McCall, Timothy B.
McCall, Timothy B.
PERSONAL:
Education: University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.D.
ADDRESSES:
Home—San Francisco, CA. E-mail—Yogadoctor@gmail.com.
CAREER:
Writer and physician. Medical commentaries were featured on the public radio program Marketplace, 1995-2001. Practiced medicine in Boston, MA, for ten years before becoming full-time writer.
MEMBER:
WRITINGS:
Examining Your Doctor: A Patient's Guide to Avoiding Harmful Medical Care, Carol Publishing Group (Secaucus, NJ), 1995.
Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing: A Yoga Journal Book, photographs by Michal Venera, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2007.
Contributor to periodicals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, Public Citizen's Health Letter, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times. Columnist for Bottom Line Health; medical editor of the Yoga Journal.
SIDELIGHTS:
Timothy B. McCall is a licensed internist who practiced medicine for more than ten years in the Boston area of Massachusetts. He has since become a full-time writer. His first book, Examining Your Doctor: A Patient's Guide to Avoiding Harmful Medical Care, was published in 1995 and is meant to educate patients to deal effectively with their physicians from a position that equalizes the power between the two. He emphasizes topics such as the importance of the patient-physician dialogue, getting second opinions, and the need to have trust in a physician. He also provides charts for evaluating physicians and other health-care providers.
The author begins his book by looking at whether or not the doctor is doing a good physical examination and how to get good medical care in an HMO. He writes of avoiding unnecessary routine tests, how to get the right test, and looking at test results. He focuses two chapters on physicians taking enough time with their patients and another several chapters discussing prescription drugs, from the physician prescribing drugs to the risks and benefits of drug therapy. He discusses surgeons, prevention, addiction, and misdiagnoses. He ends with an examination of the connection between emotions, health and disease, the socialization of doctors, telling a good doctor from a bad one, and the effect of your type of health insurance on recommendations for surgery and other aspects of health care. In addition, the book includes information on special-interest organizations and sources of information on specific medical problems.
Noting that the author "offers a blueprint for being an informed consumer," a contributor to HealthFacts went on to write in the same review: "Dr. McCall does a good job of warning of the pitfalls of medical care while informing us of the mind set displayed by many doctors." Several reviewers also noted that the book is not a diatribe against practicing physicians or modern health care. As noted by Shannan Higgins writing in the Network News: "Unlike some critiques of the medical system, McCall does not suggest that all doctors are ‘out to get’ their patients or too money hungry to provide quality care. Still, he convincingly exposes the external influences and incentives which affect the way some doctors practice medicine."
The author began in 2000 to investigate the therapeutic aspects of yoga, as well as the scientific explanations of yoga's effects. His book Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing: A Yoga Journal Book, with photographs by Michal Venera, focuses on the use of yoga to improve physical, emotional and spiritual health. The book first provides an overview of the history and science of yoga. The author discusses who can benefit from yoga and provides yoga practice routines geared to individual fitness levels. In addition to discussing postures, breathing techniques, and meditation as a way to prevent and heal illness, the author explores yoga as a way of becoming more in tune with the body and how to find an instructor and type of yoga that is appropriate for individual needs. Citing the work of noted yoga medical practitioners, the author shows how yoga has been applied to a wide range of disease, including arthritis, chronic fatigue, depression, heart disease, infertility, and even HIV/AIDS.
"No doubt McCall's fine articulation of yoga's healing potential will appeal to a large audience of instructors, students, physicians and their patients," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Booklist contributor Mike Tribby noted that the book is "conversational in organization as well as tone" and also wrote that the author provides an "informative guide to obtaining good medical care."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 1995, Mike Tribby, review of Examining Your Doctor: A Patient's Guide to Avoiding Harmful Medical Care, p. 1850.
Choice, January 1, 1996, D.R. Shanklin, review of Examining Your Doctor, p. 824.
HealthFacts, October, 1996, review of Examining Your Doctor, p. 6.
JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, October 4, 1995, Jill Waalen, review of Examining Your Doctor, p. 1083.
Library Journal, June 15, 2007, Dana Ladd, review of Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing: A Yoga Journal Book, p. 86.
Network News, September-October, 1995, Shannan Higgins, review of Examining Your Doctor, p. 4.
Publishers Weekly, June 5, 1995, review of Examining Your Doctor, p. 58; May 21, 2007, review of Yoga as Medicine, p. 51.
ONLINE
Timothy B. McCall Home Page,http://www.drmccall.com (April 21, 2008).
Yoga Journal,http://www.yogajournal.com/ (April 21, 2008), brief profile of author.