By Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine Director, Medical Student Education Medical Director, Island West Family Medicine Clinic University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor   “Our equanimity is chiefly exercised in enabling us to bear with composure the misfortunes of our neighbors.” – William Osler   My Tuesday morning acupuncture clinic is busier than ever. Medicare has in the past couple of years started paying...

By Sagar Kamprath, MD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch In a world with so many stressors and decreasing resources, we are left often wondering what to do when faced with further seemingly insurmountable news.  For some patients and family members, that news comes as one word: cancer.  Advances in the field of medicine allow our patients to survive much longer with targeted treatment options including immunotherapy, biologic treatments, chemotherapy, radiation,...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD The mark of the educated man is not in his boast that he has built his mountain of facts and stood on the top of it, but in his admission that there may be other peaks in the same range with men on the top of them, and that, though their views of the landscape may be different from his, they are nonetheless legitimate. -E.J. Pratt, poet Meditation is one...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD With 36 states having legalized medical marijuana and 18 allowing it for recreational use, we hear precious little on data for its benefits and harms. We also don’t see any reports of massive upticks in marijuana addiction, overdoses, deaths, except for some cases of cannabis hyperemesis syndrome and reports of impaired driving. A recent article in The American Family Physician, “Cannabis Essentials: Tools for Clinical Practice” delves into the clinical...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD Prime health concerns of patients as they age are the 3-D’s: dependence, disability, dementia. No one wants to be in a situation where they are totally dependent on their family or others, disabled from normal activities of daily living, or worst of all, demented with Alzheimer’s or another cognitive problem. These are deep and very real concerns of so many patients I have treated over the years. Preventing or slowing...

By Victor S. Sierpina, MD “Do or do not. There is no try.” -Yoda If there were a pill as good as physical activity, it would be a blockbuster. We have long known the benefits of exercise, as little as 150 minutes a week, on improving risk and outcomes of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and even cancer. Now, we can add our new buddy COVID-19 to the list. In a study...

By Jaysonn Vel, MS3, UTMB and Samuel Mathis, M.D., UTMB Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is an increasingly common intestinal condition characterized by a relapsing and remitting course of abdominal pain with a change in bowel habits. It affects millions of individuals and has severe effects on quality of life with an increase in morbidity and risk of colorectal cancer. There are two variants of IBD that are defined according to location and depth of intestinal...

BY Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine Director, Medical Student Education Medical Director, Island West Family Medicine Clinic University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor Are integrative medicine approaches useful to the management of post-COVID syndrome? This is an evolving space of clinical and pre-clinical science, so no definitive consensus, adequate randomized trials, or meta-analyses are yet available to answer this question. However, at this stage...

By Amulya Sajja, MS4 and Samuel Mathis, M.D. Depression is a common diagnosis that is seen in almost all medical practices. It is characterized by feelings of sadness or guilt and changes in sleep, energy, appetite, concentration. In severe cases, it can also cause psychomotor symptoms and suicidal ideations. Prompt and appropriate treatment is vital to improving patient quality of life and for safety. With the increased stress of Covid-19, cases of depression and anxiety...

BY Victor S. Sierpina, MD, ABFM, ABIHM, Director, Medical Student Education Program, WD and Laura Nell Nicholson Family Professor of Integrative Medicine, Professor, Family Medicine University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor Primary care is indeed primary. It is the foundation of our health care system. Those who have a primary care doctor have fewer hospital days, better care of chronic disease, improved screening, and immunization rates, and overall improved health. A root cause of health...