Lady Docs Corner Cafe Blog - Linda Yau, M.D., F.A.C.P.

One of the jobs of a practicing internist is to help patients improving health through lifestyle changes such as diet, exercise and sleep. This can be quite challenging for me, so the fact that fascinating book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business delves into the neuroscience behind our daily routines, was very helpful for me to understand some of the ...

The FDA approved the use of Shingrix, a recombinant inactivated vaccine, for protection against shingles in patients aged 50 and older on October 20, 2017. The American Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), recommended that Shingrix be given instead of Zostavax, the currently available live, attenuated vaccine which has been on the market since 2006. Shingles is a disease ...

The autumn months bring temperature changes and remind us of the influenza (flu) season that will occur soon. Influenza is a highly infectious virus that causes 20,000 preventable deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations annually. The seemingly low protection (45%) of last year’s flu vaccine spells uncertainty for most of us when deciding to vaccinate for flu this year; however, ...

February has traditionally been designated Red Dress month to raise awareness of the issue of heart disease in women. Now there is a special day and a website as well. The stereotypical heart patient is an older man who may have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. However the leading cause of death in women in the United States continues to be heart disease. Women ...

The first book review I wrote for this website focused on The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. I absolutely loved that book. Critics agreed, since it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. It is hard to top such a sweeping drama in terms of the breadth and depth of cancer research. Therefore, this book on cancer, The Death of ...

When I saw the subtitle of this book, I immediately felt hope. It is good to think of the opportunity that lies with midlife. Often being in this time of life brings stress with aging parents, growing children and health issues. So often the word “midlife” goes along with the word “crisis”. Not so in this book. The author, a long time reporter at ...

My good friend from medical school forwarded me an article called Before I Go published in the Spring 2015 Stanford Medicine magazine. It was written so beautifully by a young neurosurgeon that it made me tear up. Dr. Kalanithi majored in English and biology at Stanford and then got a master’s in English literature before attending Yale School of Medicine. This article ...

As the days get longer and schools let out, the summer travel season is heating up. If you are traveling internationally, be sure to get all the appropriate shots to protect yourself from preventable infections. As a first step, everyone should be up to date on the routine vaccines. The following should be up to date if you are traveling: Tetanus: Tetanus/Diphtheria/Pertussis: ...

In the introduction to this book, the author remembers that “by the time I stepped down as dean at Stanford in 2012 I had interacted not only with a tremendous number of parents but with students who seemed increasingly reliant upon their parents in ways that felt, simply, off.” “Helicopter parenting” , “invasive parenting”, and the “cult ...

I recently heard a very scary story from my friend. Her father had called her at work saying he was not feeling well, and that an alarm was loudly blaring in the background. She made out the mechanical sounding words, “Carbon monoxide” by the alarm system. Immediately she told her father to open the windows and called 911. After rushing to her father’s home, ...