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Articles from Estelle Goldstein | Selfgrowth.com
- Bureaucracy, What It Is and Why I hate It - by Submitted on Dec 05, 2014 from Estelle Goldstein“Bureaucracy” is a word that comes from the French, which I suppose means that moi has a greater understanding of it than most folks who have never lived in France. Literally, “bureau” means “desk.” So “bureaucracy” is “rule by desk” in the same way that “democracy” is supposed to be “rule by ...
Views: 1495(1 vote) - Mental Health In Women - by Submitted on Nov 22, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinMaybe if it’s “all in your head,” it’s in your brain chemistry We women have spent so long and worked so hard for equality in rights, in education, and at work, that it may actually be hard to talk about how we are different. The World Health Organization has been working on this, and ...
Views: 1553 - Bureaucracy, What It Is And Why I hate It - by Submitted on Nov 22, 2014 from Estelle Goldstein“Bureaucracy” is a word that comes from the French, which I suppose means that moi has a greater understanding of it than most folks who have never lived in France. Literally, “bureau” means “desk.” So “bureaucracy” is “rule by desk” in the same way that “democracy” is supposed to be “rule by ...
Views: 1420 - Your Family Really Can Kill You - by Submitted on Nov 07, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinOnly 16% of all murder victims are members of the defendant’s family? That’s according to the PDF file that pops open (or opens in your browser) when you click this link – and you must have the free Adobe Acrobat reader to see it. (Fortunately, it is included with most computers ...
Views: 1290 - Act Like Wonder Woman And Become Wonder Woman - by Submitted on Nov 07, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinFor most of my life I have been more or less overweight. I figured my body was just something I used to carry my brain around. Tentatives at presentation (clothes, makeup) were just not as serious as with my women-friends. I mean, it was just not as important to my identity as “smart” ...
Views: 3089(1 vote) - MEMORY TESTS - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinThe fastest, easiest test of the memory that I know is the one where you have to remember three objects five minutes after you’ve been told what they are. This is part of a standardized test of cognition (typically testing for dementia) known as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). ...
Views: 1985(1 vote) - Families Often Indicate Psychiatric Problems - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinThe person who walks into a psychiatrist’s office looking for help is not necessarily the patient. Often, they are simply the family of the patient. Sometimes, they themselves have something – possibly a disorder, but maybe just an emotional or attitude problem — that would seem somehow ...
Views: 1409 - Psychiatrists Don’t Just Talk About Sex - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI think this was said to me for the first, last, and only time at the first, last and only mixer for singles I went to in Wichita, Kansas. I don’t remember the man’s name or face, but I do remember how he responded to my answer to his inquiry about what I did for a living. “Psychiatrist? ...
Views: 1455(1 vote) - Freedom And Mental Health - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinFreedom is healthy. I have always believed this, and still do. My perspective comes from many places — my upbringing, when I was bombarded since an early age by my Russian-immigrant grandmother how wonderful it is to be in the United States, where we are free, unlike the oppressed and ...
Views: 1691 - Internet Pornography IS Addiction - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI have seen them. Men, who sit in my office and tell me they are addicts to internet pornography. They describe symptoms that have long been regarded as markers of addiction. Dependence — They start feeling poorly, maybe even depressed, if they don’t get their regular quota of ...
Views: 1259 - Your life, Your Work – What’s The Difference? - by Submitted on Oct 10, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI love being a ”shrink-lady.” (okay, a “psychiatrist.”) I did not pick it out of a hat. I tried a couple of other medical specialties. The “doctor” part — well, there was never any doubt about that part, really. I mean the idea of taking care of other folks came into my head pretty early ...
Views: 1295 - Hills and Mountains - by Submitted on Oct 10, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI was in the 9th grade at 13 when I was looking at the ceremony for my Bas Mitzvah, literally “Daughter of the Covenant,” when I would chant the portion of scriptural commentary to the five books of Moses consistent with my birthday, and speak all the Rabbi would let me, and collect some ...
Views: 1294 - We Can Fix This Vaccination Bit - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinIf I haven’t convinced everyone yet, I don’t know how. I have written on this before. Vaccination keeps kids alive. Kids who could die dead as door nails from preventable diseases. Vaccination has very few side effects. All kids should get them (except for specific and quite rare ...
Views: 1017 - Internet Pornography IS Addiction - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI have seen them. Men, who sit in my office and tell me they are addicts to internet pornography. They describe symptoms that have long been regarded as markers of addiction. Dependence — They start feeling poorly, maybe even depressed, if they don’t get their regular quota of ...
Views: 1393 - Meet Dr. Receptacle - by Submitted on Sep 12, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI first learned that I was a “receptacle personality” in Baltimore, Maryland. I was serving our fine country in the US Army Medical Corps as psychiatrist to the 82nd Airborne Division in Ft. Bragg. NC There was some sort of a training group there that all of the other active duty ...
Views: 1255 - Let Me Tell You ‘Bout The Bees (Maybe The Birds Later) - by Submitted on Sep 12, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinWhen I first saw in a headline somewhere that the earth’s population of honeybees was diminishing, I actually thought it might be a good thing. Less bee stings. I cannot count the number of patients I have seen (particularly males young enough to harbor delusions of their own ...
Views: 1252(1 vote) - Facial Diagnosis - by Submitted on Sep 12, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI grew up with the Reader’s Digest, although I do not think that was what my parents had in mind. I was a very early reader. I had the activity pretty much nailed by the time I was three. I could even do phonetic “sounding out” of words, as well as the obsessional “dictionary searching” that I ...
Views: 1019 - Babies Born Addicted - by Submitted on Aug 29, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI have had a lot of trouble with the idea of criminalization of drug addiction for a very long time. I am only one of a lot of folks who say “addiction is a real disease.” People feel every bit as sick as people with other diseases, sometimes more. The patients are certainly able to die ...
Views: 1494 - Alarmism vs. Real Worries About Beer - by Submitted on Aug 29, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI am not a particular fan of beer. My family certainly did not have it in the house. (Control freak that I am, I even had trouble with Passover wine. I never — and I mean never — managed to imagine how anybody made it through the allegedly requisite four glasses.) I really don’t ...
Views: 1455 - Pets Are Okay, But I Love Humans - by Submitted on Aug 29, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinAnimal mummies from ancient Egypt are featured on banners flying from poles here in middle-to-upper class southern California and I realized something significant but not earth-shaking. I didn’t care. I was fascinated with Egyptology back in the 4th grade when I built a model pyramid out ...
Views: 1409 - Cynicism and Alzheimer’s - by Submitted on Jul 31, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinMost of the time I see a single piece of research related to psychiatry reported by multiple news services, I figure the institution that produced it has a prizewinning public relations person. I figure it is popular for some kind of unspoken agenda. Maybe it is consistent with some level of ...
Views: 1408 - Dangers of Energy Drinks - by Submitted on Jul 31, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinPeople are not wired the same. Individual differences are the spice of life and medicine. I love people, their verbal discourses, because they are so delightfully individual. To me, the biggest problem with medicine is something I actually never heard anybody else discuss. I call it ...
Views: 1361 - Cialis, OTC, and Men - by Submitted on Jun 26, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI love men. I mean, I actually went and married one, and I am delighted. I understand their senses of “maleness” are sometimes a bit more fragile with women challenging them on absolutely every front imaginable. But they still do quite well. I absolutely love them. I may have simply ...
Views: 1835 - Assaults On Psychiatrists - by Submitted on Jun 20, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI remember a supervisor from the past whom I never thought had the right personality to be a psychiatrist. I mean, he was a little angry and domineering for my taste. But heck — I gave him a “bye” since he worked in a prison context. I was never attacked by a prison patient through my ...
Views: 1386 - Rise in Measles From Lack Of Vaccination - by Submitted on Jun 20, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinHumans are … well, strange. A fixed problem can become unfixed. First, let’s take it on good authority this problem really has been fixed. It has been fixed with vaccination. Nobody wants problems. So why? Why is the number of measles cases suddenly rising? People seem to ...
Views: 1071 - “Listening to Prozac” and What People Really Want - by Submitted on May 24, 2014 from Estelle GoldsteinI was in my specialty training when I read Peter D.Kramer’s “Listening to Prozac.” I remember thinking he was articulate and observant and all kinds of wonderful things, riding the cusp of a great change in psychiatry, doubting him to be a “real” scientist who would hang out at a meeting of ...
Views: 1179 - The Speech That Made An Unwilling Addict Go To Rehab - by Submitted on Oct 24, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinI found myself facing a person who had lost themselves in drug abuse. Not so unusual — when dealing with public health clinics. The prognosis is usually poor. An addict won’t cooperate with treatment unless forced by the courts in most cases. Here is what I said to one mental health ...
Views: 1504 - Why Soldiers Commit Suicide These Days - by Submitted on Oct 23, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinThe current rate of suicide among soldiers should make us angry, maybe enough to destroy our computers or, heaven forbid, write to congress or even try to stop war. I checked out this institution¸ the National Center for Veterans Studies, the best I could. I am not sure why the Department of ...
Views: 1200 - (Poor) Substitutes For Birth Control - by Submitted on Sep 27, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinOkay, so you don’t care. You tell me you don’t have sex too much and that is kind of like birth control. It isn’t. It might be if it took having sex five times to have a kid, but it only takes one, so you are very likely to get pregnant. Once you get pregnant, the child is your responsibility ...
Views: 1184 - We All Need Inspiration — Here Is Today’s Dose - by Submitted on Sep 26, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinWe are in an era when all reporting — wire services, networks, whatever — looks the way tabloid reporting did when I was small. Aggressive, emotional, mostly verbal renderings of disasters that are meant to strike terror into the heart of the reader. Sometimes, something miraculous or near ...
Views: 1041 - Death By Tattoo - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinCan you die from a tattoo? You betcha. I never looked very closely at the literature since getting tattoos on your body is against Jewish law. I remember from Jewish Religious school when I was quite young, having it reamed into y poor little noggin along with a bunch of other stuff, that ...
Views: 1544 - Bouncing Back From Adversity - by Submitted on Aug 30, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinI do surf the web — I do not do so aimlessly. I was impressed by an article published by AARP on things people should not do after 50. Despite the fact that I absolutely abhor anyone telling me “laws” about what to do or not to do, I checked it out. I decided most of them were so stupid ...
Views: 890 - Why I Have Not and Will Not Take Tamiflu - by Submitted on Aug 23, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinThis story does not start with “I was minding my own business, surfing the internet.” I was seeing a deeply suffering patient with terminal cancer and I was sneezing. I have a bunch of seasonal allergies and I treat them naturally with Quercetin and related compounds, a bioflavonoid, ...
Views: 1421 - Anti-Obesity Discrimination and Obesity Treatment - by Submitted on Aug 16, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinI am an expert on this — Anti-overweight discrimination. First, from my practice. I remember a woman in her forties I saw in Oklahoma for a routine antidepressant renewal who told me that she had a cardiac condition and had been to her primary physician (this is back in the prehistoric days ...
Views: 1305 - More Fake Diet Methods On The Market - by Submitted on Aug 10, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinI thought that everyone knew by now that if something is a supplement that is supposed to help you lose weight by gulping down a pill, it is going to turn out to be a lie. One of the first things they teach you in debating is that your weakest argument is an appeal to authority. Everyone who ...
Views: 1517 - Gender Bias in University Admissions - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinWait a sec … there are more women applying to college than men, and more women in college than men, so we have to attract more men and women have tougher admissions standards, and nobody seems very worried about this? I think sometimes anonymity is a damned good idea, especially when you are ...
Views: 1234 - Whose Birth Control is it, Anyway? - by Submitted on Mar 08, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinSo who is or is not going to pay for contraception under Obamacare? And this is a religious question? The truth of the matter is that even though the United States has promised religious freedom from the very start, they have not done a very good job, historically, of delivering on this ...
Views: 1134 - Men Aren’t What They Used To Be - by Submitted on Mar 08, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinMen. They really are different. They are psycho-socially different; this has provided for generations of standup comedy material about their inability to ask for directions when they are driving and lost, as well as their inability to move toward a restroom in groups. They got issues. I ...
Views: 1270 - Men Aren’t What They Used To Be - by Submitted on Mar 08, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinMen. They really are different. They are psycho-socially different; this has provided for generations of standup comedy material about their inability to ask for directions when they are driving and lost, as well as their inability to move toward a restroom in groups. They got issues. I ...
Views: 1303 - Cefaly, the Anti-Migraine Device - by Submitted on Mar 08, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinThis thing might work for some. Proof of its working is thin, but that tends to be a chronic problem with this kind of device. The patients studied with Cefaly had migraines not over a few times a month. My patients — who use marijuana, generally of the sativa type — have the most intense ...
Views: 1928 - Cefaly, the Anti-Migraine Device - by Submitted on Mar 08, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinThis thing might work for some. Proof of its working is thin, but that tends to be a chronic problem with this kind of device. The patients studied with Cefaly had migraines not over a few times a month. My patients — who use marijuana, generally of the sativa type — have the most intense ...
Views: 2458 - To Aspirin or Not To Aspirin; That Is the Question - by Submitted on Feb 15, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinWarning: Daily use of aspirin can lead to side effects which may include total loss of impulse control, man boobs, toe hair, and third nipples. Please consult your doctor before taking this and other over the counter medicine. Well, not really. But your really should know the risks and ...
Views: 973 - A Few Extra Pounds Might Not Be So Bad - by Submitted on Jan 25, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinLike many others, I am of the type who has been made to feel less. Less than healthy, less than human; whatever, the kind of feeling that sells diet food and diet plans. When some of the wire services picked up on the latest meta-analysis about obesity and mortality, I had to smile. I’ve ...
Views: 935 - Denied a Kidney Transplant for Taking Legally Prescribed Medicine? - by Submitted on Jan 17, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinWhen human lives are at stake, there is simply no room for emotional decisions based on pseudo-science. But since when does anybody listen to anything I have to say? Individuals are being removed from organ transplant lists because they are users of medical marijuana. Most recently, a ...
Views: 1069 - How Brominated Vegetable Oil Found Me - by Submitted on Jan 11, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinMost of my early drafts of blog posts start with “I was minding my own business, surfing the net….” That is something I often do; “surf the net,” I mean. Not “minding my own business,” something which my Mother-of-Blessed-Memory would attest I haven’t done since the beginning of high school. ...
Views: 1039 - Why Would a Forensic Scientist Run Amok? - by Submitted on Jan 04, 2013 from Estelle GoldsteinLike most folks who have not only hung around in academics but venerated scholarship, I am a little circumspect about applied scientists. I wonder if they do not get bored, repeating the same procedures. I will admit the closest I have gotten to forensic science is television shows about crime ...
Views: 1272(1 vote) - Thanking Veterans - by Submitted on Dec 28, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinTurns out, while most veterans appreciate a stranger saying “thank you” for their service, it can also be a bit uncomfortable. I wonder how these same guys feel about the “Have you thanked a veteran today?” bumper stickers. I’ve been thanking veterans for a long time. Sometimes, not as ...
Views: 970 - Where Have All the Psychiatrists Gone? - by Submitted on Dec 27, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinA lot of people are whores; it is just a question of naming the price. Even in psychiatry. The psychiatrist interviewed — and he does sound like a fairly decent fellow — says he can only do drug therapy. He cannot change to a talking practice that pays less because he and his wife want to ...
Views: 916(1 vote) - The Man Who Was Born With His Feet On Backwards - by Submitted on Dec 14, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinYou probably know by now that I’m all about helping people relieve chronic pain and live longer and healthier lives. Just the other day, a gentleman visited me at the clinic to request medical marijuana. He said his feet had rotated 180 degrees from normal when he was born. He was literally ...
Views: 2911 - Topic: Xyrem and Doctors - by Submitted on Dec 14, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinI’ve got to admit, I must have already been living in the world of alternative medicine by the time the FDA approved Xyrem. As far as I can figure, it’s exactly the same as the street drug GHB. Us pharmacology types call this gamma hydroxybutyric acid. In a stable salt form that people can ...
Views: 1375