"This blog was developed to provide medical updates that are important and have my perspective as additional insight."
A patient of ours, Brad Gerson, is doing good work in The Valley, bringing hearing aids to those who cannot afford such devices and who are in need. They do this by refurbishing old hearing aids that patients are no longer using, and they are looking both for donations of such hearing aids, and for …
Great institutions of medicine are resources for patients worldwide. When I studied at Johns Hopkins Hospital and University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics I developed a great deal of respect for the power and potential of these entities. On the west coast, we have other great institutions are are the equal to those back east, …
Blink Health ( https://www.blinkhealth.com ) is a new online service that is helping locate the cheapest generic medication in your area. This is sorely needed and has been lacking since Drugstore.com and Costco.com removed online information on their prices. Why is it that we can find out the financial information and secrets of others, but …
With all of the news about PPI medications and issues of kidney concerns and dementia concerns, I think it is wise to catch our breath and maintain some perspective. The jury is out on this topic. PPI’s are great medications and the topic of quitting PPI’s is always worth exploring, but I have written extensively …
Yes…it’s an old joke and we all know it. The answer to our question is ….”Practice, practice, practice.” This old joke fits in with my follow-up post about ZE & PPI medications because the story of why we hear so many criticisms about PPI medication is based on how assistant professors become professors. How?….Not practice, …
There are always changes going on with insurance and medication insurance coverage, and one of the most curious phenomenon is ‘uncovered’ medications. Medicines that insurance used to pay for, but they no longer do. This includes a variety of medications: sleeping pills, muscle relaxers, anxiety medications, and hormones….to list just a few. The reason they …
What is a beta blocker and why should you care? Well, because they are among the great pharmaceutical discoveries of the 20th century, and they are useful in so many ways. Perhaps you could benefit from a beta blocker. What is a beta blocker? It is a chemical that blocks the action of adrenaline …
The other day a patient asked me about my hobbies. Aside from doing some exercise, reading, and involving myself in my kids lives (to the extent that want such)….my hobbies are medicine and my website (which is to say….also medicine). It is this passion for what I do that keeps me motivated and engaged and …
I often have patients that see me with strange symptoms. I listen…I examine…but the symptoms don’t fit into any of the pigeonholes of medical science, in fact, they often don’t make much sense at all. They are real…in the sense that the patient is experiencing the symptoms, but there is no evidence that anything …
What the heck? What am I talking about? Actually…I’m having a little fun with acronyms that are so common in medicine by spelling out the letters as opposed to just using the acronyms ZE & PPI. Z.E……are the initials for Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome, and rare condition of persisting and recurring excess stomach ulcerations due to massive …
The passing of Justice Scalia is a call to arms for older men. What do I mean? Well….reading all of the news accounts, it appears that Justice Scalia died from sudden cardiac death, which is classically the first manifestation of heart disease in 1/3 of people with heart disease. He is the classic person to …
It was President Eisenhower’s heart attack during office, in 1955, that resulted in the US declaring a war on heart disease, just as Beau Biden’s death from cancer has inspired President Obama to declare a war on cancer this year. Back in 1955, there was very little that could be done to prevent and treat …
Dr. Scott Sporer is a Chicago-area orthopedist who does knee and hip replacement. He just came to my attention when a patient told me about her experience getting her knee replaced by him, back home. We have a lot of excellent physicians here in The Valley. Many of them are listed on our Recommended Doctors …
OK….so I’m a cow! I love meat. That said, it’s probably not the worst thing you could be….you could be a sugar cube! Along those lines, a new book on weight loss and dieting, Always Hungry, focuses on reducing fats and carbohydrates to reset your appetite and help loose weight. In a modified ‘high …
Three cheers for a great scientist and humanitarian….Linus Pauling. His Day is celebrated on February 28th in the state of Oregon, because Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize winner, is a native-son of Portland, and got his undergraduate degree at Oregon State University. He both discovered the specific abnormality in the hemoglobin molecule that causes sickle-cell …