Doctors

Seaweed can shrink your waistline. Grow your hair. Bring down your blood pressure along with your blood sugar. Build up the strength of your bones and your brain. Make your joints stop aching and your bowels get moving. Give cancer short shrift, and give cellulite and wrinkles the old heave-ho. That is, if you believe the hype - only some of which is backed up by reliable evidence. The data are strongest that seaweed can reduce inflammation, premenstrual syndrome symptoms and even the growth of tumors (in animals)

Olympic sprint champion Florence Griffith Joyner died after suffering an epileptic seizure, according to autopsy results released Thursday, and her family and friends say they hope the findings will put to rest rumors that drug use contributed to her death. Griffith Joyner died last month in her sleep at age 38. Her husband, Al Joyner, bitterly criticized those who suggested that she took performance-enhancing drugs.

White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles has agreed to pay $14.1 million to settle allegations that it paid illegal kickbacks to physicians to get their patient referrals. The settlement announced Friday by the U.S. Justice Department stemmed from a whistle-blower complaint filed under seal in 2008 by two Los Angeles doctors who objected to the hospital's practices. The two internal-medicine physicians, Hector Luque and Alejandro Gonzalez, will share $2.8 million as their portion of the settlement.

The physician was wearing high heels, a tight-fitting white lab coat and lots of gold jewelry, which is not quite what you expect to see when you visit a pot doctor. Nor do you expect to see a chandelier the size of a Christmas tree in a waiting room decorated like an Indian palace. Dr. Sona Patel told me that's just who she is. Her Melrose Avenue office, she said, is designed in much the same way as her home in Hollywood. You may be wondering what I'm doing in the office of yet another cannabis specialist, given my fruitful encounter last month with a physician in Glendale.

More than 120 investigators and prosecutors looking into workers' compensation fraud in Southern California served search warrants Wednesday at 31 sites, including the homes and offices of a string of doctors and lawyers suspected of paying illicit kickbacks. The investigation is one of several major workers' compensation fraud probes launched by authorities in the region since the beginning of last year.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Serene Branson smiled uneasily. She was back in the newsroom Thursday for the first time since becoming an instant ? and reluctant ? media sensation after she had infamously garbled her words during a live report at the Grammy Awards. But the 31-year-old journalist wasn't going back to work just yet. Instead she was back to be interviewed by her anchor, Pat Harvey, and to finally view the 17-second clip that triggered ridicule, concern and speculation that she'd suffered an on-air stroke or worse.

A Northridge doctor and three other physicians have been charged with paying illegal kickbacks to a medical referral firm that is under investigation for workers compensation fraud. The physicians allegedly paid for patient referrals from L.A. Management, a former Sherman Oaks firm under investigation for possibly paying kickbacks to get patients from companies that process workers' compensation claims for some employers and insurers. The investigation of L.A.

A 26-year-old woman underwent what doctors said was the world's first heart-liver-kidney transplant Sunday. Cindy Martin of Archbald was listed in critical condition Sunday night, considered normal after a transplant operation, said Lisa Rossi, a spokeswoman for University-Presbyterian Hospital. The operation began at 7:35 p.m. Saturday and ended at 5 p.m. Sunday, Rossi said.

I went into an anesthesiology residency and began my love affair with Fentanyl, a narcotic-anesthetic that we use all the time. I saw how great it made patients feel. I tried it intravenously. With Fentanyl, if you use it once, you are hooked. It removed every trace of anxiety and tension I had felt. But I never became so high that I felt detached; I felt efficient and in control. My mistake was in thinking I would always feel this way. Getting Fentanyl was ridiculously easy.

As he piloted his new, $1.4-million helicopter from his Apple Valley home to Orange County one recent morning, Dr. Prem Reddy enjoyed a cloudless view of his growing empire. Today, the five-seat Eurocopter EC120 whisks him to Anaheim, where he recently agreed to buy two hospitals. On other days, he sweeps over endless miles of gridlock to his facilities in Sherman Oaks, Huntington Beach and San Diego.