Occasional essays on aging, medicine, memory, and whatever else refuses to leave the mind alone. New pieces appear here from time to time.
I add to this collection periodically, as the thoughts arrive and the mood permits. Leave your email address and I will send word when something new turns up. No newsletter, no schedule, no fuss.
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A song for the aging spine, with apologies to Steppenwolf. The heating pad is glowing, the vertebrae have formed a flash mob, and the internal organs have convened a committee. The liver brought a PowerPoint. The kidneys brought cupcakes.
Read the SongA man found in a stupor for years turns out to have been brewing his own alcohol. On the hundred trillion tenants of the colon, the antibiotics that evict them, a transplant that goes in the back way, and one credential the author cannot earn.
Read the EssayThe ancients thought the soul made its exit through the mouth. The newspapers now suggest it is the bacteria travelling the other way that ought to worry us. On bad breath, wild animals with cavities, the great flossing scandal of 2016, and a small brush ordered from Amazon.
Read the EssayThree monkeys carved above a stable at Nikko, a fourth quietly left off the wall, and the great man who kept a set on his desk. On guarding the gates of the senses just as the gates begin to fail, and the two saboteurs working from opposite ends of the ear.
Read the EssayA season of food recalls comes for the author's lunch, by way of Chile, Guanajuato, and a terrifying viva voce examiner with an unforgettable mole. What the six Fs of public health have to do with keeping a Caesar salad safe.
Read the EssayA diet, a leg cramp at dawn, a giant bottle of magnesium, and a blonde cardiologist on late-night television selling Coenzyme Q10. Following the money to its natural, and entirely unglamorous, conclusion.
Read the EssayIf it works on mice, it must work on humans, right? On mouse friendships, Robert Burns, Steinbeck, and what a maze full of elderly mice might teach the rest of us about keeping the memory gears from rusting.
Read the EssayA summons to the doctor's office, a statin prescription politely declined, and a wade into the statistics — relative risk, absolute risk, and the difference between treating a population and living a life.
Read the EssayLeave your email address and I will let you know when a new essay is posted.
I will send word when the next essay goes up. In the meantime, there are a few above that you may not have read.