I have a pretty fast resting pulse rate, and it shoots up very quickly when I do any aerobic activity, goes so high, in fact, that I have literally scared the whatevers out of a few of my personal trainers over the years. Yet, I seem to be in pretty good aerobic shape so my […]
There’s an old doctors’ joke about 2 doctors discussing an operation that one of them had done and the punchline is something like “Well, the operation was a success but the patient died.” Yes, I admit, it’s not very funny but it does tell you a lot about the way some doctors judge their successes, […]
For a few years in the 70s and early 80s (so last century!), I worked at a free clinic, where a great number of my patients simply didn’t trust medical dogma (it was mutual, by the way: Lots of doctors didn’t trust them, and they didn’t trust lots of doctors), so many of them had […]
A mini-stroke (better known to doctors as a TIA or transient ischemic attack) is a nerve-racking problem because there is a high likelihood of that TIA being a harbinger of a flu-fledged stroke in the not-too-distant future (TIAs are often referred to, in fact, as strokes-in-waiting). So because we know there’s a potential stroke lurking […]
That headline, which was used to accompany the release of a study in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics, is the very succinct (and totally correct, in my opinion) state of the art when it comes to picking the best pain-reliever for yourself, a list that can include a host of potentially useful products […]
So, the background here is simple: Some people get hit hard on the head and bounce right up and continue doing whatever it is that they were doing pre-hit, without any hint of a neurological problem as a consequence of that hit: No headache, no dizziness, no lingering neurological or cognitive deficit. On the ubiquitous […]
Used to be that there was no better breakfast for you than 2 fried eggs along with whatever you wanted to add in: Buttered toast, some kinda meat, potatoes, whatever. Then along came the cholesterol police and “Sorry, oops, your yummy eggs, which are loaded with cholesterol, are a no-no, so please don’t eat them […]
This one is personal. In helping take care of my mom during several of her bouts with stuff over the 10 years she lived in Vancouver, each time we ended up in hospital – and it was often, alas, in part because I think my mom loved the attention from the emergency responders, who were […]
An interesting study published in the British Journal of General Practice claims to have come up with a good new sign to diagnose a potential case of lung cancer. By analyzing nearly 30,000 records of British adults diagnosed with lung cancer over a period of 17 years, these researchers concluded that shortness of breath and […]
One of the more controversial issues about health recommendations over the last few years has been an attempt to get pregnant women to totally eliminate alcohol from their lives during their pregnancies because, as the authorities keep reminding us, when it comes to the health of a fetus, there is no known safe limit for […]