Yesterday's L.A. Daily News business section featured an interesting story about concierge medicine.  I was delighted to be one of the physicians interviewed for the story.  I'm grateful to Barbara Correa for shining some light on a practice model that has received very little attention -- a model that I'm convinced is bett...

This week's New England Journal of Medicine has an interesting study about how differently emergencies are handled outside of normal working hours.  The study looked at every patient in New Jersey hospitalized with his or her first heart attack between the years of 1987 and 2002.  The authors separated the ...

Losing weight is the second hardest thing I ask my patients to do.  (Quitting smoking is the hardest.)  Typically, physicians have generally recommended a low-fat diet which is still the diet recommended by national guidelines.  Despite this, several different kinds of diets have become popular recently with varying amounts of carbohydrates, most notably the Atkins diet which is very low in carboh...

Garlic is frequently touted as a natural treatment for high cholesterol, and many garlic extracts are sold with the suggestion that they improve cholesterol levels.  The current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has an article reporting the most definitive study yet looking at the effects of garlic ...

Last week's TIME Magazine has an excellent article about a very important trend in healthcare:  evidence-based medicine.  It's not long, and I urge you to read it. The surprising truth is that the scientific practice of medicine is a very new development.  For centuries medicine was an apprenticeship in...

This week the Food and Drug Administration approved orlistat for over-the-counter sales.  Orlistat is currently available as the prescription medicine Xenical, and will be marketed over-the-counter under the brand name alli. The details of the announcement, and reactions by various weight loss experts are detailed in More

A popular misconception (at least in health-conscious Southern California) is that natural substances are in general safer than artificial ones.  Some people who would never take a prescription medication without educating themselves about the possible side effects use natural products without a second thought. Last week's New England Journal of Medicine published an article which is a <...