Watching the Olympics this summer has been a wonderfully guilty pleasure. Between the various levels of drama about what Ryan Lochte’s mom may have meant about his social life , unnecessary discussions about Olympic Gold All-Round Women Gymnasts champion Gabby Douglas’s hair and concerns about whether the US Women’s Swimming Team smiles too much (sorry we’re only getting US coverage over here — what else is new.) there are relevant discussions about exercise, health and motivation. As a physician in training my curiosity about these topics extends not only to my own health but to the health of my patients. I wonder constantly how I can help motivate for better health. I recently finished a month long clinical rotation in outpatient specialty clinics where in 30min-1hr sessions we ran through the list of medical problems for each patient. We checked through their labs and imaging scans. Somehow, we still found time to counsel and motivate them to do what they could do on their own as we did what we could on our end. The question, however, is always to what extent? In David Jones, MD, PhD’s perspective article published in the New England Journal Of Medicine last week, he takes […]
