Maybe your doctor should be a woman
Quick, picture in your head a highly competent physician. What does that person look like?
Does your doctor image look like this?
![Photo: ABC Television [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://healthymatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Young_1973_Marcus_Welby-150x150.jpg)
Public domain photo
Or like this?
![By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer, Stone Richard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://healthymatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Dr_Gibson-Hill_examines_Irene_Stacey_with_a_stethoscope_at_Southmead_Hospital_in_Bristol_prior_to_the_birth_of_her_first_child_in_1942._D10448-150x150.jpg)
Public domain photo
For the record and the recognition, that’s Dr. Gibson-Hill, a doctor in Bristol, England. You probably know the guy in the top photo.
History has maybe ingrained in us the image of doctors as many things, but first of all they have been men. The reality, even dating back over a hundred years (Elizabeth Blackwell, anyone), is that women have served as physicians for a great long time.
And the reality today is that women are a huge part of the physician workforce in the United States. I remember vividly one moment during the first hour of the first day of my Medical School education at the University of Minnesota some 20 years ago. The Dean stood up in front of the nearly 200 of us eager young medical students and announced that for the first time in that school’s history, more than half the medical students were women. The room erupted in applause that day.
My current practice bears this out. In my group of hospitalist physicians at HCMC, we have 17 women and 14 men. So when you see a doctor in our hospital and I presume at all other hospitals in the country, you are likely to be cared for by a physician who happens to be a woman.
This is a good thing. read more…
9th year of Healthy Matters. . . and you have homework
Friends, in January we will be launching the 9th year of the Healthy Matters radio broadcast on WCCO 830 AM radio!
When HCMC decided to produce a radio show in late 2008, they put out a call for a host. I was minding my own business practicing general internal medicine, when two friends of mine (thanks, Anne and Heidi) independently prodded me to audition. After all, they both knew me well and pretty much said I talk a whole lot so why not give it a try. So I did an audition tape at the Minneapolis WCCO studio and in January 2009 we launched the first Healthy Matters show.
I thought it would last 6 months or a year, tops.
That was 8 years and 416 shows ago. 
My friend and co-host Denny Long and I are still on the air because of one thing and one thing only: you the listeners!
Here’s the homework assignment
To celebrate our 9th year, I want to compile the Top Nine Reasons you listen to the show. So I have a request: leave me a comment below on this post with the top reason you listen to the show.
Or you can send me a Tweet @DrDavidHilden using the hashtag #HealthyMatters
Special Christmas Eve show
I’ll compile the Top Nine and read them on the air at our special Christmas Eve show, which will be on Saturday, December 24 at 7:00 a.m (Central time) on WCCO 830 AM in the upper Midwest and streaming live on WCCO.COM
Why do you listen? Is it a specific medical topic? Maybe you like the range of expert guests? Maybe it is the Open Lines shows? Maybe you just like the sound of Denny Long’s voice (I know I do!). Maybe it is to hear me get stumped with a medical question that I can’t answer! Maybe your wife makes you listen and you actually wish you were watching football instead. Ha.
Whatever it is – leave a comment below or send it to me with a Tweet @DrDavidHilden using #HealthyMatters.
Maybe I’ll read it on the air on Christmas Eve!
And I am genuinely thankful for you, the listeners. You’re the best.
-David
Apple cider vinegar: a Healthy Matters investigative report!
On a recent “Open Lines” radio broadcast (in which we have no topic and I simply answer the sundry questions from listeners) somebody asked about the health benefits of apple cider vinegar. Fair enough.
Well as a highly educated medical professional I am here to firmly and unequivocally state after my extensive exposure to the best in medical science that I know nothing about apple cider vinegar, whether it be the health benefits or culinary benefits or counter top cleaning benefits.
But happily, I’m not 100% ignorant about apple cider vinegar any longer. Just about 90% ignorant. That’s since my daughter introduced me to the stuff while I was visiting her far from home at college. Here’s how it all went down. I was having some queasiness in my belly or some such thing and she goes to the cupboard and pulls down a giant bottle of ACV (apple cider vinegar = ACV). Then she starts telling me all about how ACV improves everything from colds to upset tummy to sunburn and cancer and everything in between. But she does live in Los Angeles so I naturally wondered what the crazy Californians are teaching my level-headed Midwest-raised daughter.
But I was game to give it a try. So we poured some ACV into a glass of water, I held my nose, and drank it all down. It wasn’t too horrible to drink so that was a plus. And dang if my stomach queasiness didn’t get a little better!
So I chalk up my rapid improvement to one of two possibilities:
Placebo effect – I convinced myself that it helped because I wanted it to help.
OR
Apple cider vinegar really does help upset tummies.
Which is it?
So in the spirit of hard-hitting investigative journalism and to be true to my medical credentials and only stick to the best science, I’ve done some looking into ACV as a health option. Here’s what I found: read more…
