“The Winter I Lived On Potatoes – And Loved It!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

Is there any veggie better than the humble and versatile potato? It is and always has been my very favourite comfort food. Potato pancakes with those crispy brown edges, twice-baked stuffed potatoes oozing with cottage-cheesey goodness, those exquisite first-of-the-season new potatoes tossed in my mother’s incomparable dill sauce, creamy garlic mashed at Sunday dinner – heaven, absolute heaven, every single forkful!

But potatoes sometimes get a bad rap for being fattening (especially given all the goop we like to scoop or pour or melt over them) and not quite as healthy as, say, the boring broccoli floret. Not so for Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission. Chris ate nothing but potatoes throughout October and November of 2010 (that’s about 20 5-ounce potatoes a day for 60 days) to help publicize the nutritional value of potatoes. He varied his clinically-supervised menu by eating things like potato pickles and even (seriously!) potato ice cream. (Read on for some of my favourite – and more conventional! – heart-healthy potato recipes!)   Continue reading ““The Winter I Lived On Potatoes – And Loved It!”” →

Heart attack funnies: “You suck at pessimism!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

“Catastrophizing” – why we feel sicker than we actually are

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 19 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

It’s distressingly common in cardiac circles to run into people who don’t have heart disease, but who are very certain that they do. When I first heard some of their stories, I suspected that these people are being misdiagnosed, but the reality may instead be that there’s no heart disease here at all.

This scenario came up recently with a woman with few if any cardiac symptoms, no definitive test results, and very little reason for believing she might have a heart condition. Yet she was so utterly convinced a heart attack was imminent that she described feeling like a “ticking time bomb”. A fellow heart attack survivor, far braver than I, suggested to this woman that she might be experiencing a phenomenon called catastrophizing.   Continue reading ““Catastrophizing” – why we feel sicker than we actually are” →

The Lancet: “A New Year’s message from 100 years ago”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 2 Comments

As every other magazine is publishing New Year’s editorials this month, the British medical journal Lancet has instead revisited the editorial from its January 1911 issue.  Then-editor Squire Sprigge welcomed the new decade in an editorial titled, “The Promise of 1911”. Continue reading “The Lancet: “A New Year’s message from 100 years ago”” →