December: The Great Outdoors

 Growing evidence suggests that we all need to be spending more time outdoors.

For example, lack of outdoor exposure to natural light during childhood, especially in green spaces, may be a major contributor to the myopia crisis.

Natural lighting may be viewed as an essential nutrient, and deficiencies may manifest in many ways, for example, disturbing mitochondrial function, which can set in motion a chain reaction of metabolic dysfunction. Living under “ultra-processed lighting” that no longer emits near infrared light as incandescent bulbs used to do. and blocking out necessary wavelengths of light with high-efficiency windows may come at a significant health cost.

What challenges do you face in understanding and applying the evidence to your life? What objections do you think you might meet in prescribing more of the outdoors to your patients?

In January, we started the year by examining the the six pillars of lifestyle medicine.

Please join us in the darkest days of winter for for a healthy discussion of the potential 7^th pillar: sunshine, with the authors of the article making that proposal.

November 11: Prolonged Grief

 This Remembrance Day, you are invited to spend an evening reflecting on the universal cost of war: grief.

How well do you understand the process? Do you feel that you were adequately trained to manage the grief of your patients, or even your own grief responses? When is grieving considered to be prolonged? Is there a medical model for treating prolonged grief? Could that lead to innovative therapies e.g. focused ultrasound?

Our guide for the evening will be Dr. Holly Prigerson. Dr. Prigerson  is Director, Cornell Center for Research on End-of-Life Care, and has Endowed Professorship of Diagnostics in Radiology, is Professor of Sociology in Radiology, and Professor of Sociology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine 

She is an expert in grief and other psycho-social aspects of end-of-life care. Her field trials of consensus criteria for Prolonged Grief Disorder were the basis for the inclusion of this new disorder in the 11th edition of the World Health’s Organization's International Classification of Disease and in DSM-V-TR.

Please join us to learn from our speaker and to share your personal insights.