The best way to avoid the flu is spending the months from fall until spring in a solitary bunker, communicating with other people only electronically. The second best way is getting the flu vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the flu vaccine for everyone over 6 months who doesn't have a specific contraindication to it. Because of the increasing number of...

I have written twice this year (links below) about the increasingly severe Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The news in West Africa is still mostly bad. Over 7,000 have become ill and over 3,300 have died. This is by far the worst Ebola outbreak ever. This week marked another first, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US. This news is likely making many of my regular readers wonder “Shou...

Mutations in two genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2 greatly increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Last year I wrote about Angelina Jolie’s discovery that she carries a harmful BRCA1 mutation and her decision to have preventive double mastectomy. In the general population mutations in these genes are quite rare, but am...

The joys of September! Parents gleefully shove their reluctant children onto school buse...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, sometimes called Lou Gehrig’s disease) is a truly horrible illness. It is a progressive fatal neurodegenerative disorder that leads to worsening muscle weakness. Weakness in the limbs initially makes handwriting sloppy and makes it hard to button clothes and eventually causes paralysis. Patients also develop weakness in the muscles that control swallowing...

In every life we have some trouble When you worry you make it double Don’t worry. Be happy.

It will soon pass, whatever it is. Don’t worry. Be happy. -- Bobby McFerrin

Much has already been written in reaction to Robin Williams’s untimely death, about his incandescent talent, his prolific career, his decency and kindness, ...

Patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are forced to spend much of their time obsessing about their blood sugar and insulin doses. The state of the art in treatment of T1D is an insulin pump that delivers insulin and a continuous glucose monitor that displays the glucose level and sounds alarms for values that are too low or too high. (...

It’s nearly impossible for us not to believe that what we eat has a profound effect on our health. But what we know about the link between food and health is much less than what we believe. A study published this week provides a perfect example. An overweight person trying to lose weight is likely to hear advice about the importance of eating breakfast. We have some reasons to guess that sk...

[The patient interactions in this post are amalgams of hundreds of patient encounters over my career. They are not accurate depictions of any encounter with any single patient.] “I don't like taking medicines.” All physicians hear some form of this opinion very frequently. Even more frequently, patients don't state this view outright but rely on it to completely subvert their doctor’s pl...