Stop prescribing one eating disorder to treat another: Why under and overeating are not “opposite problems”

Physician
February 6, 2022

Throughout my recovery journey from anorexia with a propensity for compulsive exercise, I have often heard, in a tone full of self-judgment, “I have the opposite problem.”

What the person is typically referring to is that they feel they eat too much, exercise too little, or both. The self-judgment usually reflects the way society places a positive value on undereating and over-exercising and negative connotation on the opposite. The interactions demonstrate …

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The power of a patient’s thank you

Physician
February 6, 2022

I turned to leave.

She spoke softly, “Thank you. Thank you for coming.”

The way these words were spoken caused me to gulp a deep breath while my heart fluttered.

In my mind, I was doing my job. A physician visiting one of our COVID-positive patients in the hospital.

In my mind, I wasn’t even able to offer her human connection as I would have wished to do.

Sound: Gowned up in PPE, including two …

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What really happens when the unvaccinated get sick with COVID

Conditions
February 6, 2022

“My body, my rights.”

“My body is a temple.”

“I don’t want poison going into my body.”

” I’ve done my research.”

And they refuse to wear masks; they refuse to social distance. They refuse COVID vaccinations and the booster. Essentially, they spit in the face of the population that trusts in science and medical research.

The disrespect and disregard for scientists, medical doctors, RNs and respiratory therapists are astonishing.

Their support groups tout ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine …

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What shared journeys to the afterlife teach about dying well and living better [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 5, 2022
YouTube video

“The more I spoke with individuals who had experienced a shared crossing event, the more I also noticed repeating patterns. A woman in West Virginia and a woman in Australia with deeply similar experiences around the loss of a baby. A grown daughter in California and a grown daughter in …

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What does it even mean to work through the unimaginable?

Physician
February 5, 2022

When the Delta variant hit Mississippi, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published alarming statistics for maternal and perinatal deaths. Pregnant women were dying at three times the pre-COVID baseline rate. These young, healthy women would rapidly deteriorate in a matter of days, with three weeks as the average time to death. And those were just the moms. Fetuses under 20 weeks gestation aren’t counted in the mortality rate …

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The silent burden of shame

Physician
February 5, 2022

Shame.

It’s what keeps physicians silent. It’s what keeps physicians from getting the help they need.

I’ve been a successful doctor for many years, but I’ve lived with the shame of having an eating disorder. It was my secret that hardly anyone in my life knew about.

No more. My shame is gone, and I’m ready to tell you my story.

When I was in eating disorder recovery, my …

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Inside the race to conquer the COVID-19 pandemic

Conditions
February 5, 2022

An excerpt from The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

For the first time in weeks, Uğur Şahin’s calendar was clear. It was a Friday morning and the two-bedroom apartment he shared with his wife, Özlem Türeci, and their teenage daughter was unusually …

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Is Descovy really the better option? [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 4, 2022
YouTube video

“As individual patients, we often don’t think about these costs. In my Instagram poll, nearly everyone taking Descovy reported receiving the drug effectively for free, largely due to Gilead’s copay coupons. However, as with anything in life, nothing really ever is free. More patients taking Descovy rather than generic …

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Why do physicians stay in toxic work environments?

Physician
February 4, 2022

For the most highly educated and specialized professional on the health care totem pole, physicians put up with a ridiculous amount of nonsense in the workplace.

You are pressured to see high volumes of patients in a rapid-fire fashion (15 minutes per visit) even when it interferes with the quality of care.

You are expected to complete mundane and excessive administrative tasks and generally are not directly compensated for this time.

You are …

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Patients need palliative care to manage the pain of sickle cell disease

Conditions
February 4, 2022

Sickle cell disease (SCD) affects about 100,000 Americans as an inherited genetic disorder with intermittent exacerbations requiring hospitalization. SCD is also a painful and complicated disease with no single physician specialist that can provide pain relief. While SCD pain is similar in severity to cancer pain, patients struggle to find adequate pain relief because they are often labeled as “doesn’t appear in pain” as the …

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Why telehealth will change the course of autism

Conditions
February 4, 2022

As a medical student working in East Harlem, I see inequities in access to care on a daily basis. These inequities are exemplified amongst children suffering from neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism. In 2000, about 1 in 150 children were identified as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD). That rate has skyrocketed to 1 in 44 today. For parents and their children, it is well appreciated that an …

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A physician’s money goals for 2022

Finance
February 4, 2022

It’s 2022, and many of us want this year to be better than last year. Instead of just hoping this happens, let’s make some realistic goals and put steps in place to achieve them. Here are some of my 2022 goals:

1. Continue to invest at least 10 percent of my salary in retirement accounts. Investing money gives me the opportunity to allow my money to grow. Because of inflation (the …

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Noah Kaufman, MD on the cryptocurrency market and educating physicians about Bitcoin [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 3, 2022
YouTube video

Emergency physician and financial planner Noah Kaufman gives a general cryptocurrency market update. He discusses the state of Bitcoin and the impact of fiscal tightening by the Federal Reserve and also comments on Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times column comparing cryptocurrency to the subprime mortgage crisis. Finally, we talk …

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Do prescription drug monitoring programs hurt more than they help?

Physician
February 3, 2022

It was a warm summer in Maine but felt like a cold winter in the confines of the hospital building. I was seated next to a physician who was quietly working on a big screen monitor. It was a slow workday as I pondered tips and tricks to make the physician workflow efficient while training providers on implementing electronic health records. I stared at the computer screen and the physician …

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Why boundaries should be part of your 2022 physician goals

Physician
February 3, 2022

As we enter another predictably unpredictable year in medicine, we all have some sort of goals for this year, or at least we should. Goals help us experience mastery, even if our goals include brushing our teeth daily, leaving medicine or traveling.

Hopefully, more boundaries are on every physician’s goal list for 2022.

The word “boundaries” brings up our medical school psychiatry rotation or physician-patient relationship for most physicians. But what if …

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The importance of treating early treatment diseases

Conditions
February 3, 2022

Today, the practice of medicine mainly involves treating medical conditions after symptoms of the medical condition become obvious (e.g., setting a fracture or treating pneumonia), or preventing disease for a population of patients using a preventative that has few side effects (e.g., vaccinations, mammograms).

In the future, medicine will be more predictive and proactive. Medicine will be better able to predict that a disease will occur for an individual before there …

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Bringing the Hippocratic Oath into the venture capital world [PODCAST]

Podcast
February 2, 2022
YouTube video

“When I came into the business world, I saw a huge spectrum of ethics and am still shocked at how there aren’t any standards. Why must one be in a professional career only to have some guidelines and/or rules to follow? I don’t currently have patients in the entrepreneurial …

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The first page in a story that’s been years in the making

Education
February 2, 2022

The year is 2022.

Like the thousands of freshly minted new medical students around the country, we sit in this liminal space between a life past and the journey to come. In a time when the word uncertainty does not begin to describe the climate of our health care systems around the world, we are truly stepping into a global institution marred by systemic fatigue, constant entropy, and profound grief.

For as …

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