Dr. Ben Kim's blog

Just wanted to elaborate on this topic to address some of the more common questions that I've received in response to my post on why you shouldn't use soap to clean your anus or urethral opening.

Mucous membranes line the following areas of your body: Read more

If you have tight hip flexors, you can expect to have problems with your hip joints and lower back, if not now, then almost certainly at some point in the future.

Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that enable you to bring your knee up towards your trunk. Though several muscles contribute to this action, the two primary players are your iliacus and psoas major, which come together to form the extremely strong ilipsoas tendon, which attaches your hip flexor muscles to your thigh bone. Read more

Pink eye - also known as conjunctivitis - is sometimes accompanied by what appears to be a pimple in the white portion (sclera) of the eye.

Conjunctivitis often looks far worse than it is for the simple reason that you have a close-up look at inflamed and ruptured vessels. All that redness and mishmash of engorged blood vessels looks just as bad under your skin when you experience a bruise, but with a bruise, you don't actually see the goriness. Read more

In early 2011, a fellow tennis player in Barrie, Caitlyn Lawrence, now a university student in South Carolina, asked me to participate in a career-related Q&A for a class project. I thought that some of the following would be useful to others considering a career in health care. - Ben Kim Read more

As a follow-up to my outline of the three most important determinants of cardiovascular health, this post reviews six reliable measures of how healthy your heart is. Read more

Here's another favorite, one that I listen to all year round. It's actually titled "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," and was written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono back in '69 or '70 as a protest to the Vietnam war. Read more

Now that we're just a few weeks away from the holidays, I thought I would post a few of my favorite Christmas tunes, beginning with the following rendition of "My Grown Up Christmas List," performed by Kim Bum Soo, accompanied by Yiruma on the piano: Read more

I've long been a believer in the idea that all of us are born to be creative artists. Playing music, drawing, acting, dancing, writing, designing, building, even playing sports at a high level - when we nurture our creative instincts through any of these artistic experiences, we stand a good stance of feeling deeply fulfilled, and we almost certainly add value to other people's lives. Read more

Last week, I published a post detailing the struggles that my father and I have gone through over the past few months. I shared this post with hope that it would mean something to at least one person out there. Read more

Performed by Kerris Dorsey - the 13-year old actress who plays Brad Pitt's daughter in "Moneyball" - this sweet little song is best with your eyes closed and when you're in need of a few deep breaths to slow down: Read more