Tag: book

Health Blogs by Family Docs

These health blogs by Family Physicians provide valid medical information, sound advice, and insights on healthy living. Board-certified in Family Medicine, they discuss common health concerns, the healthcare system, and provide educational and challenging content. Topics range from climate change to medical terms understandable for patients.

reviewed July 24, 2025

Health Blogs by Family Physicians

  • offer valid medical information on a variety of topics.
  • offer sound advice without quick fixes.
  • discuss common everyday health concerns.
  • discuss the healthcare system, how it works well, and how it doesn’t.
  • offer insights into healthy living, both as individuals, families, and a society.
  • show you how physicians think, feel, and act, both as persons and professionals
  • will educate and challenge you.

People sometimes ask me if I  ever considered specializing, and I answer, “I did. I specialized in Family Medicine.”

Family Medicine specializes in families

According to the American Board of Family Medicine.

“Family medicine is the medical specialty that provides continuing, comprehensive health care for the individual and family.

It is a specialty in breadth that integrates the biological, clinical and behavioral sciences.

The scope of family medicine encompasses all ages, both sexes, each organ system and every disease entity.”

Like me, these physician bloggers are board-certified in family medicine. To become certified, we must:

  • Graduate from  a medical or osteopathic college
  • Complete an accredited residency
  • Maintain an unrestricted license to practice medicine
  • Pass a secure, computer-based certification examination every 7 to 10 years
  • Complete at least 150 hours of continuing medical education every 3 years
American Board of Family Medicine certification plaque
By completing the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) requirements, I remain certified indefinitely.

Many family physicians belong to a national medical association, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), as well as our state chapters.

The AAFP provides high-quality learning opportunities for family physicians,  patient education materials and practice management support.

I don’t know these doctors personally, nor am I directly financially connected to them.

(This post does have affiliate links which can pay a commission to this blog for purchases made through them. )

Common Sense Family Doctor

Common sense thoughts on health and conservative medicine from a family doctor in Washington, D.C.

a blog by Kenny Lin, M.D. who is
  • a board-certified Family Physician and Public Health professional practicing in the Washington, DC area.
  • Associate Deputy Editor of the journal American Family Physician (AFP )
  • teaches family and preventive medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
  • Paid consultant to the American Academy of Family Physicians, John Wiley & Sons, and Business Health Services.

In this post he suggests that climate change may really be a health issue.

And here  Dr. Lin explains some medical terms that doctors use frequently but patients may not understand.

Dr. Linda

just a family doctor speaking up from the frontlines of medicine

 Linda Girgis MD, is a family physician who treats patients in South River, New Jersey and its surrounding communities. She

  • holds board certification from the American Board of Family Medicine and is affiliated with both St. Peter’s University Hospital and Raritan Bay Hospital.
  • collaborates closely with several universities and medical schools where she teaches medical students and residents
  • has earned awards and recognition from her peers and a variety of industry bodies
  • contributes to other health blogs
  • has written and published two books

Dr. Girgis’ primary goal as a physician remains “ensuring that each of her patients receives the highest available standard of medical care.”

Topics covered include medical information, healthcare policy, public health and poems, like this one she posted on World Cancer Day 

And in this post she encourages patients to advocate for their own healthcare.

Dr. Girgis wrote these books-

INSIDE OUR BROKEN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM and THE WAR ON DOCTORS 

(affiliate links)

THE WAR ON DOCTORS book
INSIDE OUR BROKEN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM book

Exploring the HEART of Health

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Dr. Aletha

Prostate cancer screening- where it stands now

(this post has been updated 11/17/2015)

Prostate cancer is to men what breast cancer is to women in the United States-

  • The number 1 diagnosed cancer in men
  • The number 2 cause of cancer-related death in men

Top 10 cancers in the U.S.

So, naturally we would like to be able to diagnose it at a stage where the chance for a cure is greatest.

A screening test is a test that is done on a healthy person to detect a disease that is not causing symptoms. 

For breast cancer, that is a mammogram. For prostate cancer, it is a fairly simple blood test to measure a chemical called Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA

The blood level of PSA may be high or normal in the presence of cancer. If high, it will decline with treatment.
The blood level of PSA may be high or normal in the presence of cancer. If high, it will decline with treatment.

 PSA is a protein produced only by the prostate gland; levels in the blood can be elevated by any disease of the prostate, not just cancer. And, in some cases, it can be normal, even in the presence of cancer.

anatomy of the prostate gland
The prostate gland sits just under the bladder in the pelvic area.

Despite the bleak sounding statistics, we know that most prostate cancers grow so slowly that they will never cause death. And, for cases that are discovered and treated, sometimes the treatment can cause complications worse than would have occurred from the cancer.

So, multiple organizations including the American Cancer Society, and the American Urological Association, have issued guidelines for screening. To simplify, I am listing a composite of the recommendations from them and others, since they are all quite similar.

  • Men under 50 years old- screening not recommended (unless high risk, see below)
  • Men from age 50 to 70 years old should discuss the benefit versus risk with their physician, and make a decision together
  • Black men are at higher risk so should discuss screening with their physician at age 45 years.
  • Men whose father or brother had prostate cancer prior to age 65 years, should begin discussions at age 45 years.
  • Men age 70 and older do not need screening, because they will unlikely die from prostate cancer.
  • Finally, any man whose health status suggests a life expectancy of less than 10-15 years does benefit from  screening.

The goal for cancer screening, other than merely finding a cancer, is to

  • increase a person’s chance for cure and survival.
  • minimize complications of the screening and treatment

In the case of prostate cancer, screening does not seem to accomplish this. But these, like other screening guidelines, are based on current evidence, so must be reviewed regularly and changed based on new information.

Here are the guidelines as published for patients in the Journal of the AMA with a link to a podcast discussion.

This Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer 

by Dr. Patrick Walsh

Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer
This represents an affiliate link for this book.

“covers every aspect of prostate cancer, from potential causes including diet to tests for diagnosis, curative treatment, and innovative means of controlling advanced stages of cancer.”