"This blog was developed to provide medical updates that are important and have my perspective as additional insight."
A recent study from China shows that people who eat spicy foods appear to be healthier and live longer. In a survey involving 500,000 Chinese men and women, there was a inverse correlation between spicy foods and all cause mortality, heart disease, cancer and respiratory infections. So…besides being tasty to those ‘chili lovers’ out there, …
You might think that if you were the President you’d get the best healthcare in the world….but I suspect you would be wrong. The VIP treatment tends to provide inferior care to what you get right here in Scottsdale, at our best hospitals and with our best doctors. Read the story of President Garfield …
Dr. John Sotos was a former classmate at Hopkins, and is known as Dr. Zebra for his knowledge of arcane medical conditions and diagnosis. Sound familiar…like someone on TV ? That’s because he is the ‘real life’ Dr. House, and was the medical adviser for the TV show. What is the diagnosis of this patient …
Stories can be a great teaching tool…they can also entertain. THE MOTH is a radio program that is on the web, and it celebrates wonderful stories and the storytellers. I enjoyed this wonderful reminiscence by this Infectious Diseases doctor….take a listen and see what you think Listen >>>>HERE<<<<
Here is a link to some of the most wonderful pictures I’ve seen on the internet. It’s 37 famous locations…filmed by low-flying drones. Take a look and enjoy…… >>>HERE<<<<
My nephew John Smyth is 23 years old, lives in Indiana with his parents, and has had major communication issues his entire life due to Autism. More recently, he has been communicating through ‘facilitation’, a method that allows caregivers to assist in improving communication methods with those who find it challenging to communicate on their …
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. ProPublica has just come out with a simple to read scorecard for surgeons….to share Medicare information on surgical outcomes that the government is collecting. This information is useful, to the extent that it provides a ‘ballpark’ estimate of a surgeon’s …
The internet has many surprises….and one of them is THE WAY BACK MACHINE On this website, you can look up old versions of websites that no longer exist or you can see the initial iterations of ones you are currently using. It’s a bit of a ‘trip’ to go back and see www.doctordoug.com from the …
Here is a fun little quiz to check your memory and your artistic knowledge. Take a look…it’s a lot of fun: QUIZ IS >>>>HERE<<<<
In an effort to help keep your mind sharp, here is a fun quiz to puzzle over. Remember….one of the key features of warding off memory loss is THE 3E’s…. Exercise Engage….this is engaging your mind!…..CLICK >>>>HERE<<<< Vitamin E
I took the plunge recently and contributed to my first project on Kickstarter, the contribution was given to developers of a printing ‘font’ for the computer made from the handwriting of Albert Einstein. As you all are aware, I am a bit of an Einstein fan. His gentle manner, self assuredness, and brilliance make him …
As a physician, the commonplace experiences that patients relate to me often have completely different meanings than the ones they give them. For instance….it is often that case that patients will think that a symptom, let’s say ‘bright red blood in the bowel movement’ strongly suggests they might have cancer, when in fact, the vast …
….IS RELISHED BY THE WISEST MEN” Among my favorite quotes by Roald Dahl, it’s the motivation for this new column on my website that will focus on humor. A good joke from the internet is great medicine, so I thought to share them on the site and I’ll begin with a series of wonderful …
I was recently emailing my patient J.R. and the topic of his upcoming 90th birthday was on my mind. We ran into each other in Las Vegas ten summers ago when he was having a party for his 80th, so I thought I’d ask him his secrets for making it to 90. In his response …
Read More “THIS TIME, DR DOUG ASKS THE QUESTIONS AND A PATIENT RESPONDS”
I’ve always been interested in the basis for understand how ‘we know’ things that we know. As a result of this, I became a philosophy major at Arizona State, and although I focused most intently on the Platonic Dialogues, and the Philsophy of Science, Epistimology (theories of knowledge) was an area of fascination. How do …