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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*

The Principles Of Moisturizing Your Skin

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When I was in medical school on my dermatology rotation, we joked that all skin treatments boil down to three decrees: If it’s wet, dry it. If it’s dry, wet it. And if in doubt, use steroids.

Some other time I’ll discuss the “drying” of skin, or the use of steroids (which are not, by the way, the kind of steroids taken illegally by athletes!) Today I’ll cover how to keep the skin “wet” – and some principles of moisturizing.

Skin is our first line of defense against disease. Bacteria, viruses, parasites – dangers lurk everywhere. But our epidermis (the outer layer of our skin) blocks them almost always. When people have inflamed skin, the epidermis becomes disrupted and infectious particles can enter their body.

The key to keeping the epidermis intact is keeping it moist. Now, I’m talking about moisture just below the surface of the skin (within the epidermis), so the outside surface doesn’t feel wet. There are molecules within the epidermis that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Making Sense of Medicine*

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*

Killing Lice At $500 A Head

What’s one of the fastest growing healthcare fields? A professional nitpicker — as in the profession of picking lice out of hair.

In a recent New York Times story, it’s becoming apparent that parents will do anything to get rid of lice. Part of it is the stigma associated with it, part of it is the “ickiness” factor. As a parent myself, I certainly understand the sentiment. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*

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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