Health pearls

March was colon cancer awareness month. I am a little late in my blog this year but want to give a shout out to getting screened – you can prevent or detect this cancer early with a colonoscopy. Colon cancer is the 2nd most common cause of cancer death in the US, with approximately 50,000 people expected to die from colon cancer this year. Colon cancer deaths have dropped ...

*Osteoporosis, a Brief Overview.* Let’s talk about a process that we should think about when we’re young so we can try to prevent unfortunate events as we age.  First, here are a few important definitions. Osteoporosis is a decrease in bone mass leading to fragility of the bones and increased fracture risk. Osteopenia is its less severe sidekick and sarcopenia is loss ...

Are you alone at this time of the year, or do you plan to spend time with your family and friends? Do you know of the loners in your neighborhood or your work places?  If you have, like me, many holiday gatherings to go to, count yourself very lucky.  You might complain how you do not have enough time to “relax,” with all the running around getting gifts for family members ...

We got a frenzy of portal messages from our patients in the last few weeks wondering why the evening news on television announced a recall of high blood pressure meds they take. They thought changing Valsartan (a commonly used blood pressure medication that is part of the ARB family) to other blood pressure medications should have done the trick. They were already familiar ...

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of going to a Smithsonian sponsored talk by Dr. Hall, who is a Senior Investigator at NIH and chief of one of the research programs at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases that reaches across different branches of the institute. It was the first talk in a series called “Pulse on Modern Medicine”. The ...

You may have heard recently that lack of exercise is a greater risk factor for death than high blood pressure, high cholesterol or smoking. I was curious to see whether this was a sensational headline or if there was good data to back up the claim. The article referred to in the popular press was posted on the open network of the Journal of the American Medical Association ...

Well, we’re finally seeing some action on e-cigarette use in youth! It’s a few years too late, but hopefully we can catch up. E-cigarettes are a form of ENDS, or electronic nicotine delivery systems. [LINK: /article/electronic-cigarette-update--more-potential-for-addiction-and-poisonings/#sthash.kGkISvFW.dpbs%20-%20article%20re%20e-cigs] We reviewed some pros and cons of ...

Over the past few years, and more commonly in the last few months, you may have noticed calorie counts on menus. Federal requirements for this information have been in the works for years, with some cities and states leading the way. New York City was at the forefront with implementation in 2008. Since these rules mainly affected chains of restaurants, having different requirements ...

*Low Dose Aspirin May Lower Rate of Preterm Birth (PTB)* A recent study, released on June 15, 2018,  by researchers from the Department of Maternal Fetal Medicine of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, NY, showed how baby aspirin use significantly lowers the rate of preterm birth in patients less than 34 weeks pregnant. In this study, consisting of 2543 women ...

  Everyone deals with stress in his or her own way.  Some of us seem to have as busy and as stressful a life as others, yet we seem to have little or no anxiety or depression, whereas others in similar situations suffer significantly.  Some of us, when feeling stressed, develop “bad” habits, like drinking alcohol or using other drugs, or engaging in binge eating.  ...