Hormones as the Body’s Language of Meaning, Not Just Molecules

When a patient says, “I feel like a different person in this body,” they are rarely talking only about lab numbers. They are talking about meaning: Who am I now? What happened to my energy, my desire, my steadiness, my sense of myself? Hormones sit at the center of that question. They are not just […]

Peptides, Enhancement, and Ethics: What Doctors Owe Their Patients and Themselves

A patient sits across from me, asking about peptides for muscle recovery and anti-aging. “I’ve been reading about BPC-157 and CJC-1295,” he says. “My training partner swears by them. Can you prescribe these?” This is the moment where medicine intersects with ethics, performance, and enhancement. And honestly? These conversations are getting more common—and more complicated. The Rise of […]

From Burned-Out Internist to Competing Physician: How Performance Changed My Medicine

I was 20 pounds overweight, chronically exhausted, and running on coffee and willpower. As an internal medicine hospitalist, I spent 12-hour shifts managing other people’s health crises while my own body was quietly falling apart. The irony wasn’t lost on me. One night, after another brutal shift, I caught my reflection in the hospital bathroom […]