My Blog
I dive into subjects related to chronic ailments and how to finally feel relief from them.
Why Your Doctor Can’t Help You With Your Stress
One of the most frequent questions I’m asked in my medical practice is “Do you think stress is causing this rash?” For years I answered this question by giving a biologic explanation for the rash, sticking strictly to the textbook wisdom about the...
When a Medical Rarity Becomes the Norm
In 1912, Dr. Harvey Cushing, father of neurosurgery, described a cluster of symptoms -- obesity, abnormal hair growth, and lack of menstruation -- in a 23 year old woman, and posited that these symptoms were caused by a pituitary tumor. This condition --...
How to Beat the Medical Odds
Illness is frequently random. Catching the flu or breaking an arm can happen to anyone. Though many people believe your genetic code determines your health, the fact is genes don't completely explain illness and can't perfectly predict your health. On the other hand,...
Putting Medical Science Under the Microscope, Part 5
In my last four posts, I've discussed some of the shortcomings of medical science: the irreproducibility of medical research; the fact that medical "truths" can be overturned; and the way bias influences research, both in terms of what is researched and what results...
Putting Medical Science Under the Microscope, Part 4
We want to believe that researchers and pharmaceutical companies are primarily concerned about improving our health. After all, it's our very lives which are at stake. But, just as we need to be aware that medical research has a positive bias, as I discussed in my...
Putting Medical Science Under the Microscope, Part 3
We put a lot of faith in medications. We expect them to be safe. We expect them to cure illness. We expect them to make us healthier. But the truth is many medications aren't as safe or as effective as we like to think they are. The problem is that there is positive...
Putting Medical Science Under the Microscope, Part 2
Last Friday morning, the Medscape Internal Medicine digest which popped into my inbox contained the following two news items: Statins Increase Diabetes Risk Up to 50% in Older Women 'Suggestion' of Brain Changes With Statin Use Statins, such as Zocor (simvastatin),...
Putting Medical Science Under the Microscope, Part 1
Last year Nature published a survey in which well more than half of the 1,500 scientists surveyed stated they have been unable to reproduce the results of medical research -- even when they were trying to reproduce their own research. In January 2017, the...
Fear is the Last Thing We Need in Medicine
I recently watched Danielle Ofri's TED talk titled Fear: A Necessary Emotion For Doctors. Dr. Ofri begins her talk by relating how she became paralyzed with fear while in the middle of resuscitating a dying patient during her first night as a resident. I know exactly...
Work Should Make You Well
If you google the phrase "working is making me sick," you get over 99 million hits. Search engines work so quickly that we don't usually take notice of the number of hits we get, but I'll tell you that 99 million citations is an enormous number. Repeat...
