Blog - Healthy Matters

Scenes from a frozen Minnesota lake

by David Hilden, MD MPH | Jan 20, 2018 | Dr. Hilden's reflections

On Lake Harriet, Minneapolis

Hey. This is going to be a weird post.

I went for a run today on a balmy January day near my home in Minneapolis. Along the way I encountered frozen canoes by a lake shore, ducks swimming in a rare patch of open water, and thousands of people on a frozen lake – walking, swinging on gigantic wooden swing sets, biking, fishing, running, dressing up like butterflies, even standing in a circle while singing old hymns. I saw guys running in shorts. OK, that last part is not too weird, after all, it was 39 degrees today. In Minnesota that qualifies as shorts weather in January.

Of course, I wore headphones playing a mix of Prince songs. It was a terrific Minnesota kind of day.

I’m going to share a bit of it with you, my Healthy Matters friends. There’s no medical talk here – no influenza or heart disease or illness or any kind. To those of you feeling sick today, I hope you feel better soon! But for now just some thoughts and pictures from a day when I felt really alive. Surrounded by active, artsy, whimsical people. Today I’m thankful for nature, for winter days, for my Minnesota neighbors – and I’m going to share a bit of it with you.

So if you wish, I invite you to check out some scenes from a frozen Minnesota lake . . . (with some links to cool stuff) . . .

Your arthritis questions answered!

by David Hilden, MD MPH | Dec 30, 2017 | Joint and Muscle issues, Tips from Healthy Matters radio broadcast

By James Heilman, MD via Wikimedia Commons

Hey, what were you doing on Sunday morning, December 3? I know what I was doing – I was on the air with my colleague Dr. Rawad Nasr – and we were talking about arthritis. Dr. Nasr is a rheumatologist and the hour on the air just flew by. We had so many questions that we only got to a small fraction of them.

I guess you all want to learn about arthritis!

I’ve been promising to do a post with Dr. Nasr’s answers to some of the questions we didn’t get to that morning. I asked him to give written answers to listener questions, and he has begun that huge task, so the first batch of questions is here!

I do invite you to listen to the actual audio of the radio broadcasts, which are conveniently available as podcasts, without commercial breaks, for you to listen to on your computer or mobile device. To do that, click this logo to reach the main podcast page, then select Healthy Matters show #465, December 3, 2017.

Podcasts

In case you missed it: our most popular topics

by David Hilden, MD MPH | Nov 30, 2017 | Diabetes, Diet and exercise, Dr. Hilden's reflections, Health and wellness, Preventive care, Quick tips, Tips from Healthy Matters radio broadcast

I have been writing My Healthy Matters for nearly two years, and over that time there have been over 50,000 views to the site. To all of you who read along with me, THANK YOU!

I took a pause in writing new posts today to look at the statistics on what most of you are reading on the blog. It is really fascinating to see what strikes your collective fancy, so I thought I’d do a little retrospective post to highlight the most popular posts of the past. You may wish to go back and read what you missed.

I’ll rank them in order of popularity, based on number of people who viewed them in 2017, and I’ll include links to the posts in case you want to read them.