Category Archives: Health & Medicine

Living Healthy Podcast: Shows 6 and 7

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We now have seven Living Healthy Podcasts online or in the can. We’ve been recording two shows at a time to get a bit ahead. Henry’s idea, and a good one. The most recent shows (Influenza and Smoking) are the best to date (IMO). I’m hearing some things for the first time and it’s all useful stuff you can put into practice (or not). And some of it’s just interesting. For example, people who succeed in quitting smoking attempted it seven times. The new shows go up on December 3 and 10.

Living Healthy Podcast #2

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Just uploaded the second Living Healthy podcast and we record #3 (What over-the-counter pills will make you healthy?) this Thursday. My doc is doing this because he sees it as the perfect vehicle to help people (his patients and others). I’m doing it because it’s fun. And it’s so easy and inexpensive to do, we just did it. We don’ need no stinking sponsors! But if you did want to make this pay, it might work like this:

Let’s say a year from now, there are 1,000 people downloading the show every week. With patients, friends, colleagues… I don’t think that would be an impossible number. Would a local hospital or medical group be willing to pay $100 per show (nice mention at beginning and end and maybe a drop-in somewhere in the middle)? Maybe.

Now, can you think of, say, nine more show ideas out there? I can. (SFX: calculator) Hello! We’re at $50,000 annually. The only thing missing are the 30’s and 60’s.

Update: Looks like I might have been off by a factor of four. Maybe. Good article by Heather Green at BusinessWeek online:

KCRW, the public radio station in Santa Monica, cut a deal with Southern California Lexus Dealers for a sponsorship this summer, when the station was getting 20,000 downloads a week. Since then the number spiked to 100,000. When the Lexus deal ends, KCRW plans to charge $25 per thousand listeners.

Why the premium for some podcasts? They help advertisers reach specific groups, even as media fragments. That’s one reason Sequoia Capital’s Mark Kvamme thinks podcasting could siphon $1 billion to $2 billion away from the $30 billion radio advertising market in three to five years.

Living Healthy Podcast

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For months now, I’ve been noodling around ideas for a podcast. We have several projects underway at work and the only way to really get a feel for what’s happening “in this space,” is to get your hands dirty, as it were.

The Living Healthy Podcast features Dr. Henry Domke, a family physician here in Jefferson City. Henry is unique in that he might talk with a patient for 20-30 minutes before laying on a hand. It finally dawned on me that a weekly chat with Henry might make a pretty interesting podcast. I approached him with the idea…he loved it… and we posted the first show yesterday.

DASH for Health

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My doctor has encouraged me to try the DASH Diet. I don’t need to lose any weight, he just thinks it’s a good healthy, diet. I went back to their website and entered my data: 57 year old male, 155 pounds, moderate activity. Here’s what the DASH program recommends that I eat each day.

Man, that’s lot of fruit and vegetables. If you figure I’m not gonna have spinach for breakfast, that means I have to have three veggies at lunch and three at the evening meal. Tough. Most of the rest seems doable… but who in the hell eats 11 slices of bread a day? I guess I can do two at breakfast and two more at lunch and a couple for the evening meal. But that still leaves 5 slices! I’m sure I’m reading this incorrectly so I have to do a little more research. Stay tuned.

Smoker’s Math

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While I’m on the subject. One of my co-workers is trying to quit smoking. She proudly reported that she’s down from a pack-a-day, to just five cigarettes. She seems to really want to stop and I hope she makes it. But the math kept nagging at me.

Let’s say she starts smoking when she gets up at 7:00 a.m and has her last one before retiring at, say, 11:00 p.m. So she consumes 20 smokes over a 16 hour day. On average, that works out to a cigarette every 48 minutes. And if it takes 5 minutes to smoke one, every 40 minutes she’s reaching for the Virginia Slims. That can’t be right, how would she ever get anything done? So I went back and asked.

“Well, I usually had about three cigarettes before I came to work. Maybe three or four during lunch. And the rest after work. Oh, and we usually take a couple of breaks during the day but only long enough to smoke one.” Okay, let’s re-run the numbers:

07:00 – 08:00 — 3
08:00 – 12:00 — 1
12:00 – 01:00 — 4
01:00 – 05:00 — 1
05:00 – 11:00 — 11

That only leaves 6 hours to smoke 11 cigarettes. One every half-hour until bedtime. My mom smoked two packs a day, every day. If she was awake, she had a Winston in her hand or in the nearby ash try. It was hard but satisfying work and she loved it.