Research shows that self-advocacy in healthcare can lead to significantly improved health outcomes, including better quality of care, increased patient satisfaction, reduced symptom burden, and a greater sense of control when patients actively participate in decision making about their goals, treatment, and needs.  However, self-advocacy is often misinterpreted to include self-diagnosis, self-prescribing, and reliance on Dr. Google.  On this episode, we’ll examine the many facets of self-advocacy.

Atop the textbook list of medical emergencies are the following: bleeding uncontrollably (including coughing or vomiting blood); breathing problems (difficulty breathing, shortness of breath); change in mental status (unusual behavior, confusion); fainting or loss of consciousness; chest pain for two minutes or more; feeling of committing suicide or murder; and accidents and injury (including poisoning, burns, smoke inhalation, and near drowning). On this episode, we talk with three callers whose situations challenge the textbook list of medical emergencies.

There is a unique emotional conflict with diseases of the brain and central nervous system, a need to understand and put a label on the process and a dread or denial when that label is placed.  Whether it’s schizophrenia or dementia, depression or ALS, the pronouncement of the label is as fraught as the absence of one. On this episode, we’ll hear from patients who struggle with both the fear and functional loss of neurodegenerative disease.

The first joint replacement surgeries were performed 135 years ago in Germany, shortly followed by efforts in France and England using rubber and steel joints. Refinements in materials and methods progressed slowly, but by 1969 the FDA finally approved the first hip prosthesis, the technical name for the artificial joint. In 2025, it is projected that 2.5 million Americans will undergo hip and knee replacement surgeries with countless more undergoing replacement surgeries of other joints.

Out-of-network doctors or hospitals, surprise billing, limited benefits, and off-formulary medication are all-too-familiar healthcare hurdles. The list of potential financial disasters awaiting the healthcare consumer is so profound it has earned its own name on the list of medical complications: financial toxicity.  Possibly more than other consumer sector, healthcare is fraught with buyer beware situations at every turn.

The impact of diabetes in America today is nothing short of apocalyptic. It’s a scourge, an epidemic, a catastrophe, a preventable tragedy of enormous proportion, and none of these statements are exaggerations. More than half the country is pre-diabetic or diabetic,  and more than 3/4 of Americans are obese. The extent of obesity in American youth suggests the trend is likely to worsen.

The penis refers to the male sex organ, which combines with the testis and prostate gland to complete the male sex anatomy. It’s a relatively simple organ comprised of the head or glans, the shaft, and the base, which surround the urethra through which urine and semen flow. Despite its anatomical and physiological simplicity, its cultural influence remains profound as does its central role in men’s health.

Throughout the history of man, most disease was a medical mystery characterized as either a divine response to sin and disobedience, an imbalance of bodily humors, or an unknown pestilence. As we recently learned from Covid, mysteries still persist in medicine. And those who were fond of the TV show “House” may recall that medical mysteries are often of a personal nature. On this episode, several callers share their own.

When you think about blood, what comes to mind? Blood contains the elaborate systems for clotting and immune regulation that prevent us from bleeding to death or dying from infection. Blood is also integrally linked to the lungs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged, as well as to the heart, arteries, and veins through which it flows. Blood is life.

Cholesterol was the first measurable biological marker of heart disease discovered in medical research. Biomedical research became obsessed with cholesterol. In fact, studies of cholesterol’s role in disease have garnered 13 Nobel Prizes. This episode touches on what we know about cholesterol, what we don’t know, and the mythology that has been built around it and around the drugs that treat excess amounts of cholesterol.