As a rule, parents don’t like the music their children listen to–and they never have. That said, we all know that music can–and does–affect the way we feel, bringing up emotions such as joy, sadness, love, and anger. The big question, however, has always been whether those emotions trigger certain kinds of behavior. A fascinating...Continue reading
Category: Family
Are men an endangered species?
How come men don’t live as long as women? Is it because they do things like big wave surfing, base jumping in squirrel suits or highlining between buildings? Maybe we have a testosterone-fueled, Evil Knievel gene within us, right next to the air guitar and channel surfing genes, and are simply destined to break 433 bones, just...Continue reading
How I finally forgave my father
For years, I questioned why I had to experience the gruesome, heartbreaking death of my eight-month-old puppy Ezra. It seemed so horribly tragic, meaningless, and preventable. I was fourteen years old, and for 10 years I had experienced what felt like two separate lives as I visited back and forth between my divorced parents. The...Continue reading
Why You Should Never Touch Anything on a Plane
The air in the cabin is clean, but when it comes to health risks, everything else in the cabin in a horror story. So, rather than a surgical mask, you’d be better off investing your money in surgical gloves. Planes used for short trips may do as many as eight trips per day. Those used...Continue reading
How to Use Technology to Improve Your Life, Not Add Frustration
Technology can be a double-edged sword. That amazing smartphone you’re holding puts the world at your fingertips, but it also can prevent you from interacting with the person right next to you. You can do your holiday shopping, banking, and ordering pizza for dinner from a tablet or watch, but only if you remember your...Continue reading
I Saved a Man and He Saved Me
I learned something today. Something really important. About how to stick to your guns, how use your gut. About what it really means to be a doctor. And, what’s funny is that I didn’t have to cure a man of cancer to learn this, but simply rid him of pain. A tech engineer, he hailed...Continue reading
The Flipside of Living Forever
Name some issues brand new to this world in the last 100 years. How about nuclear war, environmental pollution and climate change? Medically, we can blame carpal tunnel syndrome on the typewriter or computer keyboard, and “automobile knee” on that awful car commute. Hard to know whether these marks on modern society are preferable to...Continue reading
Are There Masculine and Feminie Foods?
We all know the expression, “You are what you eat”: eat healthy foods and you’ll be healthy, eat unhealthy foods and you’ll be unhealthy. But when it comes to our perceptions of food, specifically what’s healthy and what isn’t, sex differences play a big role. And there’s another expression (one you probably haven’t heard until...Continue reading
The Boy with the Varicocele
The case of the month is an actual patient of The Turek Clinic His head was topped with bobbing red hair and his face full of freckles. Thin as a beanpole, he spoke softly as if trying to control his cracking pubertal voice. All in, he appeared to be the stuff that teenage boys are...Continue reading
A Tale of Three Testicles
Its funny what people think about every day. Some decide exactly where to paint the lines in our streets. Others, called Gumbusters, remove gum stuck to park benches. Jelly Doughnut Fillers do precisely that, and Golf Ball Divers find stray golf balls that land underwater. And what would casinos do without certified Dice Inspectors? Better...Continue reading