Conditions

The milkweed and the wind: a poem on aging as renewal

Conditions

February 1, 2026

The years pass without ceremony.

They do not always announce themselves.
Sometimes they slip by like quiet weather,
like afternoons we cannot later recall
except by the way the light
once rested against a wall.

Time moves like autumn wind,
unannounced,
persistent,
tender in its own indifferent way.

A milkweed stands in a field,
having grown tall without noticing
the exact moment it became mature.
Its green has deepened,
its stem stiffened with understanding.

Now the wind arrives,
and the pods open
not in grief,
but in readiness.

Each …

Alex Pretti’s death: Why politics belongs in emergency medicine

Marilyn McCullum, RN

Conditions

January 31, 2026

Emergency medicine trains clinicians to recognize patterns early, anticipate deterioration, and intervene before outcomes become irreversible. We pride ourselves on seeing what others miss. Yet we are repeatedly instructed, explicitly or implicitly, to ignore the largest pattern of all. Political decisions consistently and predictably shape who arrives in our emergency departments, how sick they are, and how unsafe the environment becomes for the people expected to care for them.

If political …

Women in health care leadership: Navigating competition and mentorship

Sarah White, APRN

Conditions

January 31, 2026

In recent years, medicine has become more open about burnout, workforce shortages, and the challenges facing women in health care leadership. We write about mentorship programs, leadership pipelines, and the need to bring more women into ownership and executive roles. We celebrate women who build clinics, lead departments, and create space for others to rise.

What we talk about far less is what happens when women actually meet each other in …

Senior financial scams: a guide for primary care physicians

John C. Hagan III, MD

Conditions

January 31, 2026

In an increasingly digital world, older adults are often viewed as prime targets for financial scams. These malicious schemes exploit vulnerabilities inherent in aging, such as social isolation, cognitive decline, and trustfulness. As primary care physicians, we are in a unique position to recognize the signs of vulnerability in our older patients. Understanding the methods employed by fraudsters, the impact on victims, and how to educate them on preventative measures …

Genetic mutations and racial disparities in leukemia survival

Kurt Miceli, MD, MBA

Conditions

January 30, 2026

Throughout contemporary medical discourse, health disparities among racial and ethnic groups are often attributed to systemic and structural racism. Furthermore, organizations such as the American Medical Association assert that race itself is a social construct and urge a shift away from viewing race as a “biological risk factor” toward a “deeper understanding of racism as a determinant of health.” Unfortunately, this framing rings hollow and obscures an important …

From doctor to patient: a critical care physician’s ICU journey

Ian Barbash, MD

Conditions

January 29, 2026

This is the fifth New Year since the onset of COVID-19 in America. I am a pulmonary and critical care physician who had spent a decade of my life working in ICUs before I became an ICU patient myself in 2025. As a physician, husband, and father of four young children, I had been saving others. But this year, I needed to be saved.

Transitions are times for introspection. How do …

Scientific literacy in nutrition: How to read food labels

M. Bennet Broner, PhD

Conditions

January 29, 2026

Dr. Andrea Love wrote about the lack of basic scientific knowledge among the public, noting that only about 28 percent of people possess it. She highlighted the consequences of this, emphasizing how it can negatively affect people’s decisions and lives.

Many of the articles I have written have dealt with scientific knowledge in one form or another. My comments on the FDA and drug approvals, Alzheimer’s and cancer screening blood tests, …

How personal experience shapes perimenopause and menopause care

Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian

Conditions

January 28, 2026

Many OB-GYNs find their views on perimenopause and menopause change once they experience these transitions themselves. Even with medical training, the symptoms can be surprising and harder to recognize than expected.

As women’s health clinicians, we understand the common challenges of this stage of life. Hot flashes, sleep problems, vaginal dryness, mood changes, weight gain, and trouble concentrating can affect daily routines in ways that many women do not expect. When …

Anne-Sophie Mutter, John Williams, and the art of aging

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

January 28, 2026

When Anne-Sophie Mutter appeared under the lights in Taipei to play John Williams, the audience was already aging with her. That is not a tragedy; it is a form of wisdom. In a super-aged society, an evening at the concert hall is not only entertainment; it is an anatomy lesson in movement, meaning, and care.

Tempo and governance

The program opened with “Sound the Bells!” The brass did not summon cinematic sentiment; …

A poem on kidney cancer survivorship and the annual scan

Michele Luckenbaugh

Conditions

January 27, 2026

Once a year,
I return to two quiet organs
I once carried without thought,
working faithfully in the dark,
asking for nothing,
until one day they asked to be seen.

Cysts.
Small moons of fluid,
bubbles scattered like careless stars
throughout the geography of me.
Harmless, they said.
Mostly.
Until one was not.

That year,
a word entered my body:
cancer.
A word that knows how to make itself at home
in every corner of thought.

A specialist explained
how light and force could be aimed,
how the invader could …

Hashimoto’s disease in adolescent girls: Why it’s often overlooked

Callia Georgoulis

Conditions

January 27, 2026

Hashimoto’s disease is the most common cause of hypothyroidism in children and adolescents, yet it remains frequently overlooked, particularly in adolescent girls. Fatigue, mood changes, weight gain, and cognitive slowing are often attributed to mental health conditions or dismissed as normal features of puberty, delaying diagnosis and treatment. This pattern reflects a broader failure to recognize how autoimmune thyroid disease presents during adolescence, and how gendered assumptions shape clinical interpretation …

Why doctors ignore their own advice on hydration and health

Amanda Shim, MD

Conditions

January 26, 2026

“I’m surprised I haven’t had a kidney stone.”

It’s a running joke among my co-residents, when it’s 3 o’clock in the morning, with over 20 patients in the waiting room, and nobody can remember the last time they had water. Most days, my fluid intake is limited to the sips needed to swallow my antidepressants (to quote my parents, “you can’t just take them whenever you feel sad,” and “it’s not …

Low testosterone in men: a doctor’s guide to TRT safety

Martina Ambardjieva, MD

Conditions

January 26, 2026

A man in his late 40s sits down in my office and says, “Doctor, I think my testosterone is low.”

Sometimes he is already holding lab results. Sometimes he is coming from a gym forum, a friend’s recommendation, or a late-night Google search. But almost always, the story sounds familiar: lower sex drive, fewer morning erections, weaker erections, fatigue, brain fog, mood changes, and that stubborn belly fat that seems to …

Uterine aging in IVF: Why the “soil” matters as much as the seed

Oluyemisi Famuyiwa, MD

Conditions

January 26, 2026

Most clinicians know that eggs age. Fewer acknowledge that the uterus ages too.

In reproductive medicine, we often rely on the seed-and-soil analogy. The seed is the embryo. The soil is the endometrium, the inner lining of the uterus where implantation occurs.

Here is the part that deserves more explicit counseling and strategic planning: Even when embryo quality is controlled, uterine age can independently influence implantation, miscarriage risk, and live birth rates. …

How modern health care design strains patients and clinicians

Deanna J. Gilmore, RDH

Conditions

January 25, 2026

My great-grandfather was a small-town doctor in the early 1900s.

It was a different time. A different place. A very different pace.

He knew his patients. He knew their families. He understood their lives, not just their symptoms. Care happened in the context of relationship because that was simply how medicine worked.

Today, health care looks very different. The science is better. The technology is stronger. We can do things now that would …

Physician retirement: a cultural shift from system to self

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

January 25, 2026

The number was specific: 18,000 steps.

It came from a retired hospital director in Taipei, a physician-administrator who spent four decades building services, negotiating budgets, and managing crises across a health care system that now treats an aging society as its primary patient.

Most physicians retire into silence. He retired into data.

But the more interesting revelation did not come from his smartwatch. It came from the dinner table.

A shift in governance

In Western …

ADHD and cannabis use: Navigating the diagnostic challenge

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Conditions

January 25, 2026

As a psychiatrist, I increasingly meet patients who come in convinced they have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They arrive prepared: an online screening test, a list of symptoms (poor concentration, low motivation, distractibility) and often a quiet sense of relief at finally having an explanation. Then I do what physicians are trained to do. I take a careful history. I review medications. I ask about sleep, mood, anxiety, substance use, and …

How the mind-body split in medicine shaped modern clinical care

Robert C. Smith, MD

Conditions

January 24, 2026

In my first and second KevinMD posts, I emphasized how medicine had failed clinicians by not training them in mental health care. All agree, it’s not our fault. Now let’s look at how successfully our teachers did prepare us for patients with medical disorders. There’s an interesting history behind how we developed expertise in physical diseases: Medicine needed to overthrow the four humors theory that guided clinical care …

Is testosterone replacement safe after prostate cancer surgery?

Francisco M. Torres, MD

Conditions

January 23, 2026

It has been six months since my robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy, and I find myself suspended in a strange middle space, grateful to be cancer-free, yet still struggling with a question I cannot fully answer: Is it safe for me to restart testosterone replacement therapy?

Before my diagnosis, testosterone replacement was not just a prescription; it was a restoration. I have lived with hypogonadism for years, and TRT helped me regain the …

The impact of war on the innocence of children

Michele Luckenbaugh

Conditions

January 23, 2026

They are not born into battle.
They arrive with open hands,
with laughter,
with faith that the world will keep them safe.

Yet, men who are not content with peace
clench their fists around power,
mistaking domination for strength
and control for legacy.
They draw borders with bullets
and call it victory.

In their pursuit to prove themselves,
they let the bombs fall.
Roads darken with blood.
Homes become rubble.
The sky learns the language of fire.

And in the wreckage stand the children.

They watch …