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80 articles by Estelle Goldstein · showing 50

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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently publishedTopic pending

Cialis, OTC, and Men

I love men. I mean, I actually went and married one, and I am delighted. I understand their senses of “maleness” are sometimes a bit more fragile with women challenging them on absolutely every front imaginable. But they still do quite well. I absolutely love them. I may have simply seen more male patients than a lot of psychiatrists. When I started my psychiatric residency, it was estimated that 70% of all psychiatric patients were female. The obvious exception was where I spent a fair amount, of my career to date, in the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system.

Primary topic: Recently published
Recently published
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Why Would a Forensic Scientist Run Amok?

Like most folks who have not only hung around in academics but venerated scholarship, I am a little circumspect about applied scientists. I wonder if they do not get bored, repeating the same procedures. I will admit the closest I have gotten to forensic science is television shows about crime scene investigations. And I mean the rare times that I watch.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Gender Bias in University Admissions

Wait a sec … there are more women applying to college than men, and more women in college than men, so we have to attract more men and women have tougher admissions standards, and nobody seems very worried about this? I think sometimes anonymity is a damned good idea, especially when you are selecting for intelligence, which is not a terribly bad idea in higher education.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Meet Dr. Receptacle

I first learned that I was a “receptacle personality” in Baltimore, Maryland. I was serving our fine country in the US Army Medical Corps as psychiatrist to the 82nd Airbo e Division in Ft. Bragg. NC There was some sort of a training group there that all of the other active duty psychiatrists seemed to have attended. The Army – in its wisdom – had decided to take me – a trained neurosurgeon – and make me a psychiatrist. Our country needed me (in this position, at least) and I obeyed, like a good soldier.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Being A Quitter Isn't Always Bad -- With Cults

I do remember when I was a university student seeing the glassy-eyed young students selling second rate (a bit dry or petals missing) flowers on the major thoroughfares of Boston. I remember reading all the newspaper accounts and finding out these people were somehow part of a "cult," before I understood what that meant. I learned about Sun Myung Moon, now in his 90th year and somewhere in South Korea, who some may have thought was the Messiah of the second coming.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

The Drug That Doesn't Help But Is Still Available

I was 15, there were not enough science courses at my prep school, and I was doing some kind of intensive science work at the "cancer research institute" of a nearby college -- in Boston there are many. In this special "science training program," I was the youngest on the list to be a Westinghouse something of other, none of which had happened at my prep school before -- so they were nurturing, if a bit nonplussed.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Memory Problems Can Be Prevented And Treated

I don’t care if Dylan Thomas was drinking himself to death while that was being written. It is a sentiment close to my heart, and undoubtedly the stanza of poetry I quote most often. Do not go gentle into that good nightr Old age should burn and rage at close of dayr Rage, rage against the dying of the light. I will not accept the allegedly inevitable “cognitive loss of age.”

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Marketing for Healers

Marketing for healers? I'll bet you have trouble even reading those words! Somebody taught you somewhere that these are God given gifts that you have, healing others, and you should not even think of them as a way of making money. My first medical textbook said I was so lucky to be becoming a ...

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Act Like Wonder Woman And Become Wonder Woman

For most of my life I have been more or less overweight. I figured my body was just something I used to carry my brain around. Tentatives at presentation (clothes, makeup) were just not as serious as with my women-friends. I mean, it was just not as important to my identity as “smart” was. Back then — only a few years ago — I actually had a mental health worker (therapist) who allegedly had a particular interest in eating disorders ask me how I got through life without being ashamed to go places because I was fat.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Cynicism and Alzheimer’s

Most of the time I see a single piece of research related to psychiatry reported by multiple news services, I figure the institution that produced it has a prizewinning public relations person. I figure it is popular for some kind of unspoken agenda. Maybe it is consistent with some level of political correctness. Do you think that’s a cynical thought? Perhaps I should be a little more cautious. Even though I could not get to the original research paper, this article tells it right up front: “People with high levels of cynical distrust may be more likely to develop dementia.”

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

A Tough Pill To Swallow

Every once in a while I run into someone who has trouble swallowing pills. Sometimes people “bite the bullet” and gulp the pills down with a struggle, just because they are anxious to get rid of whatever ails them. However, it doesn’t have to be a struggle. There are a few ...

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Assaults On Psychiatrists

I remember a supervisor from the past whom I never thought had the right personality to be a psychiatrist. I mean, he was a little angry and domineering for my taste. But heck — I gave him a “bye” since he worked in a prison context. I was never attacked by a prison patient through my tours-of-duty through four (all-male) Califo ia state penal institutions. I had a couple who ended up on their knees, crying, stroking my hands, or even asking permission to kiss me (denied, of course).

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

MEMORY TESTS

The fastest, easiest test of the memory that I know is the one where you have to remember three objects five minutes after you’ve been told what they are. This is part of a standardized test of cognition (typically testing for dementia) known as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Actually there has been more debate of the “what is this test and what objects should be used?” variety than anyone can possibly imagine. It is usually not too tough to engage someone in talking about something else for five minutes, to keep them from repeating it in their head.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Pets Are Okay, But I Love Humans

Animal mummies from ancient Egypt are featured on banners flying from poles here in middle-to-upper class southern Califo ia and I realized something significant but not earth-shaking. I didn’t care. I was fascinated with Egyptology back in the 4th grade when I built a model pyramid out of cardboard and made little mummies out of clay. I knew back then that some people mummified pets, and that was fine, but I didn’t want to model little dogs or cats, just humans.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Psychiatrists Don’t Just Talk About Sex

I think this was said to me for the first, last, and only time at the first, last and only mixer for singles I went to in Wichita, Kansas. I don’t remember the man’s name or face, but I do remember how he responded to my answer to his inquiry about what I did for a living. “Psychiatrist? That sounds like a fun job. You probably get to talk about sex all the time.” My response was undistinguished. “No, not really.” But his response to my response was even worse. “Huh? What do you talk about, then? I mean they pay you for talking. It still doesn’t sound like a bad job….”

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Want To Waste Time? Argue Science VS Religion

I have no use for “science vs. religion” debates. They are artificially created to get people angry at each other, when there is absolutely no reason. Whatever divine entity you believe in — whatever “universal intelligence” — is not a stupid being. Any Deity would simply reveal to people what they can understand. Such a Deity has given humans a marvelous mind that can question and search for the truth. Much has been learned — and many miracles are possible — because of the hard work of people who advance science and technology.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Families Often Indicate Psychiatric Problems

The person who walks into a psychiatrist’s office looking for help is not necessarily the patient. Often, they are simply the family of the patient. Sometimes, they themselves have something – possibly a disorder, but maybe just an emotional or attitude problem — that would seem somehow lesser in magnitude than the psychiatric diagnosis the person who is or should be the patient has actually got.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

The Speech That Made An Unwilling Addict Go To Rehab

I found myself facing a person who had lost themselves in drug abuse. Not so unusual — when dealing with public health clinics. The prognosis is usually poor. An addict won’t cooperate with treatment unless forced by the courts in most cases. Here is what I said to one mental health center patient to convince him to go into rehab.rn++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++r

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Internet Pornography IS Addiction

I have seen them. Men, who sit in my office and tell me they are addicts to internet pornography. They describe symptoms that have long been regarded as markers of addiction. Dependence — They start feeling poorly, maybe even depressed, if they don’t get their regular quota of exposure. This is easy enough to get on the internet, so everybody who feels they want this (or “need” this) is able to get it. Tolerance — People who tell me about using internet porn seem to increase their use of it, to get the same “effect” or “satisfaction.” There is a corollary to this.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Anti-Obesity Discrimination and Obesity Treatment

I am an expert on this — Anti-overweight discrimination. First, from my practice. I remember a woman in her forties I saw in Oklahoma for a routine antidepressant renewal who told me that she had a cardiac condition and had been to her primary physician (this is back in the prehistoric days when I took insurance) and he had told me it was her own fault she was overweight and she was risking her life by doing nothing about it. She was not suicidal. She told me she would never see that doctor again. And she was not going to take any heart medicine.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Dangers of Energy Drinks

People are not wired the same. Individual differences are the spice of life and medicine. I love people, their verbal discourses, because they are so delightfully individual. To me, the biggest problem with medicine is something I actually never heard anybody else discuss. I call it “norming.” Maybe there is no other way to get started on developing a new treatment that could help many people who have similar afflictions. But people are so different that what is life-saving for one may be poison for another.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Newsletter

Welcome! This is the discussion area for and the archive of my newsletter The Renegade Doctor. I started publishing a newsletter in March of 2011 and distribute it exclusively to my opt-in email list each week. Not only will subscribers get to read content that isn’t available in my open-public blog, but there are lots of bonuses, specials and extras, too. For example, I recently gave a free bottle of Omega-3 fish oil away to each subscriber — and I even paid the postage!

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Bouncing Back From Adversity

I do surf the web — I do not do so aimlessly. I was impressed by an article published by AARP on things people should not do after 50. Despite the fact that I absolutely abhor anyone telling me “laws” about what to do or not to do, I checked it out. I decided most of them were so stupid they should never be done by anybody. For instance, a Frenchman told me many years ago that nobody should ever drink champagne out of a woman’s slipper, mainly because it tastes rotten.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Why Soldiers Commit Suicide These Days

The current rate of suicide among soldiers should make us angry, maybe enough to destroy our computers or, heaven forbid, write to congress or even try to stop war. I checked out this institution¸ the National Center for Veterans Studies, the best I could. I am not sure why the Department of Defense and the Department of the Air Force seem to have a love affair with this division of the University of Utah.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Your Family Really Can Kill You

Only 16% of all murder victims are members of the defendant’s family? That’s according to the PDF file that pops open (or opens in your browser) when you click this link – and you must have the free Adobe Acrobat reader to see it. (Fortunately, it is included with most computers nowadays). Actually, I am surprised to see the number is so small. I am a little bit heartened to learn that only 20% are strangers. This leaves 64 % that are friends and acquaintances.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Adjusting to Medical Illness

The psychological ability to adjust to chronic medical illness is an area where there has been very little study. Lately, I find myself working mostly with this population of people. I’m noticing that some adjust very well and some do it very poorly. It depends on a lot of factors.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

We Can Fix This Vaccination Bit

If I haven’t convinced everyone yet, I don’t know how. I have written on this before. Vaccination keeps kids alive. Kids who could die dead as door nails from preventable diseases. Vaccination has very few side effects. All kids should get them (except for specific and quite rare medical counter indications endorsed by a physician). So now I am finding out a little more of the story. Previously, an alleged outbreak of measles was traced to non-vaccination. Now we know that non-vaccination can happen because–children are going to non-public schools.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

We All Need Inspiration — Here Is Today’s Dose

We are in an era when all reporting — wire services, networks, whatever — looks the way tabloid reporting did when I was small. Aggressive, emotional, mostly verbal renderings of disasters that are meant to strike terror into the heart of the reader. Sometimes, something miraculous or near miraculous. Once in a while in this constellation of stories there is something “inspiring.” We all need inspiration. It is tough to define and highly individualistic. I actually like this definition more than others: That “feeling of enthusiasm” that makes you “do” or “create” something.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Freedom And Mental Health

Freedom is healthy. I have always believed this, and still do. My perspective comes from many places — my upbringing, when I was bombarded since an early age by my Russian-immigrant grandmother how wonderful it is to be in the United States, where we are free, unlike the oppressed and subjugated multitudes left behind in the “Mother Country.”

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Hospital Accountability Is An Ideal (Not Always Reality)

I have spent as little time as possible on the staff of hospitals. The interface between doctors and administrators has always seemed to be dominated by petty politics. People are interested in money, and secondary to that, some vague sort of reputation or power. A large and prestigious Midweste hospital used to have a certain kind of meeting every few months. This hospital had only the vaguest of University associations — just enough to make it look academic and research oriented. I knew perfectly well it was neither.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

They’re Ba-a-a-a-ck!!! Zombie Diet Drugs!!!

To paraphrase some recent political campaigns, the FDA was against Qnexa before they were for it. I’ve written about this diet drug compound before – HERE And HERE. Last time I wrote about this “drug,” I thought it was down for the count. Aauugghh!!!! Like a scene from “Night Of The Living Diet Drugs” – it is back from the grave.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Alarmism vs. Real Worries About Beer

I am not a particular fan of beer. My family certainly did not have it in the house. (Control freak that I am, I even had trouble with Passover wine. I never — and I mean never — managed to imagine how anybody made it through the allegedly requisite four glasses.) I really don’t remember tasting beer until I was working Mme.Mareschal’s Cafe “Les Arcades” in Amiens, France, — a quaint village where I attended medical school — where beer was a staple. In fact, it was pretty much a staple everywhere in Northern France.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

“Listening to Prozac” and What People Really Want

I was in my specialty training when I read Peter D.Kramer’s “Listening to Prozac.” I remember thinking he was articulate and observant and all kinds of wonderful things, riding the cusp of a great change in psychiatry, doubting him to be a “real” scientist who would hang out at a meeting of the Society for Biological Psychiatry as I once did. I was wondering what to do with the result of his observation that certain character traits, such as “rejection sensitivity,” could be somehow changed for the better with psycho-pharmacology.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Stem Cell Benefits Masked By Fear and Misinformation

Maybe the folks who continue to argue against stem cell research are just afraid their own stem cells could beat them at a game of checkers. Listen, I want to live forever. Not like in the song “Fame,” but like in the way that most of us would do anything to live. Or like the guy who had to leave the country to get life-saving treatment for cancer of the trachea. Now he is alive when everyone thought he wouldn’t be. It’s a treatment he couldn’t get in the States. In the States, stem cell benefits are masked by misinformation and fear.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Babies Born Addicted

I have had a lot of trouble with the idea of criminalization of drug addiction for a very long time. I am only one of a lot of folks who say “addiction is a real disease.” People feel every bit as sick as people with other diseases, sometimes more. The patients are certainly able to die every bit as dead. Someone told me that the first correctional facility I worked at had the best “rock orchestra” of any such facility, because of a large number of incarcerated rock musicians. I was told they were almost always there on drug charges.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Penn State Child Abuse: The Coverup Is Worse Than The Crime

So many times the cover-up seems to me to be worse than the crime. It might be something as President Nixon and Watergate or as trivial as Sarah Palin and her … um … improvisation on the ride of Paul Revere. (Don’t try to fool a Boston girl – I know all about Paul Revere). I think most of us can agree that the alleged sexual abuse of a young boy by a college football coach is definitely on the more serious side. And in addition to whatever reputed sexual trauma may result, there is another severe trauma. Living in fear. Have you ever lived in fear?

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

A Lesson In Dealing With Anti-Social Personalities

He really looked down on his luck, as do most people who came into this particular urban mental health clinic. He was receiving drug samples from a nurse practitioner somewhere in the system; drugs too expensive to continue getting samples to give him. Drug companies stop giving out samples of drugs when it is no longer financially appropriate to do so, when it becomes an "old" drug, presumably used enough that the extra "boost" of sales from sampling is not necessary.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Penn State Sports Scandal Destroys Lives

A beloved football coach – I might even say a living legend – finds his life destroyed after a luminous career. All because of alleged inaction – perhaps to shield a friend, perhaps to preserve the “old school” or for other reasons. And the sad story of Joe Pate o is only one more chapter in how the victims who suffer are once again vilified, and how we wonder if it is even possible for justice to prevail when such tragedy is involved.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

I Lost Over Half My Body Mass WITHOUT Diet, Exercise, Drugs Or Surgery And I Am Going To Tell You How!

I was heavy all of my life – no, to be honest, I was FAT. My weight caused me severe health problems, including more than one “near-death” experience in comas. And as you can guess, my romantic life was non-existant. I couldn’t weigh myself accurately, because normal scales only go to 300 lbs. From my clothing size I can estimate that I was over 350 lbs. Yet now, well past age 55, I have gone from dress size 24 to size 12. I felt dynamic when my weight went below 200 lbs. and now it is in the range of 160 lbs (I am 5-ft-7-in tall).

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

This Is Not A Diet Book

WARNING: Don’t spend hundreds of dollars on diet or exercise programs that seem to work for everybody but you until you read this important informatio I have to tell you. I Lost Over Half My Body Mass WITHOUT Diet, Exercise, Drugs Or Surgery And I Am Going To Tell You How! By Estelle Toby Goldstein,MD How Could I Be Happy? I was heavy all of my life – no, to be honest, I was FAT. My weight caused me severe health problems, including more than one “near-death” experience in comas. And as you can guess, my romantic life was non-existant.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

This Is Not A Diet Book

WARNING: Don’t spend hundreds of dollars on diet or exercise programs that seem to work for everybody but you until you read this important informatio I have to tell you. I Lost Over Half My Body Mass WITHOUT Diet, Exercise, Drugs Or Surgery And I Am Going To Tell You How! By Estelle Toby Goldstein,MD How Could I Be Happy? I was heavy all of my life – no, to be honest, I was FAT. My weight caused me severe health problems, including more than one “near-death” experience in comas. And as you can guess, my romantic life was non-existant.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Science and War (and Ethics)

In the National World War II museum, it is easy and even triumphant and pride-generating to look back and see some of the scientific advances made during World War II. There’s no doubt that science is advancing. But I wonder if our ethics can keep pace.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Facial Diagnosis

I grew up with the Reader’s Digest, although I do not think that was what my parents had in mind. I was a very early reader. I had the activity pretty much nailed by the time I was three. I could even do phonetic “sounding out” of words, as well as the obsessional “dictionary searching” that I now do on line. I also had an obsessional interest in books intended for “bigs.”r

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Bureaucracy, What It Is and Why I hate It

“Bureaucracy” is a word that comes from the French, which I suppose means that moi has a greater understanding of it than most folks who have never lived in France. Literally, “bureau” means “desk.” So “bureaucracy” is “rule by desk” in the same way that “democracy” is supposed to be “rule by the people” since “demos” in Greek is “people.” Problems already. There is considerable debate possible about how much representative government can even be a democracy. I mean, do so-called “Public Servants” vote for what their constituencies want, or for what they really believe? Desks have no soul.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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By Estelle GoldsteinRecently published1 topic

Your life, Your Work – What’s The Difference?

I love being a ”shrink-lady.” (okay, a “psychiatrist.”) I did not pick it out of a hat. I tried a couple of other medical specialties. The “doctor” part — well, there was never any doubt about that part, really. I mean the idea of taking care of other folks came into my head pretty early on, as did the idea that I was smarter than most other kids, ahead of where I was “supposed” to be. My family had some health problems as I persevered in schooling. It became evident that doctors had not only status but power over other people’s lives.

Primary topic: Alternative Medicine
Alternative Medicine
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