Pastors and church staff members answer a call to take care of the rest of us. They often sacrifice personal time and possessions to support their congregations. But now, the congregations are not returning the favor.

A recent survey conducted by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) reported that many pastors and church staffers are among the growing number of uninsured or underinsured Americans. A majority of pastors reported receiving little or no help from their national denominations in obtaining health insurance coverage. Read more →

Do you remember a time when most people on the roads just drove their car? Let me be more explicit. Do you remember a time when the main activities drivers engaged in were talking to a passenger, singing, and eating or drinking something?

Today it’s not often that I simply see someone driving; a good third or so of the people are talking on their cell phones. Now I realize that my percentage is far from accurate data but the fact that a large number of people talk (via cell) and drive is common knowledge. Read more →

In recent years, there’s been a resurgence of interest in placebos. Not the kind that are used to minimize bias in clinical trials, but the kind that doctors knowingly give to patients.

In a recent survey of more than 200 doctors practicing in academic medical centers, 45% reported that they had given placebos to patients in the course of providing clinical care. Nearly all the physicians surveyed agreed with the statement that “placebos have therapeutic effects,” and the condition for which they believed placebos offered the most psychological and physiological benefit was pain. Read more →

The human brain recognizes “patterns” as a natural way of looking at places and things. The feeling of deja vu is the result of such a pattern match; although we might not actually have been in a similar situation, the brain thinks it has, and produces a feeling of familiarity.

New research published online in Science reveals that specific neuronal pathways in the learning and memory center of our brain, the hippocampus, is crucial for rapidly “comparing” two scenarios based on visual cues, thus identifying similar contexts. In turn, this can lead to the feeling of familiarity we often get in odd places and circumstances, termed deja vu. Read more →

In medicine, we often see patients with chronic neck and back pain. I previously posted about patients who present with neuropathic pain and how they can be some of the most difficult patients to treat. Often, the etiology of their pain is unknown and treatment often involves a long trial and error approach.

Health professionals have always been taught that chronic neck and back pain is a phenomenon of industrialized nations. Read more →