Honored by Healthtap

Posted on by Paul Turek, MD

Ah shucks! Thank you for the honor…you really shouldn’t have!
The Grammies? No, the Healthtap Top Doctor Awards.
What did I win? A piece of paper.
What does it mean? I think it means a lot.

What is Healthtap?

Healthtap is a social media site that has 50,000 doctors answering medical questions posed by the online public. So, far doctors have answered over 1 billion questions. Their mission is to help people better understand health and make more informed health decisions. Healthtap believes that the best health decisions take into account unbiased expert knowledge, community insights and relevant data. It is a vanguard initiative in the emerging space of “interactive health.” I don’t get paid, I am not on their board. I just participate.

Why Me?

Funny thing is, as a doctor on Healthtap, I’ve only answered 180 questions. Apparently, my answers cut a pretty wide swath, as I have “helped” over 277,000 people and received 232 online “thank you” notes. Maybe it’s because the questions that I choose to tackle were waiting the longest for answers and may have been considered difficult ones in the first place. Here are some examples:

  • What are the causes of stringy semen?
  • Can cats give you sexually transmitted diseases?
  • Do bumps on the foreskin mean warts?
  • Why does it hurt to pee after I masturbate?
  • Can the HPV virus be transmitted by a shower sponge? Bathtub water?
  • My bladder cannot hold urine for a long time…
  • When I masturbate there is a little blood with the semen…
  • Why do I feel my blood pumping toward my penis?
  • What is the best way to clean an uncircumcised penis?
  • How come I can only ejaculate with porn and not with sex?

The Naked Truth

Let’s get this straight. These are real questions posed by real people. And by simple math, each question that I answered was read, on average, by 1500 people. Now I ask you: Is there an opportunity to make a difference here? Big time. As I have said very recently, “imparting wisdom where only information exists” is a good thing for the burgeoning field of men’s health. And that is why this little piece of paper matters to me.