Your health: Is Chicago facing a doctor shortage?
Chicago's possible doctor shortage
Chicago is ranked No. 9 in the U.S. for “doctor shortages,” according to the BetterDoctor.com Health Opportunity Index.
To create this ranking, BetterDoctor.com, a free consumer health care tool to find a doctor, used new government data to calculate the average number of local residents per primary care doctor in cities across the U.S.
Shown below are the rankings of the top 10 “cities that don't have enough doctors” (with a higher number indicating more residents per doctor and greater doctor shortages):
1. New York City (6,536 residents per primary care doctor)
2. San Antonio, TX (3,820)
3. Los Angeles, CA (3,062)
4. Greensboro, NC (2,986)
5. Jacksonville, FL (2,710)
6. Raleigh, NC (2,518)
7. Phoenix, AZ (2,486)
8. Albuquerque, NM (2,484)
9. Chicago, IL (2,375)
10. Columbus, OH (2,233)
For this study, BetterDoctor.com focused on primary care doctors because as the first doctors you see when you get sick, these doctors are in the highest demand and shortest supply. Primary care doctors are defined as either family practitioners, general practitioners, internists or pediatricians.
Popular diets pretty much the same
If your goal is to lose a few pounds, there's a crowded library of best-selling programs to get you there. But which one is best?
A new analysis published in JAMA shows that you might not have to worry about that so much, at least when it comes to two of the more popular diet regimens, low-carb and low-fat, Time magazine reports.
No matter which one you choose, you can't really go wrong.
An earlier study in Annals of Internal Medicine did find that low-carb dieters lost slightly more weight than low-fat dieters after one year. The new study reached similar conclusions, but the differences in weight loss were not significant.
After analyzing data from about 50 clinical trials, researchers found that any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet resulted in weight loss.
No single program contributed to a dramatically larger drop in pounds: people cutting back on carbs lost 19.2 pounds on average after a six-month follow-up, while low-fat dieters lost 17.6 pounds. After a year follow-up, some pounds crept back for people on both diets, but still resulted in a 16-pound drop for people on low-carb or low-fat diets.