This is recurring question for me in practice. Each day someone comes to the office asking if they might be pregnant. In today’s world there is no reason for anyone to be asking this question. There is no reason to guess. There is no reason to wonder if you might be pregnant because you are [...]
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“Eat Right To See Well!” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Vincent P. de Luise
We all know by now that, in large measure, we are what we eat. And because of that, these days most of us have become very health-conscious (if we weren’t already!) and we try to teach proper nutrition and dietary habits to others. There has been an enormous amount of basic science and clinical trial research [...]
“WSJ Wrong- We need IT” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. James Salwitz
In a reactionary opinion this week in the Wall Street Journal entitled “A Major Glitch for Digitized Health-Care Records”, Soumerai and Koppel expanded to the point of silliness the conclusions of a review of healthcare IT by McMaster University. The McMaster analysis abstracts data from 36000 studies over five decades of healthcare IT and concludes [...]
“The Vitamin Dilemma” by HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Padmavati Garvey
I am always amazed at the enormous variety of vitamin supplements that are available in my local grocery store. After the cereal aisle, the vitamin aisle is the longest aisle. I peruse over the multiple brands, various combinations, and of course the different prices and feel that if the sheer vastness of the options overwhelms [...]
“Choosing who will choose: The ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Selecting a Healthcare Agent” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Monica Williams-Murphy
Will your cousin (who lives across the country) choose what you will have for lunch? Did your mother choose which underwear you are wearing today? All very unlikely -yet both of these relatives could end up choosing whether you have a feeding tube placed in you, or whether you are kept alive on a ventilator [...]
“How Paula Deen and Pharma Can Help Physicians on Obesity and Diabetes” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. John La Puma
Getting physicians to help patients to lose weight has never been easy: docs have not been paid to do it, have little training and less hope of success. For the first time in a long time, pharmaceutical companies and organized medicine are interested too. And that’s great: I have a new approach to this, targeted for men [...]
“Sailing between Support and Insight in Therapy” by HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Steven Reidbord
For more than a decade I’ve taught a seminar in dynamic psychotherapy to psychiatry residents. One tricky issue that arises every year is the apparent choice between conducting a “supportive” psychotherapy, versus an “analytic” or “insight-oriented” one. I developed a sailing analogy to clarify this issue, and to teach an important point about it. Most [...]
“I laughed so hard, tears ran down my leg.” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Kevin O’Neil
That was a quote from a sign I saw on vacation last summer. While we read it and laugh, we all know what it means. “How’s your bladder working?” is a common question that I ask patients in the office. The responses I get include, “fine, except when I ____”, or, I’m fine as long [...]
“Do You Need Antibiotics?” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Alex Lickerman
One hundred fifty million prescriptions for antibiotics are written each year in the United States. By some estimates, one third of them are unnecessary. One of the most common diagnoses for which antibiotics are inappropriately prescribed is upper respiratory tract infections (URIs). The overwhelming majority of these infections are viral—infections for which we have no [...]
“News Flash: Diabetic Retinopathy a Worldwide Public Health Problem” By HealthTap Featured Writer Dr. Damien Luviano
Each time I hear the news that the prevalence of diabetes is increasing, I cringe. In 2012, The United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that over 25 million people in the US have diabetes, and that diabetes is the leading cause of: 1. New blindness (diabetic retinopathy) 2. Limb loss 3. Kidney failure [...]
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