Rachel Reiff Ellis

Physician burnout persists even as the height of the COVID-19 crisis fades farther into the rearview mirror. The causes for the sadness, stress, and frustration among doctors vary, but the effects are universal and often debilitating: exhaustion, emotional detachment, lethargy, feeling useless, and lacking purpose. One or even more of these more unusual burnout prescriptions may be key to your personal emotional regulation and mental wellness.

Learning you have an illness can be a pivotal, life-changing moment. This year, we celebrate four people who have transcended their medical diagnosis to embrace activism and action in the wider health community and accelerate progress in research, understanding, and hope.

When you are in treatment for cancer, your body can’t fight off germs as well as it should. You’re at especially high risk of infection if your white blood cell counts are low or you’ve had lymph nodes removed. You can help guard your system against bacteria, viruses, and fungi with some smart steps.

Emergency department (ED) physicians frequently encounter fatal situations, feel frustration when they can't save a person, and constantly see patients in distress. How do physicians weather the emotional storm of life in the ED with both their mental health and empathy intact?

Although most physicians have gotten used to working with EHRs — despite their irritations — the use of EHRs has contributed to a growing number of malpractice lawsuits. Defense attorneys say that doctors need to be increasingly careful of their EHR interactions in order to protect their patients — and themselves against legal action.

When you picture your kids as successful adults, what do you see? According to a Pew Research study, most parents hope their kids grow up to be financially independent and satisfied with their careers. These are solid goals, but they’re only one small slice of what it means to be successful.

For the scores of people seeing weight loss success on prescription injectables such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Saxenda, and others, the number on the scale isn’t the only change they’re experiencing. The “food noise” in their brains—the mental distraction of feeling compelled to eat—is also getting quieter.
Robin, 49, from Baltimore, Maryland who is using her first name for privacy, started taking Ozempic in December of 2022 as a preventative measure against diabetes after she showed several signs ...

With brand-name bottle fads and gallon-a-day water challenges trending on TikTok, hydration is in, and that’s good news for health. The average human body is more than 60% water. Water makes up almost two-thirds of your brain and heart, 83% of your lungs, 64% of your skin, and even 31% of your bones. It’s involved in almost every process that keeps you alive. So if you’ve hopped on the water-drinking bandwagon, you’re doing yourself a big solid.

In addition to being a source of intuition for making decisions, your gut is the system in charge of your digestion. The health of that digestion—as well as other things like mood and immunity—depends heavily on a teeming microflora of both beneficial and harmful bacteria that live in the lining of your GI tract.

If you’ve ever walked down the supplement aisle in a pharmacy, you’ve seen the overwhelming abundance of options available for your medicine cabinet. According to the 2022 Council on Responsible Nutrition Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements, 75% of Americans use dietary supplements, most on a regular basis.

Ozempic, Wegovy and other GLP-1 medications work by suppressing appetite.
A 2022 study found that after people stopped taking Wegovy, they regained two-thirds of the weight they’d lost on the drug.

As a physician, you may ruminate over an interaction with a patient or worry about a complicated procedure that didn't go as expected. You work through lunch, see patients after hours, handle numerous emergencies, and plow through endless paperwork and red tape. In short: factors related to practicing medicine can put enormous stress on physicians.

Pain is common after some surgeries. But successfully managing it after surgery does more than just keep you comfortable -- it can also speed up your recovery time.

Compassion is borne out of a sense of empathy — the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Studies on empathy show it to be crucial to quality healthcare and not just for patients. In one study on empathy ratings among doctors, 87% of the public believe that compassion, or a clear and obvious desire to relieve suffering, is the most critical factor when choosing a doctor.

Whether you’re a fitness buff or live with limited mobility, yoga is an accessible, gentle form of physical activity that can increase your flexibility and muscle tone, as well as put you in touch with your breathing. You may know it’s “good for you,” but there’s a mountain of scientific study on just how beneficial it can be—and the positives are many.