The End of Fasting Labs

The End of Fasting Labs

In many medical offices, patients have to starve themselves ... for eight to twelve hours prior to getting annual labs drawn. But does this make any sense? As patients know, I urge plenty of skepticism when it comes to recommendations that a doctor might make. Here, I...

Super Bugs

Super Bugs

"What is a super bug and how do you ..." make one? The term “super bug” always reminds me of the 1972 Black exploitation film Super Fly, starring Ron O’Neil. The movie’s trailer featured the tagline, “He’s got a plan to stick it to the man!” Back then, there weren’t...

Vaginismus

Vaginismus

Wow, this is an embarrassing article to ... write. Oh, I don’t mean that writing an article on the human vagina is embarrassing. After all, as a physician, I deal with this organ and its associated diseases on a regular basis. No, the article is embarrassing to write...

When Shyness Needs Treatment

When Shyness Needs Treatment

If you were to describe yourself as ... “painfully shy,” probably the last job you’d want is going on national TV every night, telling jokes and interviewing people you don’t know.  But such is the case for David Letterman. Other famous people, brilliant on stage but...

Shingles

Shingles

We’ve all seen the horror movie where ... we think the bad guy has been killed off, but he is really hiding in the basement ready to attack the girls at the sorority as soon as the cops wrap things up and head home. This is just how shingles works. Shingles is a skin...

Know Thy Enemy

Know Thy Enemy

The immune system is one of the most ... extraordinary feats of Darwinian engineering on the planet. Over the past four billion years as life developed from single-celled organisms to complex multicellular creatures, we have been under continual attack by viruses,...

Benign Positional Vertigo

Benign Positional Vertigo

Vertigo means dizziness—actually a specific ... kind of dizziness where you think the room is spinning or moving, as opposed to feeling unsteady on your feet with reasonably stable surroundings. Any child who has experimented with spinning around like a top knows the...

Bronchitis

Bronchitis

Of all the diseases I commonly see in primary care ... none is more likely to be improperly treated than bronchitis. What is bronchitis and why do physicians and patients often approach this disease incorrectly? Bronchitis is divided into two versions. Acute...

Cancer, Reconsidered

Cancer, Reconsidered

In 1971 when Richard Nixon launched our nation ... into a war on cancer, little did we realize that this war would have significant collateral damage. Although we have made progress against certain types of tumors, the part of the battle that involves wide-spread...

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