It's that time of year again! Ramadan begins in less than a week. It's a great time to start good habits and stop bad ones.

While Ramadan is designed to be a month of empathy, caring, compassion, humility, piety, and many other things, it's also a great time of year to make changes. This is the month of fasting, wherein Muslims are required to fast during the daylight hours. No food, no drink, no smoke, no chewing gum, no form of oral sustenance whatsoever. Basically, you are NPO while the sun is up. The point of this month is to be able to empathize with those who are less fortunate and gain some humblitude.

But sustenance isn't the only thing you are supposed to avoid. You are also supposed to be a better human being, be kind, don't lie, cheat, steal, be more generous, and be a better person overall.

For these reasons and many others, Ramadan is a great time to do "New Year's Resolutions". I always tell Muslim friends and patients that this is the time to quit smoking, adopt a new diet regimen, make other lifestyle changes, avoid saturated fat, eat more fruits and vegetables, and so on and so forth. Ramadan is perfect in that regard. It's great for stopping bad habits.

Ramadan is also great for starting new good habits. Become more generous, donate to local food shelters, start a new diet for life (like the Alo Diet http://www.AloDiet.com), begin a nightly exercise routine, pray more, get closer to God, help a friend in need, become more humble, donate a skill you know, give a talk at a local grade school, see patients for free at a local clinic, do more "family" stuff, plant a tree, etc, etc. You get the picture.... BE A BETTER PERSON!

Let's all make a commitment to maximizing this Ramadan and making the world around us a better place!

Enjoy this Ramadan!

(stay tuned on a follow up post regard medical research that has been conducted on people who fast during Ramadan)

I am not big on New Year's Resolutions. I think that if you decide to do something good, you should start right away. Not wait for some magical time. Don't delay, procrastinate and waste time. Just start your new habit.

If you are a big fan of New Year's Resolutionsm here are some that I think you should consider:

1. Stop smoking! This is the single most important lifestyle modification that will make the biggest impact on your life. Stop hookah, cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, whatever it is.... Just stop! Nothing makes a bigger impact on your health and future than quitting smoking. If you have already tried quitting, try again! Most people try quitting 7-11 times before they finally kick the habit. It is the hardest addiction to break, we know that. But you have to fight it! I can't tell you how bad it is. Every patient I've had who has had a heart attack under the age of 50 has been a smoker! Smoking runs in families. If you smoke, your kids are more likely to smoke. Of all the things your kids could inherit, don't let this be one of them. People who smoke are dumber, have lower IQs, are more likely to be depressed and have mental issues, and teens that smoke are more likely to be obese adults. Please stop this God awful habit.

2. Stop eating! I know you aren't going to start an exercise program. Our lives are busy. We can squeeze in some exercise once or twice a week if we try. That's just life. Instead, stop eating! Eighty-five percent of your body composition is what you eat. The last 10-15% can be fixed by exercise. If you want to look good and lose weight, stop eating so much. I like to use substitution. Substitute good things for bad. Instead of mayonaise, use mustard. Instead of ground beef, use ground turkey. Instead of butter, use oil. Instead of white bread, use multigrain. Instead of sugar, use splenda. Salad instead of potatoes. Veggies instead of fries.

All diets work! Just pick one and do it! Atkins, Low Fat, Zone, Southbeach, Weight Watchers, whatever it is..... just pick one and do it! They all work. Pick one you can actually do! Then..... eat like that forever! A diet is not temporary! Do you breathe temporarily? A diet is a lifelong committment. Just do it!

3. Start moving! I realize that it's hard to get people to move and exercise. Just try to get moving somehow. Get an exercise bike or something. Get a health club membership (and actually use it). Get your kids and friends involved. Pick up a new hobby or sport that involves activity. Biking, weight-lifting, hiking, climbing, basketball, golf, anything. Exercise helps your mental health, mood, longevity, waist size, and overall wellbeing! Just do it!

4. Stay out of the sun! If you don't want wrinkles and don't want to age, steer clear of UV rays. It's that simple.

5. Change your worst characteristic! Figure out what you hate about yourself. Or what people hate about you. And change it! What is it that you do that you wish you could change? Temper? Lying? Condescending? Not romantic? Arrogance? Non-commital? Ignorant? Racist? Get better!

6. Change careers! If you hate your job and your life.... now is a great time to quit and be what you've always wanted to be. Stop making yourself (and everyone else at work) miserable. Take classes, move to a new city, explore your dreams!

7. Adopt a charity! If you don't give to charity.... you should. Find a cause you like and decide to adopt that cause. Find a charity for that cause and give them financial support as well as volunteer your time. It can be anything!

8. Spend more time with family! If you haven't seen your parents, grandparents, kids, spouse, cousins, whatever it is.... find them, call them, spend time with them. I am sure we all do this anyways, but put in some extra effort this year.

9. Stop spending! You don't have to buy everything on earth that you want. You don't need 300 pairs of shoes! You don't need 5 computers. You don't need new speakers. You don't need that dress. You don't need a new car. Stop spending this year, and save. Americans affinity for saving is only 5%. We only save 5% of what we make. Is that not insane? Find discount stores and purchase thing online if you need them. You don't need "brand name" everything. Get the Target, Walmart, Jewel, or Aldi version. They are all made in the same factory anyways and are exactly the same. Spend less! Only buy things you need! Make that a goal this year! You will be very happy!

10. Reconnect! Find someone from your past and reconnect. In a genuine sense. See what they are up to or how they have been doing. See if they want to hang out. Facebook has brought the present and past together. Find some old friends and hang out.

11. Visit someone sick. If any of your friends or family members are ill, pay them a visit. This is rewarding for you and very uplifting for them.

12. Help someone out! Someone needs a contact, needs a letter of recommendation, needs a phone number.... help someone out! If their life is made better, so will yours!

If you think of anything else, start right away. Don't wait a year!

In the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd expound on the Muslim view of Jesus Christ. I've been asked about this at work nearly every day for the past few weeks.

Muslims love Jesus Christ and consider him one of the top 5 historical figures in history, alongside Moses, Abraham, Adam and Muhammad.

In fact, it is a requirement of our faith to believe in Jesus Christ. Muslims have to believe in Jesus Christ! No other religion that I know of has a prerequisite of its own faith, to believe in a religious figure of another faith. Since we consider Jesus Christ to be one of our own prophets and messengers from God, we consider him as a part of our faith as well. We believe that God continually kept sending prophets to us over time to renew his message. We believe the message is the same, starting with Adam, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, Lot, Joseph, Jesus and all the way through Muhammad.

In fact, Jesus Christ foretold of Muhammad. He said that if another messenger comes after him and tells us that Jesus is from God, then he is also from God. In essence Jesus told us about Muhammad. Take a look at 1 John 4:2 you will see that Jesus says, "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.” The word spirit in the Bible usually refers to prophets.

Want more proof that Muslims hold Jesus in the highest regard? The word "Jesus Christ" is mentioned in our book (the Quran) 33 times, whereas "Muhammad" is only mentioned 4 times. In fact, an entire chapter of our Quran is titled and dedicated to the mother of Jesus, the Virgin Mary.

We believe in the Virgin birth, that Jesus was taken up by God (resurrection), and that he will return (second coming). People don't realize this.

The Quran encourages Muslim to work with Christians, Jews and people of faith on common moral issues and values. The Quran says, “Oh Christians and Jews, bring your women and children, and we will bring ours, and let us discuss the birth of Christ.” (3:61) in another place it ends with “and let us agree on a kind word.” (3:64)

The Quran says that the closest people to you are the Christians. (5:82)

Prophet Muhammad said: “He who hurts a Christian or Jew has hurt me.”

Most people don't realize that there is so much similarity between Islam and Christianity. William Baker, a famous Biblical scholar and theologian wrote a book titled, More in common than you think, wherein he outlines the similarities between the world's largest two faiths. Check it out on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/More-Common-Than-You-Think/dp/0910643016/

A very good friend of mine who is a Catholic priest once said to me, "You are more Christian than I am" after we discussed the above Muslim views about Jesus Christ.

Enjoy the holidays! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Eid, Happy Kwanza, and all the other wonderful holidays! 

Smoking Hookah (aka nargileh, argeelah, narjile, goza, water pipe, sheesha) has become fashionable among educated professionals and college kids in the United States. Smoking has always been a disease of the poor and uneducated, however, Hookah seems to be transcending these bounds. For some reason, hookah smoking has been able to make it out of the ghettos of uneducated Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt and make it to America's university campii. Why are educated, intelligent young people taking up this habit? Is it peer pressure, mental illness, or just a fad?

It's been estimated that 43% of cigarettes in the US are consumed by people with mental illness. Experts feel that smoking leads to depression, and depression leads to smoking. So are these kids using Hookah to help their mental illness?

A study on young people in the United Arab Emirates found that 69% of hookah smokers had a college education, while 23% had a high school education. Are they just ignoring the facts? Or do they not care? Do they have mental health disease?

Further, the myth about smokers losing weight  has been demystified. A recent study has shown that teenagers that smoke are more likely to be obese adults. Probably because if they are making bad choices as teens, they will likely make bad choices as adults. Further, they have an oral addiction. They constantly need to be putting things in their mouth.

Is Hookah better than cigarettes?
In two words: Hell No! In one study it was found that smoking Hookah for one hour is equivalent to smoking 200 (and up to 400) cigarettes. What if you are just around but don't smoke? Even if you never touch the Hookah, if you are in the room for one hour, you have smoked nearly 100 (and up to 200) cigarettes. Another study found that one puff on a cigarette gives the user 50mL of smoke volume, whereas one inhalation on a Hookah pipe gives the user 500mL of smoke. Ten times more! And that's on just one inhalation! It's estimated that in a 30 minute Hookah session most adults consume approximately 50 Liters of smoke volume! Nearly 1000 times more! That is unbelievable!

Cancer shmanser!
We all know that smoke, tar, and the carcinogens in smoke cause all kinds of cancers. That is obvious. We don't need to repeat those over and over. Bladder cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, oral cancer, tongue cancer, and nearly every other cancer! Not to mention it destroys your blood vessels from the inside out, which in turn destroys every organ system! Every single patient I have had that had a heart attack before the age of 50, has been a smoker. Some as young as 26 and 32. Awful!

Other effects?
Young people don't care if you tell them they will get cancer or a heart attack when they are old and die. What they care about is immediate results. Smoking causes yellow teeth, yellow, brittle hair, bad breath, wrinkles in your skin (especially on your face), bad hands and fingers (the tips of your fingers get fatter and shorter), vocal changes, tooth and gum disease, and a lot of things that are easily noticeable. Nasty! You can easily tell who is a smoker and who isn't by how they look.

Is Hookah Haram?
The word Haram in Arabic and Islamic tradition means "religiously forbidden." As Muslims, one of our most important tennets is "No harm and no harming". This is very similar to the physician's creed: "First do no harm!"

The Prophet Muhammad (and all religious leaders) have taught that people should not harm themselves. The Prophet Muhammad said: "No Harm and No Harming!"

Jesus and the Bible teach in Corinthians: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

In other words, DO NOT HARM YOURSELVES NOR YOUR BODIES!

Professional athletes are supposed to take care of their bodies and be ready to play and do very well. Surveys of former NFL players have shown a very low smoking rate compared to the national average. That should tell you enough!

I am no religious scholar by any means, but to me it's pretty clear: Hookah is Haram (and Horrible)!

If you need resources and links to articles:

We all know that nicotine is not the worse part of cigarettes. That's just the part that keeps you addicted. By far, smoking is the hardest addiction to break, in part due to ncotine and it's physically addicting properties. They want you addicted, and put it in their. The other part of smoke is the carcinogenic, wrinkle-ogenic, and nasty-ogenic parts.

Further, hookah does contain tar, nicotine, and carbon and much more than cigarettes:
http://www.kansan.com/photos/2009/oct/08/6925/

The numbers on smoke volume come from "The Hookah Lounge":
http://www.thehookahlounge.org/2006/06/30/is-smoking-a-hookah-bad-for-your-health/

Which is actually a website that actually advocates the use of hookah as well as others who have connected hookah to machines and measured smoke volume. Those numbers are from a World Health Organization study. You can view the WHO advisory here:

http://www.who.int/tobacco/global_interaction/tobreg/Waterpipe%20recommendation_Final.pdf

Which is where most of the research comes from.

The Mayo Clinic also has a resource on Hookah:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hookah/AN01265

and demonstrates hookah to cigarette equivalency.

An article here also shows that hookah smoke is just as bad, if not worse based on a JAMA article:
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080103/hookah-smoking-as-tough-on-lungs-as-cigarettes.htm

and here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE57O2RZ20090825

and:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/03/AR2006070300774.html

Reading the recent CNN article on fasting reminded me of an article I wrote a few years ago on losing weight in Ramadan.

Unfortunately, many Muslims end up gaining weight during Ramadan, as opposed to losing weight. Just the other day, myself anda few friends went to an ethnic Muslim restaurant to break our fast. They had a buffet, where at 7PM everyone could go up and fill their plates. As we were sitting around waiting for the line to die down, you saw people just loading up their plates. Old men, young women, teenagers, kids, elderly women.... all of them had over 5000 calories on each plate. I was shocked, but I should not have been.

No human, especially not the elderly, needs more than 1600-2000 calories PER DAY! I told the guys that I was with that you are gonna see a lot of leftovers on plates. Sure enough, as we were leaving, we saw piles and piles of left over food. This is really sad. Wasted food is a shame, especially when the whole point of Ramadan is to be able to empathize with those who don't have food! The problem is that people have different expectations when they are fasting. They think they can eat a mountain of food, but they don't realize how much their stomachs shrink. It would have been easy to fill only half your plate, eat, then see if you are hungry again. What a shame.

There are ways to lose weight during Ramadan and it's not that hard. Take a look at the article I wrote:

http://toledomuslims.com/Criterion/Article.asp?ID=170