Here’s a fun question to float at your next cocktail party: Which animal bite has killed the greatest number of people? It’s the mosquito. By far. Because mosquitoes transmit malaria, which has killed more people than any other germ. And now, as security guards are coming to remove you from the cocktail party, let me remind you that mosquitoes also spread West Nile Virus, Yellow Fever, Deng...

We’ve known for over a generation that using medications to lower high blood pressure can decrease the risk of strokes, heart attacks, and kidney failure. National guidelines have recommended using medications to get the systolic blood pressure (the higher blood pressure number) below 140. So for my whole career a systolic in the 130s would lead to me pat the patient on the back and declare vi...

This week a group of researchers in the World Health Organization (WHO) released a study that caused a bit of a kerfuffle. The group, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published a paper classifying processed meat as a carcinogen. What’s processed meat? Accordin...

Last week every single physician across the country who bills insurance companies, every hospital, every diagnostic laboratory, every medical facility of any sort that bills Medicare or private insurers switched the set of codes they use to submit diagnosis information to insurance companies from the ninth International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) to ICD-10. Why? Because the change was ...

“When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not.” Jedi Master Yoda

My patients occasionally ask me “do you have something that will make me younger?” Sometimes they’re just joking and want to complain a bit about some indignity of getting older. But frequently they’re serious and would like me to reverse some ravage of time. What I find fascin...

Last week our office received our batch of flu shots for the upcoming flu season. Every fall I urge my readers to get a flu shot. If you'd like to ...

I love writing about vaccine-preventable diseases. I’ve written about measles, polio, and whooping cough. That’s because vaccines have become victims of their own success. Less than one h...

I'm having trouble trying to sleep I'm counting sheep but running out As time ticks by… And still I try… -- Brain Stew by Green Day from the album Insomniac

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in lif...

Smoking is a major cause of heart attacks, strokes, emphysema, and lung cancer. Smoking rates have steadily declined in the US in the last 50 years, but about a fifth of US adults still smoke. Helping them quit would make a major contribution to their health. More

It’s very hard to find a product or service that is both lousy and unaffordable. Such expensive duds are usually quickly replaced by cheaper and better competitors. Yet prior to the Affordable Care Act, healthcare was becoming more expensive every year while simultaneously becoming less convenient, less personal, and less satisfying. In 2009 I wrote a More