Conditions

How the new DOT ruling on food allergies threatens air travel safety

Conditions

March 20, 2026

On March 18, 2026, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a ruling that could make air travel less safe for millions of Americans with food allergies, by limiting a basic accommodation many rely on to prevent life-threatening exposure. Food allergies are a serious, life-threatening medical condition that remains widely misunderstood. For millions of travelers, navigating airline policies is an unpredictable challenge, where inconsistent accommodations and societal skepticism create unnecessary risk. …

The psychology of hero worship: When admiration overrides reason

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Conditions

March 20, 2026

Emotional contagion and crowd psychology are powerful forces that shape human behavior in large gatherings. In India, where collective identity and reverence for public figures often run deep, emotional responses within crowds may take on added intensity. This reflection draws on an incident from Tamil Nadu to illustrate how collective emotion can sometimes override proportion and common sense, with implications for community safety and well-being.

This may sound amusing today, but …

How junk food shrinks your brain and fuels depression

Marc Arginteanu, MD

Conditions

March 20, 2026

Let us cut to the chase: Your daily dose of junk food is not just padding your waistline; it is quietly eroding the most complex organ in your body. The evidence is no longer scattered case reports or instinctive hunches. It is an ever-growing stack of human epidemiology, neuroimaging, and mechanistic biology. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are associated with depression, a shriveling brain, systemic inflammation (which crosses the blood-brain barrier), gut …

The 3 levels of psychiatric treatment: biological, psychosocial, moral

Mark D. Kilgus, MD, PhD and Nicolas Badre, MD

Conditions

March 19, 2026

One can consider that psychiatric treatment occurs on three levels: biological, then psychosocial, and then moral-existential. First, if needed, the psychiatrist prescribes medication to rectify biological abnormalities. Second, the therapist facilitates psychotherapy to address psychosocial problems. Third, the therapist uses the clinician-patient …

Why clinician education must prioritize nutrition training

Beata Pasek, EdD

Conditions

March 19, 2026

When I began coordinating GI research in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), I noticed something unexpected: Second- and third-year GI fellows, bright, motivated, steeped in medical science, had received little to no formal training on diet’s role in disease. For many, nutrition was treated as peripheral, “something dietitians handle,” rather than core physician knowledge.

This is not a reflection on their ability or commitment. It reflects how medical education is structured. U.S. …

Surviving stage 4 breast cancer: a 10-year journey of hope

Tami Berczuk

Conditions

March 18, 2026

As I approach the 10-year anniversary of hearing the words “I am 99 percent sure you have breast cancer,” I have many emotions: gratitude, fear, anxiety, hope. Having been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2016, then learning it had metastasized to my liver, so stage 4, I had so many questions and so much uncertainty.

Since then, it has been a journey of self-reflection, relationship evaluation, insurance negotiations, family …

The hidden cost of long-term care policy for family caregivers

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

March 18, 2026

Every spring, millions of families across Chinese communities around the world travel back to their hometowns for Qingming Festival, often translated as “Tomb-Sweeping Day.” It is a centuries-old tradition of honoring ancestors. Highways fill with traffic. Families gather at gravesites to clean tombstones, burn incense, and leave offerings of food. On the surface, Qingming is about remembering the dead. But in many homes, the holiday quietly exposes a different reality: …

ADHD in physicians: Why medical training punishes neurodiversity

Samantha Leite, MD

Conditions

March 18, 2026

I was halfway through my first year of OB-GYN residency when I learned that my brain had been working against me my entire life. By then, I had passed licensing exams, matched into a surgical specialty, and learned how to function convincingly while exhausted. What I had not learned, and what medicine never taught me, was how to recognize when “high functioning” was actually quiet suffering. And that distinction matters, …

The biological cost of night-shift work on circadian rhythms

Chinyelu E. Oraedu, MD

Conditions

March 17, 2026

“Try not to work the night shift if you can.” Many physicians have said this to patients. Some have said it to colleagues. Often, we say it because we understand the science: Working through the night comes at a physiologic cost. Night-shift work is associated with weight gain, chronic fatigue, disrupted sleep, insulin resistance, and increased long-term risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Circadian disruption affects …

Why perfectionism in medicine leads to moral injury

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

In the hallowed halls of medical school, we are often screened for traits that make the “ideal doctor”: high empathy, meticulous perfectionism, and a profound sense of duty. We are the fixers, the ones who find deep meaning in the intersubjective space between healer and patient. Yet, there is a shadow side to this personality architecture that no one talks about, an underlying proclivity toward rejection sensitivity.

The very traits that …

Adult disability care transition: Why medicine must grow up

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

“Let’s Fly.” Captain Burnham’s words on the USS Discovery were more than a command. They were a declaration of trust, of forward motion, of refusing paralysis.

That is the question before us now: What happens when children with disabilities grow up?

For decades, pediatrics treated disability as a childhood condition. The grant language, the fellowship training, the systems of care, all built on the assumption that disability ends at eighteen. But children …

How the microvasculature drives the human aging process

Kenneth Ro, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

For years we have searched for the causes of aging inside the cell. Researchers study mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA damage, and the accumulation of senescent cells. But the real bottleneck in aging may not lie inside the cell at all. It may lie in the system that keeps those cells alive. During my years working in emergency medicine, I often saw patients whose blocked coronary arteries had been successfully opened during …

Herniated disc recovery: a physician’s personal journey

Eric Dessner, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

Anyone that has suffered a herniated disc knows that the road to recovery can feel like a spiritual journey. The searing pain can be so extreme that it leads us to prayer. We may even question the very design of the human body. Why would an all-powerful, wholly good Creator of the Universe endow man with the capacity to experience so much agony? To fear the electric jolt caused by …

Diabetic foot complications prevention: Stopping amputation before it starts

Wendy Kang

Conditions

March 16, 2026

Since 2023, while volunteering at an amputee sports competition in Los Angeles, I encountered athletes whose amputations resulted from complications of diabetes. In many cases, limb loss did not begin with a catastrophic injury, but with gaps in preventive care that allowed small, manageable wounds to progress into irreversible outcomes.

Participants traveled long distances to attend the competition, seeking peer support and health information that was often unavailable in their home …

The physiology of heartbreak: hormones, ischemia, and healing

Sara Police, PhD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

As a nutritional scientist and educator, I spend a lot of time thinking about the heart through a lens of physiology, metabolism, and medicine. I aim to reduce risk for cardiovascular disease by sharing evidence-based nutritional strategies. As a human, I realize an equally dangerous health risk can begin in one’s emotional heart. We are hardwired for connection. In this regard, the heart seems simultaneously the strongest and most fragile …

Rethinking health care for older adults beyond lab results

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

March 15, 2026

Every year on March 14, mathematicians celebrate Pi Day. The constant π (approximately 3.14) describes the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. It represents perfection in geometry. But in clinical life, health rarely looks like a perfect circle. I was reminded of this while speaking with Mrs. Chen at a community health program. She was 78 years old. By most medical standards, she was doing well. Her blood …

Tracheostomy communication barriers: a gap in medical training

Alyssa Lambrecht, DO

Conditions

March 15, 2026

Despite an ongoing shift in medical training across the country to enhance physician communication skills, there remains limited formal training communicating with patients who have tracheostomies. With over 100,000 tracheostomies performed every year in the United States, clinicians in every field will encounter patients who have individualized communication needs. These patients often experience isolation, depression, and anxiety due to an inability to interact and communicate with others. Clinicians can and …

Overcoming dental anxiety for better oral health care

Kaushal Shah, DMD

Conditions

March 15, 2026

Dental anxiety remains one of the most common yet overlooked barriers to oral health care. Despite advances in modern dentistry (painless techniques, improved anesthetics, and patient-centered care), millions of people continue to delay or completely avoid dental visits because of fear. The consequences extend far beyond oral health; untreated dental disease can significantly affect overall health, confidence, and quality of life. For many patients, dental anxiety begins early in life. …

Tubal ligation and widowhood: Navigating toxic requests

Dr. Vartika Mishra

Conditions

March 15, 2026

“Oh, poor thing!” exclaimed Dr. S, shaking her head in empathy.

“It is very sad,” I chimed in.

Lalita lay on the operating table. A sterile green cloth hung perpendicularly, separating her, the patient, from Dr. S and me, the operating surgeons.

She was undergoing her first cesarean section in view of fetal distress.

It was indeed very sad. Not the cesarean part, but the fact that her husband had passed away when she …

Lowercase PTSD: Why emergency staff are still hypervigilant

Amy Dinaburg, RN

Conditions

March 14, 2026

In the emergency department, you learn to function under pressure. You compartmentalize. You prioritize. You override your own nervous system in order to keep someone else alive.

During COVID, that skill became oxygen.

We worked in zones of four to eight critical patients, all unstable, all needing constant vigilance, or we were assigned to the lobby and hallways, managing 50 or 60 patients triaged as “non-critical,” knowing any one of them could …

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