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In this episode, Barbara discusses: 

 

  • Dr. Barbara Hales explains why physicians must separate excitement from evidence when patients ask about supposed “miracle cures.” 
  • She shares her process for evaluating extraordinary medical claims, starting with clarifying the exact claim, asking if it makes biological sense, and checking whether the specific product (not just an ingredient) has been studied and compared properly. 
  • She emphasizes that doctors don’t need to know everything on the spot and that saying “I don’t know yet, but I’ll look into it” builds more trust with patients. 
  • She contrasts ethical marketing—which tells the truth without exaggeration or pressure—with hype-driven marketing that relies on emotion, urgency, and claims like “doctors don’t want you to know this.” 
  • She encourages both physicians and patients to stay curious, keep asking good questions, and base decisions on evidence and thoughtful conversations rather than headlines or short videos. 

 

Key Takeaways: 

“Whenever you hear an extraordinary claim, don’t rush to an extraordinary conclusion. Take a breath, look at the evidence, and let’s think this through together.” 

Connect with Barbara Hales: 

 

TRANSCRIPTION 

Chapter 1: Is This Really a Miracle Cure? Framing the Question 

0:00 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

Grab your coffee or tea, or whatever keeps you going today. I have mine. I’m Dr. Barbara Hales. And welcome to Marketing Tips for Doctors, the podcast where we help physicians build stronger practices, attract better patients, and enjoy medicine again. Today, we’re asking a question that has physicians and patients asking, Is this really a miracle cure? This has been on my mind lately. You know, a few weeks ago someone asked me about a product and wanted to know what I thought. They asked me, Barbara, is this a miracle cure? Now I know I could have answered their question. Instead, I asked them one of my own. I said, ” Let’s think this through together, because I realized something. The important question wasn’t whether I liked the product. The important question was, how do we decide? How do we separate excitement from evidence? How do we decide whether something is truly a breakthrough or simply a really good marketing campaign? Now, before we go any further, let me make something very clear. This episode isn’t about criticizing any particular product; it isn’t about criticizing supplements, medications, or innovation. Quite the opposite. I love innovation. If someone discovers something that genuinely helps my patients live longer, healthier lives. I’m going to be the first one celebrating. Woo hoo! Medicine has always moved forward because someone was willing to ask “what if.” Thank goodness they did. Otherwise, we’d still be practicing medicine the way it was practiced 100 years ago, but medicine has also advanced because someone asked another question. How do we know? To me, those are two of the most important questions in medicine: what if, and how do we know now? If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed that every few months there’s another headline, another breakthrough, another product, another celebrity endorsement, another video that promises to change everything we thought we knew. Sometimes they’re fascinating, sometimes they’re exciting, and every once in a while, they’re absolutely right. But here’s where my brain goes: not Is it true? Not yet. The first thing I ask myself is, how do we know it’s true? There’s a difference, you know. Patients ask us questions every single day; that’s what they’ve always done. Years ago, they came into the office carrying newspaper clippings. Then it was magazine articles. Then they started bringing pages they printed from the internet. Now they come in talking about something they watched on YouTube or social media; the technology has changed. People haven’t. They’re still looking for hope. They’re still looking for answers, and honestly, I don’t fault them one bit. If someone I loved was sick, I’d be looking too. Wouldn’t you? 

 

Chapter 2: Respecting Patients’ Effort and Preparing for Conversations 

3:30 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

One of the things I’ve always told my patients is this: if there’s something you really want to discuss, send it to me about two weeks before your appointment. Put a little Post-it note on it that says I would like to talk about this along with the date and time of your appointment. Do you know why? Because I want to respect the f. Are made if they took the time to read something or watch something. The least I can do is take the time to look at it before they come in. Our office appointments are busy enough as they are, trying to review an article, evaluate the evidence, answer questions, and still take care of everything else during a 15- or 20-minute visit. That’s not fair to the patient, and it’s certainly not fair to the topic. I’d rather be prepared. Then, when they come into the office, we can have a meaningful conversation. I’ve found that patients really appreciate that, and honestly, I think they deserve that. Now, let me ask you something. Have you ever had a patient ask you about a product and quietly thought to yourself, I’ve never even heard of this? I think every physician has, and you know what, that’s okay. Somewhere along the way, I think we started believing that physicians were supposed to know everything, every medication, every supplement, every new device, every AI tool, every study, every impossible headline. Medicine changes too quickly. 1000s of studies are published every year. New products come onto the market constantly. No one can know all of it, and I actually think saying that’s an interesting question. 

 

Chapter 3: “I Don’t Know Yet” and the Power of Good Questions 

06:50 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

Let me investigate it and get back to you builds more trust, not less. Patients don’t expect me to know everything; they expect me to care enough to find the right answer for them. There’s a big difference. So, if someone asks me, Barbara, is this a miracle cure? My answer is I don’t know yet, but I know exactly where I’d begin, and that’s what I’d like to share with you today, not because I have all the answers, I certainly don’t, but because over the years I’ve realized my brain tends to ask the same questions every time I hear an extraordinary medical claim, I never sat down and made a checklist. It’s just where my brain goes. Maybe some of those questions will become part of the way you think, too. So, grab another sip of coffee and let’s think this through together. Where does my mind go first? Well, probably not where you think. The first thing I ask myself isn’t, ‘Does it work? The first thing I ask myself is, ‘What’s the actual claim? Now that may sound almost too simple, but you’d be surprised how often we skip over that part. We hear words like breakthrough, scientifically proven, clinically tested, doctor-recommended, and before we know it, we’ve become excited without ever stopping to ask, wait a minute, what are they saying? Are they saying it supports healthy blood pressure, improves circulation, helps maintain healthy arteries, or are they claiming it prevents disease? Those are very different statements. Words matter. As physicians, we know that. Then my mind goes somewhere else. I ask myself, does that make biological sense? Notice, I’m not asking whether it’s true, not yet. I’m simply asking whether there’s a reasonable explanation for why it might work. Sometimes there is; sometimes there isn’t; and sometimes the answer is that we just don’t know yet. I’m perfectly comfortable with that answer. Medicine has always been a journey of learning. There are things we believe today that we’ll probably look at differently 10 years from now, and there are ideas that were dismissed years ago that eventually became accepted because the evidence caught up. Yeah, that’s one of the things I love about medicine. We’re allowed to change our minds when the evidence changes. 

 

Chapter 4: Studying the Actual Product and Asking, “Compared to What?” 

10:00 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

Now, here’s where I think we sometimes get into trouble. We fall in love with an idea before we fall in love with the evidence. Have you ever done that? I have. You read something; it sounds logical, sounds exciting. You start thinking about all the patients it could help, then six months later, a year later, more studies come out, and suddenly the picture isn’t nearly as clear as you thought it was. If you’re anything like me, you’ve lived through that more than once. It certainly taught me something. It taught me not to become emotionally attached to a headline. It taught me to become attached to the process. Now, here’s another question that always pops into my head. Has this product actually been studied? Notice, I did not say that one of the ingredients has been studied. Those aren’t the same thing. Let’s say a product contains five different ingredients; maybe one of those ingredients has strong research backing. Wonderful, but that doesn’t automatically tell me what happens when all five are combined. Dosages matter, formulations matter, interactions matter. That’s why I always want to know: has the actual product been evaluated? Then I ask, compared to what? Compared to doing nothing? Compared to a placebo? Compared to another treatment? Compared to lifestyle changes, because saying something works without telling me what it’s being compared to really doesn’t tell me very much at all. Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking, Barbara, this sounds like a lot of work. Sometimes it is, but here’s the interesting thing. After you’ve practiced medicine for a while, you don’t consciously go through this list. It just becomes the way you think. At least that’s what happened to me. I don’t sit down with a checklist. My brain simply starts asking questions. 

 

Chapter 5: Who’s Talking, Humility in Medicine, and Not Skipping the Process 

13:15 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

Here’s another one, and I think it’s an important one. Who’s talking now? Don’t misunderstand me. Credentials matter, experience matters, expertise matters. If someone has spent 30 years studying a particular field, I’m going to listen very carefully, but I don’t stop there, because even brilliant people can disagree. We’ve all seen it. That’s not a weakness in medicine; that’s one of its strengths. Ideas are challenged, evidence is questioned, and studies are repeated. That’s how we get closer to the truth. You know, one of the things I enjoy most about practicing medicine is that it keeps us humble. Every physician has been wrong, every physician has changed their mind, every physician has looked back and said, if I knew then what I know now, that’s not failure, that’s growth and honesty, not exactly what I hope my patients want from me, not someone who pretends to know everything, but someone who’s willing to keep learning. So, by this point, you may be wondering, Barbara, are you against supplements? No, not at all. Some supplements have strong evidence supporting them. Some medications have excellent evidence. Some lifestyle interventions have strong evidence, and others simply need more research. I’m not against new ideas. I’m against skipping the process; there’s a big difference, and maybe that’s the biggest point I’d like to make today. I don’t want physicians to become cynical. I don’t want patients to become cynical either. Curiosity is a wonderful thing. Hope is a wonderful thing. Innovation is a wonderful thing. I never want to lose those. What I do want is to slow down just enough to ask a few really good questions, because in my experience, good questions usually lead to good decisions. 

 

Chapter 6: Stories, Ethical Marketing, and Slowing Down Urgent Claims 

17:30 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

Speaking of questions, there are a few things that immediately make me slow down, not because I think something is wrong, but because I think it’s worth looking a little more closely. Let’s talk about those. What are the things that make me slow down? I don’t call them warning signs; I don’t even call them red flags; I simply think of them as little reminders to ask one more question. The first one is this: whenever I hear an extraordinary claim, I expect extraordinary evidence. Now, that doesn’t mean I dismiss it, not at all. It simply means that if someone tells me one product can solve half a dozen unrelated problems. My curiosity goes up, not down. The bigger the promise, the more carefully I want to look at the evidence behind it. Here’s another thing I’ve noticed: whenever someone says doctors don’t want you to know this, I always smile. I’ve spent my entire career around physicians. I’ve worked with 1000s of them. I’ve never met one who got up in the morning and thought, how can I keep my patients from getting better today? That’s just not who doctors are. Most physicians I know spend their careers looking for better treatments, better outcomes, better ways to help people. If something truly works, believe me, doctors want to know about it. Now, here’s another thought. Stories, stories are powerful. You’ve heard several from me before. Stories help us remember, stories help us connect, stories remind us that medicine is about people, not just statistics, but stories have limits. One person’s experience, even a wonderful experience, doesn’t necessarily tell us what will happen for everyone else. It tells us what happened to one person; that’s important, but it’s different from asking what happens when hundreds or 1000s of people try something. That’s where good research becomes so valuable. Stories and science are not enemies; they simply answer different questions. You know this. This reminds me of something that happened repeatedly in my practice. Patients would come into the office and say, Dr. Hales, I read this article, or I saw this on television, or today I watched this video online, and I loved that. I really did. It told me they cared about their health. They were trying to learn, they were asking questions, they were engaging. I never wanted to discourage that, but I also knew we couldn’t do justice to a complicated topic in the last three minutes of an office visit, so I started telling my patients something I would say, if there’s something you’d really like us to discuss, send it to me two weeks before your appointment, put a little post-it note on it that says I’d like to talk about this, along with the date and time of your appointment, that gave me time to read it, time to look at the references, time to ask my own questions. Then, when the patient came in, we were both prepared. Instead of giving them a quick opinion, I could give them a thoughtful one, and, you know what, patients appreciated knowing I was taking their question seriously. Can I share something else with you? Over the years, I’ve had physicians tell me, Barbara, I don’t market my practice because I don’t think. Marketing is unethical. I always smile. Then I ask them a question. So, let me see if I understand this correctly. You are willing to tell people what you do and what your products and services are, but you’re going to keep your office location a secret, which usually gets a laugh. Then I continue, or maybe you’ll tell everyone where your office is, but you’re going to keep what you do a secret, of course. Not marketing isn’t the problem. Bad marketing is the problem to me. Marketing is simply telling people who you help, what you do, and where they can find you. That’s all. Now, how you do it, that’s where ethics comes in. Ethical marketing tells the truth; it doesn’t exaggerate, it doesn’t promise what it cannot deliver, and it certainly doesn’t try to replace evidence with emotion. That’s true, whether you’re talking about a medical practice or a medical product. Now, here’s something else I think about. Have you ever noticed how often advertisements try to make us feel like we have to decide immediately, limited time, only a few left? Act now. Whenever someone tries to rush my decision, I intentionally slow it down because very few good medical decisions get worse after you’ve had time to think; if anything, they usually improve. Now, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not suggesting that every exciting claim is wrong; far from it, some of today’s standard treatments were once considered radical ideas. Medicine advances because people are willing to challenge conventional thinking. We need people asking new questions. We need researchers exploring new possibilities. What we don’t need is to stop asking questions once the marketing begins. 

 

Chapter 7: Staying Curious, Staying Humble, and Choosing Thoughtful Answers 

21:30 | Dr. Barbara Hales 

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed something else. Patients today have access to more medical information than ever before; that’s a wonderful thing, but they also have access to more misinformation than ever before. Sometimes those two are mixed so well it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. That’s why I believe physicians have become even more important, not because we’re the only source of information- we’re not- but because we’ve been trained to evaluate information. Those are two very different things, and that’s really what this conversation has been about, not whether one product is good or another product is bad. It’s about developing the habit of asking good questions before making important decisions, because when we do that, we’re serving our patients, ourselves, and our profession, you know. When I first started thinking about this episode, I thought it would be about one product. It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s about something much bigger. It’s about how we think, and maybe that’s one of the most important things we can do as physicians, not just collecting information, but evaluating it. I’ve often said that medicine is both an art and a science. Science gives us evidence; art teaches us how to apply that evidence to the person sitting in front of us. Neither one works very well without the other. If there’s one thing I’d love for you to remember from today’s conversation, it’s this: you don’t have to know everything. None of us does. The longer I’ve practiced medicine, the more comfortable I’ve become saying That’s an interesting question. Let me look into it. Let’s see what the evidence actually says. Years ago, I might have felt pressure to have an immediate answer. Today, I think patients deserve something better than an immediate answer. They deserve a thoughtful answer. Sometimes that takes a little time, and I think that’s okay. You know, one of the things I’ve always loved about medicine is that it keeps us humble. Every physician has been surprised, every physician has had to change an opinion, every physician has learned something they did not know before. That’s not a weakness; that’s one of the greatest strengths of our profession. Science keeps moving, and if we’re in good positions, we move with it. So, the next time someone asks you, Doctor, what do you think about this, I hope you’ll remember today’s conversation, not because I expect you to have the same opinion I do; I don’t. In fact, I hope you continue to ask your own questions, read your own studies, and think things through for yourself. That’s exactly what a good physician does. And if you’re a patient watching today, I’d like to leave you with one thought: keep asking questions, bring articles to your doctor, tell them about the videos you’ve watched, and share what you’ve learned. Those conversations are valuable. Just remember, medicine is rarely as simple as a 32nd commercial or a 62nd social media video. The best decisions usually come from a conversation, not a headline. You know, I think that’s why I enjoy doing this podcast so much: it gives us a chance to have conversations we rarely have time for during a busy office day, no interruptions, no waiting room full of patients, just two colleagues or maybe a physician and a patient thinking something through together, and honestly, I wish we had more opportunities to do that. If today’s conversation made you stop and think, if it gave you a different way to evaluate the next exciting medical claim that comes across your desk, or your computer screen or your phone, then I hope you’ll join me again next week, because every week here on Marketing Tips for Doctors we have conversations about medicine, marketing, communication, practice growth, and the challenges physicians face every single day. My goal is always the same: to help physicians attract better patients, build stronger practices, and enjoy medicine again. If that’s the kind of future you want, I’d love to have you as part of this community, so please take a moment to subscribe, not just because it helps the channel, but because every week we’ll continue having conversations that can make a real difference in your practice, and maybe even remind you why you chose medicine in the first place, and if you will know if you know another physician who would enjoy today’s discussion, please share it with them. I have a feeling it’ll start some interesting conversations, and if you’re a member of the community, you could drop us a note or a comment as to what topics you would like to cover next. Until next time, keep asking good questions, stay curious, stay humble, and whenever you hear an extraordinary claim, don’t rush to an extraordinary conclusion. Take a breath, look at the evidence, and let’s think this through together. I’ll see you next week. This has been Dr. Barbara Hales with Marketing Tips for Doctors.