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Showing posts from August, 2017

Breaking: 100% Chance We're All Going to Die Some Day

Statistics. People love to cite them.  This is especially true in the context of medical research,  You know, so we all can be reminded of our inevitable mortality which will be brought on by some unpleasant disease because we ate too many rice cakes. I would go so far as to say we have a love-hate relationship with statistics in that people are natural information seekers and simple numbers make it easy to understand complex things. But sometimes the simple numbers are associated with things we don't want to consider, causing a whole lot of cognitive dissonance, so we reject them as spurious tricks some nerd in an ivory tower came up with. (Don't tell anyone but I'm a nerd in an ivory tower) Research Mark. Possibly the best meme on the internet. I've had this topic on my "what should I write about" list for a while, and a tweet by a member of my IBD tribe (Are people over the age of 40 allowed to use the word "Tribe"?) prompted me to sit

Don't Tell Me I Have An Eating Disorder

dis·or·der disˈôrdər/ a   disturbance   in   physical   or   mental   health   or   functions;   malady   or  dysfunction I was in New York this weekend for the annual meeting of the American Neurogastroenterology and Motility Society, a gathering of experts in the field of functional digestive illness. This year had a heavy psychology presence, which was pretty exciting since psychology was integrated into most sets of talks on a certain topic or condition. Because, you know, psych is important. On Saturday, Dr. Sarah Kinsinger , now director of the adult GI behavioral medicine program at Loyola University outside of Chicago, spoke on the topic of eating disorders. Sarah and I worked together at Northwestern for about a decade before she moved on to start the Loyola program. We talked a bit the day before about her presentation and she expressed some concerns about the potential for controversy due to the highly sensitive nature of the topic. If you live with a chr