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This was the last column I wrote for the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Free Lance-Star: To celebrate March being National Nutrition Month, the Fredericksburg Food Coop and Mary Washington Healthcare sponsored a recent seminar on ‘Food As Medicine’ at Stafford Hospital.  Six local dietitian/nutritionists described the importance and scope of the nutritional…

Screen time may be messing up your kids.

The industry is supporting its price hikes with bogus numbers it would appear.

This great article in The Atlantic magazine exposes the dishonesty and manipulations of the drug companies who claim they have to charge so much for their medicines. I hope a lot of politicians read it and then have the testicular fortitude to stand up to the Big Pharma lobby for…

Changing kids eating habits can literally save their lives. Dr Yum is working on it.

Akratics - and maybe you - have trouble changing bad habits - but there's a whole science out there to help.

Adverse Childhood Experiences I was not giving much thought to the childhood experiences of the disheveled old guy I was treating for emphysema and excess alcohol consumption at the clinic the other day – but I should have been. This realization was brought home to me by a presentation at…

How academic wizards can be doozie doctors.

Is depression commoner over the holidays? Who is more vulnerable? it has a beneficial side. My own experience of Blue Christmas prompts me to explore the why's and wherefores.

Getting medical screening tests must only be a good thing, mustn’t it? It might find some cancer or other condition that would be missed otherwise? What this idea doesn’t take account of is that testing can lead to, not only pain, anxiety and expense, but lethal complications.     Colonoscopy…

There is currently strident debate in Virginia about legalizing medical aid in dying.* Recently the American Medical Association has reaffirmed it’s code of ethics, saying “physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer.” Several states have passed legislation to legalize medical aid in dying, or will not…

Here’s good news for those of you who like an occasional tipple – or even those who drink regularly.   The recent paper in the Lancet suggested any amount of alcohol is bad for you.   Before that I had always comforted myself, as I sipped my V&T, with the old…

I seem to be hearing a lot of stories of people being stressed out because their provider has, unnecessarily, put the fear of God into them. Friend Jane (not her real name), a 69 year old diabetic was being checked out for liver problems. She was sent for a fibroscan…

Great article in Washington Post on October 5th by Daniel Morgan, an epidemiologist at University of Maryland School of Medicine how doctors are “radically and catastrophically wrong” about how useful a medical test will be and how “many thousands of patients are diagnosed with diseases they don’t have.” How, for…

I’m tempted to lead with some bad joke, like Christian Zammas is exchanging hard drugs for soft. It is true. He has gone from using hard drugs to peddling soft one(s) - caffeine.   All brought about by a sort of epiphany that has motivated him to gather up people with…

Call me skeptical, but the new Apple Series 4 watch, touted as having a “serious role as a clinical health tracker” makes me worry that it’s going to fire up the hypochondriacs.   About to be on the market, the watch has improved heart rate sensor; a new feature that…

Because I was writing about precepting a medical student, I looked back at what I had written before. I found this that I wrote 3 1/2 years ago:   When the medical student likened the pieces of banana in the desert at the Chinese restaurant to Reed-Sternberg cells of Hodgkins…

The patient I saw in the clinic yesterday has fully embraced the Virginia senate’s unanimous vote decriminalizing medical marijuana it would seem.   Edward C. was my first patient, being seen for the first time. “He uses quite a lot of marijuana” the nurses who checked him in told me.…

My brother-in-law Olly, a Dutch ex-merchant mariner is a bit of a character. But also a bit of a hypochondriac.     When Paula and I went to England for Christmas , the whole family decamped to stay at Fingals Hotel, which describes itself as  an “eccentric, quirky, luxury country…

This is a piece I wrote for the Free Lance-Star about the incredibly long term effects adverse childhood events (ACE's) can have on people.   What's the prospects for kids currently being separated from their parents at the border?   Adverse Childhood Experiences     I was not giving much…