By Victor S. Sierpina, MD Are we ready for the next pandemic?  In a thoughtful essay by Lainie Rutkow, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, calls the field of public health an “invisible discipline.” This has been particularly true during non-crisis periods across the international stage. The essay is published in a recent book, COVID-19 and the World Order: The Future of Conflict, Competition, and...

BY Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, Director, Medical Student Education Program, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine, Professor, Family Medicine University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor   Recently, I participated in the Texas Academy of Family Practice annual virtual conference and saw a presentation on COVID and mental health. It was given by Katherine Buck, Ph.D., and Dr. Grant Fowler, from John Peter Smith Hospital. I will share part of...

By Laura Porterfield, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, Interim Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs, UTMB What if a diet could improve not just an individual’s health, but also the health of the whole planet? A recent collaboration of international experts found evidence for just such a diet. They call it the “great food transformation.” [i] The EAT-Lancet Commission—composed of 37 experts from the fields of food systems, environmental sustainability, nutrition, human health, economics,...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD There is a well written, meticulously documented book by Baylor Professor Jeff Levin, Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity’s Two Great Institutions. Dr. Levin, an epidemiologist and religious scholar has spent his career investigating and documenting the dialogue, and the conflicts between medicine and religious traditions, their synergies and their tensions. A quote from the book that characterizes some of this dynamic: “Medicine, in the final...

By Laura Porterfield, Clinical Assistant Professor, Interim Vice Chair of Clinical Affairs, UTMB, Department of Family Medicine   Before entering, I put on my armor: surgical cap, KN95 mask covered by a secondary surgical mask, face shield, gown, and gloves. Donned in protective gear, I’m barely recognizable even to colleagues who know me well. Grabbing a clean stethoscope, I stride to the examining room, where I pause to read the patient’s name before entering. In...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD “Just because you are happy it does not mean that the day is perfect but that you have looked beyond its imperfections.”. -Bob Marley The other day, picking up groceries at the Walmart, I recognized a struggle inside myself, to be more kind, understanding, and compassionate instead of feeling irritated, judgmental, angry. It was just a little thing really, but it became a metaphysical and spiritual breakthrough. Walmart and other...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD   “The beginning is always today.” –Mary Wollstonecraft   During some unexpected free time, I took an online course from the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Go to https://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/ for a large array of online materials and course in integrative medicine. It is a rich, well validated, and dependable resource for the entire spectrum of integrative medicine.   In my case, I decided to enroll in...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD   Last weekend, instead of donning my usual tennis clothes, I put on a crisp dress shirt and a pressed white coat with a UTMB logo to prepare for a day of telehealth visits with complex Medicare patients. As many docs have over the past months, we have migrated to electronic platforms to care for patients unable or unwilling to leave their homes. It has been a mixed blessing, but...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD As I am engaged in telehealth visits with patients and interactions with students and residents, there is an undercurrent of anxiety. What last month was a stressful job, is now the stress of being out of one. Concerns about children and family have been expanded to concerns about public and personal health and safety in a pandemic. I have also rediscovered the resilience of people. Talking with patients and learners,...

By Doris Amaro, Medical Student, UTMB “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food” so brilliantly stated by Hippocrates, may have been a declaration that we can use the nutrients from the earth to heal our bodies. However, it is difficult to imagine how the food we put into our bodies influences our thoughts, emotions, and particularly our development of mental illness. There are a number of different integrative and complementary approaches for...