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Hello Again

Obviously this blog is not one of my top priorities.

This quarter has been pretty brutal. We had a slew of tests in February- pretty much two every week. At the beginning of the marathon I came down with the flu/cold that's going around. Missing two and a half days of school at this level is much harder.

We had two shorter courses this term, Mind-Body-Spirit Medicine and Doctor-Patient Communication, that focused more on the personal side of medicine. I really enjoyed both and its easy to forget about this side of medicine when we're so focused on the basic sciences right now. Each class really emphasized how important the interactions between practitioner and patient really are - it doesn't matter how competent you are if you cannot connect with and meet your patients wherever they are in the healing process.
I must admit I was pretty wary of a class called Mind-Body-Spirit Medicine. I did not enjoy all of the posted reading material but there were a few chapters from various books (Oschman is the only name I remember right now) that really challenged my idea of energy medicine as a completely woo-woo subject. There's a lot of physics in this field and that is what has really influenced my opinion. If anyone's interested in more, send me an email. I can't say I'm competent enough to have a discussion but I can forward articles. There's some really good research and science behind this modality, conversely there's also a lot of really bad "energy" medicine as well.

I'm procrastinating right now. Unfortunately I spent yesterday avoiding school work so today I'm paying. I should have worked yesterday though- its sunny and beautiful.
Back to the books...

As If I Need Another Reason To Get Off My @ss

This morning when I opened up my window to the outside world, I was greeted but not suprised, by this astounding bit of research:

Sitting May Increase Risk of Disease
University of Missouri-Columbia (2007, November 20). Sitting May Increase Risk Of Disease. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 20, 2007, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/11/071119130734.htm

Excerpt from article:

They found evidence that sitting had negative effects on fat and cholesterol metabolism. The researchers also found that physical inactivity throughout the day stimulated disease-promoting processes, and that exercising, even for an hour a day, was not sufficient to reverse the effect.

There is a misconception that actively exercising is the only way to make a healthy difference in an otherwise sedentary lifestyle. However, Hamilton's studies found that standing and other non-exercise activities burn many calories in most adults even if they do not exercise at all.

No surprise there. We've been told for years to put down the remote and potato chips, get off the couch, and exercise until you're ready to drop in the hopes of avoiding whatever chronic disease is destined to make our later years unbearable. This study states that it's not so much the strenuous exercise that's necessary - it is simply necessary to not spend so much time sitting. Standing, as opposed to sitting, is beneficial.
I have not read the actual paper to be published so I cannot speak for the quality of this research, but I'm willing to risk saying that this is good information.

So get off yer derriere as much as possible (assuming you do not have a pre-existing condition that would make standing or otherwise moving from a seated position a bad idea).

i'm in love, with music

i do have somewhat of a life outside of school. granted its fairly limited, but it's there. i'm lucky enough to have lived in portland long enough to have a great circle of friends (although i do look forward to making great friends while in school as well). i went to see a show tonight, sean hayes. he's not well known and i'll assume no one else reading this has heard of him. it's defintely worth the sleepiness i'll experience tomorrow. i love sean hayes' music the way i loved certain bands in high school.
i did have the fortune of going to the symphony the other week with a dear friend of mine. we saw nadja solerno-sonenberg (spelling could be iffy), it was divine. some day, i look forward to being able to afford tickets to the symphony. i really enjoy experiencing classical music.
i really need to get myself in bed now. good night!

not for the squeamish

on tuesday mornings i have anatomy lab, which is also known as cadaver or dead lab. yes, it is a little unnerving and yes my first morning i was a little apprehensive about how i might react. it is definitely so much easier to understand anatomy lecture by studying a real human body. i'm not fond of the smell and occasionally get a little freaked out, especially looking at the face. we don't get to dissect the bodies as our school only receives six per year, so work study students do the cutting. i think i would find it much harder to handle if we did the dissecting ourselves.

this morning we saw some really interesting pathologies. one of the bodies had multiple cancers- colon, breast, and maybe something else, but we're not given info other than age and cause of death. the liver on the person was so large it extended almost to the top of the hip bone. the liver should not really extend beyond the ribs. the body also appeared to have had a lobectomy, staples in the sternum, an enlarged large intestine, and an enlarged spleen. the stomach was also very distended. it was amazing to see what happens to the body when it suffers from a serious illness.

we also saw a pair of lungs with serious problems. part of the top right lobe had completely deteriorated and had multiple blebs. yes, bleb is a medical term- a large blister filled with serous fluid. part of the lung tissue has become stretched out and can no longer contract. the TA thought that the person may have had some sort of pneumonia.

seeing the disease process makes me very thankful that my body, to the best of my knowledge, is functioning well. who knows, maybe i have a tumor festering somewhere.. but i'm not really worried about it at the moment. and if i do, i hope that some day med students get to look at it and learn. its really pretty fascinating. definitely worth twenty two grand.

the beginning

i've never had a blog before and i've read very few in general...
this is a great way to procrastinate. i should be studying for a physiology midterm, or reviewing histology, or anatomy, or working on whatever various end of quarter projects i have, or cleaning... or... anything really.

so far med school is great. i love it. i'm absolutely thrilled to spend hours sitting in lecture learning about how our bodies work. it's amazing. i honestly feel quite lucky to be able to do this. of course, i am only 8 weeks into this journey. i'm sure i'll have days or weeks where i don't feel quite so lucky or quite so motivated, but right now i do and i'm riding that rollercoaster for as long as i can.

now, i will open my physiology book and learn about blood flowing through the body.