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…
Category: Conditions
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…
Ending the opioid crisis starts with physicians
A recently published opinion article by opioid advocates attempts to assuage physicians’ prescribing guilt, arguing “doctors prescribing to their patients did not create the U.S. opioid crisis.” As lawsuit after lawsuit concludes, Pur…
Our institutions have given up on the COVID-19 pandemic. We should not.
The COVID-19 pandemic is over. On May 5, The World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 was no longer a public health emergency. The U.S. followed suit on May 11, allowing the public health emergency declaration to expire. The pandemic did not e…
Uncovering the truth about genetic mutations and weight loss
“I do not feel full even after I eat” is what I heard from so many of my patients. Even after bariatric surgery, this feeling of fullness would go away initially but then it would come back, and they found themselves again overindulging. Wh…
Accessing needed pediatric mental health care was difficult before the pandemic and is now at crisis levels
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit kids hard. Their mental well-being was already tenuous before the pandemic, and COVID-19 has only exacerbated what was already a crisis of anxiety, depression, and suicidality among youth. Getting treatment for adolescents…
Life and death in the ICU: a night of heroism, tragedy, and budgetary battles
ICU: Our acuities were high, and staffing was low. Our ICU, with 24 beds, was already full. The staffing situation for that night was so poor that instead of our RNs having a 2:1 patient-nurse ratio, we were forced into 3:1 assignments. Despite the cha…
Revealing the hidden impact of skin conditions
During my internal medicine residency, I rotated through various subspecialties, but the one that always gave me thought-provoking perspectives at the end of the day was dermatology. I was very excited to work in derma and learn how to treat basic clin…
Is inflammation too much of a good thing?
Inflammation is currently a popular topic, and I must admit that I’ve fallen into the trap of vilifying this natural physiological phenomenon. Simply put, inflammation is our body’s response to infection, injury, or insult. Heat, redness, s…
