Category: Conditions

Why spiritual health so important for medical students

A tale of two pandemics: Around the time of the coronavirus outbreak, 2019 also marked a full century since the death of Sir William Osler, who revolutionized medical training. Despite some lingering debate over whether Dr. Osler’s pneumonia-related de…

Parenting in a pandemic: Making the best decisions for your family

An excerpt from Parenting in a Pandemic: How to help your family through COVID-19. When my husband and I made the decision to purchase a house outside of New York City, the prior owners left behind a trampoline. The trampoline is big, above ground, and…

In the COVID-19 era, point of care ultrasound has proven invaluable

Amidst the crushing human and economic carnage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic, one innocent bystander has been cowering in the dark corner of medicine’s past, clinging to its final breaths of iconicity: the beloved stethoscope. For over two centuri…

The success of a COVID-19 vaccine depends on effective scientific communication

One commonality amongst all reporting associated with the COVID-19 pandemic: “unprecedented.” Unprecedented circumstances, unprecedented symptomatology, unprecedented prevalence, and now, unprecedented velocity. “300 million doses of a safe, effective …

We need rapid tests for a fast virus

Imagine a future where you wake up, go to the bathroom, pick up a small strip of paper, and put it in a tube with your saliva and saline.  By the time you are done with part of your morning routine, within 15 minutes or so, the paper will tell you if t…

Fascia in primary care: When chest pain is not in your chest

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein “Mr. Thomas, are you OK?…

10 COVID-coping tips from the trenches

There is absolutely no playbook for what we are all experiencing today. The changes coming at us have been swift, mercurial, and frightening. Governments, businesses, nonprofits, and individuals have scrambled to cope with relentless waves of chaos in …

COVID-related stressors and increasing instances of substance abuse

Throughout 2020, the United States has been playing catchup against the coronavirus. As several well-researched articles have noted, lack of appropriate and timely response has been at the forefront and can be attributed to numerous factors including t…

A family physician’s COVID story

It was April 5, 2020. In the months prior, I imagined, she had been grappling with the isolation of her newfound unemployment.  The pandemic’s solidarity was possibly a relief: the rare solace of the permission to take a pause.  Her new days were…

There is endless profit potential to treat chronic diseases

I have noticed several articles describing how antibiotic development has bankrupted some pharmaceutical companies because there isn’t enough potential profit in a ten-day course to treat multi-resistant superbug infections. Chronic disease treatments,…