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« Previous EntriesYou might have cancer and not even know it!!!!!
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012…Just kidding. But that is what so many of us worry about. This is why we have cancer screening tests – tests we give to people with no symptoms – which must be performed in specific ways.
Here are the 3 most basic cancer screening rules:
1. Men and women, get a screening test for colon cancer [...]
Sweaty palms?
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012I have been learning about hyperhidrosis.
Hyperhidrosis (“HI-per-hi-DRO-sis”) is a condition where the sweat glands are overactive. It can affect the whole body, just the armpits or groin, or only the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. 1 to 3% of the U.S. population has it, and it usually runs in families.
I [...]
Oregon health insurance scandals
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012Just a few newsbites for your perusal. Scroll down for sharks in the Medicaid grant-money waters, the punishments to be inflicted on those who eat and/or smoke (and their spouses and kids), and the creative ways that patients save money on health care. Featuring photos of cute kittens to help ameliorate the rage and sadness [...]
In the News: Prostate cancer and its discontents
Saturday, January 7th, 2012If you’d like to know what I think of all this… Well, I could be induced to write a post about it, by a critical mass of timely requests (not people asking two years after the original post went up). But for now I will simply recirculate some news bits that caught my eye.
“Updated findings [...]
how to Occupy Healthcare!
Friday, January 6th, 2012…Just kidding. I don’t really know how to occupy anything. But I do want to tell you some things about the politics of MRIs.
Have you ever had an MRI? Brief review: Magnetic Resonance Imaging uses a magnet – an very large “superconducting” magnet, using liquid helium. (Actually, not just even liquid, but cold liquid helium, [...]
the hundred-day cough
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012If you started coughing today, January 3rd, and coughed for a hundred days, you’d finish up on April 12th.
I know an adult who broke a rib with this kind of cough (but had to keep coughing with the broken rib. Made it hard to work). I know someone who had a prolapsed – well, you [...]
immunometabolism: in the micro-world
Sunday, January 1st, 2012As you may know, I’m working on a cookbook. (It’s more than a cookbook.)
Because of it, I have been learning a lot about “metabolic syndrome” – what it truly is, how it works, what we can do about it. I’ve been talking to a lot of you about this stuff in the office. You [...]
nuns vs. heartless corporations
Friday, December 30th, 2011Backstory: When I moved to town, I signed up with the biggest, fanciest lab, went there and toured the facility, listened to a presentation in a conference room with a complementary bottle of water, and found out the details of how they do their work, which was cool.
Then I was gently told that no, they [...]
$40, the Payroll Tax Cut, that wicked cough, and you
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011You might recall I wrote earlier about “The 99%.” “The 99%” are not actually the working class and unemployed folks standing in the park holding cardboard signs, if you ask me. “The 99%” includes CEOs, professional athletes, Senators, neurosurgeons, etc., who have little in common with the cardboard-sign-holders, in terms of lifestyle, life chances, [...]
The Meatloaf Syndrome: “I would do anything…”
Thursday, December 1st, 2011Okay. So I have all these patients who want to lose weight, reverse their diabetes or “prediabetes,” lower their blood pressure and cholesterol, and reduce their chronic pain, insomnia, and stress.
Neither they nor I are big fans of using prescription medication to do these things. They don’t want to take a weight-loss pill three times [...]
