Medicine

The world of psychedelics is painted with neon colors and smiling, white hippies with long hair who use hallucinogenic substances for wild, recreational trips. But psychedelics like LSD, MDMA (also known as molly or ecstasy) and psilocybin (also known as magic mushrooms) have a much richer history in their use as therapeutic medicines, which existed in Indigenous communities long before Western culture and medicine discovered them. 

Television medical dramas have been a staple in Hollywood for decades. But just how accurate are those surgery scenes on NBC’s “Chicago Med?” Could Holmes and Watson really solve a crime using the science portrayed in the CBS series “Elementary?” It is Dr. Oren Gottfried’s job to ensure that medical facts align with the fiction of Hollywood. 

When did you last look up your symptoms online? Medical tomes and doctors visits were once necessary for diagnosis; now the internet makes medical knowledge — both amateur and professional — available to the masses.

Heart disease kills more people than any other disease in the world. But as cardiologist Haider Warraich illuminates in his new book, it gets less funding and less attention than numerous other diseases, including cancer.

According to the United Nations, more people are living with HIV than have died since the epidemic began in the 1980s. There have been large medical and social advances for those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. But many of those early researchers, advocates and survivors are nearing the end of their lives. 

Science and religion are often pitted against one another as opposing forces. While science is defined by clear methodologies and peer-reviewed findings, religion is at once abstract and highly personal. Yet whether or not someone is a highly-devout Hindu priest or a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, both are wielding tools in search of greater understanding. 

Note: This is a rebroadcast. This program originally aired September 6, 2016.  

Contrary to popular belief, statistics show that North Carolina does not have a doctor shortage problem; it has a doctor distribution problem.

Experts say the lack of funding for graduate medical education (GME) in rural areas is one reason that those communities have worse health outcomes.

The latest numbers from the Pew Research Center show that the number of Americans who say they believe in God has declined in recent years. And millennials are much less likely than older Americans to belong to any religious faith.
 

But despite these trends, psychiatrist and researcher Harold Koenig argues that science shows that religious belief is good for mental and physical health.

For many health professionals, treating patients is a matter of assessing their ailments, making a diagnosis and prescribing treatment where it is required. Then it is on to the next patient. But a new program in VA medical centers aims to make connections between medical professionals and their patients through narratives.
 

When Damon Tweedy was in his first year of medical school, he learned a number of startling statistics that led him to the conclusion that being black is somehow bad for your health.

He heard over and over how black patients were faring worse than other patients in almost every field of medicine, but nobody seemed to be talking about the reasons for this disparity.

It’s not often that you get the chance to interview your personal hero on the day you become a doctor, but yesterday, I got to do just that. Minutes after I graduated from UNC School of Medicine, I had the chance to speak with UNC commencement speaker Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Gawande is a Harvard surgeon, best-selling author and has been named one of the world’s 100 most influential thinkers by TIME magazine. His acclaim comes from his ability to write about health care problems in a way that is easy to understand and powerful enough to effect change.

When Dr. Becca Neal loses a patient after a routine procedure, she grieves much like the patient's family. 

One of the most influential physicians of the 20th century was not a practicing doctor, but an artist.  

A team of doctors implanted a bioengineered blood vessel into a patient with late stage kidney disease at Duke University Hospital in June.   

Medical decisions are fraught with emotion and often have drastic impacts, yet we leave much of the choice in the hands of the doctors. They have been to medical school, after all. But Dr. Peter Ubel thinks the medical establishment has got it all wrong. Patients need way more participation in their medical decisions, and doctors should not dictate treatments. He explores this issue as well as others in his new book, “Critical Decisions: How You and Your Doctor Can Make the Right Decisions Together” (HarperOne/2012).