Preface: After one year of a two-year Behavioral Neurology fellowship at Harvard Medical School I was faced with the leaving of my mentor and the offer to travel with him to the midwest to complete my second year. This presented all kinds of problems, including the fact that my wife was firmly ensconced in her fellowship in Infertility at the same Medical Center in Boston and she was pregnant with our first son. Then in one innocuous moment in Beth Israel Hospital that January of 1994 a friend and colleague, Anthony, advised me to think about becoming a neuroendocrinologist. There was his vacating space available in a Neuroendocrine Fellowship with Andrew Herzog, MD. He told me in this new field I would meet lots of young interesting people and cure or help most of them. Moreover, my wife, a Reproductive Endocrinologist, was canvassing hard that Chicago was too cold and that hormones were very interesting. They both were largely right. After 20 years in the field this has been my experience.
By combining Behavioral/Cognitive Neurology with Neuroendocrinology, I became what I would call a clinical Psychoneuroendocrinologist. In fact, there is a medical journal called Psychoneuroendocrinology with a lime green cover that publishes the research done in the field, though most studies concern rodent’s hormones and their behaviors. What I hope to do with this blog is transmit to the larger human public the amazing clinical and scientific facts that I come across in this field on a regular basis. After consulting with patients who have come to New York City to see me, they nearly always ask me, “Why doesn’t anybody outside this office know about this stuff?” This is my response – to let people know about this stuff.