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Oct16

The Coming Health Care Social Media Revolution *Conferences*

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, Media, Wellness and Health

The coming health care social media revolution in health care is getting some buzz. There’s the Mayo Clinic Health Care Social Media conference this week. There’s Connected Health next week. There’s Health 2.0 and South by Southwest, e-Patient Connections (with lots of consumers), and the always ahead of the curve Medicine 2.0 at Stanford.

Oh, wait, they’ve already happened.

What if you didn’t have to spend a few thousand dollars on travel, a hotel, and a full-access conference pass to the one remaining big health care social media conference of the year, at which people way more well known than I am will drop pearls of wisdom as they tweet by?

This is the part where I tell you about my talk at BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2011 in LA next month. I’m speaking about what health care social media can and should do to learn from entertainment, tech, transportation and marketing to actually improve patient care, public health and doctor-patient relationships, not just market, spin and promo.

You could snag a live, in-person conference ticket and save 20%. Enter the code “BWEVIP20″ for the discount.

But, if you can’t travel, buy a virtual ticket (probably the best deal if you don’t do social media marketing or cruise ship management for a living. Gourmet barges need YouTube, too).

Because BlogWorld’s Virtual Ticket is the best you-can’t-be-there-live-but-you-can-attend-anyway virtual event in social media and health care social media around.

The Virtual Ticket contains audio/video recordings of all 100+ hours of conference sessions. There are live recordings during the conference and at the extracurricular events. The recordings of the sessions AND the live extras available for you for a full year.

If you do come, I’ll be there all day Saturday, until my session at 3pm concluding the Social Health track (more about that soon) with Scott Monty of Ford Motor Company and Dakila Divina of EveryDay Health. But if you can’t make it LA, check out a virtual ticket to Blogworld…it’s a bargain.
May13

The Cost of Calories: A Disruptive Technology

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, High Cholesterol, Obesity and Weight Loss, Wellness and Health

Eating for health doesn’t have to be expensive. And it’s some of the best medicine: for weight loss, for pre-diabetes, for cancer prevention, for cholesterol control.

Courtesy of MyMoneyBlog are easy ways to understand the cost of calories.

In speaking with health professionals about what is new and next in nutrition, and the power of writing recipes on prescription slips, the subject of how much food costs does come up, but it’s usually the last question, after those about resources, food prescriptions and prevention.

For the food-buying public, cost is usually the first question. Getting real about the high price of cheap food is the biggest stumbling block for most people, and why not?

The most precious commodity for many people is time, followed by immediate, check-to-check cost. Then food quality and nutrition.

We spend almost as much away from home (48.6 percent) on food as we spend for food at home (51.4 percent), as of 2009.

Saving health care dollars down the road often takes back seat to getting the kids fed, the car fixed and the job done. Mark Bittman persuasively and lucidly writes that the U.S. can save $1 trillion dollars by reforming the American diet.

We’re eating 23% more in the U.S. than we did in 1970. And that’s just quantity: quality of calories also makes a difference (cool interactive info-graphic here, from Civil Eats). And there’s no better control of quality than your own hands.

Could cooking could be a disruptive technology in health care?
Mar22

Nutrition and the Eye

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, Common Conditions, Obesity and Weight Loss, Wellness and Health

Acute macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people over age 55, and in Western countries. The macula is part of the retina, and allows central vision.

If you smoke, have had previous cataract surgery, or have a family history of AMD, your risk is high. If you are overweight or obese, have heart disease or high blood pressure, ditto.

But it’s one of the conditions that is preventable with what you eat, and may actually be improved with nutrition. In fact, the commonly prescribed medications Visivite and Ocuvite (excellent comparison chart here) are formulations of dietary supplements that work for preventing AMD progression.

In this Harvard nurses’ study of over 38000 women (average age 54) without AMD, eating at least 1 serving of fish versus eating 1 serving per month lowered risk by 40%. The fish eaten? mostly canned tuna fish and dark-meat fish.

I have the chance to speak with ophthamologists and other clinicians soon about nutrition and the eye, and I’ve started to do some research.

There’s a treasure trove of information about what you can eat to prevent and treat eye disease–glaucoma, retinopathy (glycemic levels predict), AMD. You just have to look, hard, at what’s there.

And taste it too: they’re going to serve my recipe for kale chips for glaucoma prevention!
Nov16

See How Easily You Can Make Yourself Younger: Small Group Seminars

Posted in: Aging and Costs of Aging, High Cholesterol, Wellness and Health

One of the most productive and fun seminars I’ve given took place just two weeks ago, here in Santa Barbara, in a nearby rented living room: house call!

A group of guys from the Midwest, all members of an executive professional organization, called me a few weeks ahead of their planned biking and wine country expedition. They asked if I would speak with them for a couple of hours on Staying Healthy as You Age.

Sure, I said. I asked them all to take a RealAge test (disclosure: I wrote two books on healthy aging with RealAge founder and Dr Oz superstar Michael Roizen, and serve on the Scientific Advisory Board).

And the good news: nearly all had RealAges (the age of their bodies as they’ve chosen to care for them) younger than their birthday ages. And all wanted to do better…especially in weight loss, cholesterol, sleep, stress relief, quality of life.

Plus, we got to talk about wine, wine-tasting, pairing and making. And I shared two wines I’d made–a Petite Sirah and a Zinfandel–which was also really fun. I gave each a signed copy of The RealAge Diet.

I’m confident that the next time I see them, several of them (all of them?) will look and feel better and younger than they do now.

Judith Weinraub of the Washington Post interviewed several of us who have observed that men and women sometimes need different advice.

And collaboration and partnership, instead of direction. Very satisfying.
Nov9

Writing a Best-Seller: Resources!

Posted in: Uncategorized, Wellness and Health

In Las Vegas last week, I gave a talk last week to 75 physicians on writing, publishing and marketing–specifically, how to write a New York Times Best-Seller (see previous post for strategies).

I also love being with out-of-the-box people, who think beyond their training or degree, and are keenly interested in something else too. That was the MedicalFusion conference.

I prepared for the talk by researching the topic (there are real empiric data), and examining my own experiences.

It turns out that as fast as publishing is changing, some of the old truths still hold.

If you are swinging for the fences, you are best served by getting an agent, using a New York publisher, letting them amplify your message, and learning excellent media skills. And there’s no substitute for practice.

What put my last book (ChefMD) over the top was the NPR interview, confounding the conventional wisdom that only TV works to sell books.

I prepared for the interview, like I prepare for all interviews: by reviewing my handwritten 4 x 6 or 8.5 x 11 cards. I love high technology, but I have not transferred these to my phone, because the hands-on approach seems to work.

Here are 8 recommended hands-on resources about writing a best-seller: Seth Godin, of course, and Tim Ferris of Four Hour Work Week, twice; Dan Poynter’s self-publishing guide with suppliers; authorhive.com for book marketing; and for self-publishing: lulu.com, createspace.com and authorsolutions.com. See what you like!