Nick Pappas, MD

Nick Pappas, MD Nick Pappas, MD is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon in New Orleans, LA A New Orleans native, he graduated from St. Martin’s Episcopal School (Metairie, LA).
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Nick Pappas, MD is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon with a Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) in hand surgery who specializes in various hand and upper extremity conditions. He then traveled to Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) for college, where he earned a B.A. in Philosophy and pitched for the baseball team. While at Princeton, he played baseball for all four years on a team that

won 2 Ivy League Baseball Championships and made 2 appearances in the NCAA Division I College World Series Tournament. After college, he earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN). He then completed an orthopedic surgery residency at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA). After residency, he returned to Vanderbilt University to complete a fellowship in Hand, Microvascular, and Upper Extremity Surgery. Dr. Pappas has been in practice for over 10 years. He currently serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at both Tulane University and Louisiana State University. He is also a member of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and serves as a consultant reviewer for the prestigious Journal of Hand Surgery, American. He has an active interest in clinical research with over 30 peer-reviewed publications and multiple textbook chapters to his credit. For a complete up-to-date listing of all Dr. Pappas’s publications, please click the following link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Pappas+n

04/20/2026

Ibogaine: cure… or just hype? 🤔💊

As an orthopedic surgeon who routinely prescribes opioids when indicated and often sees patients who are already taking suboxone, I'm always curious to learn about any new possible treatment for opioid addiction.

👉 But what exactly is ibogaine?

Ibogaine is a naturally occurring psychoactive (psychedelic) compound extracted from the root bark of the Tabernanthe iboga, a plant native to West Africa.

🧠 What does it do?

Ibogaine has powerful effects on the brain, including:

* Interacts with dopamine, serotonin, and NMDA receptors
* May “reset” reward pathways involved in addiction
* Produces a long, intense psychedelic experience (often 12–24+ hours)

👉 This is why it’s being studied for opioid addiction treatment.

📚 As for Joe Rogan’s statement, a 2017 study (PMID: 30272050) by Alan K. Davis looked at 88 patients treated with ibogaine in Mexico for opioid addiction 🇲🇽. There are several other studies on ibogaine, but I just chose this one since it appeared that Joe Rogan was referencing it when he quoted the 80% statistic.

Here’s what the study showed 👇

💥 80% said withdrawal symptoms were dramatically reduced
⚠️ BUT… about 70% relapsed at some point
📉 Only ~30% reported staying off opioids long-term

👉 Translation:
Ibogaine may help with short-term withdrawal, but it’s not a proven “cure”

🚨 And remember:

* This was self-reported data
* No randomized control group
* Small sample size

🧠 Bottom line:
Interesting results… but high-quality randomized trials are needed before we call this a cure for opioid addiction. Also, it is important to note that there are potential side effects of ibogaine such as cardiac arrhythmias.

04/19/2026

Did I get these right? Let me know in the comments. Also, let me know what specialties I should do next.

👉 Comment NEWSLETTER and I will send you a link to sign up for my free weekly newsletter with more relatable medical humor plus helpful health information 📰

04/18/2026

As an orthopedic hand surgeon, I see fingertip injuries on a daily basis. The real reason some fingertip amputations can “grow back” has more to do with the nature of the injury than interventions like stem cell injection 💉

✅ Stem cells, particularly mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), can certainly help increase healing potential, mostly through signaling as opposed to directly transforming into other cell types. Transformation with MSCs can occur but is much less common. Nevertheless, it is important to note that accelerated healing and true regeneration are completely different things.

👉 When a fingertip amputation is very distal, clean, and preserves the nail bed/germinal matrix plus surrounding soft tissue scaffold, the body can use that intact biologic blueprint to regenerate surprisingly well. 🩹✨

The more tissue architecture that remains, the more the body can re-epithelialize, restore pulp contour, and even regrow nail structures. Once that scaffold is gone, true regeneration becomes much less likely.

👉 It’s less “stem cell magic” and more “the injury left behind the roadmap.” 🗺️🦴

🚨 Comment NEWSLETTER for more similar health information, and I'll send you a link to my free weekly newsletter..

🦴 Can TURMERIC actually help your joint pain? That is the topic of this week's newsletter, which drops tomorrow (and ev...
04/18/2026

🦴 Can TURMERIC actually help your joint pain? That is the topic of this week's newsletter, which drops tomorrow (and every Saturday).

✅ If you are interested in hearing the answer from a board-certified orthopedic surgeon, join thousands of other subscribers to my newsletter by signing up here:

http://eepurl.com/iQYOcQ

Thanks,
Nick Pappas MD

Bone density peaks at around age 30. If you don’t put stress across your bones in the form of activities like resistanc...
04/17/2026

Bone density peaks at around age 30. If you don’t put stress across your bones in the form of activities like resistance training, the bones will get weaker with time.

🦴🚨 Once you lose bone density, it’s very difficult to regain it. The weaker your bones are, the more likely they are to fracture.

💪 The best ways to help keep bones strong are as follows:

1.) Consuming calcium-rich foods (e.g. milk, yogurt, almonds) 🥛

2.) Consuming foods with vitamin D like salmon or cheese (can also get vitamin D from sunlight) 🍣

3.) Weight-bearing exercises, especially resistance training (e.g. squats) and jumping-type activities (e.g. drop jump), which help strengthen bone via Wolff’s law (states that bones become stronger over time with increased stress placed upon them) 💪

4.) Supplements (generally only needed if inadequate dietary intake): calcium / vitamin D, magnesium (which helps vitamin D work), collagen peptides (have been shown in multiple studies to help with osteoporosis). 💊
*Note: for individuals who may have cardiac issues, calcium supplementation may not be recommended.

As always, be sure to check with your doctor before starting any new supplement to see if it’s safe for you.

5.) Hormone replacement therapy (most often estrogen for post-menopausal women as prevention for osteoporosis)

6.) Medications like bisphosphonates which help slow down bone breakdown

🚨 Comment NEWSLETTER for more similar health information, and I’ll send you a link to my free weekly newsletter.

04/17/2026

Passing gas for a living is not as easy as it looks!

👉 If you enjoy this type of humor, please comment NEWSLETTER and I’ll send you a link to my free weekly newsletter, which has similar comedy mixed with helpful health information.

😷 By the way, I am not really an anesthesiologist (this is a parody). I am an orthopedic surgeon though, so I do interact with anesthesiologists on a consistent basis.

I’m very appreciative of their willingness to tolerate the various tendencies of orthopedic surgeons, especially our desire to fix fractures as soon as possible! Sorry we are not better at estimating length of surgeries or blood loss.

🙏 Many thanks to my anesthesia colleagues for keeping our patients safe while we perform human carpentry.

04/17/2026

Repetition is the key to adult learning 🧠

😷 Other healthcare providers out there, how do you remember the steps to your procedures? Let me know in the comments.

04/16/2026

Did I get these right? Let me know in the comments.

👉 Comment NEWSLETTER and I will send you a link to sign up for my free weekly newsletter with more relatable medical humor plus helpful health information 📰

04/16/2026

I just used the rise of GLP-1 agonist usage as an example; however, actively seeing patients is something in my mind that does help raise credibility of physician on social media for any topic they are discussing, whether it be controlling blood sugar, building muscle, or the latest in infectious disease.

🚨 Believe it or not, there are several physician content creators (who shall remain nameless, but we all know who they are) with large social media followings who do not actively see real patients. Some of these content creators are also not board certified and did not complete residency training.

👉 Aside from attending physicians, I do also follow medical students and residents.

👉 I do also follow retired physicians, many of whom have 30+ years of experience seeing patients.

✅ In sum, there are many excellent physician content creators on social media providing evidence-based assessments of the latest healthcare topics. I just showed a few of the many I follow in my video.

💪 Feel free to post your favorite physician content creators in the comments. I'm always looking for new, excellent accounts to follow in different specialties. I think we all would appreciate the recommendations.

04/15/2026

Comment NEWSLETTER and I’ll send you a link to my free weekly newsletter with similar medical information and non-cringey medical humor 🗞️

👉 Shoulder dislocations are most often anterior and can typically be reduced in the emergency room setting. The key to reducing pretty much any dislocation is muscle relaxation combined with appropriate traction, although sometimes varying degrees of external or internal rotation and added pressure over the dislocated bone may also be required.

😷 First-time shoulder dislocations often can be treated with just physical therapy, but sometimes if there’s recurrent instability, surgical repair of the torn labrum may be required.

Original video credit: .gentile

04/15/2026

The struggle is real!

🚨 Before anyone gets bent out of shape in the comments, this is meant to be a joke. As an orthopedic surgeon, I do have to admit it can be difficult to remember a lot of facts about internal medicine since what we do on a daily basis focuses so heavily on muscles, bones, and joints.

👉 That being said, most of us can still remember a lot of the basics of internal medicine and probably did reasonably well on our internal medicine rotation as medical students to be able to match into a competitive field like orthopedics.

😷 Anyway, as physicians, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Some of us may be better at reading EKGs, while others at reading x-rays. At the end of the day, we’re all working together to take the best care of patients we can. Many thanks to my internal medicine colleagues who have helped me manage many of my patients’ medical issues over the years after their various orthopedic surgeries.

04/14/2026

Rats are great for generating hypotheses 🐀🧪… but they are not humans 👀

Just because something heals a tendon, nerve, or gut in a rat does NOT mean it will do the same in your body 💥

This is exactly the issue with **BPC-157**👇
Most of the excitement around it comes from animal studies, especially rat data 🐀
But when it comes to high-quality human trials? We basically don’t have them 🚫📚

That means:
• no strong dosing data 💉
• no real long-term safety data ⏳
• no proof it works the same in people 🧍‍♂️
• lots of hype, very little human evidence 📉

Science starts in animals… but it has to survive human trials before it becomes truth 🧠⚡️

Don’t confuse promising lab data with proven clinical outcomes 👊

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