Thread about medicine & my life:
When I was 14-15, I knew I would become a healer in some sense. I came from a family with serious metabolic illness & “beating the genes” was my top priority.
When I was 14-15, I knew I would become a healer in some sense. I came from a family with serious metabolic illness & “beating the genes” was my top priority.
Along the way in college, and after college, my intellectually curiosity led me down many paths. I started by exploring Wall Street for a bit, on the analytical side, researching companies and product candidates. Meanwhile I studied for MCATs.
As I continued studying for my entrance exam, I started an intelligence service with 5 other people, we collectively analyzed much of the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, analyzing clinical trials, market potential
Every major biotech hedgefund was our client & some small pharma companies contracted our services.
My life story led me there because I was intellectually curious, how drugs worked, how they were approved, how pharma assessed market potential, etc.
On one hand pharma made miracles but on another hand, well.... what I learned was actually quite different. I saw the way in which pharma exploited the medical legal landscape
At my core this irked me, but my job was to provide intelligence, so I largely ignored my discontent, chalking it up to: “this is capitalism”, “this is how it is”...
Simultaneously, during that initial time prior to medical school, I became fascinated with eastern medicine, martial arts and yoga. All driven by my intellectual curiosity & a desire to understand life & health.
I practiced karate & ju jitsu hours a day for several years, like I was desperately trying to learn a new language as quickly as possible.
In any case, eventually I was accepted into medical school, locally, and I stayed in the NY area, which is what I wanted. But the martial arts stopped, and my intellectual curiosity was now more exclusively applied to medicine.
During medical school I continued to help run the pharma intelligence service until I couldn’t, until the demand of medical school & residency became too great
In medical school, I remember looking at my coulleagues and to some extent judging them based on this one incident 👇🏻
I remember sitting in a lecture with @SeeFisch in my 2nd or 3rd year. If you haven’t been to a lecture by him, you are missing out
I noticed right away that this was a man who had immense intellectually curiosity, BUT he also carried that quality with what I call divine inspiration.
His intellectual interest was beyond evident. He quoted religious texts, recited Rumi & Elizabeth Barrett brown & lectured in 2-3 languages all while making the difficulties of medicine easy and understandable
What re-invigorated my passion for medicine was one simple question... he looked around the room at 3rd year medical students and asked....
“What is kim kardashians boyfriends name” ... everyone responded “Kanye” or whatever it was at the time.
Then he asked, “what drugs lower mortality in acute mi” and there was a less enthusiastic response.
Then he asked, “what drugs lower mortality in acute mi” and there was a less enthusiastic response.
It was at that moment that I knew I had to re-devote myself to medicine. I read Harrison’s twice since then, probably all of UpToDate, Mksap several times and countless other medical textbooks.
I eventually dropped my passion and remaining interest in analytical work in biotech and pharma. Focused on residency, ultimately became chief resident.
Little known fact: in my first year of residency, someone in my program complained to my director about my tweets. (That didn’t stop me BTW)
I continued to study medicine with intense passion, reading trials, journals, etc. ultimately I became chief resident & tried to cultivate a culture of passion in students & residents.
Yet, my personal physical transformation didnt occur until my wife challenged me to focus my intellectually curiosity & passion on myself & my own medical problems
That’s when I turned to medical literature for answers about combating obesity & modern disease...
My approach in life has been steered by intellectual curiosity, re-invigorated by the few who also have this quality & then applied by support & nudging by my wife.
Ultimately, my approach to disease was based in evidence & born from the medical literature. It is the culmination of my life story to date and brings me back to when I was 14-15 when I knew I would be a healer. It is based in intellectually curiosity & powered by passion.
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