If you like thinking and writing, few topics are better than the excess exercise and heart disease story. Indeed it is a matter for the curious. Two studies published last week in the British journal Heart addressed the relationship of exercise and heart disease. (See references below.) Although these studies garnered mainstream media attention they […]
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Hey Everyone, I recently returned from the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in San Francisco. I attended the meeting as both a physician-journalist-columnist for theHeart.org and as a practicing electrophysiologist. As it so often is with international meetings, I returned energized and rejuvenated about the practice of medicine. Medical meetings are great this way. It’s quite […]
Patterns. As a doctor, you learn to see patterns. Biologists call the patterns of organisms phenotype–as opposed to genotype, the genetic makeup. For twenty years, I have observed the phenotypes (patterns) of people afflicted with AF, and have come to believe, and data are beginning to confirm, that the disease doesn’t just happen. It’s not […]
Students of the obvious might consider the topic of physician satisfaction one of mere folly. The “rich doctor†label is an easy one, and the recent Medicare data dump, which revealed hordes of physicians who were doing quite well, thank you, only strengthened it. Yet, when one moves past intuition, into analytical thinking, the contentment […]
It happened while I was leaving a grocery store in the southeastern United States. The young girl who asked me if I wanted to buy Girl Scout cookies was strikingly perfect. She was thin, happy, and well spoken. So were her colleagues. The moms, too, were of healthy weight and cheer. It was as if […]
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Small things, big things
I ran up the hill. It seemed shorter, and less steep than I had remembered. I was barely winded at the top. I looked into the front office windows as I ran by the old high school. I don’t run fast anymore, yet the image was gone in seconds. My memory had the building as […]
Atrial fibrillation is a mysterious disease. We know a lot but surely not enough. We look at AF but are we really seeing it? I believe there are hard truths to this disease. Hard in a way that neither patients nor doctors like. More on that later. First to some news on a major AF […]
Now that the ‘healthiness’ of products sold at CVS stores is a matter of public discourse, it seems a perfect time to mention the common pain relievers known as Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs). It just so happens that two FDA advisory committees are meeting today and tomorrow to discuss the cardiovascular risks of NSAIDs. The […]
Editor’s note: What follows is a guest post. Michael Zhang is an MD-PhD student studying at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He is one of my go-to experts on matters of cell biology and stem cells. (His bio is below.) As you may have heard, this week brought striking news in the field […]
It goes without saying that caregivers are not interchangeable. Quality matters. What else is there other than our health? From the day I began as a doctor, the absence of a legitimate meritocracy has been a source of inflammation. In 1996, when I started private practice, referrals depended too much on old-boy networks. In 2014, […]
“We should be as demanding of ourselves as we are of those who challenge us.” Dr. Jerome Groopman, writing in the New Rupublic Writing about the medical decision-making surrounding vaccines proved to be sketchy. Yesterday’s post brought stinging criticism from both sides of the debate. A pediatrician felt the structure of the post was patronizing. […]