
When I was twenty-three years old, I decided that I would try to become a smoker.
Wait. What?
It’s true.
An Editor’s Invitation: Smoking Read More »
She’s as tall as the easel now,
purple tank top
underneath the apron
falling below her shorts,
My Daughter Paints in Quarantine Read More »
It started because of the news, or because the heat made me sweat, or because of neurotransmitters. Or my environment. Or nothing at all.
California was in a drought (as now), and in college I started to worry.
OCD: What It Takes and What It Gives Read More »
I can’t stop thinking about you.
Last night, at about midnight, the phone aroused me from my happy slumber. It was Vance, the on-call resident, needing advice from me, as the supervising physician, on how to help a worried mother—you—who’d called our family health center’s after-hours service about your daughter’s worsening asthma.
Dear Worried Mother Read More »
My story is about not exercising.
I had always defined myself by my activity. In my youth, I was a runner and a swimmer, then I was a college athlete, and later on a physician who taught medical students about health promotion counseling and who researched physical activity interventions. I was the person my colleagues, family, and friends turned to for advice on how to incorporate exercise into their busy lives.
When we met you, we didn’t believe your pain. We didn’t believe you when you told us your pain was nine out of ten, because wouldn’t you be screaming if it were? Because you sometimes slept. Because you were addicted.
At home, you treated your pain with heroin, so I carefully gave you opiates, limiting the amount and the frequency. You came for an infection and you brought your pain—you brought it everywhere you went.
A half century ago, exercise had little place in medical care. Months of rest were for advised for TB, women spent weeks in bed after giving birth, and three weeks of bed rest was typical after a heart attack (as was a reduced likelihood of returning to many forms of employment).
At that time, a team of us started a cardiac rehab program based at Morristown Medical Center. It involved both professionals and laypeople.
An Idea Whose Time Had Come Read More »
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