Category: Conditions

MRI safety in breast cancer screening

The numbers are scary: The average woman has a 12 percent risk of developing breast cancer at some point in her life. For women with certain genetic mutations or risk factors, lifetime risk can climb to 85 percent. Even more terrifying than the numbers…

Help stop pediatric drownings

The boy is three years old and quite curious about the world. He watches his father leave the house and wants to go find him. He looks to his mother but she is napping beside him on the couch, and he would rather not wake her, so he grabs his stuffed d…

How to help your children manage migraines

Stress! It is a fact of life for all human beings. Stress is a normal reaction — psychologic and physiologic — to the everyday demands of life. When your brain perceives a threat, the body reacts with a fight-or-flight response, releasing hormones, inc…

Don’t forget this common trigger of cyclic vomiting syndrome

There is a condition known as cyclic vomiting syndrome which causes people to develop episodes or “attacks” of frequent vomiting lasting for a few days at a time without an apparent cause. Sufferers of cyclic vomiting are totally fine between episodes …

When medical experts say “first,” be careful

Spot the word “first” in a headline, and you might assume a major milestone has been reached. Think first person on the moon, first woman on the Supreme Court. But in health care news, things heralded for being first might not amount to a c…

3 things about psychiatry that don’t focus on pathology

I was asked to present information about mental health to a lay audience. This is both an exciting and daunting task. I imagine it’s like asking someone to talk about fish. There are so many kinds of fish! They live in many habitats! Some of them look …

Sex in the elderly is not a need. It’s a privilege.

If you’re sexy, fit and nimble, if you can part your thighs and bend your knees, if you can see your private parts without a mirror, ignore this. Move on. This is not for you. This is for those with flailing sex-drive and failing abilities whose sex li…

Mild memory loss: Is it Alzheimer’s disease?

As my patients aged along with me, I noticed both the expected increased numbers of people with some form of dementia and even more patients who were worried about this topic. Unless you have been away on a ten-year safari, you are very aware that deme…

MKSAP: 44-year-old man with HIV, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 44-year-old man is evaluated in the office during a routine visit. Medical history is significant for HIV diagnosed at age 25 years, hypert…

Woman physicians: Make informed decisions early on planning a future family

As women in medicine, we are always focused on the next goal we need to achieve to advance our career. Though undergraduate education, medical school, residency, and fellowship, we are constantly striving to get the highest score, to maintain a high GP…