A Look Into My Wife’s Response to Cancer
My wife, Susan, has experienced five types of cancer in her life—breast, melanoma, basal cell, and squamous cell and we have always been very different in our responses to it…
How Our Government Can Improve Our Healthcare System
It’s clear that the US healthcare system needs changing. The costs are too high and the results too poor. The system also needs changing because our patients have changed. What…
The Four Dimensions of Healing Everyone Should Know About
Only about 15 to 20 percent of health-related outcomes are attributable to medical interventions. The rest are related to health behaviors such as diet, physical activity, and smoking status, with…
The One Aspect of Healing Our Healthcare System Gets Wrong
When I began practice as a young doctor, I thought that the treatments I gave to patients were the primary reason they got well. But after almost 40 years of…
Healing Tool Series: HeartMath® emWave® Training System
A stress management training system that monitors stress by measuring a person’s heart rate variability and provides biofeedback to increase this heart rate variability, which correlates with the relaxation response…
Healing Tool Series: Narrative Medicine
A patient-centered, collaborative storytelling process to deliver respectful, empathic, and effective medical care for serious illness “Healing Tools” summaries are a collection of evidence-based resources to help providers and patients…
A Patient’s View: Athlete Scores Against Chronic Pain
Exercise, meditation and mindfulness, yoga and an anti-inflammatory diet lead to a nearly pain-free life Like many teenagers, John Slay wanted to be a professional athlete. As a baseball, basketball…
Recognizing the Power of the Placebo Effect
I have always considered the placebo effect to be the sleeping giant of research and medical care. The placebo effect is essentially the meaning response that is induced by the…
Conquering Chronic Pain: Self-care plus conventional treatment helps patients relieve or prevent chronic pain
Getting through the workday used to take all of Olivia Seonbuchner’s energy and willpower. For about 19 months, the 25-year-old would go home and get into bed with a heating…
Healing Tool Series: Book Review: Aches and Gains: A Comprehensive Guide to Overcoming Your Pain
A book for people with chronic pain: Aches and Gains: A Comprehensive Guide to Overcoming Your Pain “Healing Tools” summaries are a collection of evidence-based resources to help providers and patients…