Dr. Gabe Mirkin

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File:Gabe Mirkin.jpg

Dr. Gabe Mirkin on one of his radio talk shows

Dr. Gabe Baron Mirkin (born on 18 June 1935) is a physician who hosted a radio show on health and fitness for more than 20 years and wrote several books on sports medicine, nutrition, and health. He was a long-distance runner who organized age group running and women's running for the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and was elected to the Road Runner's Club of America Hall of Fame and the DC Road Runners Club Hall of Fame.

Biography

Early Life

Mirkin was born on June 18, 1935, in Brookline, Massachusetts to Mitchell and Vera (Baron) Mirkin. His parents were born in Russia and immigrated to the United States, where his father collected insurance policy premiums for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and his mother taught piano lessons. He was brought up in Roxbury, a suburb in Boston.

Education

He was graduated from Boston Latin School in 1953, Harvard College in 1957, and Baylor Medical School in 1961.

Personal Life

• In 1961, Dr. Mirkin married Irene Mannheimer and had four children with her: Gene, Jan, Jill, and Geoff.
• In 1983, he married Mona Shangold, M.D. and they had a son, Kenneth.
• He married Diana Purdie Rich in 1997.

• In 2008, he retired from his medical practice in Maryland and moved to The Villages, Florida. He and his wife, Diana, ride daily with a large group of tandem bicyclists, maintain a website, produce a weekly newsletter, and write a column on health and fitness for the Villages-News.com.

Career

Medical Career

Dr. Mirkin opened a private practice in Sports Medicine, Allergy and Immunology in Silver Spring, MD from 1966-1968. He served in the United States Army at Fort Belvoir from 1969-1970 and then resumed his medical practice in Silver Spring and Kensington, MD from 1970 until his retirement in 2008.

Teaching Appointments

He took a residency in Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1961-1963 and a fellowship in Allergy and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD from 1963-1965. During his training, he served as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Medical Schools. He was Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland (1972-77) and Associate Clinical Professor in Pediatrics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine (1982-2008). He has been a featured speaker at the Family Medicine Review Course conducted by Temple University for more than 30 years (1986-present).

Long-Distance Running

During his fellowship at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Mirkin started to train for long-distance races and ran twice a day. He then chose to settle in Washington, DC because, at that time, it was the only city in the U.S. with competitive long-distance races 52 weeks a year. He continued to race competitively into his late thirties.

While at Johns Hopkins, he founded the Run-for-Your-Life Program in 1962, a two-mile fun run for novice runners that was added to regular Road Runners Club of America weekly road races for more senior runners. He was the founder and the first National Chairman of the Age Group Long Distance Running Committee of the AAU. As a result of his organizational efforts, he was named to the Road Runners Club of America Hall of Fame in 1984 and the DC Road Runners Hall of Fame in 2003.

Writing Career

As a physician practicing sports medicine and a competitive athlete, Mirkin had experience with sports injuries and their causes. He taught one of the earliest undergraduate courses in sports injuries at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1972-77. He wrote The Sports Medicine Book, reviewed by Jane Brody in The New York Times (1/8/79) which led to his radio shows and syndicated newspaper columns and has been used by athletes and coaches for decades. For example, in the book he coined the term RICE as a mnemonic for treating injuries (Rest, Ice, Compression. Elevation), and when his advice changed in 2016, it became the subject of stories on Fox News, in The Washington Post and other news outlets. One of his other books, The Complete Sports Medicine Book for Women, was also reviewed by Jane Brody in The New York Times. He also wrote about the devastating effects of addiction to Quaaludes in The Sad Story of Karen Carpenter.

Bibliography

• The Sports Medicine Book (with Marshall Hoffman, Little, Brown and Company, 1978; ISBN: 0316574368)
• Getting Thin (with Laura Foreman, Little, Brown and Company, 1983; ISBN: 0316574392)
• The Complete Sports Medicine Book for Women (with Mona Shangold, M.D., Simon and Schuster, 1985; ISBN: 067155722X)
• Women and Exercise: Physiology and Sports Medicine (with Mona Shangold, M.D., F.A. Davis Company, 1988; ISBN: 0803678177)
• Fat Free, Flavor Full (with Diana Rich Mirkin, Little, Brown and Company, February 1995; ISBN: 0316574732)
• The 20/30 Fat and Fiber Diet Plan (with Barry Fox and Diana Rich Mirkin, Harper Resource, 1998; ISBN: 9780062736505)
• The Healthy Heart Miracle (with Diana Mirkin, Harper Resource, 2003; ISBN: 0061240532)

Contributions to Health and Fitness

Dangers of the Beverly Hills Diet

The Beverly Hills Diet is a fad diet that was developed by author Judy Mazel in one of her books. This diet argues that proteins and carbohydrates should never be eaten or combined on the same day. It begins with the consumption of a series of prescribed fruits in a specific order for the first ten days of the program. On the succeeding days from days 11 to 18, the dieter can choose to add bread, two tablespoons of butter, and three cobs of corn. The dieter will not be allowed to consume complete protein until day 19 of the plan.

Although this diet poses promising results, it has been dubbed by nutrition experts as quackery basing on the discredited idea of food combining. Dr. Mirkin and Dr. Ronald Shore contributed to the growing number of critics by submitting a report that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1981. They noted a number of significant inaccuracies that could very well result in physical harm to those who choose to follow the regimen. They also pointed out that there was no evidence to support the scientific validity of the diet program and that it even stood in opposition to established knowledge in the medical profession about nutrition. According to them, it was “the latest, and perhaps the worst, entry in the diet-fad derby”.

RICE

­This is an acronym for rest, ice, compression, and elevation. The mnemonic, introduced by Dr. Gabe Mirkin in The Sports Medicine Book 1978, serves as a guideline for treating soft tissue injuries. However, he has since recanted his support for the regimen and wrote on March 16, 2014 that “Coaches have used my 'RICE' guideline for decades, but now it appears that both Ice and complete Rest may delay healing, instead of helping. In a recent study, athletes were told to exercise so intensely that they developed severe muscle damage that caused extensive muscle soreness. Although cooling delayed swelling, it did not hasten recovery from this muscle damage.” Today, RICE is considered as a first-aid treatment and not a cure for soft tissue injuries. Its aim is to manage internal bleeding and discomfort.

Goldman's Dilemma

Also known as the Goldman dilemma, this is a question posed to elite athletes by Robert Goldman (physician, osteopath, and publicist). The question asks whether elite athletes would willingly take a drug that would promise immense in sport but would cause them to die after only five years.

During the 1970s, Dr. Mirkin conducted his own research and reported that more than half of the top runners he interviewed would accept the proposal. He asked the runners: "If I could give you a pill that would make you an Olympic champion and also kill you in a year, would you take it?"

Due to this surprising result, Bob Goldman was prompted to ask world-class athletes in combat and power sports this question: "If I had a magic drug that was so fantastic that if you took it once you would win every competition you would enter from the Olympic Decathlon to the Mr Universe, for the next five years but it had one minor drawback, it would kill you five years after you took it, would you still take the drug?" More than half of them also answered in the affirmative. The results of this research was consistent in his findings from 1982 to 1995.

Dr. Mirkin and Goldman’s research results were widely reported; however, due to the shocking implications their research held around doping in sport, it was also criticized.

However, a recent research involving participants at an elite-level track and field meet in North America reported that an overwhelming rejection of the Goldman’s dilemma was posed by them when surveyed via interview or online response.

Sprained Ankle Treatment

This is a common injury where sprain occurs on one or more ligaments of the ankle. Dr. Gabe Mirkin – who previously popularized the term RICE but now has some issues with the “I” in it – notes that since modern studies now state that ice closes off blood vessels, “ice doesn’t increase healing – it delays it”. Now, he advises to skip the “I” altogether unless it is needed to reduce the pain from swelling. But despite having recanted his previous support of using ice for treating soft tissue injuries, it is still widely accepted.

References

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