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Latest Posts

Could Your Skinny Jeans Be To Blame For A Rash On Your Legs?

If your legs are red, bumpy, and irritated, don’t blame your soap or body lotion. It may be your skinny jeans. Those popular body-huggers may look hot, but they could be causing some very uncool things on your skin.

When you move in your skinny jeans, the material causes friction on your skin, which over time, can lead to folliculitis, inflammation of the hair follicles. If you have red, itchy bumps or pimples, especially on your thighs where skinny jeans tend to be tightest, then stop wearing them for a few days to let your skin heal. To treat folliculitis, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Dermatology Blog*

Could Your Swimming Pool Give You A Rash?

Allergic to Swimming? We’re in the dog days of August and summer continues to hold on. What better way is there to relax than in your nice, cool pool? Unless you’re allergic to it, of course.

I had a patient this summer who developed an itchy rash all over. He thought it might be due to his pool, but insisted that he kept it immaculately clean. Ironically, that might have been the trouble.

Some people are allergic to Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Dermatology Blog*

How To Soothe That Itchy Sunburn

Have you ever had a sunburn? First it hurts. Then it itches. And itches. And itches.

Why is that?

Sunburn is caused by ultraviolet (UV) radiation damage to your skin. Too much UV damages your skin cell’s DNA, and your immune system responds by killing off the bad cells. Because UV radiation doesn’t penetrate (unlike X-rays for example), it damages only the surface layer of your skin. This outermost layer happens to be loaded with special nerve fibers called C-fibers which are responsible for itch.

Itch is a mechanism to Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Dermatology Blog*

The Facts About Laser Hair Removal

Yes, laser hair removal is a common and effective way to permanently remove hair. It is safe, but remember these tips:

  1. Hair removal lasers target the pigment in hair (that’s how they work). Hair lasers can damage darker or pigmented skin as the laser will target both the hair and the skin, burning it. This can lead to permanent skin discoloration.
  2. Tanned skin is dark skin, and laser hair removal should never be done on people with a tan.
  3. Laser hair treatments hurt. Some people Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Dermatology Blog*

Five Tips To Protect The Most Sensitive Skin

Baby skin is sun-sensitive.

Everyone wishes they had baby skin. It feels so soft and smooth; it’s perfectly adapted to induce us adults to want to clean their diaper, no matter how many times they dirty them. Like their big eyes and cute noses, baby skin is part of the whole package of being adorable. But like their eyes, their skin, however beautiful, is immature. Baby skin is thinner, has less natural moisturizers and has fewer pigment cells, making it more vulnerable to the environment than adult skin.

This is important especially in summer. How often do you see babies running around on the beach with just a diaper on? Although they seem indestructable, they are more vulnerable than the adult holding the pail and shovel.

Studies have shown that up to 83% of babies get sunburned their first year of life. This is our fault, not theirs. Sunburns at an early age can increase the risk for melanoma skin cancer on the trunk later in life. Sun exposure is also a poor way to get vitamin D for infants because most will get far more damaging sun than they need to make vitamin D — we adults tend to over cook them.

Here are five tips to keep your baby safe this summer: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Dermatology Blog*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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