Medical

Taking a break from technology is a fine idea, but we don’t need a pseudoscientific new name for it: dopamine fasting.  Launched with viral Silicon Valley memes, online reports, and articles in the New York Times and elsewhere, dopamine fasting is now a thing.  Basically, the idea is to temporarily deprive oneself of the usual stimulations of life — largely electronic…

“As an oncologist, perhaps the hardest part I play is as witness. I am there to give a diagnosis that, more often than not, will alter someone’s life forever. For some, I see resignation—a sense that they’ve known something was wrong and that it’s what they thought they had. For others, I see an almost…

An excerpt from Dying with Ease: A Compassionate Guide for Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions. Used by permission of the publisher Rowman & Littlefield. All rights reserved. In 2017, there were 2,813,503 deaths in the United States. About a quarter of Americans die of heart disease, some 22 percent from cancer, and about one in twenty…

You are doing all the right things: washing your hands frequently, wearing a mask when out in public, getting the requisite sunlight needed to reduce stress and maintain your health. And the reward you’re getting for all your diligence? Dry skin, damaged nails, acne, and sunburns. As we continue to live with the threat of…

We were surprised by the “So you want to be a doctor? Here are 10 myths debunked.”.  It did not represent our collective experiences as family physicians.  We offer an alternative perspective: 1. You’ll be rich. An average family physician, at a salary of about $230K, makes more than 93 percent of other households. The…

Despite the advances in modern health care, chronic wounds remain highly problematic.  For the critically ill and those with mobility issues, missing just one routine repositioning could send them down a protracted path of intensive wound care therapies.  Even our ambulatory patients develop non-healing ulcers from neuropathy and microvascular disease.  For purposes of this discussion,…

Using a treatment without having any understanding of how it works is often thought of as unscientific, and suggesting that a placebo can help a sick patient has until now been viewed as unethical. The New England Journal of Medicine just published an article about placebo (making you feel better) and nocebo (making you feel worse) effects,…

“Grocery shopping is not optional; it’s necessary. But if you go every day and to multiple stores, you are increasing the chance you will be exposed. From my informal survey, this practice is extremely common. Yet, experts advise to consolidate shopping. In fact, in my experience, there is always at least one person (shoppers AND…

Now that it appears certain that the Republicans will approve a new Supreme Court justice in the coming weeks, there is great concern among Obamacare supporters that this could well mean the end of Obamacare. That concern is being amplified in the hyper-partisan environment in the ramp-up to the election––it makes for good scare tactics.…