Knee osteoarthritis in women may begin with childbirth

Conditions and Diseases
July 3, 2026

Every physician has seen it.

A healthy young woman gives birth, recovers from the immediate demands of pregnancy and childbirth, and returns to the responsibilities of work and family. Years later, often decades later, she presents with chronic knee pain, hip discomfort, lower back pain, or declining mobility. Eventually, some of these women progress to knee replacement surgery.

We usually regard these events as unrelated. Perhaps they are not.

The question deserves greater …

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Knee osteoarthritis in women may begin with childbirth

A gene therapy is rewriting Huntington’s disease

Conditions and Diseases
July 3, 2026

As someone who has spent decades peering into skulls and pondering the fragile machinery inside, I have seen firsthand how our gray matter can falter under the weight of time, genetics, and disease. In my world as a neurosurgeon, the brain is the ultimate paradox: a brilliant, three-pound masterpiece capable of infinite consciousness, yet completely vulnerable to the slightest microscopic flaw.

There is perhaps no greater testament to this vulnerability than …

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A gene therapy is rewriting Huntington’s disease

Why patients with unexplained symptoms go unheard

Conditions and Diseases
July 3, 2026

In 2020, during a period of severe insomnia, I took one drop of CBD oil hoping it would help me sleep. At the time, CBD was described everywhere as natural, gentle, and safe. I had read stories about people using it for sleep, anxiety, and pain. I was desperate for rest, but I was also cautious. I did not take a large dose. I took one drop.

What followed changed my …

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Why patients with unexplained symptoms go unheard

Guardianship and hospice care fail dying patients

Conditions and Diseases
July 3, 2026

His dimly lit room is quiet except for the hum of the monitor. “Mr. L” is alone, lying flat on his back in a slightly inclined bed, eyes squeezed shut, hands raised in the air as immobile fists. He has not spoken in weeks. He has not moved much voluntarily, aside from the hand positions that are reminiscent of his passion for boxing. The medical team calls it catatonia, …

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Guardianship and hospice care fail dying patients

Why hospital food is failing patients who need to heal

Conditions and Diseases
July 3, 2026

When I first learned of chef and food activist Alice Waters and her farm-to-school initiative, I could see how programs that connect children to fresh local food can influence how they interact with their meal. Schools were no longer places where typical cafeteria-style lunches were served; they became places where students learned how food and health were connected.

I began to wonder why that idea stops at schools.

As a chronic disease …

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Why hospital food is failing patients who need to heal

Why physicians stay in jobs they could afford to leave [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 2, 2026
YouTube video

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

Most physicians who feel stuck in a job could actually afford to leave. They just can’t stomach what the worst week might look like. Stanley Liu, cardiologist and fiduciary financial planner, discusses the KevinMD article “Physician career choices come down to …

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Why physicians stay in jobs they could afford to leave [PODCAST]

The night I almost diagnosed grief as mental illness

Physician
July 2, 2026

At two in the morning, grief looked like psychosis.

I remember being irritated before I even saw her. At the time, I was working back home in Malaysia. The emergency department fluorescent lights were too bright, my head heavy with interrupted sleep, the air-conditioning turned low enough that the corridors felt vaguely refrigerated. Someone from the emergency department had telephoned psychiatry on call (me) requesting an urgent review of an elderly …

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The night I almost diagnosed grief as mental illness

Bearing witness in medicine begins after time of death

Physician
July 2, 2026

“Time of death, 17:49.”

“Let’s pause for a moment of silence.”

Stillness settles over the room. What had been a flurry of activity becomes something different. Something reverent. Sixty seconds pass.

“Thank you.”

There is a collective exhale, followed by a harsh realization. We must now move into cruel acceptance, into a place where hope no longer lives. With two words, I have ushered in a new reality.

A reality in which a mother lost …

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Bearing witness in medicine begins after time of death

Immigrant physicians can do more than practice medicine

Physician Finance
July 2, 2026

I arrived in the United States from India with one goal: become an excellent physician. That was the entire plan. Get through residency. Pass your boards. Build a clinical reputation. Publish research. Maybe land a faculty position at an academic medical center. Stay on the path.

For immigrant physicians, the path is narrower than most people realize. You don’t have a family network in American medicine. You don’t have alumni connections …

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Immigrant physicians can do more than practice medicine

Why psychiatric overdiagnosis fails the students who suffer

Conditions and Diseases
July 2, 2026

On June 29, 2026, psychologist Adam Omary published a landmark observation in the Boston Globe, titled “The disability accommodation trap on college campuses.” As he observed:

“It was well-intentioned when the Americans with Disabilities Act was amended in 2008 to include mental health conditions and learning disabilities as eligible for accommodations. But in practice, it created incentives for overdiagnosis. As The Harvard Crimson reported in December, the share of …

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Why psychiatric overdiagnosis fails the students who suffer

What is the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program?

Medications
July 2, 2026

As our understanding of obesity as a chronic disease has evolved, one paradox has been the ongoing barriers to accessing effective therapeutics for this condition, an approach vastly different from the way we treat other chronic diseases like heart disease, hypertension, or cerebrovascular disease.

Thankfully, that era has ended, and in July of this year, Medicare will begin covering access to GLP-1s for the treatment of obesity.

Why is this important for …

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What is the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program?

Can emotional regulation in medicine reduce errors?

Conditions and Diseases
July 2, 2026

Health care professionals are trained to diagnose, decide, and act under pressure. Yet one of the most important factors influencing clinical judgment, patient trust, and resilience is often overlooked: emotional self-regulation.

Emotional regulation is not just a personal wellness practice that clinicians might pursue outside work to reduce stress or improve work-life balance. Today, it is increasingly being recognized as an essential clinical competency to practice, to reset, and to renew …

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Can emotional regulation in medicine reduce errors?

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Are physicians next in AI health care layoffs?

Physician
July 2, 2026

Multiple news sources have recently pointed out massive layoffs in the technology industry due to artificial intelligence (AI) improvements that lead to job redundancy. During an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Bill Gates expressed a vision where in the future AI will replace health care providers and other service professionals. A sentiment that is shared throughout the tech industry.

In health care, the first wave of AI-related workforce adjustment has …

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Are physicians next in AI health care layoffs?

Universal health care after a calling became a job

Physician
July 2, 2026

I think the battle for health care is lost.

It started with HMOs in the 1980s and 1990s, which turned doctors into assembly-line workers. It got worse with the supposedly protective measure of work-hour restrictions, further turning a “calling” into a “job.” That well-intended change had several unintended consequences. It shifted the applicant pool for medical school toward people who wanted to clock out at 5 p.m. A sense of responsibility …

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Universal health care after a calling became a job

When local doctors disappear, patients pay the price [PODCAST]

Podcast
July 1, 2026
YouTube video

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

A patient with a dying leg won’t drive 20 miles for care. In Devin Zarkowsky’s town, that’s not a hypothetical. Vascular surgeon Devin Zarkowsky runs a solo office-based practice in a San Diego County town where peripheral arterial disease patients had nowhere …

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When local doctors disappear, patients pay the price [PODCAST]

Falls, syncope, and the orthostatic hypotension we miss

Physician
July 1, 2026

Last week a patient came in after his third ER visit in four months. Dizziness, near-syncope, and two falls. He has Parkinson’s disease and has been on carbidopa-levodopa for six years. His blood pressure in my office was 128/82 sitting. Completely normal.

That number told me almost nothing.

What I needed was his blood pressure lying down and again after standing for three minutes. I needed the reading he took at home …

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Falls, syncope, and the orthostatic hypotension we miss

Private equity is reshaping concierge medicine

Health Policy
July 1, 2026

Nobody is asking this out loud. They should be.

Consider any mid-sized American city. A physician shortage that predates the pandemic. A growing population. Enough employer density to attract outside capital. A physician opens an independent concierge or DPC practice. The panel fills. The model works. The relationship medicine covenant holds.

Then the room changes.

Around 63 percent of physician transactions in 2023 were attributable to a PE firm or their portfolio …

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Private equity is reshaping concierge medicine

The difficult patient in the ER is often the sickest

Physician
July 1, 2026

As an emergency medicine physician, we’ve all had that hysterical patient. The one that comes in during a busy shift grabbing at their head, their chest, their abdomen. Yelling out that they are in pain as they roll by.

You know the one. They make the nurses’ eyes roll. They add to an already chaotic scene. Other patients stop to watch as the gurney passes.

You debate how long you’re going to …

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The difficult patient in the ER is often the sickest

The hidden curriculum no residency teaches

Physician
July 1, 2026

“There are moments in medicine that transform a medical graduate into a physician.”

Every July, thousands of newly graduated physicians begin residency. They arrive with crisp white coats, fresh medical degrees, and years of scientific knowledge. But July 1 is more than the first day of residency. It is the start of a professional and personal transformation.

There is another curriculum, however, that receives far less attention. It has no syllabus, no …

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The hidden curriculum no residency teaches

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