My father was ecstatic when he retired from the US Postal Service after 30 years. But it didn’t take long before he began to miss the packlike male bonding he took for granted: group lunches, team projects, water cooler banter. When they were gone, it left a big hole in his life. “Men acquire friend...

Let’s face it: managing your period is a hassle. There’s the cramping, the bloating, the bleeding, and the feeling a little cranky. Not to mention the need to remember to have tampons and ibuprofen on hand. There may also be the bad timing of a special occasion or a tropical vacation that complicate...

Follow me on Twitter @drClaire We started giving flu shots at our practice last week, and it made me not just happy, but relieved. I know how bad influenza can be and I always feel better when we can start preventing it. Every year, influenza sickens millions, hospitalizes hundreds of thousands, and...

New research on yoga has yielded promising evidence that yoga could complement traditional treatment for depression. The scientific study of yoga has grown rapidly in the past decade. Between 1975 and 2014, a total of 312 randomized controlled trials on yoga from 23 countries were published. Between...

It’s amazing how a good night’s sleep can rejuvenate the mind, or “rest the little grey cells” as Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie’s famed sleuth, liked to say. But sound slumber may boost the brain another way by protecting you against Alzheimer’s disease. Research has begun to show an association b...

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling If you do an Inte et search on “hiccups” you’ll find lots of supposed cures for this annoying but usually fast-passing condition — one site lists 250 of them! One thing you won’t find, though, is a good reason for why we hiccup. Hiccupping is a more complex reflex ...

Remember when packaged foods emblazoned with the words “fat free” seemed to be everywhere? Then came labels boasting “zero grams of trans fat.” “Sugar free” and “low sodium” claims soon joined the chorus. These days, gluten-free foods are all the rage. For the most part, food industry trends have ec...

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling If you’re like me, you lea ed that about 90% of people are right-handed and much of the reason is genetic. And that’s true, although it remains a mystery why our genetic evolution led to so many more righties than lefties). But for certain tasks, handedness can be ...

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling When I see patients with rheumatoid arthritis, I’m often asked about diet. Are there foods that can help? Should I avoid certain foods? The role of diet in arthritis Whenever I’m asked about diet for arthritis, my short answer is that with a few exceptions, there i...

Follow me on Twitter @drClaire More and more, I have families in my practice who are trying out treatments and therapies I didn’t prescribe. Most of the time, it’s absolutely fine. Other times, it’s not. “Complementary and alte ative medicine” is a broad term that refers to treatments that are not g...

The world of primary care is challenging right now. It can be frustrating for both patients and doctors. From the patient’s perspective Let’s say you’re basically healthy, but overweight. You can’t quite get your diet under control. You’d like your doctor’s help and maybe some testing, like thyroid....

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition of unknown cause in which the covering lining of nerve fibers (called myelin) is damaged. Myelin is like insulation on a wire — when it is damaged, nerve impulses are not transmitted properly. This leads to an array of symptom...

When you were younger, life revolved around goals: college degree, new job, traveling to a foreign country, running a marathon. Having your eyes (and mind) on a prize kept you motivated and engaged. But as you age that focus tends to wane. What’s left to accomplish? Is it even worth striving for som...

What if I could prescribe a pill that could prevent or treat high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, even depression and dementia? And what if researchers had extensively researched this pill and the result was: ample proof that it’s effective. On top of that, it’s practicall...

When you are pregnant, what you hear from people around you makes a difference. You want to do the right thing for your child; if someone you trust gives you advice, you listen. That’s why we need to be sure that pregnant women get good advice. In a study recently published in the jou al Pediatrics,...

In the 1980s, reports began to surface of a potential connection between vasectomies and prostate cancer. This worried men considering vasectomies for birth control, but it was also controversial. Some studies detected an association while others didn’t. Harvard Prostate Knowledge last covered the t...

I frequently lecture to physicians, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals on drug safety, and I often start by asking how many people have ever observed a serious adverse drug event. Almost everyone in the room raises his or her hand. I then ask how many have ever reported a serious advers...

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling Did you know that places where chocolate consumption is highest have the most Nobel Prize recipients? It’s true, at least according to a 2012 study published in the New England Jou al of Medicine. Of course, that could be a coincidence. But is it possible that inte...

Follow me on Twitter @JohnRossMD Antibiotic resistance is an emerging threat to public health. If the arsenal of effective antibiotics dwindles, treating infection becomes more difficult. Conventional wisdom has long held that stopping a course of antibiotics early may be a major cause of antibiotic...

A standard approach for treating aggressive prostate cancer is to give therapies that block testosterone, a tumor-stimulating hormone. Should initial hormonal therapies fail, doctors can switch to other drugs that suppress testosterone in different ways. One of them, a drug called abiraterone, has b...