My most popular books, at least based upon sales and letters, are the Bryson City series, made up of:

Bryson City Tales: Stories of a Doctor’s First Year of Practice in the Smoky Mountains (read a chapter here)
Bryson City Seasons: More Tales of a Doctors Practice in the Smoky Mountains (read a chapter here)
Bryson City Secrets: Even [...]

One of the joys of being a Christian family physician is being able to discover where my patients are on their personal spiritual journeys. I’m delighted when I can pray with and for them. And, it is a special privilege, on occasion, to guide them in beginning a personal relationship with God.
So, just how do [...]

HealthDay News reports “there may be nothing wrong with stuffing your turkey full to bursting, but you might not want to do the same thing with your suitcase as you pack for holiday trips.” They go on to say:
More than 53,000 people were treated in 2008 in U.S. hospital emergency rooms, doctors’ offices, clinics and [...]

The AP is carrying a very well done story on how we, as parents, can help our children with more healthful nutrition during the holidays:
Pam Vetter’s 15-year-old son balked when she told him she was opting for a healthier holiday season this year: fish rather than turkey, fewer carbs and sweets. He threatened to purchase a [...]

Planning on shopping ’til you drop? CBS News reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that over 50,000 people every year sustain some sort of winter-related back injury, and 5,800 of those are holiday decorating-related.
Your back could sustain all sorts of strain from carrying heavy purchases, and from the increased stress of lugging [...]

I received an announcement this morning from my dear friend, David Stevens, MD, announcing something that is coming as a surprise to many — his resignation from the AMA.
Resignations from the AMA are not really the fodder for news stories or blogs, except when the person resigning is the CEO of a national organization for [...]

Barb and I have just learned that an interview we did with Dr. James Dobson for his daily international Focus on the Family radio broadcast has been selected among “The Best of 2009.”
The broadcast was titled, “Differences That Strengthen a Marriage” and will be broadcast on Wednesday, December 16, 2009.
This is from the FOTF website:
Dr. [...]

Hundreds of you joined Barb and me last Christmas in sending “Thank You” post cards to our military men and women overseas. The program, sponsored by Xerox, is starting once again.
If you go to this web site, you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to [...]

If you love those holiday smorgasbords, but are already stressing about the added pounds you’ll have to sweat off come Jan. 1, help is at hand from a report on Health on the Net:
It’s possible, say nutrition experts, to enjoy holiday eating and make it to 2010 weighing the same as you do today.
It’s all [...]

We all know that breastfeeding has myriad benefits for the baby. Breastfeeding reduces babies’ risk of these diseases by these percentages:

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS):  36%
Type 1 Diabetes:  19-27%
Type 2 Diabetes:  39%
Leukemia (acute lymphocytic) :  19%
Leukemia (acute myelogenous):  15%
Asthma:  27%
Gastrointestinal infections:  64%
Lower respiratory tract diseases:  72%
Atopic dermatitis:  42%
Acute otitis media:  50%

We know that breastfeeding has psychological [...]

The first week of December, most new outlets reported, as did NBC Nightly News on 12/3, “There’s been speculation for years that there’s been a link between” cell phones and brain cancer, but “the results of a very large, very long study of just about everybody in Scandinavia found no link.”
This is great news for [...]

I had the privilege of caring for pregnant mothers for over 20 years (delivering over 1500 babies). During that tenure, I would tell moms, “I do NOT want you to experience ANY morning sickness during your pregnancy.”
Only about one-third of “morning sickness” occurs in the morning. About 1/3 occurs in the afternoon or evening. And, [...]

Nicotine patches and gum seem to be safe and effective in pregnant women, according to a new study.
Such patches and gum have been shown to help non-pregnant adults stop smoking, study co-author Dr. Geeta K. Swamy told Reuters Health. However, women and their physicians have been uncertain about their safety and effectiveness during pregnancy.
Reuters Health [...]

MedScape is reporting “An important head-to-head study of smoking cessation therapies shows that combination treatment with a nicotine patch plus lozenge almost doubles the rate of abstinence at 6 months compared with placebo, new research suggests.”
“This is the first time that a head-to-head study has been done looking at all the different smoking cessation pharmacotherapies, [...]

Here is the Table of Contents for the December edition of our Family Newsletter:

Family Update
Great Christmas Gift Ideas
Personalized and Autographed Books Available
Several Books on Clearance Sale for $4.99 (plus shipping)
TSI: The Gabon Virus – Copies Autographed by Both Authors available
Publication Update

Lintball Leo: The book that thought it could.
Dr. Walt interviewed for Examiner Article on STDs [...]

A HealthDay News report led me to some new research that has found that although far more caregivers now place babies on their backs to sleep — a practice that reduces the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) — that encouraging trend has leveled off since 2001.
The study also shows that black mothers and [...]

No treatment is more emblematic of the world of alternative therapies for autism than chelation. The influential autism recovery group, Defeat Autism Now, calls removing metals from the body “one of the most beneficial treatments for autism and related disorders.” Chelation is one of the highest-rated treatments on the parent survey of the nonprofit Autism [...]

In a gripping series exploring autism and its treatments, the Los Angeles Times reports that “after reviewing thousands of pages of court documents and scientific studies and interviewing top researchers in the field, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that many of these treatments amount to uncontrolled experiments on vulnerable children.”
According to results of [...]

In the 1990s, I published a number of papers in the medical and birthing literature to help birthing families design and experience safer and more satisfying birthing experiences.
On of the articles I published was for a midwifery journal on the issue of whether the father of the baby should be in the delivery room or [...]

Ten years ago I published an article for a midwifery journal on the issue of whether the father of the baby should be in the delivery room or not  (Larimore WL. The Role of the Father in Childbirth. Midwifery Today. Issue No. 51, Autumn, 1999, 15-7). I’ve reprinted the original article here in the post, [...]