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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: 1531(1 vote) - Penn State Child Abuse: The Coverup Is Worse Than The Crime - by Submitted on Nov 19, 2011 from Estelle GoldsteinSo many times the cover-up seems to me to be worse than the crime. It might be something as President Nixon and Watergate or as trivial as Sarah Palin and her … um … improvisation on the ride of Paul Revere. (Don’t try to fool a Boston girl – I know all about Paul Revere). I think most of ...
Views: 2091(1 vote) - Penn State Sports Scandal Destroys Lives - by Submitted on Nov 13, 2011 from Estelle GoldsteinA beloved football coach – I might even say a living legend – finds his life destroyed after a luminous career. All because of alleged inaction – perhaps to shield a friend, perhaps to preserve the “old school” or for other reasons. And the sad story of Joe Paterno is only one more chapter ...
Views: 1787(2 votes) - 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: 1491(1 vote) - This Is Not A Diet Book - by Submitted on Jun 13, 2011 from Estelle GoldsteinWARNING: Don’t spend hundreds of dollars on diet or exercise programs that seem to work for everybody but you until you read this important information I have to tell you. I Lost Over Half My Body Mass WITHOUT Diet, Exercise, Drugs Or Surgery And I Am Going To Tell You How! By Estelle Toby ...
Views: 2289(1 vote) - 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: 3131(1 vote) - Adjusting to Medical Illness - by Submitted on Nov 08, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinThe psychological ability to adjust to chronic medical illness is an area where there has been very little study. Lately, I find myself working mostly with this population of people. I’m noticing that some adjust very well and some do it very poorly. It depends on a lot of factors. The ...
Views: 1375(2 votes) - I Lost Over Half My Body Mass WITHOUT Diet, Exercise, Drugs Or Surgery And I Am Going To Tell You How! - by Submitted on Feb 24, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinI was heavy all of my life – no, to be honest, I was FAT. My weight caused me severe health problems, including more than one “near-death” experience in comas. And as you can guess, my romantic life was non-existant. I couldn’t weigh myself accurately, because normal scales only go to ...
Views: 1825(1 vote) - 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: 939(1 vote) - 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: 1302(1 vote) - A Lesson In Dealing With Anti-Social Personalities - by Submitted on Aug 18, 2009 from Estelle GoldsteinHe really looked down on his luck, as do most people who came into this particular urban mental health clinic. He was receiving drug samples from a nurse practitioner somewhere in the system; drugs too expensive to continue getting samples to give him. Drug companies stop giving out samples of ...
Views: 1708(1 vote) - 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: 1276(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: 2025(1 vote) - The Drug That Doesn't Help But Is Still Available - by Submitted on Jan 16, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinI was 15, there were not enough science courses at my prep school, and I was doing some kind of intensive science work at the "cancer research institute" of a nearby college -- in Boston there are many. In this special "science training program," I was the youngest on the list to be a ...
Views: 1442(2 votes) - (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: 1209 - 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: 965 - A Tough Pill To Swallow - by Submitted on Jun 27, 2008 from Estelle GoldsteinEvery once in a while I run into someone who has trouble swallowing pills. Sometimes people “bite the bullet” and gulp the pills down with a struggle, just because they are anxious to get rid of whatever ails them. However, it doesn’t have to be a struggle. There are a few ...
Views: 1478 - 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: 1490 - 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: 1339 - Antibiotics in Livestock Feed Endanger The Entire World - by Submitted on Sep 28, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinAs it turns out, this whole bit about the use of antibiotics in livestock and poultry is a complex issue. It’s well beyond anything that anyone would guess at first blush. The best online summary is the position paper put out by Food Marketing Institute. Curiously enough, it doesn’t have a ...
Views: 936 - 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: 1417 - 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: 1528 - Being A Quitter Isn't Always Bad -- With Cults - by Submitted on Jun 13, 2011 from Estelle GoldsteinI do remember when I was a university student seeing the glassy-eyed young students selling second rate (a bit dry or petals missing) flowers on the major thoroughfares of Boston. I remember reading all the newspaper accounts and finding out these people were somehow part of a "cult," before I ...
Views: 1945 - 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: 917 - 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: 1456 - 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: 2489 - 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: 1963 - 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: 1881 - 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: 1446 - 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: 1401 - 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: 1582 - 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: 1099 - Emotional Freedom Technique Sjogren's Syndrome Success - by Submitted on Nov 07, 2008 from Estelle GoldsteinMr. P.D., a 50 year old married male, presented to this examiner asking if anything could be done for his Sjogren’s Syndrome. Sjogren’s Syndrome is a chronic illness in which white blood cells attack various glands in the body that produce moisture. Initial symptoms occur in the ...
Views: 2272 - 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: 1048 - 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: 1437 - 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: 1729 - 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: 1273 - Headache or Tumor - by Submitted on Oct 05, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinI don’t think I know anyone who can say they’ve never had a headache. And some have them often enough that they’re given about as much attention as a hiccup or a sneeze. But sometimes, a headache can be more than a headache. I was in Minneapolis doing a rotation in neurology through a ...
Views: 863 - 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: 1335 - Hospital Accountability Is An Ideal (Not Always Reality) - by Submitted on Oct 12, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinI have spent as little time as possible on the staff of hospitals. The interface between doctors and administrators has always seemed to be dominated by petty politics. People are interested in money, and secondary to that, some vague sort of reputation or power. A large and prestigious ...
Views: 1087 - 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: 1064 - 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: 1430 - 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: 1290 - Less Football = Less Death - by Submitted on Sep 28, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinCutting back on football practice during excessive heat in order to diminish death can only be a good idea. About a year ago, scientists studied the surge in heat related deaths on the football field and noted some real problems. Problems like the tripling of the average death rate from one ...
Views: 904 - Lessons On How To Evaluate & Adjust Your Professional Rates - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2008 from Estelle GoldsteinEvery professional deserves fair compensation for his/her level of experience and expertise. But most have no idea how to calculate a fair rate. I've just completed a series of free lessons on how to evaluate and adjust your professional rates so that they are fair to the patient and fair to the ...
Views: 1076 - Marketing for Healers - by Submitted on Feb 02, 2009 from Estelle GoldsteinMarketing for healers? I'll bet you have trouble even reading those words! Somebody taught you somewhere that these are God given gifts that you have, healing others, and you should not even think of them as a way of making money. My first medical textbook said I was so lucky to be becoming a ...
Views: 1034 - 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: 1277 - Memory Problems Can Be Prevented And Treated - by Submitted on Nov 02, 2012 from Estelle GoldsteinI don’t care if Dylan Thomas was drinking himself to death while that was being written. It is a sentiment close to my heart, and undoubtedly the stanza of poetry I quote most often. Do not go gentle into that good night Old age should burn and rage at close of day Rage, rage against the ...
Views: 1293 - 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: 1339 - 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 ...
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