Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.
William OslerRead
We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
Interpretation
Most of what we consume does not contribute positively to our well-being, leading to waste.
William Osler highlights the idea that many of our dietary choices fail to provide the nourishment we need for optimal health. He suggests that a significant portion of what we eat is wasted in terms of energy and nutrition, urging us to be mindful of our food choices and their impact on our bodies.
In practice
During a health workshop discussing the importance of nutrition, this quote could emphasize the need to choose foods wisely.
Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.
I think people who become compulsive about fitness or eating right, a lot of the time it's out of fear that they're going to lose control or that they're not good enough, so I think anything done out of fear or motivated by fear is often unhealthy.
I expected social rank to be the determining factor in health, and in some ways that's true. But far more important is what sort of society that rank occurs in. Being low ranking in a benevolent troop is a hell of a lot better for your blood pressure than being low ranking in an aggressive troop.
Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Don't eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
What the American public thinks is very important to the future of global health. Many people are moved by the idea that there is unnecessary suffering in the world, and we could do a lot to stop it. We have the technologies necessary to stop most of the suffering.
This is what people don't understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.
So what we're all hoping to do, us researchers, is to develop ways to not really just extend lifespan but to keep people healthier for longer. We may just have a greater impact than a single drug because these drugs could potentially treat one disease but prevent 20 others.
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