Elevate Your Health Colorado Mark Groshek's blog

Pediatricians answer all kinds of questions from parents, from how much sleep a baby should get to whether green poop is a problem to questions about how to help a teen with a drug addiction, and almost anything between those extremes.  I think one of the most common questions is "how do handle a temper tantrum?"  Whether you have kids or not, we've all experienced them--a child gets angry and upset, starts to cry and scream and then completely loses it.  And often, when the child loses it, ever

Back in March, after the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, I wrote about having a disaster plan.  The horrible things the Japanese went through really made me realize that the unexpected can happen.  But I have to confess that it all still seemed a little abstract to me.  After all, I'm certainly not going to have to worry about a tsunami, a hurricane, or serious flood where I live in Co

I heard an amazing interview yesterday on Colorado Matters on Colorado Public Radio.  Ryan Warner interviewed John Moyer, a retired pediatrician from Evergreen.  Dr.

I was on a rowing team in college.  This weekend my crew was reunited by a bittersweet event—a memorial and the dedication of a new boat for a teammate who died recently.  It was wonderful to get together again, and to remember the many hours we spent together, our great races, and the camaraderie of our team.

I haven't posted in awhile--things have been very busy! But that is part of what I love about my job. I've been in practice for nearly 22 years, and boy have things changed! When I started working, all our charts were on paper. If a child I was taking care of had an appointment with one of my colleagues in another department, I would not be able to get his chart until later. As you can imagine, it is not easy to provide the best care when we only have the information we need part of the time.

The tragedies in Japan have been horrible to watch.  But they should also be making us think about how prepared we are for disaster.  After all, Japan probably has the most earthquake-proof buildings in the world.  Their nuclear safety systems worked perfectly--as soon as the quake started, the reactors shut down.  They know about tsunamis and have an early warning system in place that surely saved thousands of lives, though thousands were also lost.  It was the combination of the enormous quake followed by a huge tsunami that destroyed the backup power systems t

I would imagine that most of us have been watching the news from Japan with a sense of surreal horror.  First, an earthquake of unimaginable proportions.  Then the devastating tsunami.  And now the slow motion nightmare of the nuclear emergency at the Daiichi Power Station.  And you can watch it all on TV or online, 24 hours a day.  I know I feel overwhelmed by it all.  Imagine how your kids feel!

When a pediatrician is seeing kids and teens for their well visits, there are a million questions about health and safety that we want to ask.  One is about using helmets for biking and other sports.  Nowadays, we use a lot of questionnaires to ask some of these questions, so we can focus on the things that seem to be a risk for the patient in the room.  Most parents answer that they do have their kids wear helmets, so I find  am not talking about it as often. 

I haven't talked about child and teen obesity much in the last few months, but if you have been listening to the news, you know things aren't going so well.  Colorado still has the lowest obesity rates in the nation, but they are rising here, as they are everywhere else, and the rate of obesity for kids and teens is rising faster than for adults.  Only 35% of adults in Colorado are expected to be a healthy weight by 2017, if nothing changes.  And we are doing better than every other state!  It is pretty easy to get discouraged about this. 

Why does bullying happen?  And what can we do about it?

Talking with the parents of a child who is being bullied is a difficult conversation to have, because it is often not possible for those parent alone to prevent their child from being bullied.  As much as parents want to solve this problem for their kids, they can't do it, at least not alone.  This is really a problem we have to address as a whole society, and at the same time each of us must individually take a stand against bullying when we come across it.