I began writing the ‘Health Minutes’ after I realized after more than 25 years of practice I had become rather long winded. As happens with many men they realize they have become just like their father. My dad was always pretty smart. When I asked questions of him as a child, he would always give me very detailed and factual answers. I never got an answer to a question like “where do rainbows come from’ that talked about God painting the sky. I always got the answers like ‘the droplets of water in the atmosphere act like tiny prisms breaking the light into its component wavelengths which we perceive as color’. After a while all the kids in my family were a little reluctant to ask dad about the mysteries of life because we couldn’t understand his answers, or they went on longer than we would have liked. I would have liked a few of those ‘Gods painting’ answers. In any event, I find myself answering questions in my practice and at times I feel like I am answering as my dad would have, with too much detail and too much technical information. I caution my patients to ‘whomp me up side of the head’ if I get to technical. Most of my patients have been too kind to do that, but likely wanted to.
But I digress from the health minute discussion. I developed the Health Minutes to give a summary of the common questions I am asked in my office. I try to keep the timing to a minute as I believe most of the important ‘stuff’ can be covered in that time frame. If a topic needs more than a minute I believe there are more than one issue that needs to be discussed, so I create two topics each with a one minute talk. These are fluid talks and more will be added as they come to mind. I try to avoid topics of specific media interest as those are not usually important daily questions I am asked by my patients. These health minute topics are specifically aimed at addressing health questions that I see every day. This web site will try to provide links to the sites that cover information of media importance, but since I am not an expert on these things, I will defer answers about those questions to the experts. -Dr. Robert Cranfield M.D.