BehindTheMedspeak: A medical moment — or, advice is worth what you pay for it

1) The BEST remedy for nonspecific back pain: lose weight. Most such pain is due to weak abdominal musculature and subsequent cantilevering of the belly outward, putting all manner of unphysiologic stress on the lower back.

2) The BEST remedy for hypertension: lose weight. Most mild hypertension goes away when weight gets down where it should be.

3) The BEST remedy for oral-medication-controlled diabetes: lose weight. Most such patients don't need their meds anymore once their weight gets back to normal.

4) The BEST remedy for sunburn: 2 aspirin every 4 hours, starting as soon as possible after the burn and continuing 'till bedtime. I read this in a brief letter from a Florida dermatologist to the New England Journal of Medicine long ago, when I was in med school: it really works! The odd thing is that it appears nowhere in the medical literature and when I mention it to fellow doctors, it's the first they've ever heard of it.

On a different note, Peter Drucker once remarked that the only way to get Mr. Big Stuff-type CEOs to accept his advice was to charge so much it hurt: he said that was the only way to get their undivided attention.

My tactics precisely.