Premature babies (a.k.a. preemies) and their families are increasingly becoming a powerful voice in society. Life in and after the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is like being dropped off a cliff. I support the preemie community from pregnancy to NICU to home and into the adult years because I had a preemie. My daughter’s story is a stunning example of a system gone wrong and why better outcomes research …
The baby formula shortage has morphed into a full-blown ongoing crisis. Many stores report that more than half of baby formula products are out of stock. Babies who are six months old or younger should only be fed breast milk or formula. Any substitute may be nutritionally incomplete and may cause babies to have permanent problems in brain development.
What are the essential brain ingredients in the leading baby formulas?
Docosahexaenoic acid …
In late April 2022, headlines were plastered across the internet calling for the death of intermittent fasting. This was in relation to a New England Journal study out that week titled “Calorie Restriction with or without Time-Restricted Eating in Weight Loss.” I would have named it, “If you ask the wrong question, then you don’t get a helpful answer.”
The researchers asked if people lose …
I was a nurse before I was a PA. As the mantra goes, once a nurse, always a nurse. I have lived on both sides of the toxic structure: the medical and nursing models. Nurses eat their young, then place an unrealistic and unsustainable standard of altruism onto their offspring. Many times, the worthiness of nurses is gauged by how much they are willing to give of themselves, work overtime, …
During the pandemic, the already significant number of people living with substance use disorder increased. According to data gathered by the CDC, in June 2020, 13 percent of Americans surveyed said they had started using substances (not including alcohol and tobacco) or increased their use in response to the stress of the pandemic.
The number of people who died as a result of an overdose …
Recently, singer and musician Halsey shared her recent allergy testing results on TikTok along with the news of her recent diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and Sjogren’s Disease. Pictured were the telltale red welts we inflict day in and day out in allergy clinic with our scratch tests and a long list of foods to which she was possibly allergic.
Halsey has a history of being …
As a clinician, you likely do not have the luxury of playing “Dr. House.” Patients enter your exam room, long story in hand, with a litany of mysterious symptoms involving every bodily system, and you were already massively overbooked. Your patient leaves the encounter no closer to answers despite your best attempts which involved you spending far more time on their assessment than your crazy office schedule allows.
Your staff becomes …
Several years ago, I stood before an audience at a neurosurgical conference to discuss my book The Lobotomist, a biography of Walter Freeman, MD, an advocate and promoter of the controversial treatment of lobotomy.
I gave my talk, and it went well. I am not a physician — I’m a journalist and biographer who often writes about medicine, and I feel comfortable speaking at medical conferences, grand rounds sessions and medical …
In 2017, I was medically discharged from the military due to an exacerbation of an eating disorder. At that time, anorexia nervosa (AN) provided relief from the depression that I had developed secondary to the multitude of stressors that came with being in the Air Force and an oral and maxillofacial surgery resident. Years later, I have made major career pivots to regain my health. However, military and medical culture …
I will tell you why health care professionals feel they need to be superhuman, without needs or vulnerabilities.
Because that is who we want to be, why we got into the field, and then our training reinforces those very ideas. We exist to take care of others, not be taken care of.
I am a health care professional. I also struggle with major depressive disorder (MDD) as well as an eating disorder. …
It started as the “Chinese virus.” Then the “kung flu.” Then came the boycotts of Chinatowns, the rise in harassment, assaults, and murders. The recognition of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans was long overdue. However, anti-Asian racism doesn’t just manifest in hate speech or violence; it has undermined the U.S. COVID-19 policy response.
In 2020, American media narratives frequently painted Asian nations’ success in controlling COVID-19 as the result of …
It was a known fact — I was 4′ 11″ but I had a mouth on me to compensate. I was loud and noisy. Fellow nurses called me the “rebel without a cause.”
But I had a cause.
I knew I was David against Goliath. Almost everything became my cause. And I verbally fought my way through this iron-clad management structure.
I had to fight for the betterment of the patients, their survival, …
Modern medicine, a system originally designed to fix acute health care problems, now creates more chronic health care problems than helping to solve them. I see the dangers of over-testing and over-prescribing taking place each day in my day-to-day pediatric clinical practice.
It scares me to see how many doctors reflexively prescribe pills designed to merely mask symptoms rather than take time to understand the underlying cause or that most chronic …
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High on my list of favorite operations was surgery on the stomach: The anatomy is neat, the re-plumbing alternatives clever, technical challenges rewarding, and, because it’s well-supplied with blood, complication-free healing is pretty predictable. Also, several procedures were invented by and named for history’s pioneer surgeons, and it’s nice to feel the connection, heir to the discoveries and invention of the greats. Let me tell you about one of my …
Minority and marginalized communities have historically been underrepresented in local and federal governments and in dozens of private sectors globally. Pharma is no different; there exists a steep chasm that drugmakers have yet to bridge concerning research and trials. The longer this gulf exists, the harder it becomes to address – the feelings of mistrust, resentment, and disenfranchisement only get harder to overcome with time.
Over the last decade, the pharmaceutical …
The saga of distancers and pursuers in relationships exists in many different forms. Perhaps the most common version is the man as distancer and woman as pursuer.
It would seem that hardly any adult with some experience in the world of romance has not encountered this theme, at least to some degree. It is apparent that, generally speaking, men and women travel a different relationship path.
In the United States, most researchers …
Guess what? The mouth is attached to the rest of the body. And though dentistry and medicine are typically separated from the very beginning of professional training, they are irrevocably linked for patients and have an impact on each other. Here’s some foundational knowledge that will help set the stage for discussing the connection between overall health and oral health: Our mouths are teeming with bacteria – mostly the good, …
It’s a standard instruction during safety demonstrations on airplanes: “In the event of a sudden loss in cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Put your mask on before helping others.”
But why is that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to help those who are most vulnerable?
The answer has to do with the way our bodies react to a lack of oxygen.
When cabin pressure drops, the …
I was at my gym last night. Billy Joel’s ballad about trust was the metronome to my squats. Though vaccinated and boosted, I was wearing my mask. I know the latest evidence about vaccines and natural immunity, the dramatic transmissibility but mild virulence of the latest Omicron variant.
So my mask was only for optics. Someone might recognize me as a doctor in the local hospital where masking is still mandated. …
There are not many situations in general medicine where a doctor can affect an instant cure, and the patient will call them a “miracle worker.” Most patient visits end with a prescription or two or some instructions along with the admonition, “You’ll feel better in a few days.”
One exception to this rule: dislocations.
A simple dislocation happens when the end of a bone is pulled out of its socket (or niche) …
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