Health pearls

It is winter and to my practice that means several daily calls with the complaint of nosebleeds, otherwise known as epistaxis. It is truly amazing how much blood can come out of a person's nose. Perhaps, /amazing/ is not a word most people would use to describe it. Words like scary, terrifying, alarming may be more appropriate. This is what I remind myself whenever I see a ...

Intermittent fasting has become popular both for weight loss and health improvement.  People have adapted this to be anything from alternate day fasts, drastically restricting calories for 2 days each week(a 5:2 plan), or restricting eating to a certain number of hours per day, usually 8-12 hours.  Is there any  scientific reason to believe it works? A recent review article ...

As you can see by the map, the flu season is up and running all across the United States.  It’s an unusual season, in that influenza B, which is usually more common later in the season, is starting up strong.  It is usually more common in children, but that’s the only one I’ve seen so far in my office in adults.  The high dose flu vaccine that is given to seniors ...

As a marriage and family therapist, I was asked to speak at a recent Lady Docs gathering about family interactions that play a prominent role during this holiday season.  Feel free to journal as the group did last week as we explore family relationships. As therapists, we treat people as part of a family system and we focus on personal transformation as the agent of change ...

One of the talks at the conference was “Beyond Carb Counting: Why Plant-Based Nutrition is Sweet Medicine for Insulin Resistance”. It was delivered by Dr. Michelle McMacken, a board-certified internal medicine physician and an assistant professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine. She is vegan and is deeply involved with encouraging her patients to adopt plant-based ...

I had the pleasure of returning to my alma mater in the Bronx - Montefiore Hospital - where I did some of my clerkships in medical school, and the majority of the clinical work during my pulmonary fellowship.  It’s been renovated so much in the 31 years since I’ve been there that the only building I recognized was the concrete garage across the street. This conference, ...

This morning, my husband and I and several friends met at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. for our third 5K run/walk for National Race to End Women’s Cancer, to support the Foundation for Women’s Cancer.  Gynecologic cancers include Ovarian, Cervical, Endometrial/Uterine, Vulva and Vaginal Cancer.  According to the American Cancer Society statistics, there were 110,070 ...

If you are living with overweight or obesity, then you may have already experienced a host of weight-related consequences. No, I am not referring to the standard medical warnings you’ve heard over the years, like monitoring your blood pressure or being tested for diabetes. Instead, I am referring to the pervasive weight-related bias that affects people living with obesity ...

Do you need cataract surgery and are wondering if laser cataract surgery is right for you? Cataract surgery is one of the most commonly performed and successful surgeries performed in medicine. Of course, as with any surgery, there are risks involved.  In some cases, laser-assisted cataract surgery may reduce those risks and improve your outcome.  A femtosecond laser uses ...

It seems that every cause has a day, week or month to bring awareness and that we can be inundated with these messages. With that in mind, this post is about an issue that most people don’t talk much about or know how to respond to: pregnancy and infant loss. October signifies the awareness of these kinds of losses with October 15th being the “Day of Light” where at ...