I've linked to him before, but I'm doing it again. I like reading Dr. Neubaurer's blog, Beat the Blues.
He writes posts of moderate length, usually focused on disseminating a single piece of information in language that is clear and jargon-free. This makes his message abundantly clear and accessible to all kinds of readers.
Two recent posts caught my eye to serve as good examples, one on The Two-Hit Hypothesis of what causes major depression and one on Sleep Issues.
The Two-Hit Hypothesis basically theorizes that genetics and life events conspire to create major depression. While it is true that depression seems to run in famlies, it's not an absolute. There are even cases of identical twins where one develops a mood disorder, and the other doesn't. So, it seems that stressful life events contribute. The hypothesis does include the thinking that those with genetic factors may develop depression under the pressure of milder or fewer stressors than those without.
The Sleep post talks about the societal impact of a nation where 10% of us suffer from insomnia. There are some industries that actually try to enforce sleep times, for obvious safety reasons (long haul trucking, aviation.)
But he also brings up the little-discussed concept that we actually set some folks on a path of sleep problems quite early on by sending our kids to school too early! I don't know about that. How early are kids starting school? I can only recall that my high school start time was about 8:30. And that they also had a "zero" period before school for certain electives. I had choir at 7:30 AM! A ha! Perhaps that IS my problem!!
Check out the most disturbing fact in the post:
Adoption of national regulations limiting the number of hours these physicians-in-training are permitted to work during a week and during a continuous shift has lowered the weekly limit to 80 hours!
That's right they LOWERED the weekly limit to 80 hours. Preventative medicine is looking more and more like the way to go, huh? So you don't have to get seen by some zombie intern operating on no sleep whatsoever.
Anyway, Dr. Neubaurer is perhaps not the best blogger n the world from many perspectives...he doesn't respond to comments, he doesn't post daily, he doesn't really link to anything or anyone. But from this perspective he rocks: he gives me regular, readable information about a topic in which I'm interested in.
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