Category: Conditions

Optimize your knee injury recovery without surgery

Recently, growing attention has been given to the fact that some types of surgery may be overrated. This article succinctly summarizes the situation, citing dozens of studies showing that some orthopedic surgeries popular in past decades had no better …

How trauma, health care, and kindness are the keys to contagious change

I spent years researching and writing about the health care crisis. It was depressing and isolating — traumatizing. When I met someone with more reach, it was a relief to be able to stop. Early on, it was obvious to me that our medical health care cris…

From medical student to MS warrior: Navigating life with multiple sclerosis

I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during my second year of medical school. It happened while I was on a neurology rotation when I approached the neurologist after a lecture and expressed my suspicion of a flare-up. Subsequently, a lumbar puncture…

What every clinician needs to know about Sjogren’s from a physician turned patient

In the 4+ years since my own diagnosis, I have continued to peel back the layers of my illness story, realizing that seemingly unrelated complaints from my teens and twenties were actually early signs and symptoms of what would later be formally labele…

The struggle is real for patients and doctors

If you are a patient, we all are at some point. Undoubtedly, you have experienced some of the difficulties patients face today in getting approved for and receiving medical care in a timely fashion. From scheduling doctor visits to undergoing tests, pr…

It’s time to stop stigmatizing long COVID patients with mental health conditions

Mental health conditions are common among individuals with long COVID due to various factors. These include the direct effects of COVID-19 on the body, such as neuroinflammation, as well as the circumstances often associated with the condition, such as…

Can minors truly consent to reversible puberty blockers in gender-affirming health care?

Gender-affirming health care (GAH) is a rapidly developing sector within the medical profession that can include indirect therapies such as counseling, direct therapies such as hormone treatments, puberty blockers, or gender-affirming surgeries. A main…

Is obesity really a disease?

Obesity is unquestionably a major risk factor for disease and an increasingly serious societal problem, but is it actually a disease? I would argue that obesity, defined purely by a BMI of >30, is really just a number – an objective finding. In the…

Food allergies are not preferences. Let’s start treating them that way.

We’re in a rapidly growing food allergy epidemic. 1 in 13 American children have food allergies—a number that’s only growing. Private insurance claims of anaphylactic food reactions, which are severe and potentially life-threatening, rose 377 percent f…

The surprising power of lifestyle and diet changes to prevent infertility

An excerpt from What to Eat When You Want to Get Pregnant. I know firsthand how hard infertility can be to talk about. Personally, I struggled conceiving my second daughter, and I am an advocate for taking control of your own fertility through lifestyl…