Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran

In May, I was invited to take part in a survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to better delineate how long Covid is described and diagnosed as part of The National Research Action Plan on Long Covid. The survey had several questions around definitions and criteria to include, such as “brain fog” often experienced by those with long Covid. My intuition piqued, and I began to wonder about the similarities between these neurological symptoms and those experienced...

Gastroenteritis (“stomach flu”) is a term that refers to gut inflammation – the stomach, small intestine, and colon -- caused by a virus, bacteria, parasite, or fungus. Globally, the burden of disease for gastroenteritis caused by norovirus alone is 685 million. There are over 179 million cases in the United States each year. As gut issues are a common complaint in functional medicine and integrative medicine practices, we break down the causes, symptoms, risk facts, and management approach f...

Amitha Kalaichandran is a physician, health tech consultant and writer.
This particular meeting of the Serendipity Society begins the way most meetings do: a round of re-introductions, knowing smiles, and recounting recent travels and milestones. In 2019, the society held its first international conference in London. Since then, it has held multiple topic-themed symposiums, and this one was highly technical: recommendation algorithms (the sort that Netflix may use to suggest other programs yo...

What prescription would you recommend?” my attending physician asked me.
We had just admitted a patient to the large teaching hospital where I was a medical student. He had been in hypertensive crisis with type-2 diabetes and would soon need a medication he could take at home. This was the first Black patient I had helped evaluate with this condition, and I knew we could not recommend the standard medications, the ones prescribed to all of the patients I had seen up to that point in my medica...

A new crop of researchers hope that computational psychiatry will shift how we understand the mind, which could lead to novel ways to diagnose and treat psychiatric disorders
“To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller.
One rainy Wednesday evening in November, I had dinner in Mayfair, central London, with a successful filmmaker, whom I’ll call Arthur. I thought I had him pinned after the first course of a rather extensive vegetarian ta...

**Honored to have been invited to give a webinar for Happify, an evidence-based platform to improve joy. Here I share some obvious and not so obvious ways to improve stress resilience with some practical tools. Please enjoy.**

Value-based care is one of the most crucial concepts in healthcare today, in both the US and Canada.
But how do we define it? Atul Gawande penned an excellent article in the New Yorker several years ago which hits the main points in a very compelling way. Further, several years ago, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation launched the “Choosing Wisely” initiative in part to support value-based care and reduce wasteful procedures/treatments (including that which has little to...

**Podcast interview Recorded in 2019**

When Adam Grant, the author of the book Give and Take and professor at the Wharton School of Business, defined givers as someone who strives to be generous in sharing their time, energy, knowledge, and skills with other people who might benefit from them, he must have been talking about today’s guest, Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran.

She is a pediatric resident and health journalist, who has written for publications like The New York Times, The Walrus, The Atavist, The Boston Globe, ABC News, and th...

**Podcast interview on the AllSorts Podcast**

Be honest: how many self help books do you own? Are you reading one right now? Are you a biohacker or someone always reading the latest book on wellness? Do you actually feel any better as a result?
In our earnest quest to take care of ourselves, to live happier and more meaningful lives, it can be too easy to let others set the bar for our success. Is this a mistake? Now, we can all get caught up this—easily. But especially right now, when we can’t begin to unpack the trauma of the last two ...

Amitha Kalaichandran is a physician and writer based in Toronto. Her first book, On Healing, will be published in 2023.
The books, I’ve realized, are the gateway drug. I thought back to the first time. It was 2010, and several friends had recommended the same one: A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. “You’ll hate it if you aren’t ready,” a friend said. “But trust me, if you are, then … well, boom!” She made a gesture to suggest her brain (or perhaps it was her mind) was exploding into the air. My o...

Over the span of four long days in September 1918, two leading voices expressed dismay about what was then known as the “Spanish influenza.”
First, Lt. Col. Philip Doane, who led the Health and Sanitation Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, “forcefully” voiced that the Germans were behind the epidemic, which had reached American shores earlier in the year. He theorized that German spies may have spilled the virus in a locale where a large number of Americans had gathered, such as a ci...

Over the span of four long days in September 1918, two leading voices expressed dismay about what was then known as the “Spanish Influenza.” First, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Doane, who led the Health and Sanitation Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, “forcefully” voiced that the Germans were behind the epidemic which had reached American shores earlier in the year, theorizing that German spies may have spilled the virus in a locale where a large number of Americans had gathered, such ...

er husband collapsed just before reaching the top of the stairs in their small one-bedroom house in São Paulo, Brazil. Frantic, Thais Andrade grabbed the portable pulse oximeter she had purchased after hearing that a low oxygen reading could be the first sign of the novel coronavirus. Erik’s reading was hovering eight points lower than it had that morning. He also looked feverish.
“When he hit 90% [on the oximeter], I said we can’t wait anymore,” Andrade recalled. “I called an ambulance.”
At ...

We rarely discuss ‘rest’ as a strategy for well-being.
However, over the last month, three professional athletes withdrew from major tournaments in order to prioritize rest for both their emotional and physical recovery, which has prompted some necessary conversation.
First, 23 year-old Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open (and later, Wimbledon), citing her mental health as the need to step away to recover. Then, 39-year-old Roger Federer announced he was stepping back from the French Op...

In 2001, when the pediatric allergist Gideon Lack asked a group of some 80 parents in Tel Aviv if their kids were allergic to peanuts, only two or three hands went up. Lack was puzzled. Back home in the UK, peanut allergy had fast become one of the most common alle...