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Tobacco treatment neglect: Why 25 million smokers are left behind

Conditions

February 11, 2026

If a new disease emerged and killed this many people, everyone would be talking about it. This death rate has been constant over the last decade, despite the declining prevalence of cigarette smoking. The decline in prevalence is, for the most part, due to reduced adoption of smoking by teenagers, and younger smokers have been shifting to vaping. The prevalence of smoking among older, poor, less well-educated, and rural populations …

Music and brain plasticity: How sound rewires your mind

Marc Arginteanu, MD

Conditions

February 11, 2026

Hot off the presses. The latest science proves, yet again, that music benefits your brain, and not in some vague, feel-good way; it physically remodels your brain in ways that make you calmer, sharper, and happier. I’m talking about measurable rewiring, anxiety reduction, and cognitive gains you can actually see on an fMRI.

Three rock-solid studies just landed:

1. Chinese researchers and anxiety reduction

Chinese researchers took a bunch of stressed-out college students …

Employer-sponsored DPC: Why private equity is winning the infrastructure race

Dana Y. Lujan, MBA

Policy

February 11, 2026

More than a month after HSA-eligible direct primary care became available, independent practices remain unprepared for the operational complexity employer contracts require. The DPC community celebrated regulatory victory. Private equity prepared infrastructure.

That preparation became visible throughout 2025. Frontier Direct Care announced a $20 million Series B to expand its employer-sponsored DPC platform. Marathon Health, formed from the 2024 Everside merger, operates …

Validating AI in health care: the role of real-world evidence

Jeanna Blitz, MD

Tech

February 11, 2026

Before complex medical interventions ever reach patients, their effectiveness must be scientifically proven through rigorous testing in controlled settings such as laboratories and research facilities. But ensuring effectiveness doesn’t stop there. The process of assessing a medical treatment’s usefulness is multilayered and requires investigation that goes well beyond the laboratory. It must also assess how the treatment fares in day-to-day clinical practice for a wide variety of patients. Now, as …

Why Medicare must cover atrial fibrillation screening to prevent strokes

Radhesh K. Gupta

Conditions

February 11, 2026

Evelyn felt fine that morning. At 68, she was active, healthy, and just returned from her daily walk when her heart began to flutter. It wasn’t painful, just an odd sensation, like a fish flopping in her chest. It lasted around 10 minutes and then stopped. Although she thought it was strange, she soon dismissed it. A week later, she woke up unable to move her right side. A stroke …

Teaching joy transforms the future of medical practice [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

February 10, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Psychiatrist Sarah Hollander, clinical psychologist Kelly D. Holder, and physician advocate and physical therapist Kim Downey discuss their article “Joy in medicine: a new culture.” Sarah, Kelly, and Kim explore how the …

Why Filipino nurses faced higher COVID-19 mortality rates

Joaquim Diego Santos

Policy

February 10, 2026

I was always taught to show respect to older relatives through the mano po gesture. If I were meeting a new family member, I would say “Ang pangalan ko Joaquim” to introduce myself. However, since immigrating to the United States from the Philippines, there are fewer and fewer people who call me by my actual name.

My family immigrated to the United States in 2002 after my mother accepted an opportunity …

Frailty and functional decline: Why diagnosis is not enough

Gerald Kuo

Conditions

February 10, 2026

As clinicians, we are trained to look for disease.

We measure blood pressure, blood sugar, lung function, and imaging results, often waiting for pathology to declare itself before we intervene. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, many of us noticed something unsettling: patients were not only arriving later, they were arriving weaker.

Recent evidence confirms this clinical intuition. An analysis published in The BMJ, examining health records from more than 30 million people, …

Moral injury in medicine: When silence becomes a survival strategy

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Physician

February 10, 2026

Egregious ethical failures in health care almost always gain attention. Less visible, but no less consequential, are the systemic ones that are often overlooked: routine acts that present themselves as morally neutral, procedural, and unremarkable. They usually do not provoke outrage and are not experienced as trauma. Yet over time, one must be concerned about how they quietly reshape our well-being and our professional identities.

The effect of these acts does …

Iterative mindset versus AI and GLP-1s: Why shortcuts weaken the brain

Martha Rosenberg

Tech

February 10, 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the biggest economic craze since cryptocurrencies, and GLP-1 agonists are the biggest health craze since statins. But are they as good for users as producers and Wall Street? Will they implode like their predecessors?

We spoke with behavior change expert Kyra Bobinet, MD, author of Unstoppable Brain: The New Neuroscience That Frees Us From Failure, Eases Our Stress, and Creates Lasting Change. She maintains that both …

Autism comorbidities: the hidden link between POTS, GI issues, and hypermobility

Carrie Friedman, NP

Conditions

February 10, 2026

Autism is typically framed as a neurodevelopmental condition defined by differences in social communication, sensory processing, and behavior. This framing is incomplete. In clinical practice, autistic individuals frequently present with a striking burden of systemic symptoms involving the gastrointestinal tract, cardiovascular regulation, immune signaling, connective tissue, and stress physiology. These are not side notes. They reflect the fact that autism lives within a nervous system that innervates the entire body.

The …

The impact of CDC’s new childhood immunization guidance

Umayr R. Shaikh, MPH

Conditions

February 10, 2026

For most of my life, preventable infectious diseases existed at the margins of medicine. Influenza was seasonal but manageable. Hepatitis outbreaks were contained. Childhood hospitalizations from rotavirus or meningococcal disease were rare enough to be notable. COVID-19 may have shattered predictability, but even then, many of us believed the lessons we learned would be followed by renewed investment in prevention.

Instead, we now stand at a crossroads.

A crossroads in prevention

Recent guideline …

Remote nursing for burnout: How changing environments saved my career

Michele Abbott, RN

Conditions

February 10, 2026

For most of my nursing career, my instinct when work felt overwhelming was always the same: Look inward, fix myself, and try harder.

If a shift felt chaotic, I assumed I needed to manage my time better. If an interaction went poorly, I replayed it in my mind, wondering what I could have said differently. If I came home exhausted and irritable, I told myself I needed thicker skin. I believed …

Doctors often struggle to separate professional advice from family love [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

February 9, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Board-certified pediatrician, certified coach, and mindfulness and yoga teacher Jessie Mahoney discusses her article “Pediatrician vs. grandmother: Choosing love over medical advice.” Jessie explores the internal conflict she faced between her medical …

Beyond weight loss: the expanding benefits of GLP-1 receptor agonists

Zehra Haider, MD

Meds

February 9, 2026

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) were introduced to help manage type 2 diabetes. They improve glycemic control and promote weight loss, which we all know are essential for long-term outcomes. In practice, I’ve seen that their impact goes beyond these traditional targets. Patients often benefit from cardiovascular protection and kidney improvements, and emerging data show advantages in areas we did not initially anticipate, such as sleep apnea, joint health, …

Medical misinformation: Navigating vaccine hesitancy with empathy

Christine J. Ko, MD

Physician

February 9, 2026

Medical misinformation is rampant but should not be overstated. Vaccination remains a good barometer of the range of opinions on a subject directly related to individual as well as population health. 82 percent of Americans received at least one shot of the COVID vaccine by December 2023. However, more recently, population vaccination rates of children are decreasing.

Perspectives on safety and immunity

The increasing distrust in vaccines may be …

AI-assisted therapy: Why supervision makes the difference

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Conditions

February 9, 2026

Artificial intelligence in mental health has become an easy target. Headlines warn of hallucinating chatbots, reckless advice, and sensational claims that AI therapy is pushing vulnerable patients toward self-harm or suicide. The implication is clear: AI is dangerous, irresponsible, and incompatible with serious clinical care.

That conclusion is too simple and, in many cases, wrong.

The uncomfortable truth is that many patients are already receiving something far riskier than supervised AI therapy. …

When language becomes the barrier: IMGs and autism diagnoses

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Conditions

February 9, 2026

I once left grand rounds with a donut and a fake pager buzz because I couldn’t understand the speaker, who often was a natural Mandarin or Arabic speaker. Humor aside, this was not just my problem; it was a systemic failure.

I have spent decades in developmental-behavioral pediatrics, and one truth has never changed: Communication is the currency of medicine. Without it, trust collapses.

International medical graduates (IMGs) are vital to our …

Simple choices prevent chronic disease [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

February 8, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Internal medicine physician Shirisha Kamidi discusses her article “Small habits, big impact on health.” Shirisha explains why prevention is often more powerful than treatment when addressing conditions like diabetes and hypertension. She …

The American Board of Internal Medicine maintenance of certification lawsuit: What physicians need to know

Brian Hudes, MD

Physician

February 8, 2026

The tension between physicians and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has simmered for a decade. What began as a professional debate over maintenance of certification (MOC) has evolved into a broader question of fairness, autonomy, and accountability. Now, the courts are involved, and the legal battles are revealing as much about the profession’s frustration as they are about the structure of American medicine.

A landscape of lawsuits

Since 2018, multiple …

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