Of Like Minds

As you may recall from my AHS - The People Post, one of the best experiences from my visit to Los Angeles was meeting a few other like-minded psychiatrists there.  Evolutionary medicine, as sensible and evidenced-based as I try to make it, can feel very lonely and off the beaten path.  So it is lovely to meet people who see the innate reason of it all.   The northeastern US is both protective and stifling in its conservative medical atmosphere - so to have others thinking in ways apart from psychopharmacology and psychodynamic or behavior therapy as the end-all, be-all is, well, glorious.

Beethoven - Symphony No. 9, 4th Mvt (one of the finest pieces of music ever written, though choral music is not always my favorite, I make an exception for this one - right click to open in new tab)

Not long after I returned from AHS, I received an email from a psychiatrist I had seen on Jimmy Moore's low carb doctors list, Judy Tsafrir, M.D..  She works maybe 30 miles away and has a holistic psychiatry practice in Newton (a city just to the west of Boston, which, I'm told has the highest number of psychiatrists per capita in the world - and yet we could still all be working 24/7 and turning people away.  Remarkable).  Dr. Tsafrir has extensive experience and training in both child psychiatry and psychoanalysis (unlike myself - I am a pretty run-of-the-mill adult psychiatrist).  In more recent years she has turned to dietary therapies and has become an expert in the GAPS diet.

I met Dr. Tsafrir for lunch a few weeks ago, and like most analysts she is a patient and serene sort of person - rather the opposite of myself in some ways (as I can be somewhat impatient and directive).  We talked a bit about our training and experiences and our frustration with the restrictive (and sometimes disastrous) mold that encompasses "evidenced-based medicine." And of course we are interested in the best data and best evidence for our patients, yet the money and the studies seem to be spent and performed with a different agenda.

Dr. Tsafrir has started a blog, and I am adding her to my "Of Like Minds" group to the right.  Her latest entry is about her thoughts on "Wheat Belly," entitled One Size Does Not Fit All. I encourage any readers with GAPS questions especially to take a peek, as I have only started reading the book and have no clinical expertise in that area.

People often ask me if I know of like-minded psychiatrists where they live.  There is Ann Childers, MD in Oregon, the two psychiatrists I met at AHS (I did not ask them about sharing their names or details so will not do so), and now Dr. Tsafrir!  And maybe more and more, every year.  We shall see.