Podcasts about mass general

This week we're sharing a panel from the Future of Mental Healthcare conference. Marlon moderates a conversation featuring friends of the pod, John MacPhee, CEO of The Jed Foundation; Merve Lapus, Vice President of Education Outreach and Engagement at Common Sense Media, and  Dr. Khadijah Booth Watkins, Associate Director for the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Mass General. Together, the explore what AI can and can't do for youth mental health, why human connection still matters most, and how we can think more carefully about technology, care, and resilience for young people in the digital age.

She was a labor and delivery nurse at Mass General. She screened in the severe range for postpartum depression, told her care team again and again that something was deeply wrong, and checked herself into the top psychiatric hospital in the country. The day after her final psychiatrist appointment, all three of her children were gone. In Part 1, Tyrella and Nikita walk through who Lindsay Clancy was before January 24th, 2023 — the manic episodes after her second birth, the medication cascade that followed her third, and what the civil lawsuits filed by both Lindsay and her husband allege her providers missed across four months of escalating crisis. The question this episode sits with: if she was as sick as the lawsuits say, and the system kept sending her home, what does that mean when the criminal case reaches a jury? Part 2 is live now for Patreon members and drops Thursday for everyone else — the 54 minutes, the police affidavit, and the Commonwealth's case. Content warning: child death, suicide and self-harm, severe mental illness. If you're in crisis, call or text 988. Want access to our first 45 episodes? Grab em here! We've made them available for free to anyone who signs up! Remember, these episodes were recorded when we had no idea what we were doing, so just keep that in mind. The audio isn't the quality we would want to put out now, but the cases are on point! Visit killerqueens.link/og to download and binge all the archived episodes today! Hang with us: Follow Us on Instagram Like Us on Facebook Join our Case Discussion Group on Facebook Bonus Episodes Support Our AMAZING Sponsors: Smalls: For 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life, head to Smalls.com/QUEENS!  IQBAR: Text QUEENS to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping.  Message and data rates may apply.    © 2026This Feels Criminal. All Rights Reserved Audio Production by Wayfare Recording Music provided by Steven Tobi Logo designed by ⁠Ingrid at Penguin Designing⁠

If you've been told “this is just your protocol,” “we'll just try again,” or “everything looks fine” while IVF keeps failing, this episode is for you. Standard IVF works for many people, but not for everyone. So what happens when you don't fit the usual box? In this conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Pietro Bortoletto, reproductive endocrinologist at Terra Fertility. He trained at Northwestern, Brigham & Women's / Mass General, and Weill Cornell, and now focuses on the hard cases: diminished ovarian reserve, recurrent implantation failure, recurrent pregnancy loss, endometriosis, fibroids, and Müllerian anomalies. We talk about: Why he stepped out of the traditional IVF system How real experts think “outside the box” without going fringe When surgery actually helps (and when it's just more trauma) The role of endometriosis, inflammation, and the immune system in fertility What thoughtful immunologic workups look like (and when they're not useful) When to seek a second opinion and how to do it respectfully Mindset tools for staying sane when the road is long and uncertain This is not personal medical advice. It is a window into how a well‑trained REI thinks when standard IVF isn't working, so you can have better, deeper conversations with your own team.

A stiff knee looked like a minor problem. Two days later, it was swelling toward the size of a basketball.   Then doctors opened it and found an infection eating him from the inside out. Zachary Garner is a Green Beret, firefighter, and ultra-endurance athlete, and this episode is built around visible stakes: brutal deployments, a catastrophic Ironman crash, traumatic brain injury, seizures, and a fight with flesh-eating bacteria that spread from hip to ankle, into his bloodstream, bones, pelvis, and heart.   He was told it could end fast. He was moved to Mass General, spent time in the ICU, had two strokes, and coded twice. Zachary breaks down what kept him moving forward: discomfort as training, purpose as a stabilizer, loyalty as a standard, and service as the operating system. You'll leave with disciplined rules you can apply when you're stuck, overwhelmed, or looking for excuses.   Things You Will Learn: How to use purpose as a coping mechanism when quitting starts to feel logical. How to normalize discomfort so you don't fold under pressure. How loyalty and service create structure when civilian life feels flat after high-intensity environments.   Tools & Frameworks Covered: Do-It-For-Them Anchor: keeps endurance and resilience steady when motivation drops. Discomfort Reps: builds mental toughness through repeated, controlled exposure to discomfort. Service-First Operating System: aligns discipline, responsibility, and daily actions to a clear purpose.   Let's make it something similar to this: If this episode moved you, don't just listen. Do something about it. Sign up. Show up. Do the work. Spartan.com. No more excuses.   Zachary Garner is a retired U.S. Army Green Beret who's survived traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, a near-fatal car accident, and necrotizing fasciitis that nearly took his life. Instead of giving up, he's turned pain into purpose, riding across the country, carrying weight for miles, and competing in extreme endurance events to raise awareness for veteran mental health.   Connect to Zachary: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-garner-253605170/ St. George Fire Department: https://www.stgeorgefire.com/   We gave you the tools, now use them during your next SPARTAN RACE! Use codeword PODCAST on checkout for 10% your next race.  

I'm leading a team of volunteers going undercover at Friday's May Day mass general strike to collect on the ground intelligence about the groups involved.Our goal is to map the modern activist left in America.Want to join us? Watch this training and follow the instructions.Decode The Left with Karlyn Borysenko is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit karlyn.substack.com/subscribe

Send us Fan MailFrom lumbar punctures to mitochondrial recycling, this booth interview from PAS 2026 covers a lot of ground. Ben and Daphna sit down with Dr. Ioanna Kotsopoulou from Mass General to discuss two distinct but equally compelling topics. First, a quality improvement project that took ultrasound-guided LP use from 12 to 73 percent and first attempt success from 32 to 68 percent. Then a pivot to basic science: impaired mitophagy in pulmonary hypertension, and whether dysfunctional mitochondrial recycling in cardiomyocytes may be contributing to the cardiac phenotype we see in these patients. A wide-ranging conversation with something for every neonatologist.Support the showAs always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: nicupodcast@gmail.com. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.Enjoy!

Kara McWeeney shared the story of her daughter Meghan Melo, who lost her battle with breast cancer last year. Meghan's best friend Ashley Cook is running in her honor for Mass General.

Episode 243 of the Transition Drill Podcast explores law enforcement identity, career pressure, and life after the job for veterans and first responders navigating the reality that service can cost more than people see. Medically retired Massachusetts State Trooper Tony Bova shares his story on dyslexia, divorce, burnout, and what it takes to build purpose again when the uniform can't be your whole life anymore.Tony Bova grew up in Massachusetts in a close Italian family, but school was never easy for him. He was diagnosed with dyslexia early, struggled academically, and spent years feeling like he had to work harder than everyone else just to keep up. That didn't push him away from policing. In a lot of ways, it pulled him toward it. He found that while paperwork and report writing were a grind, handling problems in real time fit how he was wired. That became even clearer when he worked as a police cadet at UMass Amherst and realized this was the career he wanted.But getting there wasn't simple. Tony talks about how long and frustrating the path into law enforcement was, including background issues that kept biting him even when he was trying to be honest. Before landing in the Massachusetts State Police, he worked through other roles that kept him close to the profession, including loss prevention, special police work, hospital policing at Mass General, and summer police work in Provincetown. Those jobs gave him a taste of the work while he kept pushing for the career he'd spent years chasing.Once he got to the state police, Tony did the job well and built the career he'd worked toward for roughly a decade. But the conversation gets honest about what came with it. He talks about the pressure inside the profession, the toll of constant fear-based thinking around retirement and job security, and how major personal pain, especially an arduous divorce, hit harder than the work itself. After surgery and time away, his perspective changed. He started looking at life outside the job and decided he didn't want to be one of the people who retire, lose purpose, and fall apart.CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulpantani/WEBSITE: https://www.transitiondrillpodcast.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulpantani/SIGN-UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER:https://transitiondrillpodcast.com/home#aboutQUESTIONS OR COMMENTS:paul@transitiondrillpodcast.comSPONSORS:GRND CollectiveGet 15% off your purchaseLink: https://thegrndcollective.com/Promo Code: TRANSITION15Blue Line RoastingGet 10% off your purchaseLink: https://bluelineroasting.comPromocode: Transition10Frontline OpticsGet 10% off your purchaseLink: https://frontlineoptics.comPromocode: Transition10

In this episode of The Birth Lounge Podcast, HeHe sits down with family physician and circumcision safety innovator Dr. David Tomlinson for a detailed, no-fluff conversation about newborn circumcision in the U.S. They unpack why this topic can feel so taboo, what most parents aren't told about risks and complications, and how technique and device choice can significantly impact safety. Dr. Tomlinson also walks through the proposed health benefits often associated with circumcision, including infection and disease risk, and how those claims are supported in research. The conversation also explores timing, including why circumcision is often done within the first 24 to 48 hours in the U.S., why that differs from other countries, and what considerations come with waiting. HeHe and Dr. Tomlinson discuss pain management options, vitamin K and bleeding risks, aftercare, and what parents should know before making this decision. This episode isn't about telling you what to choose. It's about giving you a fuller picture so you can make a decision that feels informed, intentional, and aligned for your family. 00:00 Circumcision Injury Reality 01:13 Birth Lounge App Overview 04:43 Episode Setup Circumcision Questions 05:55 Meet Dr Tomlinson 09:48 Why Circumcision Feels Taboo 12:16 Safety Risks And Common Devices 14:21 AccuCirc Origin Story 18:26 How Often Injuries Happen 21:11 Long Term Injury Impacts 22:36 Foreskin Function And HIV 24:30 Benefits Evidence And Sexual Function 26:10 Devils Advocate Hygiene Question 27:46 Paraphimosis And Origins 30:50 Guidelines Without Shame 38:07 Why Delay Circumcision 38:47 War History And Early Timing 42:54 Ideal Timing 7 To 14 Days 44:05 Waiting Until Adolescence Tradeoffs 47:08 Beyond 28 Days And Anesthesia 49:04 Anesthesia Timing Risks 49:46 Topical vs Injectable Lidocaine 50:59 Hospital Cost Tradeoffs 52:53 Sponsor Cozy Earth 56:28 Vitamin K and Bleeding Rules 59:27 Oral vs Intramuscular Vitamin K / IM Vitamin K Options 01:04:33 Bleeding Prevention Techniques 01:06:11 Safer Clamp Design Explained 01:13:22 Healing Timeline and Dressing 01:14:20 Aftercare Vaseline and Trapped Penis 01:19:15 Transparency and Follow Up Care 01:22:49 Foreskin Disposal and Donation 01:26:20 How to Connect with SafeCirc 01:29:15 Final Encouragement and Wrap Up   Guest Bio: Dr. David Tomlinson is a family physician, medical innovator, and international leader in newborn male circumcision care. An Academic All-American from MIT with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, he went on to earn his MD at the University of Colorado and complete his Family Medicine training in the U.S. Navy. For over 20 years, he has worked to make newborn circumcision safer worldwide, leading the development of the minimally invasive AccuCirc® device. As a Clinical Assistant Professor at Brown University, Dr. Tomlinson has advised the World Health Organization, NIH, and Gates Foundation, and created training programs across Africa. He has served as an expert witness in malpractice cases involving circumcision injuries and has dedicated his career to preventing these devastating complications. A longtime staff physician at South County Hospital, where he was named Physician of the Year, Dr. Tomlinson has also lectured at leading institutions including Mass General, Brigham and Women's, and Dartmouth. He authored the surgical chapters of the WHO's global manual on infant circumcision and continues to shape programs for HIV prevention and safer newborn care worldwide. Connect with Dr. Tomlinson here: www.SafeCirc.com And Get a 10% discount anytime in 2026, just by mentioning The Birth Lounge Podcast  You can find links to all the research Dr. Tomlinson shared in this document.  You can learn more about the SafeCirc here.  SOCIAL MEDIA: Connect with HeHe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tranquilitybyhehe/  BIRTH EDUCATION: Learn how to stay in control of your birth and reduce the risk of unnecessary interventions in our Avoid a C-Section Webinar. HeHe breaks down the cascade of interventions, explains what's really happening in the hospital, and shares practical strategies to protect your birth plan, advocate for yourself, and navigate labor with confidence. Perfect for anyone who wants a positive, informed hospital birth experience: https://www.thebirthlounge.com/csection Feeling nervous about speaking up in labor? Our Scripts for Advocacy give you the exact words to handle the most common conversations that can make or break your birth experience. From declining unnecessary interventions to asking the right questions about procedures, these scripts empower you to stay in control, speak confidently, and protect your birth plan — even when the pressure is on. Think of it as your personal toolkit for advocating like a pro, so you can focus on your baby, not the stress: https://www.thebirthlounge.com/Scripts-for-Advocacy And if you haven't grabbed it yet… Snag my free Pitocin Guide to understand the risks, benefits, and red flags your provider may not be telling you about, so you can make informed, powerful decisions in labor: https://www.thebirthlounge.com/pitocin Join The Birth Lounge for judgment-free, evidence-based childbirth education from HeHe that shows you exactly how to navigate hospital policies, avoid unnecessary interventions, and have a trauma-free labor experience, all while feeling wildly supported every step of the way: https://www.thebirthlounge.com/ Want prep delivered straight to your phone? Download The Birth Lounge App for bite-sized birth and postpartum tools you can use anytime, anywhere: https://www.thebirthlounge.com/app-download-page

The episode moves through three connected ideas. First: clinical trials have a UX problem. One in five trials recruits zero patients. Half under-recruit. Paul's early work was understanding why – and fixing it. The answer was almost never the science. It was that patients had no parking, caregivers had no wifi (or babysitting!), and the protocol assumed everyone could get to Mass General by 9 AM on a Friday via public transit. Solving that required showing trial designs to actual patients before locking them, and listening to their recorded reactions rather than just summarizing their survey scores. Second: measuring patient experience is genuinely hard. There are no inches of insomnia. No pounds of pain. Patient Reported Outcomes – PROs – exist because the most burdensome chronic conditions don't have actual units that can be measured. There are thousands of PROs, many are outdated (the fibromyalgia questionnaire from the early 2000s asks how well you can vacuum and cook for your family), and most were designed for clinical trials, not for weekly check-ins on a mobile screen. So for you, Product Manager/Engineer/Builder: how are you going to measure whether your Care Model actually improves patient health? Third: building PROs into a product creates specific traps. Paul runs through the ones he has seen firsthand: copyright violations (most scales are licensed and litigation can cost millions), engagement drop-off (5–10% of users is a good day for consistent tracking), incentive fraud (cash rewards attract bot farms), the nocebo effect (asking about pain can worsen it: hey, 1-10 scale, how itchy are you right now?), and the regulatory ceiling – go too far with your tracker and you've crossed into medical device territory, with all the compliance that comes with it. The Five Things to Know Before You Build 1. You probably don't have permission to use that questionnaire. Most validated scales are owned by universities and licensed for a fee. Saying you found it published online doesn't mean it's free. The database PROQOLID lists rights holders, and some of them are quite litigious  2. Only about 5–10% of patients will track at the cadence you're planning. The ones who do are not representative of your broader user base. Obsessive trackers skew your data. Users with executive dysfunction may not be able to log in, let alone complete a questionnaire. 3. Cash incentives destroy your data. If you offer a financial reward for completion, expect an avalanche of bots and fraudulent responses. Survey researchers report 80–90% fraud rates in incentivized studies. Things that seem to work better: setting group goals, an AMA with the scientists behind the study, and giving users a summary of what their data revealed. 4. Asking about symptoms can worsen them. The nocebo effect is real (for example: scale of 1-10, how itchy do you feel right now?). Paul's team designed positively-framed questions ("how well are you sleeping?") rather than deficit-focused ones ("how bad is your insomnia?") specifically to reduce iatrogenic harm. 5. Interpreting a score triggers regulation. Tracking is fine. Saying that a score of 5/5 means "severe" COULD make your app a medical device and suddenly make you beholden to a lot more regulation Resources Paul Wicks on LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/paulwicks Paul's newsletter, ProofPoints Paul's podcast, Prove It! Paul's website, ProofStack Health https://www.meetnirvana.com/oop RAAPID Inc course on Risk Adjustment: V28, AI, and multi-million dollar settlements. Apr 7-9 Sponsor the Hardware Hackathon! Apr 17-19 in SF! PROQOLID — eprovide.mapi-trust.org — find the rights holder for any validated PRO scale PHQ-9: free, validated, widely used depression screener GAD-7: free, validated anxiety scale Timestamps 00:00 — Paul's origin story: ALS research, patient communities, and clinical trial ethics 03:00 — PatientsLikeMe and showing trial protocols to patients before locking them can actually INCREASE recruitment 11:00 — What PROs (Patient Reported Outcomes) are, why there are so many, and why none of them agree 18:00 — Pharma, payers, providers, patients – and who actually cares about PRO data 26:00 — The fifth stakeholder: scale developers. Beware for license fees and lawsuit risk 30:00 — Which patients actually track data, and what to do about everyone else 33:00 — False starts: psoriasis body maps, crab-to-clam scales, and positive framing 38:00 — The regulatory ceiling and pharmacovigilance

Send a textIn this episode, we sit down with Dr. Jessica Shui, attending neonatologist at Mass General for Children, to explore the game-changing potential of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) in the NICU. We dive into her recent paper in the Journal of Perinatology on using non-invasive EIT to identify optimal PEEP in infants with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Dr. Shui explains how this real-time, radiation-free technology allows clinicians to visualize lung mechanics, dynamically titrate ventilator settings, and confidently reduce PEEP without risking atelectasis. Join us as we discuss moving beyond blind adjustments and stepping into the future of personalized neonatal respiratory care. Support the showAs always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: nicupodcast@gmail.com. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below. Enjoy!

(00:00) — Curiosity in the halls of Mass General: Her mom's triple‑negative breast cancer and remission shape an early interest in medicine.(02:54) — Choosing a major without a premed major: From biochemistry to discovering neuroscience and why UMass ultimately fit.(06:04) — Double majoring without burning out: Overlap with prereqs, honest advising on dual degrees, and following interests.(09:13) — Make advising work for you: Meeting early, becoming a peer advisor, and hearing hard feedback you don't want to hear.(12:56) — Rethinking gap years: Fears about money give way to growth, responsibility, and better prep for med school.(17:23) — What went wrong on the first MCAT: Cramming, no plan, and taking it during senior year.(19:33) — The retake that worked: Six months, 3 hours a day, weekly full-lengths, and using AAMC practice tests.(22:52) — Lining up letters after graduation: Staying in touch with advisors and professors, and using undergrad resources.(25:34) — Clinical path: EMT to pediatric ER clinical assistant: Building skills during COVID, behavioral health work, and a role that cemented medicine.(32:05) — The application surprise: Not prewriting secondaries—and why she won't skip that again.(33:43) — First interview jitters and prep: Early invites, mock interviews, and centering fit.(35:52) — Eight interview invites: Why authenticity and geography beat obsessing over stats.(40:33) — Toughest interview prompt: Answering “Tell me about yourself” and a bartender curveball.(44:10) — The first acceptance: A full-circle moment at work and calling mom.(45:40) — Final advice to premeds: Keep an open mind—and be kind to yourself.Today's guest traces a clear, practical path from childhood curiosity in the halls of Mass General—while her mom underwent treatment and later entered remission—to a medical school seat built on consistency, flexibility, and honest self-reflection. She shares how starting at UMass in biochemistry, discovering neuroscience, and building an early relationship with her premed advisor shaped smarter decisions—like delaying the MCAT and embracing gap years she once feared.We dive into the first MCAT attempt that fell flat (no schedule, cramming during senior year, few practice tests) and the 15‑point turnaround that followed: six months post‑graduation, three hours a day, AAMC full‑lengths every Thursday, and a real study plan. She details lining up letters before leaving campus, keeping in touch after graduation, and why not prewriting secondaries became her biggest application headache.Clinically, she moved from EMT certification and campus EMS to behavioral health sitting and a clinical assistant role in a pediatric ER—experiences that cemented her desire to practice. Finally, we cover interviews (including a surprise bartender question), eight invites, the first acceptance at work, and her closing advice: keep an open mind—and be kind to yourself.What You'll Learn:- How to build a productive relationship with your premed advisor- A realistic MCAT retake plan: pacing, practice tests, and scheduling- Why gap years and nonclinical jobs can strengthen your application- Finding schools by fit and mission instead of fixating on stats- Timing letters and prewriting secondaries to avoid bottlenecks

Most medical encounters are structured as transactions. The patient comes in with a specific complaint, the medical expert identifies a discrete problem, and a specific intervention is prescribed.But at the heart of a medical encounter is a story. When a patient comes in with a medical problem, the problem cannot be disentangled from their life's narrative — doing so risks hollowing out the essence of what it means to care for another person. Our guest on this episode is award-winning author, and primary care physician Suzanne Koven, MD. Following the completion of her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Koven joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School and practiced primary care medicine at Massachusetts General for 32 years. In 2019, she became the inaugural Writer in Residence at Mass General. Her writings have been published broadly—including in The Boston Globe, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and The New Yorker. As a teacher and public speaker, she highlights the relationship between literature and medicine, and is a powerful advocate for female medical trainees. In this episode, Dr. Koven shares her journey to medicine at a time when few women were represented in the field and why she finds her undergraduate English classes to be more relevant to her clinical work than her science classes. We discuss narrative medicine, its value to patients and physicians alike, and how the modern healthcare system struggles to value the patient story. Finally, Dr. Koven leaves us with her advice for up-and-coming trainees: find a place in medicine where you can be yourself – for your own good and for your patients'.In this episode, you'll hear about: 3:00 - Dr. Koven's motivations for going into primary care medicine 15:49 - The impact that Dr. Koven's English degree has had on her approach to medicine 19:36 - What narrative medicine is 24:34 - What is lost when human connection and human story are deprioritized within the practice of medicine 31:15 - The benefits doctors experience when cultivating an appreciation for the arts37:21 - How gender representation in medicine has shaped Dr. Koven's experience as a physician42:54 - The need for the culture of medicine to adapt to changing demographics in the medical workforceIf you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.Copyright The Doctor's Art Podcast 2026

A Gluten Free Podcast Episode 219 Today's highlight is from my episode with Dr. Maureen Leonard, Paediatric Gastroenterologist, Physician-Scientist & Director for The Center for Celiac Research & Treatment at Mass General for Children. In the full episode we talk about Dr. Leonard's own coeliac disease diagnosis, the CDGEMM study, the gut microbiome, refractory coeliac disease and much more. In this highlight Dr. Leonard explains what the CDGEMM study is and what insights they've gained from it so far. Links Listen to the full episode here Join A Gluten Free Podcast Facebook group here 

In this episode of Cheat Codes, Dr. Sharl Azar joins the hosts to discuss his journey from Oregon to leading the sickle cell program at Mass General in Boston. Dr. Azar shares the pivotal moments that inspired his passion for hematology and advocacy, including his work on groundbreaking legislation to improve care for sickle cell patients in Massachusetts. The conversation highlights the importance of community, systemic change, and the lived experiences of patients. Listeners will be inspired by Dr. Azar's commitment to equity, collaboration, and building a brighter future for those affected by sickle cell disease.   SHOW DESCRIPTION Cheat Codes is intended for patients, caregivers, providers, and the greater community of people who are impacted by Sickle Cell Disease.  Each episode, Cheat Codes strives to provide listeners with critical education, the latest scientific updates, and voices from the Sickle Cell community.     Join an inclusive community and build connections with other hemolytic anemia allies by following @AllyVoicesRising on Instagram.   TRANSPARENCY STATEMENT  Cheat Codes: A Sickle Cell Podcast is made possible by Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. Visit Agios.com to learn more. The following Agios-supported programs are intended for informational and educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. Please speak with your healthcare professional before making any treatment decisions. Host and guests featured in this episode have been compensated for their time.  

Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU65vnqkBmE When two of the world's leading ALS researchers meet for the first time on a podcast, something remarkable happens. Dr. Merit Cudkowicz - Tim's close friend and arguably the world's foremost ALS expert, returns to Nothing Left Unsaid for her third appearance, this time joined by Dr. Tanya Daigle from the Allen Institute, who's pioneering genetic tools that could transform how we treat neurodegenerative diseases. Together, they reveal a future for ALS research that's closer than most people realize. This isn't your typical medical conversation. Merit and Tanya speak with unguarded hope about gene therapies that have stopped disease progression in 40% of patients, AI-driven drug discovery that's accelerating at unprecedented rates, and precision targeting tools that could deliver treatments directly to dying motor neurons without invasive brain surgery. They discuss the real bottlenecks between laboratory breakthroughs and patient impact, why most ALS drug trials aren't actually failures, and how the field has evolved from a handful of researchers to a global collaborative effort spanning continents. CHAPTERS: 00:00 Trailer01:09 Intro02:55 Current State of ALS Research05:19 Misconceptions About ALS09:32 Progress and Future of ALS Treatments21:17 Innovations in Genetic Tools for ALS31:59 A New Frontier in ALS Research35:03 Efficiency of Platform Trials in ALS Research36:59 The Importance of Funding and Science Collaboration37:55 Advancements in Treating ALS Smarter38:52 The Role of Biomarkers and Individualized Therapies41:31 Dream Trials and Future Prospects48:01 The Impact of AI in ALS Research54:08 The Next Big Pivot in ALS Research58:18 Hope and Collaboration in ALS Research01:01:04 How to Be Part of ALS Community RESOURCES & LINKS: Allen Institute: https://alleninstitute.orgHealey & AMG Center for ALS at Mass General: https://www.massgeneral.org/neurology/als SPONSORS:ElevenLabs: Thanks to ElevenLabs (https://elevenlabs.io) for supporting this episode and powering Tim's voice. SOCIAL:Website: https://nlupod.com/X: https://x.com/nlutimgreenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/NLUpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nlupod LISTEN ON OTHER PLATFORMS: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nothing-left-unsaid/id1734094890Audible: https://www.audible.com/podcast/Nothing-Left-Unsaid/B0CWTCRKGZCastbox: https://castbox.fm/channel/id6405921?country=usOvercast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1734094890iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-nothing-left-unsaid-155769998/ PERSONAL: Tackle ALS: https://www.tackleals.comTim Green Books: https://authortimgreen.comTim's New Book - ROCKET ARM: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062796895/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Topics We Cover: 00:00 – New data from Harvard/Mass General may classify nearly 70% of adults as having obesity 03:00 – A new oral triple agonist shows record-setting absorption rates 07:00 – Fractal Health's Revita procedure: weight maintenance after stopping GLP-1s 12:00 – Zepbound vial prices drop (full breakdown by dose) 16:00 – Dave's personal experience switching off Mounjaro and intense hunger return 22:00 – Novo Nordisk's EVOKE/EVOKE+ Alzheimer's trial: what the data really means 29:00 – Why GLP-1 neurological research is just getting started 33:00 – Updates on access, partners, and major news coming soon for Medicare patients If you're on Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, Saxenda, Trulicity, or compounded versions, this episode gives you the insight and context you need to have more competent and confident conversations with your doctor. Bullet Point Summary of the Podcast Episode New Obesity Measurement Data (Harvard/Mass General Study) Harvard and Mass General propose adding waist circumference to BMI to better diagnose obesity. Traditional BMI misses key factors like muscle mass and body composition. Using the updated measure, Americans classified as obese jumps from ~43% to almost 69%. This means 7 out of 10 U.S. adults would now qualify as having the disease of obesity. Dave notes this validates many people who “feel” metabolically unwell despite a “normal” BMI. Reinforces his claim that “most people should be talking to their doctors about GLP-1s.” New Oral Triple Agonist (Ascletis – ASC41/ASC? Molecule) From Ascletis (A-S-C-L-E-T-I-S), developing an oral triple agonist targeting: GLP-1 GIP Glucagon Similar in mechanism to retatrutide, expected around 2027. Preclinical (animal) data show stunning results: Oral bioavailability of 4.2% 9× higher than tirzepatide 30× higher than oral semaglutide 6× higher than oral retatrutide 57× greater drug exposure than oral retatrutide Half-life ~56 hours Stronger receptor activation than retatrutide in vitro Suggests potential for the first powerful oral triple agonist—worth watching. ️ 3. Discussion of the Gray Market / TikTok Experience Dave briefly recounts losing his TikTok account and landing in an algorithm filled with teenagers promoting gray-market “retatrutide.” Expresses concern over unregulated peptide sales, especially to minors. Fractal Health's New Data – Weight Maintenance After Stopping GLP-1s New results from the Reveal One study (Fractal Health). Participants: lost 24% of body weight on GLP-1s → stopped injections → got one Revita procedure. At 6 months post-GLP-1 discontinuation: Weight changed only 1.5% (vs. ~10% regain in typical off-drug trials) HbA1c barely shifted Safety profile clean Suggests possible long-term weight maintenance without injections through gut mucosal re-lining. Dave describes his own recent attempt to switch drugs and significant hunger return. Food Noise & Biologic Hunger Dave discusses how stopping Mounjaro caused terrifying, primal hunger. Describes the distinction between: Food noise (brain-based thoughts) Hunger signals (biological/animalistic) Reinforces why many patients cannot maintain weight loss without support. Zepbound (Tirzepatide) Cash-Pay Price Reductions Eli Lilly drops cash-pay vial pricing: 2.5 mg: $349 → $299 5 mg: $499 → $399 7.5–15 mg: $499 → $449 Community feedback (informal poll): Most say still too high to leave compounded versions. Many would switch to branded if price hit $200–$300. Dave notes the Most Favored Nations agreement will push GLP-1 prices toward $250/month within 24 months. Alzheimer's Study (Novo Nordisk – EVOKE & EVOKE+) Oral semaglutide (Rybelsus, 14 mg) did not slow Alzheimer's clinical progression. Biomarkers improved but daily function and cognitive decline did not improve vs placebo. Important context: Oral Rybelsus is a weak form of semaglutide; stronger versions (like Wegovy 2.4 mg or upcoming high-dose oral Wegovy) not tested. Weight loss is not desirable in Alzheimer's patients, influencing drug selection. Dave emphasizes: This was a nearly $700M trial and an act of scientific courage. This is NOT the end of GLP-1 Alzheimer's research. Future molecules may target neurological pathways without suppressing appetite. Mentions Lilly's brenipatide, a GIP receptor agonist being developed for: Addiction Opioid dependency Possibly asthma ️ 8. Access, Cost, and Patient Empowerment Highlights Shed as a partner offering telehealth GLP-1 access. Notes many patients hide GLP-1 use from their primary care doctors. Reinforces OTP's mission: better, more honest conversations with clinicians. Shapa (Numberless Scale) & Dave's Personal Update Dave explains how the Shapa numberless scale helped him stay engaged during weight fluctuations. Finds stepping on “zones” (green/gray/blue) less emotionally damaging than numbers. Closing Notes Promises upcoming Eli Lilly savings card update. Encourages subscribing, liking, and enabling notifications for algorithm visibility. Thanks OTP community for amplifying patient-centric obesity medicine news. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Alyssa and Nadia dive into a deeply personal conversation about aging, menopause, and what it means to be a woman as your body changes.Alyssa opens up about feeling younger than she looks at 48, sparking a discussion about how we perceive ourselves versus how we appear to others. The conversation quickly shifts to menopause and perimenopause — topics that dominate Alyssa's social media feed and conversations with friends her age. While hot flashes get all the attention, the reality includes forgetfulness, mood changes, sexual dysfunction, and vaginal dryness.Alyssa reveals that she missed her first period last month (and no, she's not pregnant). This milestone has her questioning whether to start hormone replacement therapy now or wait for symptoms. The research suggests HRT can protect brain health, bone density, and heart health — but Alyssa isn't someone who takes pills unless absolutely necessary.Nadia draws parallels between menopause symptoms and her own menstrual cycle experiences, noting how women are constantly attributing body changes, mood shifts, and physical symptoms to hormonal fluctuations. She reflects on doing multiple projects on women's health for school, discovering there's shockingly little research and funding in this area.The conversation takes a vulnerable turn as Alyssa grapples with what menopause means for her identity as a woman. Society has taught women that femininity means soft hair, a certain figure, attractiveness, and the ability to have babies. With menopause, many of these markers fade — hair thins, bodies change, fertility ends. It's messing with Alyssa's head, even though she knows logically these societal expectations shouldn't define her.Both agree that women face constant internal struggles and external pressures that men simply don't experience in the same way. But they also find empowerment in it — Nadia feels deeply in touch with her body because of her cycle, and Alyssa celebrates women's intuition, sensitivity, and the literal magic of creating human life.The episode wraps with Nadia sharing exciting news: she landed a co-op doing clinical research at Mass General Hospital, focusing on food insecurity, food banks, SNAP benefits, and Medicaid.TakeawaysLooking in the mirror can feel disorienting when you feel younger than you lookHot flashes are just the tip of the menopause iceberg — symptoms include forgetfulness, mood changes, pain with intercourse, and vaginal drynessHormone replacement therapy may protect brain health, bone density, and heart healthThere's a lack of research and funding for women's health issuesMenopause can trigger an identity crisis around femininity and societal expectations of womenWomen constantly attribute physical and emotional changes to hormonal fluctuations throughout their livesThe expectations and daily struggles women face are different from (though not necessarily harder than) what men experienceDespite the challenges, there's something empowering about being deeply in touch with your bodyWomen's intuition and the ability to create life are genuinely magicalChapters0:10–2:08 – Feeling Young But Looking Old 2:09–5:27 – Menopause on Social Media and the Symptoms No One Talks About 5:28–7:24 – Alyssa Misses Her First Period (And the Hormone Replacement Dilemma) 7:25–10:50 – Nadia's Perspective: Blaming Everything on Your Period 10:51–12:41 – What Menopause Means for Identity as a Woman 12:42–14:26 – Daily Internal Struggles: The Expectations Women Face 14:27–16:30 – The Magic of Being a Woman (Despite Everything) 16:31–17:51 – Nadia's Big News: Clinical Research Co-op at Mass General

Co-hosts Ryan Piansky, a graduate student and patient advocate living with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and eosinophilic asthma, and Holly Knotowicz, a speech-language pathologist living with EoE who serves on APFED's Health Sciences Advisory Council, interview Evan S. Dellon, MD, and Elizabeth T. Jensen, PhD, about a paper they published on predictors of patients receiving no medication for treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis. Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is designed to support, not replace, the relationship between listeners and their healthcare providers. Opinions, information, and recommendations shared in this podcast are not a substitute for medical advice. Decisions related to medical care should be made with your healthcare provider. Opinions and views of guests and co-hosts are their own.   Key Takeaways: [:52] Co-host Ryan Piansky introduces the episode, brought to you thanks to the support of Education Partners GSK, Sanofi, Regeneron, and Takeda. Ryan introduces co-host Holly Knotowicz.   [1:14] Holly introduces today's topic, predictors of not using medication for EoE, and today's guests, Dr. Evan Dellon and Dr. Elizabeth Jensen.   [1:29] Dr. Dellon is an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. He is also the Director of the UNC Center for Esophageal Diseases and Swallowing.   [1:42] Dr. Dellon's main research interest is in the epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) and eosinophilic GI diseases (EGIDs).   [1:55] Dr. Jensen is a Professor of Epidemiology with a specific expertise in reproductive, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology. She has appointments at both Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.   [2:07] Her research primarily focuses on etiologic factors in the development of pediatric immune-mediated chronic diseases, including understanding factors contributing to disparities in health outcomes.   [2:19] Both Dr. Dellon and Dr. Jensen also serve on the Steering Committee for EGID Partners Registry.   [2:24] Ryan thanks Dr. Dellon and Dr. Jensen for joining the podcast today.   [2:29] Dr. Dellon was the first guest on this podcast. It is wonderful to have him back for the 50th episode! Dr. Dellon is one of Ryan's GI specialists. Ryan recently went to North Carolina to get a scope with him.   [3:03] Dr. Dellon is an adult gastroenterologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He directs the Center for Esophageal Diseases and Swallowing. Clinically and research-wise, he is focused on EoE and other eosinophilic GI diseases.   [3:19] His research interests span the entire field, from epidemiology, diagnosis, biomarkers, risk factors, outcomes, and a lot of work, more recently, on treatments.   [3:33] Dr. Jensen has been on the podcast before, on Episode 27. Holly invites Dr. Jensen to tell the listeners more about herself and her work with eosinophilic diseases.   [3:46] Dr. Jensen has been working on eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases for about 15 years. She started some of the early work around understanding possible risk factors for the development of disease.   [4:04] She has gone on to support lots of other research projects, including some with Dr. Dellon, where they're looking at gene-environment interactions in relation to developing EoE.   [4:15] She is also looking at reproductive factors as they relate to EoE, disparities in diagnosis, and more. It's been an exciting research trajectory, starting with what we knew very little about and building to an increasing understanding of why EoE develops.   [5:00] Dr. Dellon explains that EoE stands for eosinophilic esophagitis, a chronic allergic condition of the esophagus.   [5:08] You can think of EoE as asthma of the esophagus or eczema of the esophagus, although in general, people don't grow out of EoE, like they might grow out of eczema or asthma. When people have EoE, it is a long-term condition.   [5:24] Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell, specializing in allergy responses. Normally, they are not in the esophagus. When we see them there, we worry about an allergic process. When that happens, that's EoE.   [5:40] Over time, the inflammation seen in EoE and other allergic cell activity causes swelling and irritation in the esophagus. Early on, this often leads to a range of upper GI symptoms — including poor growth or failure to thrive in young children, abdominal pain, nausea, and symptoms that can mimic reflux.   [5:58] In older kids, symptoms are more about trouble swallowing. That's because the swelling that happens initially, over time, may turn into scar tissue. So the esophagus can narrow and cause swallowing symptoms like food impaction.   [6:16] Ryan speaks of living with EoE for decades and trying the full range of treatment options: food elimination, PPIs, steroids, and, more recently, biologics.   [6:36] Dr. Dellon says Ryan's history is a good overview of how EoE is treated. There are two general approaches to treating the underlying condition: using medicines and/or eliminating foods that we think may trigger EoE from the diet.   [6:57] For a lot of people, EoE is a food-triggered allergic condition.   [7:01] The other thing that has to happen in parallel is surveying for scar tissue in the esophagus. If that's present and people have trouble swallowing, sometimes stretching the esophagus is needed through esophageal dilation.   [7:14] There are three categories of medicines used for treatment. Proton pump inhibitors are reflux meds, but they also have an anti-allergy effect in the esophagus.   [7:29] Topical steroids are used to coat the esophagus and produce an anti-inflammatory effect. The FDA has approved a budesonide oral suspension for that.   [7:39] Biologics, which are generally systemic medications, often injectable, can target different allergic factors. Dupilumab is approved now, and there are other biologics that are being researched as potential treatments.   [7:51] Even though EoE is considered an allergic condition, we don't have a test to tell people what they are allergic to. If it's a food allergy, we do an empiric elimination diet because allergy tests aren't accurate enough to tell us what the EoE triggers are.   [8:10] People will eliminate foods that we know are the most common triggers, like milk protein, dairy, wheat, egg, soy, and other top allergens. You can create a diet like that and then have a response to the diet elimination.   [8:31] Dr. Jensen and Dr. Dellon recently published an abstract in the American Journal of Gastroenterology about people with EoE who are not taking any medicine for it. Dr. Jensen calls it a real-world data study, leveraging electronic health record patient data.   [8:51] It gives you an impression of what is actually happening, in terms of treatments for patients, as opposed to a randomized control trial, which is a fairly selected patient population. This is everybody who has been diagnosed, and then what happens with them.   [9:10] Because of that, it gives you a wide spectrum of patients. Some patients are going to be relatively asymptomatic. It may be that we arrived at their diagnosis while working them up for other potential diagnoses.   [9:28] Other patients are going to have rather significant impacts from the disease. We wanted to get an idea of what is actually happening out there with the full breadth of the patient population that is getting diagnosed with EoE.   [9:45] Dr. Jensen was not surprised to learn that there are patients who had no pharmacologic treatment.   [9:58] Some patients are relatively asymptomatic, and others are not interested in pursuing medications initially or are early in their disease process and still exploring dietary treatment options.   [10:28] Holly sees patients from infancy to geriatrics, and if they're not having symptoms, they wonder why bother treating it.   [10:42] Dr. Jensen says it's a point of debate on the implications of somebody who has the disease and goes untreated. What does that look like long-term? Are they going to develop more of that fibrostenotic pattern in their esophagus without treatment?   [11:07] This is a question we're still trying to answer. There is some suggestion that for some patients who don't manage their disease, we very well may be looking at a food impaction in the future.   [11:19] Dr. Dellon says we know overall for the population of EoE patients, but it's hard to know for a specific patient. We have a bunch of studies now that look at how long people have symptoms before they're diagnosed. There's a wide range.   [11:39] Some people get symptoms and get diagnosed right away. Others might have symptoms for 20 or 30 years that they ignore, or don't have access to healthcare, or the diagnosis is missed.   [11:51] What we see consistently is that people who may be diagnosed within a year or two may only have a 10 or 20% chance of having that stricture and scar tissue in the esophagus, whereas people who go 20 years, it might be 80% or more.   [12:06] It's not everybody who has EoE who might end up with that scar tissue, but certainly, it's suggested that it's a large majority.   [12:16] That's before diagnosis. We have data that shows that after diagnosis, if people go a long time without treatment or without being seen in care, they also have an increasing rate of developing strictures.    [12:29] In general, the idea is yes, you should treat EoE, because on average, people are going to develop scar tissue and more symptoms. For the patient in front of you with EoE but no symptoms, what are the chances it's going to get worse? You don't know.   [13:04] There are two caveats with that. The first is what we mean by symptoms. Kids may have vomiting and growth problems. Adults can eat carefully, avoiding foods that hang up in the esophagus, like breads and overcooked meats, sticky rice, and other foods.   [13:24] Adults can eat slowly, drink a lot of liquid, and not perceive they have symptoms. When someone tells Dr. Dellon they don't have symptoms, he will quiz them about that. He'll even ask about swallowing pills.    [13:40] Often, you can pick up symptoms that maybe the person didn't even realize they were having. In that case, that can give you some impetus to treat.   [13:48] If there really are no symptoms, Dr. Dellon thinks we're at a point where we don't really know what to do.   [13:54] Dr. Dellon just saw a patient who had a lot of eosinophils in their small bowel with absolutely no GI symptoms. He said, "I can't diagnose you with eosinophilic enteritis, but you may develop symptoms." People like that, he will monitor in the clinic.   [14:14] Dr. Dellon will discuss it with them each time they come back for a clinic visit.   [14:19] Holly is a speech pathologist, but also sees people for feeding and swallowing. The local gastroenterologist refers patients who choose not to treat their EoE to her. Holly teaches them things they should be looking out for.   [14:39] If your pills get stuck or if you're downing 18 ounces during a mealtime, maybe it's time to treat it. People don't see these coping mechanisms they use that are impacting their quality of life. They've normalized it.   [15:30] Dr. Dellon says, of these people who aren't treated, there's probably a subset who appropriately are being observed and don't have a medicine treatment or are on a diet elimination.   [15:43] There's also probably a subset who are inappropriately not on treatment. It especially can happen with students who were under good control with their pediatric provider, but moved away to college and didn't transfer to adult care.   [16:08] They ultimately come back with a lot of symptoms that have progressed over six to eight years.   [16:18] Ryan meets newly diagnosed adult patients at APFED's conferences, who say they have no symptoms, but chicken gets caught in their throat. They got diagnosed when they went to the ER with a food impaction.   [16:38] Ryan says you have to wonder at what point that starts to get reflected in patient charts. Are those cases documented where someone is untreated and now has EoE?   [16:49] Ryan asks in the study, "What is the target EGID Cohort and why was it selected to study EoE? What sort of patients were captured as part of that data set?"   [16:58] Dr. Jensen said they identified patients with the ICD-10 code for a diagnosis of EoE. Then they looked to see if there was evidence of symptoms or complications in relation to EoE. This was hard; some of these are relatively non-specific symptoms.   [17:23] These patients may have been seeking care and may have been experiencing some symptoms that may or may not have made it into the chart. That's one of the challenges with real-world data analyses.   [17:38] Dr. Jensen says they are using data that was collected for documenting clinical care and for billing for clinical care, not for research, so it comes with some caveats when doing research with this data.   [18:08] Research using electronic health records gives a real-world perspective on patients who are seeking care or have a diagnosis of EoE, as opposed to a study trying to enroll a patient population that potentially isn't representative of the breadth of individuals living with EoE.   [18:39] Dr. Dellon says another advantage of real-world data is the number of patients. The largest randomized controlled trials in EoE might have 400 patients, and they are incredibly expensive to do.   [18:52] A study of electronic health records (EHR) is reporting on the analysis of just under 1,000. The cohort, combined from three different centers, has more than 1,400 people, a more representative, larger population.    [19:16] Dr. Dellon says when you read the results, understand the limitations and strengths of a study of health records, to help contextualize the information.   [19:41] Dr. Dellon says it's always easier to recognize the typical presentations. Materials about EoE and studies he has done that led to medicine approvals have focused on trouble swallowing. That can be relatively easily measured.   [20:01] Patients often come to receive care with a food impaction, which can be impactful on life, and somewhat public, if in a restaurant or at work. Typical symptoms are also the ones that get you diagnosed and may be easier to treat.   [20:26] Dr. Dellon wonders if maybe people don't treat some of the atypical symptoms because it's not appreciated that they can be related to EoE.   [20:42] Holly was diagnosed as an adult. Ryan was diagnosed as a toddler. Holly asks what are some of the challenges people face in getting an EoE diagnosis.   [20:56] Dr. Jensen says symptoms can sometimes be fairly non-specific. There's some ongoing work by the CEGIR Consortium trying to understand what happens when patients come into the emergency department with a food bolus impaction.   [21:28] Dr. Jensen explains that we see there's quite a bit of variation in how that gets managed, and if they get a biopsy. You have to have a biopsy of the esophagus to get a diagnosis of EoE.   [21:45] If you think about the steps that need to happen to get a diagnosis of EoE, that can present barriers for some groups to ultimately get that diagnosis.   [21:56] There's also been some literature around a potential assumption about which patients are more likely to be at risk. Some of that is still ongoing. We know that EoE occurs more commonly in males in roughly a two-to-one ratio. Not exclusively in males, obviously, but a little more often in males.   [22:20] We don't know anything about other groups of patients that may be at higher risk. That's ongoing work that we're still trying to understand. That in itself can also be a barrier when there are assumptions about who is or isn't likely to have EoE.   [23:02] Dr. Dellon says that in adolescents and adults, the typical symptoms are trouble swallowing and food sticking, which have many causes besides EoE, some of which are more common.   [23:18] In that population, heartburn is common. Patients may report terrible reflux that, on questioning, sounds more like trouble swallowing than GERD. Sometimes, with EoE, you may have reflux that doesn't improve. Is it EoE, reflux, or both?   [24:05] Some people will have chest discomfort. There are some reports of worsening symptoms with exercise, which brings up cardiac questions that have to be ruled out first.   [24:19] Dr. Dellon mentions some more atypical symptoms. An adult having pain in the upper abdomen could have EoE. In children, the symptoms could be anything in the GI tract. Some women might have atypical symptoms with less trouble swallowing.   [24:58] Some racial minorities may have those kinds of symptoms, as well. If you're not thinking of the condition, it's hard to make the diagnosis.   [25:08] Dr. Jensen notes that there are different cultural norms around expressing symptoms and dietary patterns, which may make it difficult to parse out a diagnosis.   [25:27] Ryan cites a past episode where access to a GI specialist played a role in diagnosing patients with EoE. Do white males have more EoE, or are their concerns just listened to more seriously?   [25:57] Ryan's parents were told when he was two that he was throwing up for attention. He believes that these days, he'd have a much easier time convincing a doctor to listen to him. From speaking to physicians, Ryan believes access is a wide issue in the field.   [26:23] Dr. Dellon tells of working with researchers at Mayo in Arizona and the Children's Hospital of Phoenix. They have a large population of Hispanic children with EoE, much larger than has been reported elsewhere. They're working on characterizing that.   [26:49] Dr. Dellon describes an experience with a visiting trainee from Mexico City, where there was not a lot of EoE reported. The trainee went back and looked at the biopsies there, and it turned out they were not performing biopsies on patients with dysphagia in Mexico City.   [27:13] When he looked at the patients who ended up getting biopsies, they found EoE in 10% of patients. That's similar to what's reported out of centers in the developed world. As people are thinking about it more, we will see more detection of it.   [27:30] Dr. Dellon believes those kinds of papers will be out in the next couple of months, to a year.   [27:36] Holly has had licensure in Arizona for about 11 years. She has had nine referrals recently of children with EoE from Arizona. Normally, it's been one or two that she met at a conference.   [28:00] Ryan asks about the research on patients not having their EoE treated pharmacologically. Some treat it with food avoidance and dietary therapy. Ryan notes that he can't have applesauce, as it is a trigger for his EoE.   [28:54] Dr. Jensen says that's one of the challenges in using the EHR data. That kind of information is only available to the researchers through free text. That's a limitation of the study, assessing the use of dietary elimination approaches.   [29:11] Holly says some of her patients have things listed as allergies that are food sensitivities. Ryan says it's helpful for the patients to have their food sensitivities listed along with their food allergies, but it makes records more difficult to parse for research.   [30:14] Dr. Dellon says they identify EoE by billing code, but the codes are not always used accurately. Natural Language Processing can train a computer system to find important phrases. Their collaborators working on the real-world data are using it.   [30:59] Dr. Dellon hopes that this will be a future direction for this research to find anything in the text related to diet elimination.   [31:32] Dr. Jensen says that older patients were less likely to seek medication therapy. She says it's probably for a couple of reasons. First, older patients may have been living with the disease for a long time and have had compensatory mechanisms in place.   [32:03] The other reason may be senescence or burnout of the disease, long-term. Patients may be less symptomatic as they get older. That's a question that remains to be answered for EoE. It has been seen in some other disease processes.   [32:32] Dr. Dellon says there's not much data specifically looking at EoE in the older population. Dr. Dellon did work years ago with another doctor, and they found that older patients had a better response to some treatments, particularly topical steroids.   [32:54] It wasn't clear whether it was a milder aspect of the disease, easier to treat, or because they were older and more responsible, taking their medicines as prescribed, and having a better response rate. It's the flip side of work in the pediatric population.   [33:16] There is an increasingly aging population with EoE. Young EoE patients will someday be over 65. Dr. Dellon hopes there will be a cure by that point, but it's an expanding population now.   [33:38] Dr. Jensen says only a few sites are contributing data, so they hope to add additional sites to the study. For some of the less common outcomes, they need a pretty large patient sample to ask some of those kinds of questions.   [33:55] They will continue to follow up on some of the work that this abstract touched on and try to understand some of these issues more deeply.   [34:06] Dr. Dellon mentions other work within the cohort. Using Natural Language Processing, they are looking at characterizing endoscopy information and reporting it without a manual review of reports and codes. You can't get that from billing data.   [34:29] Similarly, they are trying to classify patient severity by the Index of Severity with EoE, and layer that on looking at treatments and outcomes based on disease severity. Those are a couple of other directions where this cohort is going.   [34:43] Holly mentions that this is one of many research projects Dr. Jensen and Dr. Dellon have collaborated on together. They also collaborate through EGID Partners. Holly asks them to share a little bit about that.   [34:53] Dr. Jensen says EGID Partners is an online registry where individuals, caregivers, and parents of children affected with EGIDs can join.   [35:07] EGID Partners also needs people who don't live with an EGID to join, as controls. That gives the ability to compare those who are experiencing an EGID relative to those who aren't.   [35:22] When you join EGID Partners, they provide you with a set of questionnaires to complete. Periodically, they push out a few more questionnaires.   [35:33] EGID Partners has provided some really great information about patient experience and answered questions that patients want to know about, like joint pain and symptoms outside the GI tract.   [36:04] To date, there are close to 900 participants in the registry from all over the world. As it continues to grow, it will give the ability to look at the patient experience in different geographical areas.   [36:26] Dr. Dellon says we try to have it be interactive, because it is a collaboration with patients. The Steering Committee works with APFED and other patient advocacy groups from around the world.    [36:41] The EGID Partners website shows general patient locations anonymously. It shows the breakdown of adults with the condition and caregivers of children with the condition, the symptom distribution, and the treatment distribution.   [37:03] As papers get published and abstracts are presented, EGID Partners puts them on the website. Once someone joins, they can suggest a research idea. Many of the studies they have done have come from patient suggestions.   [37:20] If there's an interesting idea for a survey, EGID Partners can push out a survey to everybody in the group and answer questions relatively quickly.   [37:57] Dr. Dellon says a paper came out recently about telehealth. EoE care, in particular, is a good model for telehealth because it can expand access for patients who don't have providers in their area.   [38:22] EoE is a condition where care involves a lot of discussion but not a lot of need for physical exams and direct contact, so telehealth can make things very efficient.    [38:52] EGID Partners surveyed patients about telehealth. They thought it was efficient and saved time, and they had the same kind of interactions as in person. In general, in-state insurance covered it. Patients were happy to do those kinds of visits again.   [39:27] Holly says Dr. Furuta, herself, and others were published in the Gastroenterology journal in 2019 about starting to do telehealth because patients coming to the Children's Hospital of Colorado from out of state had no local access to feeding therapy.   [39:50] Holly went to the board, and they allowed her to get licensure in different states. She started with some of the most impacted patients in Texas and Florida in 2011 and 2012. They collected data. They published in 2019 about telehealth's positive impact.   [40:13] When 2020 rolled around, Holly had trained a bunch of people on how to do feeding therapy via telehealth. You have to do all kinds of things, like make yourself disappear, to keep the kids engaged and in their chairs!   [40:25] Now it is Holly's primary practice. She has licenses in nine states. She sees people all over the country. With her diagnosis, her physicians at Mass General have telehealth licensure in Maine. She gets to do telehealth with them instead of driving two hours.   [40:53] Dr. Jensen tells of two of the things they hope to do at EGID Partners. One is trying to understand more about reproductive health for patients with an EGID diagnosis. Only a few studies have looked at this question, and with very small samples.   [41:15] As more people register for EGID Partners, Dr. Jensen is hoping to be able to ask some questions related to reproductive health outcomes.   [41:27] The second goal is a survey suggested by the Student Advisory Committee, asking questions related to the burden of disease specific to the teen population.   [41:48] This diagnosis can hit that population particularly hard, at a time when they are trying to build and sustain friendships and are transitioning to adult care and moving away from home. This patient population has a unique perspective we wanted to hear.   [42:11] Dr. Jensen and Dr. Dellon work on all kinds of other projects, too.   [42:22] Dr. Dellon says they have done a lot of work on the early-life factors that may predispose to EoE. They are working on a large epidemiologic study to get some insight into early-life factors, including factors that can be measured in baby teeth.   [42:42] That's outside of EGID Partners. It's been ongoing, and they're getting close, maybe over the next couple of years, to having some results.   [43:03] Ryan says all of those projects sound so interesting. We need to have you guys back to dive into those results when you have something finalized.   [43:15] For our listeners who want to learn more about eosinophilic disorders, we encourage you to visit apfed.org and check out the links in the show notes below.   [43:22] If you're looking to find specialists who treat eosinophilic disorders, we encourage you to use APFED's Specialist Finder at apfed.org/specialist.   [43:31] If you'd like to connect with others impacted by eosinophilic diseases, please join APFED's online community on the Inspire Network at apfed.org/connections.   [43:41] Ryan thanks Dr. Dellon and Dr. Jensen for joining us today. This was a fantastic conversation. Holly also thanks APFED's Education Partners GSK, Sanofi, Regeneron, and Takeda for supporting this episode.   Mentioned in This Episode: Evan S. Dellon, MD, MPH, Academic Gastroenterologist, University of North Carolina School of Medicine   Elizabeth T. Jensen, MPH, PhD, Epidemiologist, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill   Predictors of Patients Receiving No Medication for Treatment of Eosinophilic Esophagitis in the United States: Data from the TARGET-EGIDS Cohort   Episode 15: Access to Specialty Care for Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE)   APFED on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram Real Talk: Eosinophilic Diseases Podcast apfed.org/specialist apfed.org/connections apfed.org/research/clinical-trials   Education Partners: This episode of APFED's podcast is brought to you thanks to the support of GSK, Sanofi, Regeneron, and Takeda.   Tweetables:   "I've been working on eosinophilic gastrointestinal diseases for about 15 years. I started some of the early work around understanding possible risk factors for the development of disease. I've gone on to support lots of other research projects." — Elizabeth T. Jensen, MPH, PhD   "You can think of EoE as asthma of the esophagus or eczema of the esophagus, although in general, people don't grow out of EoE, like they might grow out of eczema or asthma. When people have it, it really is a long-term condition." — Evan S. Dellon, MD, MPH   "There are two general approaches to treating the underlying condition, … using medicines and/or eliminating foods from the diet that we think may trigger EoE. I should say, for a lot of people, EoE is a food-triggered allergic condition." — Evan S. Dellon, MD, MPH   "I didn't find it that surprising [that there are patients who had no treatment]. Some patients are relatively asymptomatic, and others are not interested in pursuing medications initially or are … still exploring dietary treatment options." — Elizabeth T. Jensen, MPH, PhD   "We have a bunch of studies now that look at how long people have symptoms before they're diagnosed. There's a wide range. Some people get symptoms and are diagnosed right away. Other people might have symptoms for 20 or 30 years." — Evan S. Dellon, MD, MPH   "EGID Partners is an online registry where individuals, caregivers, and parents of children affected with EGIDs can join. EGID Partners also needs people who don't live with an EGID to join, as controls." — Elizabeth T. Jensen, MPH, PhD

Earlier this season, we visited the Ether Dome at the Massachusetts General Hospital to learn about the first public use of an anesthetic in surgery. On this bonus episode of The Object of History, we return to Mass General to visit the Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation. MHS Podcast Producer Sam Hurwitz joins the Director of the Museum, Sarah Alger, for a tour where they examine some of the museum's most significant items related to the history of medicine. Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-bonus-episode-Russell-Museum  Email us at podcast@masshist.org. Listen to Episode 3 Episode Special Guest: Sarah Alger is the George and Nancy Putnam Director of Mass General Hospital's Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation. She was a founding editor of Proto, a thought leadership publication that was sponsored by MGH for 17 years. This episode uses materials from: The Bond (Instrumental) by Chad Crouch (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)        Psychic by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)        Curious Nature by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)

In this episode of the NCS Podcast Perspectives series, Nicholas Morris, MD, is joined by Eelco Wijdicks, MD, PhD, professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic and chair of the Division of Critical Care Neurology. A pioneer of neurocritical care, Dr. Wijdicks reflects on training in Rotterdam, fellowship at Mass General under Allan H. Ropper, MD, and the creation of Mayo Clinic's neuro ICU in the 1990s. Wijdicks shares the story behind the FOUR Score Coma Scale and lessons from subarachnoid hemorrhage, hyponatremia and cerebral salt wasting, including how early fluid-restriction practices shaped outcomes. The conversation also explores building a new specialty, the role of neurologists in the ICU, the history of medicine and “neuro cinema,” as well as compassion fatigue and the future of global neurocritical care. The views expressed on the NCS Podcast are solely those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official positions of the Neurocritical Care Society.

Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "A Fight Bigger Than Myeloma” by Dr. Adeel Khan, an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UT Southwestern. The article is followed by an interview with Dr. Adeel Khan and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr. Khan shares the story of a patient whose multiple myeloma diagnosis and treatment serves as a reminder of the civil liberties progress we've made and that we have more to go. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: A Fighter Bigger Than Myeloma, by Adeel M. Khan, MD, MPH, MS  I met her during the early part of my clinical training in hematology/oncology. She was in her late 70s, dressed in a rust-colored cardigan and a headwrap with patterns that reminded me of Ghanaian kente cloth. Her eyes were sharp, her tone polite but direct. You could tell from the moment she spoke that she had lived a life where she had to advocate—for herself, for her family, for her place in rooms that were not always welcoming.  Her chart said “multiple myeloma, R-ISS II,” but it did not say that she had first come to an emergency room at least a year earlier complaining of back pain and fatigue and had been told it was probably arthritis or old age. It did not mention that she had seen three different doctors before someone ordered the laboratory tests that finally began to work up her anemia and increasingly compromised kidney function. It would take another trio of doctors to eventually order a magnetic resonance imaging whose ghostly lytic lesions led down the path to a bone marrow biopsy and her cancer diagnosis. When I brought this up gently during one of our early appointments, she looked at me and said, “They don't hear pain the same when it comes from someone like me.” As a Black woman from the Deep South, she had grown up learning how to navigate a health care system that did not always believe her. She told me stories about being dismissed, misdiagnosed, and interrupted. She was born into an era of structural violence where she would be ignored at best and mistreated at worst. She carried the weight of those moments, but she also carried strength, and clarity, and the kind of dignity that made people sit up straighter in their leather chairs when she entered the room. She was one of the most quietly revolutionary people I have ever known, having grown up during a time of civil rights activism. She had even taken part in bending Dr King's long arc of the moral universe toward justice and could share story upon story from her glory days. Her myeloma treatments were not easy. Chemotherapy rarely is. She shared that there were days when her body was tired of fighting, when her bones ached, her blood counts dropped, and her neuropathic pain throbbed. In the back of my mind, I thought how tragic it was that her delayed diagnosis added unnecessary complications and whether she too thought of that. She was fully mindful of the issues people with her skin color faced in our American healthcare system and society as a whole and revealed how that motivated her to carry forward. “If I don't take up space here,” she told me once, “then someone else like me won't either.” Over the course of our visits, I came to understand that she did not see her myeloma as the hardest fight of her life. Not by a long shot. Her primary struggle was centered on life in Birmingham in the 1950s where separate but equal was still the law of the land; her mother cleaned houses, her father worked odd jobs, and her own prospects were uncertain. She admired the writings of Richard Wright and Jean Toomer and was not shy in sharing her passions. One day, during a particularly tough visit—her disease had progressed and we were down to limited options—I found myself meandering. We went through the usual workup and discussions: laboratory test results, symptoms, and treatment options. I offered the prospect of clinical trials, but she shook her head gently and said, “I've done my time in experiments—I can't give myself to a system that gave my people so little.” I paused. It was the first hint of what would become a larger conversation—not just about medicine, but about history. She was well aware of the atrocities of the Tuskegee syphilis trials in her home state, the Kligman experiments on incarcerated Black men, and the forced sterilization of women of color. As dependent upon medicine as she was in her old age, it carried a bloody stain of dehumanizing racism that soured her against it. Outwardly, I had little in common with her. As a young South Asian man growing up in times more conscious of racial injustice, I was far removed from these historical crimes. Although I learned of them during my education, I did not internalize their impact on the patients in front of me in clinic. But through her I came to comprehend just how scarring and enduring these events can be and how they can rob someone of trust. And the truth is the health care system had not treated her well. She had personal stories of doctors who did not believe her pain, nurses who assumed she was uneducated,  and being passed over for better options, better care, and better answers. “But I kept showing up,” she said. “Because that's what we do. We show up even when we're not wanted.” Her stories to me were revelations. In her younger years, she had helped organize teachers at her school when they tried to fire a fellow Black teacher who seemingly spoke too loud in a meeting. She had lived through redlining, through the crack epidemic, through watching young Black men vanish into prisons, and still she rose every day and worked as a public school teacher for decades. She worked for a system that largely did not work for her. I came to admire that about her—that in simply living day-to-day life with plain dignity and acute awareness of society's issues, she promoted change by living it. “You want to talk about cancer?” she once said, half laughing. “Try walking into a bank in 1972 with a good credit score and a Black face. That's a disease this country still hasn't cured.” Curiously, she did not say these things with bitterness. Not even anger, really. Just clarity. Like someone who had long ago made peace with the truth, even if it was sharp. In clinic, she challenged my every assumption—about treatment tolerance, about compliance, about who is difficult, and who is “advocating.” And she taught me to look differently at the ways bias lingers in medicine. Not just in data or policies, but in subtle moments: the tone we use when explaining options, the hesitations in our tests and referrals, and the assumptions we may not even realize we are making. And she did not just expect good care—she demanded it. She told me early on, “Don't you treat me like I'm anything other than your mother.” That landed. And in seeing patients before me now, I remind myself to wonder who they were in their past lives, what baggage burdens them, and how it all shapes their perspectives. So from my view, she fought multiple myeloma with everything she had, but from hers, she fought something bigger: an entire system shaped by inequality. And ultimately, she made me better to realize that, not just as a doctor, but as a human being. In my years since knowing her, completing my training, and beginning my practice, I reflect on her grace. I think not just about her life, but what it means to practice medicine in a world that often forgets what patients carry with them into the clinic—generations of weight, of injustice, of strength. Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories, The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. I am so happy that today we are joined by Adeel Khan, who's Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UT Southwestern in Dallas to talk about his Journal of Clinical Oncology article, “A Fight Bigger than Myeloma.” Our guest's disclosures will be linked in the transcript. Adeel, thank you so much for contributing to JCO and for joining us to discuss your article. Adeel Khan: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Mikkael Sekeres: Adeel, I don't want to be disingenuous to our readers by acting as if we've just met. You and I have known each other for a decade since you were still in your training. I wonder if for our listeners you can tell us a little bit about yourself, where are you from and and walk us through your career so far. Adeel Khan: More than happy to. So, I grew up mostly in Oklahoma, but I've sort of lived around in the Northeast and here in the Southwest where I am currently. I did college at the University of Oklahoma. I did medical school at the University of Michigan. I did residency with good fortune at the Cleveland Clinic where I happened to get to know you and have continued to know you since. I did my fellowship then in hematology oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess in the Harvard system and along the way of all that I did a Masters of Public Health at Harvard and a Masters of Science and Epidemiology at Columbia, and that pinball finally settled here to UT Southwestern here in Dallas which I am very happy to make my second home. Mikkael Sekeres: That's great. I will say just for our listeners you've been a superstar since the moment you were a resident. It's been a real treat for me to get to know you over the years. Adeel Khan: Thank you so much. Mikkael Sekeres: Can you tell us a little bit about your own story as a writer? You're a good writer. We get submissions from some really good writers every single week. It's a real privilege to be an editor for the Art of Oncology section and it's always reinvigorating to me to see how many good writers there are in medicine. How did you start your journey as a writer and how long have you been writing reflective narrative pieces? Adeel Khan: I would say if I went back to let's say high school, you know, people tend to be divided into kind of like the sciency types versus the literary arts types and you're kind of an either/or, you know, you didn't really have as much crossover then. But you know, I actually didn't mind when we had an essay due and I liked writing back then, and when I entered college I did a minor in English because I actually did enjoy that and I just liked the idea of being able to put your thoughts on paper in a way immortalizing them. Adeel Khan: And then as I sort of pursuing medicine more and more, publishing is really- it has all kinds of flavors to it and scientific publishing is obviously what has been emphasized, but you know, there's so many things to talk about within medicine. There's the science and the art of the field, and as I've moved along, I've written different pieces focusing really on patient stories and interactions. And I think my motivation has always been that as I have gotten particularly nowadays increasingly busy, I've had the fortune and misfortune of becoming more and more busy, it's easy to lose the opportunity to really connect with people that makes what we do meaningful. And so in those times when you know, and they can be rare, but when you really get to connect with someone in front of you who you're helping to care for, it's really refreshing and it's rejuvenating and I've tried to keep that with me as long as I can as I've gone through my journey. Mikkael Sekeres: There's a lot of jumping off points from what you just said, Adeel. I wonder if I can start with do you consider yourself an English major who's good at science or do you consider yourself a scientist who's a good writer? Adeel Khan: I think I'm too humble to say either. I think I was really a science major who just happened to like writing and reading and kept that as a part of myself. Mikkael Sekeres: Because I think there are a cadre of doctors who are actually English majors and have learned to turn science into storytelling and that's their entrée into science and medicine. I remember I talked for a while with David Scadden about this. He's a brilliant translational scientist who's based at Mass General who also teaches a writing course to the Harvard undergrads and who was an English major when he was an undergrad at Case Western. We've talked about this, about how there are people, I'll include myself in this, who just think different, who probably have these liberal arts brains and they figured out a way to convert science into a way a liberal arts person can understand it. Adeel Khan: Yeah, I mean narrative medicine has been I think around all along and it has only kind of been recently named as a field, but I mean it very much speaks to that that there's so much more than just G proteins in medicine. Mikkael Sekeres: I'm thrilled to hear that by the way. You mentioned you were an English minor. Are there particular writers who are an influence on you or can you talk about what's the most recent book or article you've read? Adeel Khan: Oh, that is a great question. Paulo Coelho is someone I've liked for a long time, The Alchemist. I really liked it because I read it after I had lived in Egypt. I lived in Egypt between college and med school as a study abroad program, and I had actually been to the Faiyum Oasis where the protagonist in that story ends up. And so it was just a fascinating story to me that I could trace some of the steps that are discussed in the book and it's so much- it's a story about self discovery which at that phase of life that I was in was you know, very much a theme of my own life. And so that's one that definitely stands out in my head. Mikkael Sekeres: Do you think reading pieces outside of medicine makes you a better scientist? Adeel Khan: I think absolutely. I think it makes you a better human being. In some ways I lament that so much of what I do reading now is so much just about what's in the field, what's new in myeloma, what's new in hematology oncology and I sort of miss the escape to reading other things and being able to pursue it. And even broader than just what a novel really offers. I mean, I grew up reading comic books too and I've always loved superheroes and fiction whether it's Star Wars and other things. And really they're just stories and the medium- there might be connotations whether it's a comic book or a or a novel, but they're just different mediums, but the fact that they're just stories is fundamental. I actually think to myself that it's so fascinating that the earliest piece of writing that we've really retained as human beings is we believe, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is really a story of a superhero when you think about it, you know, and it's it's fiction, it's phantasmic in so many ways. But it speaks to how stories are just vital as people. Mikkael Sekeres: And what is it about graphic novels or my kids now of course call them graphic novels. We're not allowed to call them comic books. Adeel Khan: As they've been renamed, yeah. Mikkael Sekeres: What is it about graphic novels or comic books or the story of a hero that appeals to us in medicine? Adeel Khan: I think it's in some ways a parable of what we're doing. There's something so powerful and fundamental about this idea of good-evil and we can rename it in different ways, but that you're trying to overcome something that's an issue, an obstacle. And when you think about what we do in- particularly in oncology, that's very much what we're trying to do. We're trying to overcome an illness, a disease, to try to help the person in front of us. And it has different aspects to it. It could be someone pursuing something in a lab, it can be treating someone in front of you in clinic, but that simple dichotomy of there's something good about what you're doing because there's something bad in front of you is just the fundamental that runs through it all. Mikkael Sekeres: It's fascinating. I wonder if 30, 40, 50 years ago people would have said, “Oh, it's because the doctor is the hero,” but we don't view ourselves that way anymore. The patient is the hero. I love how you posit this as a good versus evil, the evil of course being cancer and the good everything that our patients do and that we try to to help to do to overcome that. Adeel Khan: For sure. Mikkael Sekeres: You wrote a really great essay about a woman who was a patient of yours. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you this time to make this connection and to write about this woman? Adeel Khan: Within the past year or so as I had been just really- the fortune and misfortune of getting busier, I lamented that I just wasn't able to spend as much time with patients in the way that I used to. One of the beauties of medical school and you know, to some degree residency and certainly fellowship is that you just have a little bit more time as a trainee, student and trainee where you can really bond with your patients I think a little bit more. And so in trying to kind of refresh my motivation, I was thinking about just kind of randomly some stories that I've kept in the back of my mind and this patient's story is one that stood out to me as I was recalling things. It was so fascinating to me because she had the disease which I now focus on. And the way that she viewed it and the way that she viewed it as a part of her life was just so different than what I think most people think of. And in that way it was very revitalizing that her focus in her life was part of a broader theme of the way that I think she viewed society. And this was just one piece of her own part of that much, much larger puzzle. Mikkael Sekeres: You really write lovingly about her and about how meaningful her context was in how you cared for her and what her experience was in the medical system. I wonder if I can read a little bit of what you wrote because it really did grab me as well. I'm going to start out by quoting you where you say, “Outwardly, I had little in common with her. As a young South Asian man growing up in times more conscious of racial injustice, I was far removed from these historical crimes. Though I learned of them during my education, I did not internalize their impact on the patients in front of me in clinic. But through her, I came to comprehend just how scarring and enduring these events can be and how they can rob someone of trust.” Wow, there's a lot there. Could you start with what was your perspective as a young South Asian man growing up in Oklahoma and what your view was of racial injustice compared to what her experience was of racial injustice? Adeel Khan: Yeah, I have to admit I don't know that I thought that much of it back then and I think that that's part of what it is. You know, being someone who was South Asian, I'm Pakistani, I have Indian roots, and coming into American history and as we learned about it there's so much about slavery and the theme of slavery unfortunately and and the struggles that enslaved peoples have. And you know, as a relatively recent immigrant, I didn't see myself in that narrative. I didn't see myself in that historical reality. But I knew about it intellectually, you know, I knew about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, you know, I learned about all these things and and you learned about how atrocious so much of it is. But again, not being so directly connected, I did not put myself in that same role as someone to view it so close to myself. I will say it hit a little bit more after 9/11 when you know, I was randomly stopped at airport security a little bit more often in those days and again, I think that speaks to racial injustices, you know, I was certainly profiled looking back then, I've been held by TSA in the past, but even that is very minor compared to what African Americans have dealt with here. And this patient in just kind of sharing her tidbits during our time together, I was not directly asking her so much of this. She was really offering a lot of it to me as we would talk and she would be very generous in sharing parts of her story. And over time I kind of understood the broader narrative of her life. You know, it was clear how much of all that was actually in the forefront of her head. Adeel Khan: And I think she might have been a little bit more unique in the way that she kept it there, but she was hyper vigilant of issues of society and the roots that brought a given society to where it is here. I kind of got to know her, this is during the COVID pandemic and this was after the injustice of what happened to George Floyd and so it was a theme that I think people were talking about more and so I think she felt comfortable in saying really what was quite a bit that was stewing in the back of her head seemingly at all times. Mikkael Sekeres: It's so interesting you talk about what you endured after 9/11 as being, I'm going to quote you now, “minor” compared to what she's been through, but even a minor affront like that can really compromise your trust. You write about her, “As a Black woman from the deep South, she had grown up learning how to navigate a healthcare system that did not always believe her.” Can you expand on that a little bit? How is it that the healthcare system didn't believe her and what can we do going into interactions with patients from different backgrounds where we're incorporating that there's a compromise of trust and we have to make up for that? Adeel Khan: Yeah, and I think you know, it's so unfortunate that so many people have stories like this where, in her case really it was back pain that was her presenting symptom. This is long before she knew me. And she'd had the back pain for quite some time, but being an older woman, she was in her 70s at that time, she was not in phenomenal health for other reasons. It sounds like she was just kind of ignored, told that it was old age, tendon changes, she did not have meaningful imaging for some time. When she finally did after seeing a slew of different providers, that's when it was revealed like there's something more significant here. And then when you kind of piece that a little bit retrospectively and I think she certainly sensed this and I did when I- hindsight's always 20/20, when I looked through things, it's like, well, this probably could have been caught much earlier. It's just that no one really I think listened to what she was speaking to with her pain and the gravity that was actually behind it. And it just speaks to the fact that I think we have to be more thoughtful in what we take away from patients and not to ignore even small comments because they might be revealing of something much bigger behind them. Mikkael Sekeres: You quote her, you have some really great quotes in your essay where you just listen to what she says and transcribe it because what she says is very meaningful. And one of the quotes you provide from her is, “They don't hear pain the same when it comes from someone like me.” Wow. “When it comes from someone like me,” someone like her, how was it that people weren't hearing her description of pain, something that was different that was going on in her body and how can we be more attentive to people when they complain about things like pain? Adeel Khan: It's unfortunate that there's even known data to show how depending upon a patient's melanin content in their skin, how likely they are to get pain medications and what happens to them is different and this is an unfortunate example of that where I think she just wasn't heard properly. And so it wasn't addressed properly and she was not shy about saying that. I mean I think she sensed that. She was very clear in feeling that herself and in wanting to have better care, she was still prevented and hence why she had to go from provider to provider. Mikkael Sekeres: You've lived in a bunch of different places in the country. I mean, following your path, you've been in Oklahoma, you've been in Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, and now Texas. Do you think that we as providers have to have different levels of sensitivity depending on where in the country we're practicing and how some of our patients' trust in healthcare may have been compromised in those different parts of the country? Adeel Khan: I think absolutely. I mean this particular patient was from Alabama which has a heavy history that she was again very aware of and for those of us reading history books are also very aware of too. And it's interesting how, while the U.S. is in some ways- has some aspects that are monolithic, but it's very much not so. It's very patchy and people are different, you know, if I take one theme that we're talking about here is obviously racial injustice, but if you take something like obesity, you know, prevalence rates are very different throughout the country and attitudes surrounding it are also very different. And I think we do- ought to be mindful that in treating the patient in front of us, it's not done without context. And so how they view their illness and their situation is going to be different depending upon the state, depending upon the city, depending upon actually even the era that they grew up in. So I would say now, if you took actually a similar patient, but you put her in a very modern context post-year 2000, she's likely to have different feelings of the situation around her than someone who was born in this case in the 1940s. And that just speaks to the fact that circumstances change and we should be recognizing that as providers, even though it's not always easy to. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, it just emphasizes how very important it is to know the history of the place where we practice and how it's affected our patients' perceptions of healthcare and trust and being cared for, particularly now as there's such a movement to whitewash that history and eliminate it from major institutions like the Smithsonian. It has been such a pleasure to have Adeel Khan here. He is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Public Health at UT Southwestern in Dallas and wrote just a great JCO article called “A Fight Bigger Than Myeloma.” Adeel, thank you so much for submitting your article and for joining us today. Dr. Adeel Khan: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Mikkael Sekeres: If you've enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you're looking for more episodes and context, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen and explore more from ASCO at ASCO.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for JCO Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.   Show Notes Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review.  Guest Bio: Dr Adeel Khan is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UT Southwestern.

In this episode of The Lebanese Physicians Podcast, I speak with Dr. Michelle Cherro, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at Mass General in Boston and lead author of the 2025 PLOS One study, “Predictors of suicide attempts among adolescents with suicidal ideations and a plan.” Dr. Cherro discusses the motivations behind her team's work with co-authors Dr. Hala Itani, Dr. Elie Ghossoub, and Dr. Fadi Maalouf at the American University of Beirut, exploring what drives some adolescents from suicidal thoughts and planning to an actual suicide attempt.   We unpack the study's key findings, that female adolescents, antisocial behaviors, and substance use strongly predict attempts, and discuss how these insights can inform prevention efforts in Lebanon where the rates are not higher than elsewhere despite the unstable economic and political situation.   Tune in for a compelling conversation bridging U.S.-based data with Lebanese mental-health realities, and for practical reflections on what clinicians, schools, and families can do to protect at-risk youth.  

That senior ski trip Joey debased herself for in the previous episode: it's here! Pacey's trying to be breezy about it, given the uncomfortable sex conversation he and Joey had about it last week, but Joey's making that difficult. Sharing a hotel room with a longtime boyfriend who loves you and wants to have undoubtedly very gentle sex with you? Joey, some people have real problems. Like, for instance, Jen, who can't stop slipping on ice and injuring herself, requiring herroommate Jack to look after her. The close quarters and liberated mini-bar lead them to some unexpected places. Back in Capeside, Mr. Brooks -- having ODed on his hoarded pills -- is in a coma. His doctor (Tony "Buster Bluth" Hale!) has to be the one to tell him the content of the "lawyer talk" on the paperwork Dawson signed in the last episode: Dawson is Mr. Brooks's health care proxy, so how long the hospital staff keeps Mr. Brooks technically alive is up to Dawson. He seeks counsel from everyone he knows, but it's one surprise visitor who proves the most instructive of all. Get cozy while we tell you all about "A Winter's Tale"! NOTES

Below the knee atherectomy is a hot topic right now in the vascular community. Why is it so controversial? Dr. Anahita Dua, vascular surgeon at Mass General, joins host Dr. Sabeen Dhand to explore the utility of this technique and the pressing need for more Level I evidence in this space.---This podcast is supported by:AngioDynamichttps://www.auryon-system.com/---SYNPOSISThe conversation dives into the controversial role of below-the-knee atherectomy in limb salvage, an area where data has long been debated. Dr. Dua, principal investigator of the AMBITION BTK Trial—the first randomized controlled trial comparing below-the-knee atherectomy to angioplasty alone—introduces the trial and explains how it fits into the current body of literature.Together, the doctors review past evidence, current practice, and the future outlook for tibial interventions. Dr. Dua outlines the wide range of techniques and clinical strategies used to manage PAD, and stresses the importance of physician engagement with the NIH and research community to establish stronger, evidence-based protocols. She also shares her candid thoughts on the most overrated and underrated devices in tibial intervention, highlighting atherectomy's potential role in vessel preparation before below-the-knee treatment.---TIMESTAMPS00:00 - Introduction04:55 - Current State of Evidence and Challenges10:54 - Heterogeneity in PAD Treatment14:26 - Need for National Metrics and Standardization20:51 - AMBITION BTK Trial and Importance27:23 - Potential Outcomes and Implications30:18 - Trial Design34:56 - Advice for Practitioners37:36 - Underrated and Overrated Devices41:50 - Conclusion---RESOURCESAMBITION BTK Trial:https://www.angiodynamics.com/studies/ambition-btk/

In this company introduction, we speak with David Elsley, President & CEO of Cardiol Therapeutics (NASDAQ/TSX: CRDL), a clinical-stage life sciences company focused on developing therapies to address inflammation-driven cardiovascular diseases. Cardiol's lead asset, CardiolRx™, is currently in: A Phase 3 trial (Maverick Study) for recurrent pericarditis, enrolling patients at world-leading centers including the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and Mass General. A Phase 2 trial (ARCHER Study) for acute myocarditis, where recently released top-line results showed promising impacts on heart size and function. We also cover: The company's orphan drug designation from the FDA and its implications for market exclusivity. Development of CRD-38, a next-generation therapy designed for heart failure - a market with multi-billion-dollar potential. Cardiol's capital position, with funding secured well into 2026. Key upcoming milestones for investors, including full data presentations, trial updates, and potential pharma partnerships.   Please email me any further questions you have for David. My email address is Fleck@kereport.com.  Click here to learn more about Cardiol Therapeutics.

Dr. Mike Pistiner is not just an allergist and immunologist, he's also an allergy dad and fierce patient advocate. In this episode, Dr. Mike breaks down what allergies are, typical signs and symptoms and how they're treated. Have you been curious about when is the right time to use epinephrine? Then this episode is for YOU! Tune in today!Michael Pistiner, MD, MMSc is Director of Food Allergy Advocacy, Education and Prevention for the MassGeneral Hospital for Children, Food Allergy Center. He has a special interest in food allergy and anaphylaxis education and advocacy, infant food allergy management,  healthcare provider education, facilitating collaborations between the medical home and school health, and maintaining quality of life in children (and their families) with food allergies.  Dr. Mike is author of "Everyday Cool With Food Allergies", co-author of the "Living Confidently With Food Allergy" handbook, and co-founder and content creator of AllergyHome.org.Dr. Pistiner is a fellow in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), where he is a member of the Section on Allergy and Immunology Executive Committee, Council on School Health and the Massachusetts Chapter of the AAP. He is also a member of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology and the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.Additionally, he serves on the medical advisory board of Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America, New England Chapter and is a voluntary consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health School Health Service Unit.To learn more about the Food Allergy Management Bootcamp at MassGeneral visit: https://www.massgeneral.org/children/food-allergies/food-allergy-management-boot-campTo learn more about the FAMP-It resource visit: https://famp-it.org/

A Gluten Free PodcastEpisode 195My guest on today's episode is paediatric gastroenterologist, physician-scientist and the new director for The Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Mass General for Children, Dr Maureen Leonard. We'll talk about Dr. Leonard's own coeliac disease diagnosis, the CDGEMM study, the gut microbiome, refractory coeliac disease and much more. We'll talk about: * Maureen's newly appointed position of director for The Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Mass General for Children, succeeding Dr Alessio Fasano * Maureen's history of working alongside Dr Fasano and their ongoing work relationship * Mission for the The Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Mass General for Children and its history * Dr Leonard's coeliac disease coinciding in her medical training* How Dr Leonard's coeliac disease has influenced her work in coeliac disease research by bringing empathy to her patients and study participants * The unique need when you have coeliac disease to announce your disease and your gluten free requirements * The aim of the Celiac Disease Microbiome and Metabolic Study (CDGEMM) and what Dr Lenoard and the insights the team have gained so far* Environmental factors contributing to coeliac disease activating in individuals * Analysing changes in the microbiome within stool samples prior to coeliac disease onset * Understanding the onset of coeliac disease in order to discover possible prevention methods * Precision medicine and biomarkers in relation to coeliac disease * Use of prebiotics and probiotics for management of coeliac disease * Persistent symptoms and damage in adults and children with coeliac disease despite adherence to a strict gluten free diet * Research in mucosal healing in children with coeliac disease * Defining ‘non-responsive' or ‘refractory' coeliac disease and the current management strategies in place for this condition * Defining the gut microbiome and how its effected in people with coeliac disease* How the gut microbiome can influence the immune system, intestinal barrier integrity, inflammation, gluten metabolism and more * Alterations in the gut microbiome being seen in cohort of children prior to coeliac disease diagnoses * Faecal transplants and coeliac disease* Defining gluten ataxia * Collaboration amongst The Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Mass General for Children and other organisations in the US and around the world * Biggest question for Dr. Leonard within coeliac disease research currently * Dr. Leonard's advice for parents of children newly diagnosed with coeliac disease * Story of one child's coeliac disease diagnosis and the changes Are you looking for a low cost business, that is easy to run and has a high return on investment? OMG! Decadent Donuts wants you! Join this creative, inclusive and rapidly expanding business today. Apply here: https://omgdecadentdonuts.com/opportunity/ Thanks to our sponsor Happy Tummies! Happy Tummies is a one-stop-shop for allergen-friendly and gluten free products and also stocking their very own brand - Free From Family Co. Click here to have our discount code GFFAMILY automatically applied & save 10% off Free From Family Co products! Celiac Cruise - a 100% gluten free vacation cruise is setting sail on two Australian cruises in 2026: one to the South Pacific and the other to New Zealand. There'll of course be awesome 100% gluten free food onboard, heaps of fun stuff to do, educational talks and a community of people who understand each other. Buy your tickets here & see ya onboard gluten free fam!

The Culture Show's Jared Bowen gives his arts and culture reviews around the region – from Christine Baranski in Newport and more.On the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin traces the steps that have weakened the legislation over time…right up to Texas' planned gerrymandered maps.State Auditor Diana DiZoglio still hasn't audited the legislature, like voters approved back in November. She joins us to talk about what (or who) is standing in her way. We talk with two MassGeneral trauma prevention experts about how to stay safe on the roads and in the water before kids head back to school: Toby Raybould, the trauma prevention & outreach program manager, and Dr. Michael Flaherty, a pediatric critical care physician in the pediatric intensive care unit. 

The AMI Procedure and Magneto Micrometry   This week I was honored to have back on my podcast, Dr Hugh Herr. Hugh is a bilateral below knee amputee and a professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT. He directs the MIT Biomechatronics Group and Co-directs the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics. Time Magazine coined Hugh the 'Leader of the Bionic Age'. He has also authored and co-authored over 350 peer-reviewed manuscripts and patents, chronicling the science and technology behind his many innovations. Dr. Hugh Herr is, in short, making huge contributions in the amputee community, giving amputees a hopeful future in living active and healthy lives. Today, we discuss the AMI procedure (agonist-antagonist myoneural interface) which is the surgery I just had done in Boston with Dr Matthew Carty (co-creator of this surgery with Hugh) on June 20. I was back in the MIT Media Lab over a year and a half ago, when I first met Hugh while I was a control group to test their bionic knee based on my traditional amputation. Little did I know that less than two years later I would undergo groundbreaking surgery to improve my limb and prepare my body to use the myoneural knee that is soon to be made commercial. This is exciting and unbelievable technology that brings hope and excitement to me, as an amputee, because we are going to see a huge change in our mobility based on this type of procedure plus the bionics, 3D printed sockets, and the Magneto Micrometry that is coming out of MIT!   Hugh working with a PhD student on the "bionic" knee. Photo credit. Jimmy Day/MIT Media Lab   Amputees, get excited for what is coming! Our future looks so bright and we are going to have technology on our side so we can reach our goals and dream big dreams!   Listen in as Hugh takes us through everything coming down the MIT Media Lab pipeline and how it'll work together to make us stronger, healthier, and more capable than ever before! Warriors, this is incredible and inspiring! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, Hugh, for taking time out of your very busy schedule to speak with me and bring more visibility to our future as amputees and for all the innovations and dedication to making us more complete and more than capable than we ever thought possible. We appreciate you and all of your students and colleagues at MIT and MassGeneral.   For more information on the AMI procedure check out my June 9, 2025 episode with Dr. Matthew Carty HERE And for a more in depth conversation with Dr. Hugh Herr about his journey, you can listen HERE   If you have any questions or thoughts on these technological advancements, please reach out to me and let's have a conversation! Hope you all have a beautiful week ahead. And as always, Be Healthy, Be Happy, Be YOU!!!   Much love,  

Dr. Reedy welcomes Dr. Alexa Altman where she discusses how psychedelics bring the unconscious material into consciousness. She talks about the importance of integration. Dr. Altman's Website: https://www.i-psychedelic.com 1. Single-dose psilocybin (25 mg) with psychological support for MDDJAMA – “Single-Dose Psilocybin Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder” psychiatryonline.org+15sunstonetherapies.com+15pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+15 Summary: Demonstrated strong antidepressant effects and good tolerability over follow-up. Email: info@hopkinspsychedelic.org 2. One-Year Follow-Up of Psilocybin for Depression Study: Long-term effects of psilocybin therapy for depression Johns Hopkins – “Psilocybin treatment for major depression effective for up to a year” Summary: 67% of participants remained in remission one year post-treatment. 3. MDMA-Assisted Therapy for Severe PTSD Randomized, placebo-controlled MDMA-assisted therapy Nature Medicine – “MDMA-assisted therapy for severe PTSD” Summary: Significant reduction in PTSD symptoms, well‑tolerated in a diverse cohort. Contact (MAPS / Lykos Therapeutics): Email: info@maps.org 4. Psilocybin for Cancer-Related Anxiety & Depression Psilocybin in patients with life-threatening cancer PMC – “High-dose psilocybin produced large decreases in depressed mood and anxiety…” Summary: 80% of participants maintained significant symptom relief at 6 months. Website: heffter.org (contact via site) en.wikipedia.org 1. Johns Hopkins University Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research Psilocybin for depression, anxiety, addiction, and end-of-life distress Why it's top-tier: The first major U.S. institution to receive regulatory approval for psychedelic research in modern times.

What if your anxiety isn't just emotional—but something deeper starting in your gut? In this episode of Rooted in Wellness, I sit down with Dr. Uma Naidoo, Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist and bestselling author of Calm Your Mind with Food, to explore the powerful link between what we eat and how we feel. We unpack how artificial sweeteners, processed foods, and even “healthy” snacks can silently disrupt your gut-brain connection—impacting mood, focus, and emotional resilience. Uma shares her own healing journey through cancer, and how simple, grounding meals became her medicine. You'll learn why your microbiome matters, how to spot food-mood triggers, and which everyday habits can help soothe anxiety from the inside out. Dr. Uma Naidoo is a Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist, professional chef, and bestselling author of Calm Your Mind with Food. She's also the founder of the first U.S. hospital-based nutritional psychiatry clinic at Mass General. We Also Discuss: 00:53 – What's really happening to our gut and skin with artificial sweeteners? 02:49 – The myth of the “perfect” diet—and why ancient wisdom still works 09:43 – Uma's cancer diagnosis and how food became her medicine 14:50 – Why your mood swings might start in your microbiome 21:46 – The missing link in most mental health prescriptions 28:14 – Processed foods, pandemic habits, and how they rewired our brains 37:14 – The hidden anxiety triggers lurking in everyday ingredients 48:38 – Uma's SOAR method: a gentle reset for clarity, calm, and energy Thank You to Our Sponsors: IM8:I'm always searching for wellness that's simple, effective, and rooted in science. That's why I love IM8, a daily drink with 92 nutrients designed to support energy, gut health, and longevity.Use code MONASHARMA10 for 10% off at im8health.com. Pendulum: Nourish your gut, support your whole body—head to pendulumlife.com and use code MONA for 20% off your first membership order. Cymbiotika: I Cymbiotika daily—and only recommend what I actually love. Get 20% off at Cymbiotika.com/MONASHARMA — code MONASHARMA. Learn more about Mona Sharma: Download Your FREE Guide - 12 Wellness Tips to Unlock Your Best Health Now: Ready to reclaim your vitality? Download Mona's 12 Wellness Tips and take actionable steps to transform your health, energy, and mindset. Get started now at https://monasharma.com/12tips. Visit Mona's website: https://monasharma.com – Unlock powerful tools and wisdom rooted in wellness to elevate your health, energy, and clarity. Mona blends ancient healing practices with modern science to help you achieve lasting transformation. Follow Mona on Instagram: Stay connected with Mona for daily inspiration, holistic health tips, and personal growth. Join the conversation on Instagram at https://instagram.com/monasharma. Learn more about Dr. Uma Naidoo Website: https://umanaidoomd.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drumanaidoo Book: https://umanaidoomd.com/pages/calm-your-mind-with-food

Webinar from the National Celiac Assocaition: Gut-Brain Health and Celiac Disease: Caring for Your Second “Brain"Jun 6, 2025 01:00 PM in Eastern TimeJoin the National Celiac Association for their Spring 2025 webinar in the “From the Experts” series. Speakers will present on selected topics for 60 minutes, followed by 15 minutes for Q&A, on Friday, June 6, 2025 from 1-2:15 pm ET.Dr Alessio Fasano, MD, Director of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at Mass General for Children; Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School; and Professor of Nutrition at T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will speak about the “crosstalk” between the gut microbiome and the brain, focusing on developmental disorders and mental health issues in the context of gluten-related disorders. Deanna Kelly, PharmD, BCPP, the Dr. William and Carol Carpenter Professor in Psychiatry for Mental Illness at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Director and Chief of the Treatment Research Program at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, will share her research on schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression, which are often diagnosed as part of the impressive range of celiac disease symptoms.Register here: https://partners.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NtbsSjn7TqCVOEUxY2t_cQ?mc_cid=6f22c46ae9#/registrationI would love to hear from you! Leave your messages for Andrea at contact@baltimoreglutenfree.com and check out www.baltimoreglutenfree.comInstagramFacebookGluten Free College 101Website: www.glutenfreecollege.comFacebook: http://www.Facebook.com/Glutenfreecollege Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kim, who is a nurse at Mass General, called in to suggest that fasting at night (not eating after 6pm) could be an option for Kendra...

Listen to ASCO's JCO Oncology Practice, Art of Oncology Practice article, "An Oncologist's Guide to Ensuring Your First Medical Grand Rounds Will Be Your Last” by Dr. David Johnson, who is a clinical oncologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. The article is followed by an interview with Johnson and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Through humor and irony, Johnson critiques how overspecialization and poor presentation practices have eroded what was once internal medicine's premier educational forum. Transcript Narrator: An Oncologist's Guide to Ensuring Your First Medical Grand Rounds Will Be Your Last, by David H. Johnson, MD, MACP, FASCO   Over the past five decades, I have attended hundreds of medical conferences—some insightful and illuminating, others tedious and forgettable. Among these countless gatherings, Medical Grand Rounds (MGRs) has always held a special place. Originally conceived as a forum for discussing complex clinical cases, emerging research, and best practices in patient care, MGRs served as a unifying platform for clinicians across all specialties, along with medical students, residents, and other health care professionals. Expert speakers—whether esteemed faculty or distinguished guests—would discuss challenging cases, using them as a springboard to explore the latest advances in diagnosis and treatment. During my early years as a medical student, resident, and junior faculty member, Grand Rounds consistently attracted large, engaged audiences. However, as medicine became increasingly subspecialized, attendance began to wane. Lectures grew more technically intricate, often straying from broad clinical relevance. The patient-centered discussions that once brought together diverse medical professionals gradually gave way to hyperspecialized presentations. Subspecialists, once eager to share their insights with the wider medical community, increasingly withdrew to their own specialty-specific conferences, further fragmenting the exchange of knowledge across disciplines. As a former Chair of Internal Medicine and a veteran of numerous MGRs, I observed firsthand how these sessions shifted from dynamic educational exchanges to highly specialized, often impenetrable discussions. One of the most striking trends in recent years has been the decline in presentation quality at MGR—even among local and visiting world-renowned experts. While these speakers are often brilliant clinicians and investigators, they can also be remarkably poor lecturers, delivering some of the most uninspiring talks I have encountered. Their presentations are so consistently lackluster that one might suspect an underlying strategy at play—an unspoken method to ensure that they are never invited back. Having observed this pattern repeatedly, I am convinced that these speakers must be adhering to a set of unwritten rules to avoid future MGR presentations. To assist those unfamiliar with this apparent strategy, I have distilled the key principles that, when followed correctly, all but guarantee that a presenter will not be asked to give another MGR lecture—thus sparing them the burden of preparing one in the future. Drawing on my experience as an oncologist, I illustrate these principles using an oncology-based example although I suspect similar rules apply across other subspecialties. It will be up to my colleagues in cardiology, endocrinology, rheumatology, and beyond to identify and document their own versions—tasks for which I claim no expertise. What follows are the seven “Rules for Presenting a Bad Medical Oncology Medical Grand Rounds.” 1.  Microscopic Mayhem: Always begin with an excruciatingly detailed breakdown of the tumor's histology and molecular markers, emphasizing how these have evolved over the years (eg, PAP v prostate-specific antigen)—except, of course, when they have not (eg, estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, etc). These nuances, while of limited relevance to general internists or most subspecialists (aside from oncologists), are guaranteed to induce eye-glazing boredom and quiet despair among your audience. 2. TNM Torture: Next, cover every nuance of the newest staging system … this is always a real crowd pleaser. For illustrative purposes, show a TNM chart in the smallest possible font. It is particularly helpful if you provide a lengthy review of previous versions of the staging system and painstakingly cover each and every change in the system. Importantly, this activity will allow you to disavow the relevance of all previous literature studies to which you will subsequently refer during the course of your presentation … to wit—“these data are based on the OLD staging system and therefore may not pertain …” This phrase is pure gold—use it often if you can. NB: You will know you have “captured” your audience if you observe audience members “shifting in their seats” … it occurs almost every time … but if you have failed to “move” the audience … by all means, continue reading … there is more! 3. Mechanism of Action Meltdown: Discuss in detail every drug ever used to treat the cancer under discussion; this works best if you also give a detailed description of each drug's mechanism of action (MOA). General internists and subspecialists just LOVE hearing a detailed discussion of the drug's MOA … especially if it is not at all relevant to the objectives of your talk. At this point, if you observe a wave of slack-jawed faces slowly slumping toward their desktops, you will know you are on your way to successfully crushing your audience's collective spirit. Keep going—you are almost there. 4. Dosage Deadlock: One must discuss “dose response” … there is absolutely nothing like a dose response presentation to a group of internists to induce cries of anguish. A wonderful example of how one might weave this into a lecture to generalists or a mixed audience of subspecialists is to discuss details that ONLY an oncologist would care about—such as the need to dose escalate imatinib in GIST patients with exon 9 mutations as compared with those with exon 11 mutations. This is a definite winner! 5. Criteria Catatonia: Do not forget to discuss the newest computed tomography or positron emission tomography criteria for determining response … especially if you plan to discuss an obscure malignancy that even oncologists rarely encounter (eg, esthesioneuroblastoma). Should you plan to discuss a common disease you can ensure ennui only if you will spend extra time discussing RECIST criteria. Now if you do this well, some audience members may begin fashioning their breakfast burritos into projectiles—each one aimed squarely at YOU. Be brave … soldier on! 6. Kaplan-Meier Killer: Make sure to discuss the arcane details of multiple negative phase II and III trials pertaining to the cancer under discussion. It is best to show several inconsequential and hard-to-read Kaplan-Meier plots. To make sure that you do a bad job, divide this portion of your presentation into two sections … one focused on adjuvant treatment; the second part should consist of a long boring soliloquy on the management of metastatic disease. Provide detailed information of little interest even to the most ardent fan of the disease you are discussing. This alone will almost certainly ensure that you will never, ever be asked to give Medicine Grand Rounds again. 7. Lymph Node Lobotomy: For the coup de grâce, be sure to include an exhaustive discussion of the latest surgical techniques, down to the precise number of lymph nodes required for an “adequate dissection.” To be fair, such details can be invaluable in specialized settings like a tumor board, where they send subspecialists into rapturous delight. But in the context of MGR—where the audience spans multiple disciplines—it will almost certainly induce a stultifying torpor. If dullness were an art, this would be its masterpiece—capable of lulling even the most caffeinated minds into a stupor. If you have carefully followed the above set of rules, at this point, some members of the audience should be banging their heads against the nearest hard surface. If you then hear a loud THUD … and you're still standing … you will know you have succeeded in giving the world's worst Medical Grand Rounds!   Final Thoughts I hope that these rules shed light on what makes for a truly dreadful oncology MGR presentation—which, by inverse reasoning, might just serve as a blueprint for an excellent one. At its best, an outstanding lecture defies expectations. One of the most memorable MGRs I have attended, for instance, was on prostaglandin function—not a subject typically associated with edge-of-your-seat suspense. Given by a biochemist and physician from another subspecialty, it could have easily devolved into a labyrinth of enzymatic pathways and chemical structures. Instead, the speaker took a different approach: rather than focusing on biochemical minutiae, he illustrated how prostaglandins influence nearly every major physiologic system—modulating inflammation, regulating cardiovascular function, protecting the gut, aiding reproduction, supporting renal function, and even influencing the nervous system—without a single slide depicting the prostaglandin structure. The result? A room full of clinicians—not biochemists—walked away with a far richer understanding of how prostaglandins affect their daily practice. What is even more remarkable is that the talk's clarity did not just inform—it sparked new collaborations that shaped years of NIH-funded research. Now that was an MGR masterpiece. At its core, effective scientific communication boils down to three deceptively simple principles: understanding your audience, focusing on relevance, and making complex information accessible.2 The best MGRs do not drown the audience in details, but rather illuminate why those details matter. A great lecture is not about showing how much you know, but about ensuring your audience leaves knowing something they didn't before. For those who prefer the structured wisdom of a written guide over the ramblings of a curmudgeon, an excellent review of these principles—complete with a handy checklist—is available.2 But fair warning: if you follow these principles, you may find yourself invited back to present another stellar MGRs. Perish the thought! Dr. Mikkael SekeresHello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the oncology field. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami.  What a pleasure it is today to be joined by Dr. David Johnson, clinical oncologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology Practice article, "An Oncologist's Guide to Ensuring Your First Medical Grand Rounds Will Be Your Last."  Our guest's disclosures will be linked in the transcript.  David, welcome to our podcast and thanks so much for joining us. Dr. David JohnsonGreat to be here, Mikkael. Thanks for inviting me. Dr. Mikkael SekeresI was wondering if we could start with just- give us a sense about you. Can you tell us about yourself? Where are you from? And walk us through your career. Dr. David JohnsonSure. I grew up in a small rural community in Northwest Georgia about 30 miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the Appalachian Mountains. I met my wife in kindergarten. Dr. Mikkael SekeresOh my. Dr. David JohnsonThere are laws in Georgia. We didn't get married till the third grade. But we dated in high school and got married after college. And so we've literally been with one another my entire life, our entire lives. Dr. Mikkael SekeresMy word. Dr. David JohnsonI went to medical school in Georgia. I did my training in multiple sites, including my oncology training at Vanderbilt, where I completed my training. I spent the next 30 years there, where I had a wonderful career. Got an opportunity to be a Division Chief and a Deputy Director of, and the founder of, a cancer center there. And in 2010, I was recruited to UT Southwestern as the Chairman of Medicine. Not a position I had particularly aspired to, but I was interested in taking on that challenge, and it proved to be quite a challenge for me. I had to relearn internal medicine, and really all the subspecialties of medicine really became quite challenging to me. So my career has spanned sort of the entire spectrum, I suppose, as a clinical investigator, as an administrator, and now as a near end-of-my-career guy who writes ridiculous articles about grand rounds. Dr. Mikkael SekeresNot ridiculous at all. It was terrific. What was that like, having to retool? And this is a theme you cover a little bit in your essay, also, from something that's super specialized. I mean, you have had this storied career with the focus on lung cancer, and then having to expand not only to all of hematology oncology, but all of medicine. Dr. David JohnsonIt was a challenge, but it was also incredibly fun. My first few days in the chair's office, I met with a number of individuals, but perhaps the most important individuals I met with were the incoming chief residents who were, and are, brilliant men and women. And we made a pact. I promised to teach them as much as I could about oncology if they would teach me as much as they could about internal medicine. And so I spent that first year literally trying to relearn medicine. And I had great teachers. Several of those chiefs are now on the faculty here or elsewhere. And that continued on for the next several years. Every group of chief residents imparted their wisdom to me, and I gave them what little bit I could provide back to them in the oncology world. It was a lot of fun. And I have to say, I don't necessarily recommend everybody go into administration. It's not necessarily the most fun thing in the world to do. But the opportunity to deal one-on-one closely with really brilliant men and women like the chief residents was probably the highlight of my time as Chair of Medicine. Dr. Mikkael SekeresThat sounds incredible. I can imagine, just reflecting over the two decades that I've been in hematology oncology and thinking about the changes in how we diagnose and care for people over that time period, I can only imagine what the changes had been in internal medicine since I was last immersed in that, which would be my residency. Dr. David JohnsonWell, I trained in the 70s in internal medicine, and what transpired in the 70s was kind of ‘monkey see, monkey do'. We didn't really have a lot of understanding of pathophysiology except at the most basic level. Things have changed enormously, as you well know, certainly in the field of oncology and hematology, but in all the other fields as well. And so I came in with what I thought was a pretty good foundation of knowledge, and I realized it was completely worthless, what I had learned as an intern and resident. And when I say I had to relearn medicine, I mean, I had to relearn medicine. It was like being an intern. Actually, it was like being a medical student all over again. Dr. Mikkael SekeresOh, wow. Dr. David JohnsonSo it's quite challenging.  Dr. Mikkael SekeresWell, and it's just so interesting. You're so deliberate in your writing and thinking through something like grand rounds. It's not a surprise, David, that you were also deliberate in how you were going to approach relearning medicine. So I wonder if we could pivot to talking about grand rounds, because part of being a Chair of Medicine, of course, is having Department of Medicine grand rounds. And whether those are in a cancer center or a department of medicine, it's an honor to be invited to give a grand rounds talk. How do you think grand rounds have changed over the past few decades? Can you give an example of what grand rounds looked like in the 1990s compared to what they look like now? Dr. David JohnsonWell, I should all go back to the 70s and and talk about grand rounds in the 70s. And I referenced an article in my essay written by Dr. Ingelfinger, who many people remember Dr. Ingelfinger as the Ingelfinger Rule, which the New England Journal used to apply. You couldn't publish in the New England Journal if you had published or publicly presented your data prior to its presentation in the New England Journal. Anyway, Dr. Ingelfinger wrote an article which, as I say, I referenced in my essay, about the graying of grand rounds, when he talked about what grand rounds used to be like. It was a very almost sacred event where patients were presented, and then experts in the field would discuss the case and impart to the audience their wisdom and knowledge garnered over years of caring for patients with that particular problem, might- a disease like AML, or lung cancer, or adrenal insufficiency, and talk about it not just from a pathophysiologic standpoint, but from a clinician standpoint. How do these patients present? What do you do? How do you go about diagnosing and what can you do to take care of those kinds of patients? It was very patient-centric. And often times the patient, him or herself, was presented at the grand rounds. And then experts sitting in the front row would often query the speaker and put him or her under a lot of stress to answer very specific questions about the case or about the disease itself.  Over time, that evolved, and some would say devolved, but evolved into more specialized and nuanced presentations, generally without a patient present, or maybe even not even referred to, but very specifically about the molecular biology of disease, which is marvelous and wonderful to talk about, but not necessarily in a grand round setting where you've got cardiologists sitting next to endocrinologists, seated next to nephrologists, seated next to primary care physicians and, you know, an MS1 and an MS2 and et cetera. So it was very evident to me that what I had witnessed in my early years in medicine had really become more and more subspecialized. As a result, grand rounds, which used to be packed and standing room only, became echo chambers. It was like a C-SPAN presentation, you know, where local representative got up and gave a talk and the chambers were completely empty. And so we had to go to do things like force people to attend grand rounds like a Soviet Union-style rally or something, you know. You have to pay them to go. But it was really that observation that got me to thinking about it.  And by the way, I love oncology and I'm, I think there's so much exciting progress that's being made that I want the presentations to be exciting to everybody, not just to the oncologist or the hematologist, for example. And what I was witnessing was kind of a formula that, almost like a pancake formula, that everybody followed the same rules. You know, “This disease is the third most common cancer and it presents in this way and that way.” And it was very, very formulaic. It wasn't energizing and exciting as it had been when we were discussing individual patients. So, you know, it just is what it is. I mean, progress is progress and you can't stop it. And I'm not trying to make America great again, you know, by going back to the 70s, but I do think sometimes we overthink what medical grand rounds ought to be as compared to a presentation at ASH or ASCO where you're talking to subspecialists who understand the nuances and you don't have to explain the abbreviations, you know, that type of thing. Dr. Mikkael SekeresSo I wonder, you talk about the echo chamber of the grand rounds nowadays, right? It's not as well attended. It used to be a packed event, and it used to be almost a who's who of, of who's in the department. You'd see some very famous people who would attend every grand rounds and some up-and-comers, and it was a chance for the chief residents to shine as well. How do you think COVID and the use of Zoom has changed the personality and energy of grand rounds? Is it better because, frankly, more people attend—they just attend virtually. Last time I attended, I mean, I attend our Department of Medicine grand rounds weekly, and I'll often see 150, 200 people on the Zoom. Or is it worse because the interaction's limited? Dr. David JohnsonYeah, I don't want to be one of those old curmudgeons that says, you know, the way it used to be is always better. But there's no question that the convenience of Zoom or similar media, virtual events, is remarkable. I do like being able to sit in my office where I am right now and watch a conference across campus that I don't have to walk 30 minutes to get to. I like that, although I need the exercise. But at the same time, I think one of the most important aspects of coming together is lost with virtual meetings, and that's the casual conversation that takes place. I mentioned in my essay an example of the grand rounds that I attended given by someone in a different specialty who was both a physician and a PhD in biochemistry, and he was talking about prostaglandin metabolism. And talk about a yawner of a title; you almost have to prop your eyelids open with toothpicks. But it turned out to be one of the most fascinating, engaging conversations I've ever encountered. And moreover, it completely opened my eyes to an area of research that I had not been exposed to at all. And it became immediately obvious to me that it was relevant to the area of my interest, which was lung cancer. This individual happened to be just studying colon cancer. He's not an oncologist, but he was studying colon cancer. But it was really interesting what he was talking about. And he made it very relevant to every subspecialist and generalist in the audience because he talked about how prostaglandin has made a difference in various aspects of human physiology.  The other grand rounds which always sticks in my mind was presented by a long standing program director at my former institution of Vanderbilt. He's passed away many years ago, but he gave a fascinating grand rounds where he presented the case of a homeless person. I can't remember the title of his grand rounds exactly, but I think it was “Care of the Homeless” or something like that. So again, not something that necessarily had people rushing to the audience. What he did is he presented this case as a mysterious case, you know, “what is it?” And he slowly built up the presentation of this individual who repeatedly came to the emergency department for various and sundry complaints. And to make a long story short, he presented a case that turned out to be lead poisoning. Everybody was on the edge of their seat trying to figure out what it was. And he was challenging members of the audience and senior members of the audience, including the Cair, and saying, “What do you think?” And it turned out that the patient became intoxicated not by eating paint chips or drinking lead infused liquids. He was burning car batteries to stay alive and inhaling lead fumes, which itself was fascinating, you know, so it was a fabulous grand rounds. And I mean, everybody learned something about the disease that they might otherwise have ignored, you know, if it'd been a title “Lead Poisoning”, I'm not sure a lot of people would have shown up. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres That story, David, reminds me of Tracy Kidder, who's a master of the nonfiction narrative, will choose a subject and kind of just go into great depth about it, and that subject could be a person. And he wrote a book called Rough Sleepers about Jim O'Connell - and Jim O'Connell was one of my attendings when I did my residency at Mass General - and about his life and what he learned about the homeless. And it's this same kind of engaging, “Wow, I never thought about that.” And it takes you in a different direction.  And you know, in your essay, you make a really interesting comment. You reflect that subspecialists, once eager to share their insight with the wider medical community, increasingly withdraw to their own specialty specific conferences, further fragmenting the exchange of knowledge across disciplines. How do you think this affects their ability to gain new insights into their research when they hear from a broader audience and get questions that they usually don't face, as opposed to being sucked into the groupthink of other subspecialists who are similarly isolated? Dr. David Johnson That's one of the reasons I chose to illustrate that prostaglandin presentation, because again, that was not something that I specifically knew much about. And as I said, I went to the grand rounds more out of a sense of obligation than a sense of engagement. Moreover, our Chair at that institution forced us to go, so I was there, not by choice, but I'm so glad I was, because like you say, I got insight into an area that I had not really thought about and that cross pollination and fertilization is really a critical aspect. I think that you can gain at a broad conference like Medical Grand Rounds as opposed to a niche conference where you're talking about APL. You know, everybody's an APL expert, but they never thought about diabetes and how that might impact on their research. So it's not like there's an ‘aha' moment at every Grand Rounds, but I do think that those kinds of broad based audiences can sometimes bring a different perspective that even the speaker, him or herself had not thought of. Dr. Mikkael SekeresI think that's a great place to end and to thank David Johnson, who's a clinical oncologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and just penned the essay in JCO Art of Oncology Practice entitled "An Oncologist's Guide to Ensuring Your First Medical Grand Rounds Will Be Your Last."  Until next time, thank you for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all of ASCO's shows at asco.org/podcasts.  David, once again, I want to thank you for joining me today. Dr. David JohnsonThank you very much for having me. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.    Show notes: Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review.  Guest Bio: Dr David Johnson is a clinical oncologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

Frontline Connections: Strengthening Our ResilienceIn honor of May's National Nurses Week, EMS Week, Hospital Week, and more, Transmission Interrupted celebrates the frontline professionals who stand at the crossroads of care, safety, and preparedness.In this special episode, host Jill Morgan is joined by a panel of experts from across the country: Tristan Twohig, an emergency department nurse from Spokane, Washington; Caroline Persson, who co-leads the NETEC IPC and BCU leadership workgroups and joins from Denver Health; and Stefanie Lane, co-leader of the NETEC Regional Coordination workgroup from Mass General in Boston.Together, they unpack the real-world challenges facing frontline healthcare providers—the moments when communication breaks down between EMS and hospital teams, the risks of missed or unclear handoffs, and the persistent gaps in infection prevention. The panel shares stories from the field, discusses the importance of the “identify, isolate, inform” model, and explores strategies for strengthening resilience and teamwork across emergency settings.Whether you're a healthcare worker, a leader, or simply curious about how our health systems come together in high-risk scenarios, this episode amplifies the voices of those who make healthcare resilient from the ground up.Questions or comments for NETEC? Contact us at info@netec.org.Visit Transmission Interrupted on the web at netec.org/podcast.GuestsStefanie Lane, MS, MPH, NREMT Biothreats Program Manager, Center for Disaster Medicine Massachusetts General HospitalStefanie Lane serves as a Biothreats Program Manager within the MGH Center for Disaster Medicine. In this role, she ensures operational readiness of the special pathogens program, spearheads the development of novel educational modalities (including XR/VR) for high-risk low frequency events, and serves as a SME/liaison between the EMS and healthcare facilities. Stefanie has an extensive background in education and has designed and facilitated a wide variety of training courses. She has eighteen years of experience as an Emergency Medical Technician, where she has served as a training coordinator and board member for ambulance services in Vermont. Stefanie completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Vermont, and holds Masters degrees in Environmental Science & Policy from Johns Hopkins University and Public Health from Harvard University. Caroline Croyle Persson, MPH, MPA, CIC , PMP, FAPIC Program Director, Denver Health  Caroline Croyle Persson is the Program Director for Disaster Health at Denver Health & Hospital Authority. Her work focuses on healthcare emergency management, coordination and collaboration, and capacity building to enhance healthcare preparedness and response efforts. Ms. Persson also serves as an agency representative (AREP) for NDMS IMT. Prior to her current role, Mrs. Persson worked in infection prevention and control with a focus on influenza, emergency management, high risk pathogens, program and policy management, hand hygiene, and regulatory compliance. She has worked on various public health projects prior to arriving at Denver Health spanning malaria prevention, community health worker sustainment, emergency management, and HIV/AIDs mobile health application acceptance. Mrs. Persson has an MPH from Columbia University with a certificate in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, an MPA from the University of Colorado Denver, and is a Fellow of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. Tristan...

In our divided world we face or avoid conflicts on a frequent basis. I turned to Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas to find out the best strategies to deal with these, including having them take on a mock conflict between each other on the merits of Covid research.Audio fileYou can also find this on Spotify and Apple podcasts with Ground Truths.The video is also posted on YouTubeTranscript with Audio LinksEric Topol (00:06):Well, hello. It's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and we're going to get into a new book called Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, and we're lucky to have its two authors, Bob Bordone, who is a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, and Joel Salinas, who is a physician, neurologist, a clinician scientist at NYU. So welcome both Bob and Joel.Bob Bordone and Joel Salinas (00:34):Thank you for having us. Yeah, looking forward to the conversation.Eric Topol (00:37):Yeah. So first, how did you guys get together? This is a pretty diverse, you got law and medicine, usually they don't talk to each other very much.Bob Bordone (00:46):Well, we were very fortunate. I mean, we basically were friends, but part of that friendship, I think emerged from work that I do around conflict issues in the Mass General system and then just the larger, bigger Mass General, Harvard community. Yeah, so this began really as a friendship where we were each swimming in very different waters, but then as we would start to talk, we realized there was a lot of connection and maybe the possibility to bring two different disciplines together in a way that might be practically useful and make an impact. And even when we started writing this, which was during Covid, what seemed to be some pretty polarizing times that were unlikely to resolve by the time the book would come out.Eric Topol (01:44):Yeah, well you sure hit it with the divisiveness and the polarized world that we live in is perhaps worse than ever, certainly in all my years, and probably long before then as well. So this topic of resilience, it's a very interesting concept because some people might think of resilience as just being tough. So go into a conflict and just go heavy tough. That obviously is not what you're writing about. And I guess maybe we can start off, what was the goal here? Obviously, there's other books that have addressed this topic, I'm sure, but yours is somewhat unique in many respects because it brings in the science of it and many strategies perhaps that have never been developed. But when you got together, what was the mission that you set out to do?Joel Salinas (02:38):Yeah, well maybe I can start out and then you can add on. So my research has been all around understanding how social relationships influenced brain health, and one of the things that I was seeing was social isolation and loneliness had been steadily increasing. Want to figure out what kind of interventions or what are the factors that are involved here? And I think one of the things that has stood out is just the difficulty with being able to navigate conflict in different contexts. And so, the idea around conflict resilience is really, even though there's been lots of books on what to say and what specific tactics to use, I think that there was this skillset around just being able to sit with the discomfort of that disagreement, which will ultimately help make it much more useful to take on those tactics. One way to think about it, if it's like all these tactics are like learning how to cook with a set of recipes in the kitchen, what we're really proposing here is that you also need to be able to stand the heat of the kitchen to even be able to cook.Eric Topol (03:47):Okay. Go ahead, Bob.Bob Bordone (03:49):Yeah, and I would say I was starting to write about my first kind of piece on this topic where I use the word conflict resilience was in 2018, and it really came from an observed dynamic that I was seeing in my teaching of Harvard Law School students. I was on the admissions committee, I'd been on the admissions committee for many years. I knew that we worked very hard and were quite successful in fact, at bringing together a very diverse student body, including politically. And people sometimes maybe think of elite law schools as being very progressive. But Harvard Law School, the biggest student organization is actually the Federalists, which is the conservative students. And despite that effort, what I noticed in the classroom was a reduction in conversation, diversity of viewpoint across the board, interesting classrooms became boring. And even though I was teaching around conflict and negotiation and difficult conversations, I would read in students' journals things like, I want to avoid conflict or I don't want to get into it.Bob Bordone (04:59):And so, it occurred to me that quite a part, as Joel said, from any skills, if we don't develop this capacity to sit with disagreement, then we will never get to problem solving. I'm in favor of problem solving. But this paper on conflict resilience, its original title was called Against Problem Solving. Mostly because I thought that if we had opened the possibility of problem solving as a precondition for entering the room, then we might never enter the room, particularly if we've told the demonized and dehumanized story about them. And so, that somehow we had to make the case that sitting with the discomfort of the disagreement, even if it didn't mean problem solving, although we hope for that, even if we didn't mean that it was worthwhile and it was important. And so, part of what was really attractive to me about joining up with Joel is that he just brought all of this brain science aspect to it that I had this kind of teaching and kind of academic in the negotiation and dispute resolution research experience, but couldn't bring to bear the kind of brain science parts of, well, what is going on in our brain when we do want to run or when we get into that really unproductive battle.Eric Topol (06:27):Yeah, I agree that the unique part here is that whole scaffolding with the neuroscience, the behavioral science, and those five Fs that you mentioned. You alluded to fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or fester. Yeah, so avoidance of conflict has kind of been the default for many people now because we have political divides, we have anti-science versus pro-science divides and on and on. There's a quote in the book that I thought we'd start off with because it really lays the groundwork from you both. “The biggest hidden barrier to being conflict resilient stems from the inability or unwillingness to face and sit with our own internal conflicts - the negotiations between our divided and sometimes contradictory “selves.” Even more surprising is that although there are dozens of self-help books on negotiation and conflict resolution, almost none of them spend any meaningful time on this critical intrapersonal barrier to handing conflict.” So maybe Joel, maybe start you off here. I guess you were bullied as a kid, and maybe that gives you a little background here. Joel, tell us about that if you would.Bob Bordone (07:46):Hey, Eric. On our bad days sometimes I probably inadvertently bully Joel still today, but he's pretty resilient now.Joel Salinas (07:53):Yeah, I'm a Teflon. So I think I am generally conflict of what an individual, and I think a lot of listeners and viewers can relate with that experience. And I think that also kind of speaks to some of the neuroscience that comes into this, which is that our brain has really evolved to be a fortune telling machine. It takes all of our past experiences, turns them into memories, and then makes projections about what's going to happen. And this projection or prediction of what's going to happen might as well be reality for our brain's sake. And so, if we had really negative experiences with conflict in the past growing up, whether through our families or the schoolyard or others, there'll be likely a very negative charge of negative emotional charge that comes with that. And what that does is that it increases the chances that you'll trigger this system for salience and arousal, which then sets off the alarms essentially in your body that then creates these fight or flight type responses where you're more likely to fall back on these really reflexive behaviors to make the bad thing less bad.Joel Salinas (09:08):And when you do that, whether it's through avoiding or to blowing through conflict like a battering ram that then trains your brain to assign some kind of a reward using the orbital frontal cortex, a system that kind of keeps tabs over how much reward you get for a behavior, it makes it much more likely that you'll do it again. And so, we from a very young age, develop a propensity to either avoid conflict or tackle it. And it varies depending on the context and how you're feeling, but it just makes it much, much harder to be able to bring on a much more thoughtful and deliberative approach to conflict.Eric Topol (09:49):Yeah, I mean, I think one of the salient points is that avoiding the conflict can make things worse. And as you described that it's not, I would've thought that there are some people who are just innately gifted to being diplomatic and artful about having to deal with the conflict issue and others, there's just no hope. But in fact, it can be acquired. And you alluded to this kind of neuroplasticity, the brain and you advocate for chair work. Can you tell us about chair work, because that's something I wouldn't have thought would help in this manner.Bob Bordone (10:30):Sure. I mean, I'll say a little bit work about that. A big part of this chair work idea, frankly, is influenced by work in internal family systems. And I was very fortunate early in my career, even though I was at teaching at law school to start partnering with some folks who did IFS work, they call it peace work often. But the chair work is really identifying some of these conflicted sides of ourself, right? The side of ourself that maybe feels like it's important and okay to raise this issue because it's something that matters to me and maybe the side of ourself that feels like it's pointless and it will hurt the relationship and maybe the side of ourself that's fearful and to name each of them. And then to actually give each in preparation a physical chair where we sit in that chair and give voice to each of those sides.Bob Bordone (11:32):And I'm imagining that at least some people listening to this will say, this sounds very hokey, and does he really mean going to the chairs? And the answer is, yes, I do mean that because there is something about the physicality of it that forces you to give voice to something that is true and real in you. And the chair work is very helpful to set up what an opening might be into a hard conversation, meaning that all of the chairs are real and authentic and okay, they're worthy of getting some voice. So as someone who teaches in a law school, it's all about advocacy. And you would find students who would be very good at advocating on behalf of a client would be incredibly poor at advocating on behalf of themself. And so, separating out the side that maybe has a little bit of feeling, it's selfish, but actually giving it a legitimate voice, help them when they get to the table to be able to say, I'm worried about this, or I realize I may be wrong about this, or it might be upsetting. And also, it's important and deserves to be heard because one of the things around avoidance is we often do avoidance in service of preserving the relationship or not disrupting. And we do maybe preserve the relationship for the time being of the person across the table, except we go home and there's still the side of us that is not feeling good about it, and the person we're not preserving the relationship with is that side, then we just get to have a sleepless night. And so, that's really the kind of idea behind the chair work.Eric Topol (13:22):That's helpful, Bob. I guess managing conflict, of course, I think we know you don't get emotional. Okay, sure. But yeah, there's three parts of that, three components, self-awareness. We've been talking about that deep listening, which of course when you're engaging in a discussion that's potentially leading to escalation of a conflict or the amplification that is really important. And then effective assertion. Now, that's where it seems to me things fall apart. If you're making effective assertion, then everything kind of blows up. So tell us about how you can be assertive and still, you're not trying to win the argument. I get that, but how can you be assertive and still come out in a positive way?Joel Salinas (14:16):Maybe I can start, Bob.Joel Salinas (14:19):I think one of the things that really is a good predictor of how effective you'll be at effective assertion is how good you were at the deep listening part. So the more genuine you are and curious you are about the perspective of the other person, really understanding what are the set of facts, experiences, beliefs that eventually lead up to that headline of what their position is or what their interests are. The better you'll be able articulate your own perspective while still engaging in the conversation. And the other thing that's really important here is that in that listening piece, it's really essential to be able to bring in tenets of really great listening that includes eliminating distractions, both external and internal. It involves having a nonjudgmental position toward the other person and being able to reflect an understanding of what the other person is saying. But all of that does not mean that you are endorsing their point of view. And I think that's really essential. It's really about getting as clear as you can about where the other person is coming from. So that way when you have an opportunity to share your perspective, you're able to really speak to the concerns of the other person and your own.Eric Topol (15:46):Yeah. Well, in reading the book, it took me, interestingly to an evening discussion I had with a very close friend.Eric Topol (15:56):And he was saying, we do need a randomized trial of the measles vaccine, MMR for autism. And I said, what? And I started thinking about, well, I'm going to hear him out because there's so much evidence now that you would think this has been totally debunked. And his view is, well, it can't hurt. And I'm thinking, well, so in that discussion, a lot of these points that you've been raising help me to come not to a point where basically I was trying to put a bow on it, as you said, or trying to externalize or abstract it. But to have a happy ending with him about this saying, okay, well it's never going to get done, but if you want to get it, I'm supportive of that. We don't do enough of this. I had to listen to what he had to say. I had to deal with my own confirmation biases and not get emotional and all that stuff, right. Now, I'd like the two of you to role play on something like that if you would. And let me just give you an example. Maybe you can run with it. Let's go to Covid, okay?Eric Topol (17:14):So one of you will take the side that we shouldn't do any more Covid research because the pandemic is over and we need to be efficient and not use these funds for other things. Covid is over, Long Covid is a hoax, and the other person will take the side that, no, this is a really big deal because Covid has not gone away and there's still a endemic of the virus, Long Covid in millions of people. Who wants to take away the funds? Would that be you, Bob?Bob Bordone (17:52):As a lawyer, I am happy to take any side.Eric Topol (17:55):Okay. You are the one to be on that side. Okay. And Joel, you are going to be the pro science side, if you will. Can you start that argument?Bob Bordone (18:05):Eric, can I make a suggestion? Yeah, but I'm happy to. It might be fun if one of us tries to be a person who hasn't read the book and the other person maybe tries to actually model the skills. What do you think about that?Eric Topol (18:18):Sure. Yeah, that's fine.Joel Salinas (18:19):Bob, I'll take on the unskilled position.Bob Bordone (18:22):Okay, fine.Joel Salinas (18:25):All right. So Bob, you know what? I keep hearing about people wanting to cut Covid funding and just really, I just can't believe it. It just makes me want to throw up because there's such an important need to do this research. It's just critical to understand the long-term effects of it, and Covid even gone yet. So I just can't believe that people would even want to cut this research at all.Bob Bordone (18:50):Well, first of all, it sounds like you're stunned and surprised by this. Am I right about that?Joel Salinas (18:56):Yeah, I'm beyond stunned. I'm revolted by it.Bob Bordone (19:01):So you're pretty angry about it. And I'm curious if I can ask you, you said that the disease is still going on, and of course Covid still exists. I am curious from your perspective, what do you think the benefits of spending lots and lots of money on the diseases at this point, since it's not at that level where it's killing a lot of people?Joel Salinas (19:30):Well, I think that it is killing a lot of people. Still, the disease hasn't gone away and it has a huge impact on health. I think we're still feeling the impacts on that. So I think that being able to understand what the impact does require funding to be able to do the research. And if we don't do that research, then we don't understand what interventions there can be.Bob Bordone (19:51):And what are the impacts? I mean, clearly there's impacts of the pandemic broadly in our society, but what are the kinds of health impacts from your perspective that research would be helpful to from a medical perspective?Joel Salinas (20:05):Well, for sure it impacts cognition. We have people talking about brain fog and Long Covid, and that has a real societal impact on productivity and people's ability to engage in life. It affects people's mood. And then you've got the people who have respiratory symptoms from Covid that have continued to gone on, and that decreases their ability to do their day-to-day things. It's a real societal impact.Bob Bordone (20:28):And how would you think about balancing whatever impact Covid has from all of the other funding choices that need to be made given a shrinking research pool for funds?Joel Salinas (20:44):I don't know. I mean, I think it's an important priority, and I know that there's a lot of other priorities. I think it needs to be weighed against a lot of other big programs that are out there. I just want to make sure that it doesn't go away because it needs to happen.Bob Bordone (20:56):Yeah. No, it's helpful to hear that. And if we had more time, I'd ask you some more questions. I mean, one thing that, as I think about this is given just the number of priorities out there, I worry that because Covid was in the press so much and is so politicized that we overweight the importance of money in that direction. And I would say that there's probably other things if we have a fixed set of money that kills a lot more people and has a lot more health impact. And so, I'd rather see the funds get placed there than just satisfy some kind of highly salient political issue.Joel Salinas (21:40):And I just want to make sure that the funding happens. I mean, it should be to a level that it makes sense to continue the funding so that we get good results from it, that it can be applied. But yeah, I guess you're right that it needs to be weighed against other research priorities. I mean, that's a whole other topic that gets me upset, but I think I just want to make sure that this funding doesn't go away.Bob Bordone (22:03):Yeah. So it sounds like for you, the concern is less about reduction and more about moving it to zero?Joel Salinas (22:12):I think so, yeah.Bob Bordone (22:13):And if it did move to zero, what is the thing you'd be most worried about?Joel Salinas (22:18):I think we would lose out on this really unique opportunity after all these people had been affected by this condition to understand the long-term effects. So that way, if there's another resurgence, we'll understand what can we do about it to mitigate those effects. I mean, we're still trying to figure out what the effects of a lockdown were on people. I think that's something that needs to be better understood.Bob Bordone (22:40):So for you, the research is very forward looking about future pandemics that might come up.Joel Salinas (22:46):Absolutely.Bob Bordone (22:47):And that might be something that I'd be more interested in than how can we prevent future pandemics than I would worrying about. I mean, it's very regrettable what has happened to this set of people who have Long Covid, of course. I just think that that has happened, and I would almost rather see the funds move in the direction of how do we prevent another pandemic than how do we worry about a relatively small set of people, although it's tragic on them, a relatively small set of people who may still suffer those benefits.Joel Salinas (23:26):Yeah, I think we do want to focus on the prevention, definitely. I still just don't want to lose sight of making sure that we're getting the research done that needs to happen.Bob Bordone (23:38):Should we cut?Eric Topol (23:39):That's helpful. These are two experts in conflict resilience here. I mean, the only thing I'd add is that Long Covid is affecting millions of Americans, perhaps as many as 60 million people around the world, and we have no treatment for it. So it's a big deal.Bob Bordone (23:56):I just want to say for the record, I was just being an actor there.Eric Topol (24:03):Yeah, that's okay.Bob Bordone (24:04):I don't even know if my arguments on the other side were making sense, but I was trying.Eric Topol (24:08):I think you did a good job. I think both of you did a good job. I think the point here is that you were able to have a civil discussion, make your points, I forced you into it. You couldn't avoid it. You're in touch, obviously with your own innate issues. You kind of really emphasize that throughout the book, which is you got to be in touch with yourself, not just about your priors, but also your current, what you're feeling, your posture, your heart rate, all these other physical things. So you really got us queued into what's important when you're having a discussion that could lead to, it could exacerbate the conflict rather than help come to a happy mid stance or where both people feel that they've expressed themselves adequately. I really love the Frederick Douglass quote in your book, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” I think that is so rich. And before we wrap up, I just want to get your overall thoughts. What haven't we touched on in our brief conversation about the topic, about the book that we should before we close today? Maybe start with you, Bob.Bob Bordone (25:53):Yeah, I mean, in some sense, I think it connects to exactly that quote, which is that without conflict, we are not going to get the kind of changes and dynamism we would want in our organizations, whether it's a medical center, a country, a family, but also without the conflict, we don't get the deeper connection that is possible because it's not until the first, no, that all of the yeses actually have the meaning that they should. And so, even though it seems scary to go into conflict, what I would say is it offers opportunities maybe for agreement, but if not for agreement, for a deeper kind of more authentic and real relationship. And I would just say for me, part of this is inviting people to reframe the way they think about what conflict can do in their lives.Joel Salinas (26:58):Yeah. I think if there's one thing that listeners or viewers take from this is awareness is more than half the battle. So just really taking the time to become more aware of how you react to different disagreements with different conflicts, how you're responding to it physically and mentally, and what specific patterns might emerge in terms of whether it's with colleagues, with people with authority, with family members. And I think that alone begins to get you to pay more attention about how you can be more deliberate in your responses. And ideally, you can try out some of the skills from the book with those disagreements that are a little less stressful for you. Just like when you go to the gym, you don't start out by lifting the heaviest weights. You start out by getting the reps down with the good form, and then you build that muscle. And similar with building the brain programming wiring around it is to start low and build up from there.Eric Topol (27:57):Yeah. Well, I think what you have put forth in the book will go down anchoring such an important problem. It's magnified now than more than ever. People are socially isolated, not just in the pandemic, but post pandemic and the divisiveness is profound. So hopefully the tips that you've provided, the science behind it, the practical ways to navigate and deal with this will help people as we go forward. So thank you both for the work you did in putting together the book, and hopefully some of our listeners or viewers will use these tools in the future and will have much better exchanges with others who have different views, different what might be considered adversarial perspective, whatever. So thank you very much for joining today.Joel Salinas (28:58):Well, thank you.Bob Bordone (28:59):Thank you for having us. It's been a delight.********************************As you can imagine, I'm excited to get my new book out on May 6th. It's about extended our healthspan, and I introduce 2 of my patients (one below, Mrs. L.R.) as exemplars to learn from. My op-ed preview of the book was published in The NY Times last week. Here's a gift link. I did a podcast with Mel Robbins on the book here. Here's my publisher ‘s (Simon and Schuster) site for the book. If you're interested in the audio book, I am the reader (first time I have done this, quite an experience!)Here's the back cover to give you an idea of what some people had to say about it.Thanks for reading and subscribing to Ground Truths.If you found this interesting please share it!That makes the work involved in putting these together especially worthwhile.All content on Ground Truths—its newsletters, analyses, and podcasts, are free, open-access.Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don't hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Gluten has become one of the most misunderstood aspects of modern nutrition. Let's set the record straight. In this episode, we untangle the medical, neurological, and cultural narratives surrounding gluten, from celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity to real (and rare) cases of gluten-induced brain dysfunction. We discuss: • The differences between celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, and wheat allergy • How gluten affects the gut, and what ‘leaky gut' really means • Whether gluten can trigger neurological symptoms like ataxia and brain fog • Why cutting out gluten without a diagnosis may do more harm than good • How wheat contributes to a healthy microbiome (and why fiber matters) • What role zonulin plays in gut permeability and immune activation • Why brain fog isn't yet well understood (and the theories behind it) To help us decode the science (and bust the myths) of gluten, nutrition, and the brain, we're joined by two world-renowned experts: DR. ALESSIO FASANO: pediatric gastroenterologist, research scientist, and chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at Mass General for Children (MGfC), and director of the Center for Celiac Research. DR. FRANK CUSIMANO: gastroenterologist, physician-scientist, and gut-brain health communicator with a PhD in Nutritional and Metabolic Biology from Columbia University Institute of Human Nutrition. This is... Your Brain On Gluten. ‘Your Brain On' is hosted by neurologists, scientists and public health advocates Ayesha and Dean Sherzai. ‘Your Brain On... Gluten' • SEASON 5 • EPISODE 2 ——— Your Brain On... is supported by the FREE monthly Brain Box, available in our NEURO World community: http://thebraindocs.com/brainbox

There were two flashes of white light at my feet, like quick fireworks, and then everything went black.  My brain knew that my right leg was beyond repair.  -Roseann Sdoia Materia April 15, 2013: That's the day the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line.  This is the story of an innocent bystander who lost her right leg when the second bomb went off in front of the Forum Restaurant. Roseann Sdoia Materia's life would be saved that day by three people who stepped into the smoke and mayhem to save her life:  college student Shores Salter, Boston police officer Shana Cottone, and Boston firefighter Mike Matteria risked their lives to help her, and their story is told in Roseann's memoir:  Perfect Strangers:  Friendship, Strength and Recovery After Boston's Worst Day.  Originally released as part of this series in 2018, the interview brings the listener into the events of that day, when brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev unleashed a terror attack using homemade pressure cooker bombs planted near the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three people and injuring 264.  Days later, the brothers would also kill MIT police officer Sean Collier. Treated by trauma surgeon Daniel King, MD at Mass General, Roseann explains how fortunate she was to have a doctor who had experienced treating soldiers wounded by IEDs during his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Beyond the details of what happened on that fateful day, Roseann's story is a profile in courage as she struggled to accept the loss of her leg and a new reality as an amputee.  Says Roseann, “Courage is getting up every day and facing the world. Some days you have it and some days, you don't. “  The founder of robostrong.com, she is an in-demand public speaker, an advocate for amputees everywhere, and a supporter of the many charities that have been born out of the bombings.  The friendships Roseann forged with those who rescued her remain strong. In fact, Roseann married firefighter Mike Materia!  For 23 minutes of strength, courage, community, and the resiliency of the human spirit, just hit that download button.  #bostonmarathonbombings #bostonmarathon #bostonstrong #massgeneralhospital#spauldingrehab 

The "Community Meets Clinic" podcast series introduces clinicians and healthcare personnel specializing in rare neuroimmune disorders. In this episode hosted by Krissy Dilger of SRNA, we meet Dr. Michael Levy, a clinician from Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Levy is the Research Director of the Division of Neuroimmunology and Neuroinfectious Disease at Mass General and an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He shared his journey into the field of neuroimmunology, discussed his research on the causes of MS, NMOSD, and MOGAD, and provided insights into the multidisciplinary clinic team at Mass General [01:27]. The episode also touched on the importance of understanding and reeducating the immune system to improve patient outcomes [15:22]. You can view the medical profile of Dr. Levy here:https://doctors.massgeneralbrigham.org/provider/michael-levy/1090088Michael Levy, MD, PhD is a recognized neurologist with over 15 years of clinical and research expertise in rare neuroimmunological disorders. He established the Neuroimmunology Clinic and Research Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and is the Research Director in the Division of Neuroimmunology and Neuroinfectious Disease. Previously, Dr. Levy was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University and was the founding Director of their Neuromyelitis Optica Clinic.Clinically, Dr. Levy cares for patients with MOG antibody disease (MOGAD), neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD), and idiopathic transverse myelitis (TM). Dr. Levy is also the principal investigator (PI) on numerous patient studies and drug trials for new and improved treatments for these disorders. In 2022, Dr. Levy became the lead principal investigator for the two worldwide clinical trials in MOG antibody disease.In the lab, Dr. Levy's research focuses on the development of animal models of NMO and MOG with the goal of tolerization as a sustainable long-term treatment. Dr. Levy has more than 200 peer-reviewed research articles, reviews and editorials, and 3 patents covering NMO tolerization therapy, TM diagnostics, and stem cell regeneration approaches.00:00 Introduction00:54 Meet Dr. Michael Levy01:27 Dr. Levy's Journey into Neuroimmunology04:50 Research Focus and Discoveries08:54 Clinic Operations at Mass General12:12 Self-Care and Professional Fulfillment15:22 Future of Neuroimmunology16:52 Closing Remarks

About Dr. Brian Anderson:Dr. Brian Anderson is a leading voice in health AI as CEO and Co-Founder of the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), guiding the development of national standards for safe and effective AI in healthcare. Formerly Chief Digital Health Physician at MITRE, he spearheaded crucial research initiatives, including advancements in clinical trials and oncology. An internationally recognized expert, Dr. Anderson speaks frequently on digital health, AI assurance, and interoperability. A Harvard Medical School graduate with an MD (honors) and a BA (cum laude), Dr. Anderson trained at Mass General, practiced at Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, and lives in Boston with his family.Things You'll Learn:A significant gap exists in the lack of independent labs to evaluate health AI, as these are already standard practice in other sectors with regulated technologies. The proposed national network of certified labs will fill this gap by providing independent assessments of AI models, promoting trust in their use.AI model cards are crucial for transparency because they detail the training methodologies and ingredients of AI models. This information helps users, such as physicians, make informed decisions about the tool's appropriateness for their patients.Clinicians need upskilling to critically evaluate AI tools and make informed decisions about their use in patient care.Generative AI applications like ambient scribes have the potential to greatly mitigate physician burnout by streamlining administrative tasks. This can give them more time to focus on their patients and improve their work-life balance.The creation of quality assurance labs will be a critical first step in AI regulation, helping to bridge the gap between rapidly evolving technology and established safety standards.Resources:Connect with and follow Dr. Brian Anderson on LinkedIn.Discover more about Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) on their LinkedIn and website.

In this episode, Scott Becker highlights six major healthcare stories, including Mass General's layoffs amid a $250M budget gap, Massachusetts hospitals' financial and access struggles, a surge in flu cases, and the growing crisis of healthcare access.

Surveys show that more and more Americans put down the bottle this January to try out drinking less. For some people, the goal was sobriety, and for others, moderation. Researchers are finding that alcohol consumption is going down in general across the population after spiking during the pandemic. Helping the cause are some stark recommendations from top health officials saying alcohol can cause cancer. Shirley takes a trip to a non-alcoholic bottle shop in Boston to try some mocktails, and later talks to Dr. Scott Hadland, who is a substance use specialist at Mass General for Children. Email us at saymore@globe.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of BioTalk with Rich Bendis, Dr. Kolaleh Eskandanian, Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Children's National Hospital, discusses her work driving pediatric healthcare innovation. Dr. Eskandanian introduces the BARDA SPARK Accelerator, a groundbreaking initiative focused on advancing medical countermeasures for children, and explains how it aligns with Children's National's mission to lead in pediatric healthcare innovation. She also highlights the unique challenges in developing pediatric medical countermeasures and the importance of partnerships with organizations like Rainbow Babies, Mass General, and others. Additionally, Dr. Eskandanian shares insights into the hospital's role in fostering innovation through the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI) and the Children's National Research and Innovation Campus. Join us for an engaging conversation about the future of pediatric healthcare, the opportunities for innovation, and how the SPARK Accelerator is paving the way for advancements that will improve the lives of children worldwide. Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant. Kolaleh Eskandanian, Ph.D., M.B.A., P.M.P. is Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Children's National Hospital, reporting to hospital's Executive Vice President, Physician-In-Chief and Chief Academic Officer. In this capacity, she oversees the Office of Innovation Ventures, the Sheikh Zayed Institute's R&D operations, and has a leadership role in the development of the Children's National Research and Innovation Campus (opening 2020). She is also the executive director of the FDA-funded National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI), focused on accelerating the path to market for pediatric devices. Eskandanian works with a large network of small and large businesses, nonprofits and government agencies –addressing the unmet medical needs of children. She is the producer of an annual innovation competition that supports small businesses who demonstrate the ability to address a significant medical need in the pediatric space. Eskandanian's expertise includes the full spectrum of product development activities, having held management positions at Accenture, a global management consulting firm, where she directed major product launches for clients. Eskandanian is the co-PI on the FDA-funded Global Pediatric Clinical Trials Network grant and the CTSI-CN lead of the Orphan Product Accelerator.  Eskandanian's own innovations are in the market space, used by millions. She is the lead inventor of the first-ever adverse event reporting system, initially deployed in a research academic environment. This technology and its derivatives have now been in the market for over 10 years. She has had leadership roles in the development of the first web-based trouble entry management system for a Fortune 100 company in the telecommunications sector. She has been a key contributor in securing over $40 million in government funding for two large research enterprises. Prior to joining Children's National, Kolaleh held positions with Intelsat, Accenture and Georgetown University. Her background is in mechanical engineering with a PhD in operations science and an MBA from American University Kogod School of Business.

Chime In, Send Us a Text Message!In this episode, we explore the critical role of social determinants of health (SDOH) in stroke prevention and recovery with an incredible panel of experts from the Bugher Collaborative. Our guests include:Dr. Nirupama Yechoor, Principal Investigator at Mass General Hospital and leader of the Bugher Collaborative.Dr. Devanshi Choksi, neurologist and colleague of Dr. Yechoor at Mass General.Rachel Kitagawa and Sofia Constantinescu, neurology postgraduates from Yale University.We dive into:The Bugher Collaborative: Its mission, the partnership between Mass General, Yale, and UCSF, and how it addresses equity in stroke care.Research Highlights: Insights into how socioeconomic status, access to care, and community support affect stroke outcomes.Yale's Findings: Key demographic differences uncovered through their research and what they reveal about health equity.The Road Ahead: Next steps for the collaborative and their vision for improving stroke care.Magic Wand Wishes: What each guest would change to improve stroke prevention and recovery if they had unlimited resources.This conversation builds on our discussion of the 2024 ASA Stroke Prevention Guidelines, offering a deeper dive into the intersection of health equity and stroke care.Resources and Links:Learn more about the Bugher CollaborativeDr. Nirupama Yechoor's BioDr. Devanshi Choksi's BioRachel Kitagawa's BioSofia Constantinescu's BioSupport Our Show! Thank you for helping us to continue to make great content. We appreciate your generosity! Support the showShow credits:Music intro credit to Jake Dansereau. Our intro welcome is the voice of Caroline Goggin, a stroke survivor and our first podcast guest! Please listen to her inspiring story on Episode 2 of the podcast.Connect with Us and Share our Show on Social:Website | Linkedin | Twitter | YouTube | FacebookKnow Stroke Podcast Disclaimer: Our podcast and media advertising services are for informational purposes only and do not constitute the practice of medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Nutrition is key to a child's development, but for some children with Down syndrome, feeding challenges make it difficult to get the nutrition they need. That's where tube feeding comes in. Today, we're chatting with Dr. Lauren Fiechtner, Director of Nutrition at Mass General for Children, to talk about the different types of feeding tubes, why they are sometimes necessary, and the unique feeding challenges that children with Down syndrome may face. We're chatting about when tube feeding is typically used, the emotional and physical challenges parents may experience, and how feeding therapies and supportive resources can make a difference. We hope Dr. Fiechtner's compassionate advice helps families feel empowered and reassured as they navigate tube feeding and nutrition. - - - - - SHOW NOTES Learn more about Feeding Matters Learn more about The Oley Foundation JOIN THE MOVEMENT Join us in celebrating and supporting The Lucky Few Podcast! For just $0.99, $4.99, or $9.99 a month, you can help us continue shouting worth and shifting narratives for people with Down syndrome. Your support makes a difference in our ability to create meaningful content, enable us to cover production costs, and explore additional opportunities to expand our resources. Become an essential part of The Lucky Few movement today!  DISCOUNT CODE Friends, grab your narrative shifting gear over on The Lucky Few Merch Shop and use code PODCAST for 10% off! HELP US SHIFT THE NARRATIVE Interested in partnering with The Lucky Few Podcast as a sponsor? Email hello@theluckyfewpodcast.com for more information! THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: Thank you, National Down Syndrome Society for sponsoring this episode! Check out episode 174 on The Down Syndrome Learning Profile Check out episode 181 with NDSS team member Dana Sciullo and her brother Anthony! Check out episode 262 with NDSS President Kandi Pickard celebrating their 45 years of advocacy! Thank you, Enable SNP for sponsoring this episode! 47. Planning for the Future w/Phillip Clark from Enable SNP 191. Future Planning for the WHOLE Family - ft. Phillip Clark, Enable SNP LET'S CHAT Email hello@theluckyfewpodcast.com with your questions and Good News for future episodes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theluckyfewpod/support

Today we have Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, who is perhaps best known for co-discovering all three familial early-onset Alzheimer's disease genes. In addition, Rudy's lab was the first to use human stem cells to create three-dimensional human brain organoids and three-dimensional neural-glial culture models of Alzheimer's disease, which became known as “Alzheimer's-in-a-Dish.” These models were the first to recapitulate all three of the key pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease and have made drug screenings faster and cheaper. Rudy is the director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit as well as the director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health. Rudy is also co-Director of the Massachusetts General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease at Massachusetts General Hospital and serves as the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Rudy has published more than 700 research papers and is one of the top 50 most cited neuroscientists in the world. He is author of “Decoding Darkness,” and a co-author of two books with Deepak Chopra, “Super Brain” and “The Healing Self.” Show notes: [00:03:18] Ken opens the interview mentioning that Rudy began playing the accordion when he was just seven years old. Ken goes on to ask Rudy about the time his father gave him a Jimmy Smith album and some advice. [00:05:51] Ken mentions that, in addition to Rudy's musical talents, he was also interested in science growing up. Ken asks about Rudy's participation in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and what that experience was like. [00:07:09] Ken asks Rudy about growing up in Cranston, Road Island. [00:08:39] Rudy talks about how he ended up at the University of Rochester after high school. [00:09:51] Ken mentions that both Rudy's grandfather and father passed away at the age of 45. Ken asks Rudy if this played a role in his pursuit of a career in genetics research. [00:10:57] Rudy explains how he chose Harvard Medical School for his Ph.D. [00:12:47] Ken pivots to ask Rudy about his time working with Jim Gusella in the early 80's at Mass General, where they were the first to ever find a disease gene. Family studies at the time had shown that the Huntington's disease gene was linked to a polymorphic DNA marker. Rudy talks about this discovery and how the chromosomal localization of the Huntington's disease gene was the first step in using recombinant DNA technology to identify the primary genetic defect in this disorder. [00:16:07] Ken asks Rudy about his work in 1987, when he discovered the first Alzheimer's gene, recombinant DNA technology, which causes the production of amyloid. Ken goes on to explain that mutations in the APP gene can cause a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's. Rudy talks about the paper that came out in “Science” that detailed this discovery. [00:18:38] Rudy discusses his personal philosophy and approach to research. [00:19:43] Ken mentions that in Rudy's book, Decoding Darkness, he writes that few nightmares on Earth can compare to Alzheimer's disease. Ken asks Rudy to talk more about this book. [00:21:50] Ken explains that in the same way our physical capabilities will suffer some form of decline with age, it is also expected that we have some decline in memory and cognitive ability as we age as well. However, Ken goes on to say that when people begin to experience age-related memory lapses, it can lead to a lot of anxiety about their genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's. Ken asks Rudy to talk about the lifestyle factors that play into whether someone predisposed to develop Alzheimer's can stave off or avoid disease development. [00:26:09] Ken explains that aging appears to intensify when people stop challenging themselves with new things. Given this, Ken asks Rudy what his thoughts are on challenging our brains as they age to protect our cognitive abilities. [00:29:08] Ken asks Rudy about the principal advances in...

- Sage Steele explains how the fix was in on her Biden interview. - Joe Biden's latest lie about Donald Trump. - Ashley Biden's diary isn't Russian disinformation. - A bearded "lady" dominates basketball in Lynn, MA. - Mass General won't report if babies have drugs in their system, it's racist. - Paul Pierce has thoughts on Caitlin Clark. Today's podcast is sponsored by: Hillsdale College: Select from several completely FREE online college history courses at http://hillsdale.edu/Gerry Ladder: One thing in life that you really cannot afford to wait on is setting up term coverage life insurance. Get instantly approved at http://LadderLife.com/Gerry Listen to Newsmax LIVE and see our entire podcast lineup at http://Newsmax.com/Listen Make the switch to NEWSMAX today! Get your 15 day free trial of NEWSMAX+ at http://NewsmaxPlus.com Looking for NEWSMAX caps, tees, mugs & more? Check out the Newsmax merchandise shop at : http://nws.mx/shop Follow NEWSMAX on Social Media:  • Facebook: http://nws.mx/FB  • Twitter: http://nws.mx/twitter • Instagram: http://nws.mx/IG • YouTube: https://youtube.com/NewsmaxTV • Threads: http://threads.net/@NEWSMAX  • Telegram: http://t.me/newsmax  • TRUTH Social: https://truthsocial.com/@NEWSMAX  • GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/newsmax Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can we prevent our kids from getting addicted to substances? Is there a more common personality "type" of kid that gets addicted to drugs? What drugs are we worried about in tweens and tweens? It's these questions and more that we ask Dr. Scott Hadland, Addiction Doctor and Chief of Adolescent Medicine at Mass General and Harvard Medical School. It's an episode you don't want to miss because we think this kind of information is necessary for parents with kids of any age. To follow Dr. Scott and learn more about his wealth of knowledge in this space you can find him @drscotthadland on Instagram and Twitter. Want our podcasts sent straight to your phone? Text us the word "Podcast" to +1 (917) 540-8715 and we'll text you the new episodes when they're released!Tune in for new Cat & Nat Unfiltered episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday!Follow @catandnatunfiltered on Instagram: https://instagram.com/catandnatunfilteredOur new book "Mom Secrets" is now available! Head to www.catandnat.ca/book to grab your autographed copy! Come see us LIVE on tour!! To see a full list of cities and dates, go to https://catandnattour.com.Follow our parenting platform - The Common Parent - over on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thecommonparentBecome a Member of The Common Parent, our ultimate parenting toolkit for parents of teens and tweens for just $74.99/year: https://thecommonparent.comGet a FREE “Thoughts Between Us” Journal with The Common Parent Annual Membership: Click Here!Make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel for our new cooking show and our #momtruth videos: https://bitly.com/catnatyoutubeCheck out our Amazon Lives here: https://bitly.com/catnatamazonliveOrder TAYLIVI here: https://taylivi.comGet personalized videos from us on Cameo: https://cameo.com/catandnatCome hang with us over on https://instagram.com/catandnat all day long.And follow us on https://tiktok.com/@catandnatofficial! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.