In the 1980's dermatologists were somewhere in the basement of the doctor world in terms of reputation and reimbursement.  It was always felt to be an easy job--not too much thinking, a limited scope of care, no after hours calls--but did ...

We are always amazed watching TV.  What used to be ads for car companies, beer, clothes, products are not proliferated by ads for drugs and companies seeking to sell you drugs.  These companies, like Hims and Hers, are willing to prov...

Few people realize how important nutrition is, and it's not all about weight loss.  You can lose weight and be less healthy because you are not eating food that will feed your gut bacteria, energize your muscles, and strengthen your brain....

The very landscape of organized medicine is being altered by corporate takeovers.  Whether in long term care, hospitals, or large groups, corporations are taking charge and offering "perks" that enhance the wealth of institutions, their le...

Antibiotics are one of the most impactful medical discoveries in the past century.  Along with sanitation and sterile technique, antibiotics have led to a dramatic increase in life expectancy.  However, now we have moved down a differ...

Drug companies, the media, physician groups, and patient advocacy groups, month others, have convinced the American public that the key to health is more testing, more doctor visits, more drugs, more procedures.  We have invented more dise...

Today we talk about the impact of drug advertisement on both patient and physician decision making.  These companies know that a huge investment in ads will result in more prescriptions, one of many ways Big Pharma infiltrates so many aspe...

With the opioid crisis looming on the horizon always, the question comes as to how to treat pain.  So many medicines have side effects an are overall dangerous.  Some work about as much as placebo.  We'll talk about medicines, bu...

We have always known about basic cancer screening tests, like mammography and colonoscopy.  But we have expanded the universe of cancer screening, relying on scans, blood tests, and genetic testing.  As we screen more, we find more, w...

Many books and studies have pointed to the fact that we are a nation swimming in mental health diagnoses and drugs.  The DSM--the bible of mental health diagnoses--has exploded the numbers of mental health sicknesses you may have, and for ...

The American Heart Association (AHA) has devised new blood pressure guidelines.  In this iteration, the AHA tell us that any blood pressure over 120 is dangerous and must be treated, with pressures over 180 requiring immediate hospitalizat...

New studies show that as we are drugging our senior more, they are falling more and dying more from their falls.  We may think that dramatically lowering blood pressure and sugars, fixing cholesterol with statins, using blood thinners to p...

In Return to Healing we lay out a very simple fix to the medical mess we are in.  We spend the first half the book explaining why it is a mess, and then the second half talking about who is profiting from the mess.  Then we give the f...

Alan and Andy talk about how medical school does not prepare students to be whole-person doctors, focused on numbers and multiple choice answers and slices of the body.  William Osler devised an ideal medical school at Hopkins before the F...

As two primary care doctors with a collective 75 years of experience, we understand the benefits of having a primary care doctor who develops strong relationships built on trust, who customizes care to each patient, who takes a patient-centric ...

There is no question that primary care is dying in this country, much to the detriment of our entire healthcare system and every person who utilizes it.  We talk about an article called

We look at the role of primary care in our health care system and discuss why it is the crucial ingredient to save lives, lower cost, and help people feel better and be healthier.  As we gravitate toward a technician-run specialized system...

We know that at the hospital medical students, residents, and hospitalists dive into a Flexnerian orgy of tests, treatments, and more tests.  Is this helpful?  We'll go back in time and look at Osler's dream at Hopkins before it becam...

People are losing weight on the new drugs, but at what cost?  First there is the financial cost: we're paying $35 billion a year for these drugs, and don't be fooled, all of us are paying.  While insurance pays nothing for nutrition o...

Alan and Andy discuss specialty care and its inherent dangers.  We tell about specific patient examples, why excessive specialization seems appealing but results in over-testing and over-treatment, and how we can instantly change policy to...

Alan and Andy discuss cancer screening, focusing on breast and colon.  These screening tests can save lives, but just how much do they help you as an individual, what are the risks, and is there a point in your life that they are not helpf...

We will discuss cancer screening in the next two segments, but will start with the PSA.  Why this test?  Because it is the poster child of what is wrong with screening.  One third of men develop prostate cancer in their lives, bu...

The Drug Industry was front and center in the creation of our health care industry.  The reforms that created modern healthcare in 1911 and beyond were predicated on developing a research infrastructure in medical schools and in the medica...

In our book, A Return to Healing, we dissect what is wrong with our health care system, and show how you as a patient can better advocate for your own health in a system that often deceives you for profit.  But too, we want to fix the syst...

In our book Return to Healing we explore the roots of our healthcare mess, and we dissect the many reasons that you are not being given the care you deserve.  In this audio we offer an introduction to the book and to this podcast.