Monthly Archive: June 2011

Doubling Up Against Strokes

Doubling Up Against Strokes

Headache, confusion, sudden loss of vision, dizziness — these are the symptoms of a stroke that can come at any moment, and getting help fast is crucial to a stroke victim’s recovery. Now a...

Calming Restless Legs

Calming Restless Legs

Do you ever feel an uncontrollable urge to move your legs? You could have a condition called restless legs syndrome. It often goes misdiagnosed despite estimates that up to 15 percent of the adult...

Avoiding Montezuma

Avoiding Montezuma

Nothing puts a damper on getting that passport stamp like contracting illness overseas. Unfortunately, traveling abroad carries risks. Unregulated quality control standards on preparation and sanitation can make some foods or water unsafe to...

Advances in Dyslexia

Advances in Dyslexia

Dyslexia is defined as difficulty learning to read. A commonly held myth is that it’s just the confusion of different letters. Now researchers say it’s more than that, and that information is leading to...

Know Your Sugar

Know Your Sugar

People with diabetes are not only at increased risk for heart disease, kidney failure and blindness, but simple routines such as walking down a hall can become dangerous for them, their co-workers and their...

The Right Dose

The Right Dose

A new study shows parents aren’t always sure just how much over-the-counter medicine to give their sick child. It can be pretty confusing. Not quite two years old, little Aaron has an ear infection...

The Long Good-Bye

The Long Good-Bye

Alzheimer’s disease attacks nearly four million people every year. Recent genetic discoveries may better explain why it happens, but what can be done to delay it? Doctors in Seattle may have found one answer....

Shocking Pain Relief

Shocking Pain Relief

Reflex sympathetic dystrophy is a complex name for an easy-to-understand problem: severe pain that will not go away. Treatments for the disorder range from acupuncture to medicine to surgery. We’ll tell you about another...

Sundowning Syndrome

Sundowning Syndrome

As a caregiver of an Alzheimer’s patient, you see the mood shifts change almost daily. Some good days, others bad. But when the sun goes down each evening, it also changes the mood for...

Treating and Preventing Golfers Elbow

Treating and Preventing Golfers Elbow

Almost everyone has heard of tennis elbow and many people have suffered from it. However, about ten percent of all elbow overuse injuries are a result of medial epicondylitis — golfer’s elbow. Golfer’s elbow,...

Help For Caregivers

Help For Caregivers

It could be one of the most difficult challenges you’ll ever face. Caring for a loved one who has Alzheimer’s disease. Seventy percent are cared for at home, but that can be a confusing,...

Regrowing Bone Q&A

Regrowing Bone Q&A

What is osteonecrosis? Dr. Lieberman: Osteonecrosis is when the blood supply to the femoral head is jeopardized in some way leading to the death of bone cells. Necrosis means death. Osteo means bone. So...

HIV Over 50

HIV Over 50

More effective medications are helping AIDS patients live into their 60s. A surprising number of people are becoming infected during their “golden years.” Sixty-two-year-old Jane got HIV 12 years ago when she began dating...

An End to the Shakes

An End to the Shakes

Parkinson’s disease affects about one million people in the United States. Levodopa, the most common drug used to treat Parkinson’s, is effective. Yet long-term use causes many patients to develop disabling complications, such as...

Multiple Sclerosis Pump

Multiple Sclerosis Pump

An estimated 40 thousand Americans suffer severe spasticity due to diseases such as multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. The problem causes muscles to contract involuntarily or tighten up. There’s a new way to...

Childhood Head Injuries

Childhood Head Injuries

Your daughter collides with another player in a high-school soccer match, knocking her head hard. She doesn’t lose consciousness, but is briefly dazed. The team’s star forward, she grudgingly sits out the rest of...

Clinical trials

Clinical trials

Much of the information we have about the effects of vitamins comes from clinical trials. A clinical trial is an experiment conducted with patients as subjects. The strongest experimental design is the randomized design...

General guidelines for buying and taking supplements

General guidelines for buying and taking supplements

A well-balanced multivitamin supplement is usually better than several single supplements. Such supplements contain approximately 100 per cent to 300 per cent of the RDA for those vitamins and minerals which may have protective...

Types of supplements

Types of supplements

There are various types of supplements. Different preparations suit different people and it is a good idea to experiment with different types to find the best combination. Water solubilized fat soluble vitamins The oil...

Who takes supplements?

Who takes supplements?

Data from the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES II) suggest that almost 35 per cent of Americans between 18 and 74 years of age take vitamin and mineral supplements regularly. Other...

How common are nutrient deficiencies?

How common are nutrient deficiencies?

It is often difficult to link one vitamin with a particular disease except in severe cases where a deficiency results in well-documented physical symptoms. For example, bleeding gums are a sign of scurvy which...

The basics of a healthy diet

The basics of a healthy diet

Ideas about what comprises healthy eating behaviour vary from one culture to another. For several generations, America has been a meat and milk country with the daily consumption of dairy products and beef seen...

What about Recommended Dietary Allowances?

What about Recommended Dietary Allowances?

In an effort to answer the question of how much people should aim to eat of the major nutrients, recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) were established by the Food and Nutrition Board of the US...