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TV Doctors Tout IUDs As The Best Contraceptive Option: Why It May Not Be

That’s the opinion of television’s The Doctors, a syndicated TV Show that appears to be giving Dr Oz a run for his money, in USA Today. In fact, that’s the headline – IUDs: The Best Contraceptive Option.

What you know about birth control: Nearly half of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended; abstinence is the only sure-fire way to prevent pregnancy (and protect you from STDs); smoking while on the Pill may increase your risk of heart attack or stroke; as long as you are still getting a period, you can get pregnant during menopause. But here’s something you may not know:

We think IUDs work best.

This is contraceptive education at its worst. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*

PTSD “Breakthrough?” Real Science Doesn’t Need Endorsement

The PTSD BreakthroughIt infuriates me when someone misappropriates the word “science” to promote treatments that are not actually based on science. I have just read a book entitled The PTSD Breakthrough: The Revolutionary Science-Based Compass RESET Program by Dr. Frank Lawlis, a psychologist who is the chief content advisor for Dr Phil and The Doctors. There is very little science in the book and references are not provided. It amounts to an indiscriminate catalog of everything Dr. Lawlis can imagine that might help post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients. 

He describes recent brain imaging studies suggesting that signs of traumatic brain injury are associated with PTSD.  He thinks PTSD can no longer be considered a psychological condition, but must be approached as a complex biological, physical, psychological, and spiritual condition. He says many of these patients have brain damage. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

The Friday Funny: The Physician Shortage

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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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