HIV Activists Organize to Save Lives as Trump Guts Funding
Cedric Sturdevant woke up with “a bit of depression” but made it to church, as he does every Sunday. In a few days, he would drive from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to join HIV advocates at an April rally against the Trump administration’s actions. It had clawed back more than $11 billion in federal public […]
Is Your Seltzer Habit Hurting Your Gut Health? Doctors Have (Mostly) Good News
LOADINGERROR LOADING Many of us drink sparkling water every single day, and some people even throw back multiple cans of seltzer per day. But every once in a while, some information pops up on social media claiming that all that carbonation isn’t great for you ― particularly for your digestion and can cause issues like […]
Opinion | ‘Every Kid Dreams of Walking on the Moon, or Mars’: What We Heard This Week
“Every kid dreams of walking on the moon, or Mars.” — Nathan Jones, MD, of Springfield Memorial Hospital in Illinois, on his motivation to volunteer for NASA’s year-long simulated Mars mission. “You will be poisoned and you will die.” — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), on the need for greater awareness about fentanyl’s potency at a […]
For Parents Fearful Of Their Teens’ Social Media Use, Here’s Some Hope — And Advice
If you have a teen girl, chances are she’s spending hours online every day — and you’re probably spending at least as many hours worrying about her safety there. We’ve known for some time that social media can be detrimental to anyone’s mental health, and particularly that of teen girls. Meta, the company that owns […]
Her Mom Went To Prison When She Was 13. Here’s How It Affected Her Ability To Trust Other Women.
Until she was 21, Ariana Steen cried herself to sleep every night, terrorized by the thought of her mom being killed in prison. It’s a fear that permeated her psyche throughout her young adulthood; her mother was incarcerated when Steen was just 13. Steen, now a 24-year-old living in Seattle, was primarily raised by her […]
Opinion | Questioning Medical Traditions
The U.S. consumes about 46 million turkeys every Thanksgiving. Have you ever wondered why? When traditions take hold in society, we start to forget why they existed in the first place. For example, the tradition of eating turkey on Thanksgiving started with a writer named Sarah Josepha Hale, who published scenic depictions of American life […]
Opinion | The Million-Dollar Mistake
Every physician without a business education who works in private medical practice leaves approximately $1 million on the table, and is unaware of that, a fact that’s well known to business experts who work with doctors experiencing financial difficulties. Experts such as Dan S. Kennedy, Peter Drucker, Michael Gerber, Maxwell Maltz, MD, Neil Baum, MD, […]
Opinion | The Uncomfortable Truth About Comfortable Scrubs
We love joggers. If we had to pick a piece of clothing to wear every day for the rest of our lives, it would be joggers. We wear them constantly — outside the hospital, that is. These days, this choice makes us an anomaly. Like the ubiquitous clogs in the OR, jogger-style scrubs have taken […]
Long-Acting HIV Drug Promising for Treatment-Naive Patients
Lenacapavir (Sunlenca) given every 26 weeks along with daily antiretroviral therapy (ART) suppressed HIV on par with conventional regimens in the first-line setting in the phase II CALIBRATE trial. Viral suppression to fewer than 50 copies/mL at week 54 was 85-90% across all three groups given the drug whether orally or subcutaneously every 26 weeks […]
Opinion | Perfectionism Will Kill You
Every doctor wants to be perfect. We want to make sure our diagnosis is perfect. Our treatment plan is perfect, and our outcome will be perfect. Patients want the perfect doctor. They want us to get it right on the first try, each and every time. The problem is perfectionism, as hard as we try […]