Poet Ponders the Digital

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 5, 2012 Deadline April 2012 Issue Getting Fit with a Virtual Trainer “Lose weight,” the doctor advised me, “or you could be headed for diabetes.” I’m the first to admit I had added a few extra pounds while completing my doctorate. There’s a lot of sitting and reading when you’re in graduate school. When I defended my dissertation in 2010, I weighed more than 230 pounds. Looking back 25 years, I was skinny. Not thin, either, but seriously scrawny. When I graduated from Golden West High School, I was 120 pounds with a 27-inch waist. By 2010, I was approaching twice that size. Back pain was getting unbearable. I was using a cane frequently and hobbling about with sore knees. Yet, I couldn’t seem to lose the weight. I knew I had to, but I was stuck in a cycle of losing a few pounds and gaining them right back within weeks. During Christmas break, I was reading health and fitness articles online. One of articles I read was about the “CNN He...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 2008 Issue April 11, 2008 Health Experts versus the Internet “I read on the Internet that the real cause of….” When the research physician started her presentation with that familiar refrain, the room echoed with muffled laughter. During the two years I have been conducting research on special education methods, I have come to appreciate the difficulties that must confront many doctors, nurses, and physical therapists, and psychiatrists. It seems one of the greatest challenges facing health experts is the Internet. Before you assume I am suggesting the experts should be the guardians of all knowledge, understand that I like having information before I meet with doctors, too. I hope I use the information to ask good questions, not to diagnose myself when I’m not well. Alan Gross, author of The Rhetoric of Science, told me that doctors increasingly give in to patient demands because patients can and will find doctors willing to prescribe t...