Guide to Veganism

As friends of mine know, I have changed my diet to “near” vegan for about 6 months now, based on reading and review of data that I had not seen before (but actually has been around for a while).  Since so many people have asked me, and then want some place to go, I’m creating this post so I can refer people later.

Documentary:

“Forks over Knives”

This is available as a Netflix stream and plenty of places.  Kinda low budget but interviews and involves the real stalwarts/academics in this field Carl Esselstyn and Colin Campbell.

– there is also a book, which has recipes and a very rough summary of the documentary.  Personally I didn’t find it too worthwhile.  Does have a good set of recipes, though.

Books:

Engine 2 Diet –

http://engine2diet.com/

– A good place to get started, with recipes, shopping lists, and strategies in restaurants.  Particularly good place to start for people who are younger, reasonably healthy and do not have any major medical problems (yet).

Esselstyn’s book:

http://www.heartattackproof.com/

Has clinical experience of decades of controlling many of the heart attack and stroke risks in patient after their first heart attack.

Colin Campbell’s Book:

http://www.thechinastudy.com/

– A real review of the science of nutrition, and talks extensively about the association of Meat based proteins (particularly milk) and cancer.  This is probably the “bible” of nutrition, with some 400+ reference from peer reviewed journal articles.  I have heard that it is still very readable, but I can’t vouch for it since I have a background in epidemiology.  That said, I will say that the material is very well grounded.

What I do:

Based on data outlined in a number of the above books, I am, “mostly vegan,” which means I eat meat/dairy/fish in my meals once a week.  I also make a reasonable effort to avoid, but don’t sweat the small amount of non-vegan products found in most breads and baked goods.  (cakes and such are not healthy, whether vegan or not!).  This meets my goal of staying “less than 5%” animal protein.  I also take B12 vitamins on occasion (generally about once or twice a week when I remember), which I think should be more than enough since I am not strictly vegan anyway.

Hope this helps someone out in the interwebs!

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Surviving the Winter – Colds, Flu, and other Virii

Yup, I finally made a page. I got tired to saying the same things over and over again during the winter time.

Patient Instructions for Viral Infections

Other References:

• Uptodate – Patient Info: Colds in Adults
• Uptodate – Patient Info: Colds in Children
• WebMD – Cold and Flu Center

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The New Yorker: The Checklist

A really great article by Atul Gawande (writer of “Complications” and “Better”) was published in the New Yorker. The ariticle follows the work on intensivist Dr Peter Pronovost, who made simple workflow interventions which made dramatic reductions on the rate of complications in the intensive care unit. The following quote, however, made him an instant hero to me:

“The fundamental problem with the quality of American medicine is that we’ve failed to view delivery of health care as a science. The tasks of medical science fall into three buckets. One is understanding disease biology. One is finding effective therapies. And one is insuring those therapies are delivered effectively. That third bucket has been almost totally ignored by research funders, government, and academia. It’s viewed as the art of medicine. That’s a mistake, a huge mistake. And from a taxpayer’s perspective it’s outrageous.”

A link to the article is here.

Thanks Phil Andrus at the Mount Sinai Emergency Medicine Critical Care Blog for bringing this to my attention.

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