Columns
Category: General Medicine
The Gender Gap
Learning why men and women experience pain differently It’s one of the more puzzling observations in medicine: The vast majority of chronic pain patients are women. Women suffer disproportionately from irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, headaches (especially migraines), pain caused by damage to the nervous system, osteoarthritis, jaw problems like TMJ, and much more. Women also…
The Big Thaw
Freezing human eggs is gaining in popularity, but declaring it a success would be premature Doctors have been freezing sperm for 60 years and embryos (fertilized eggs) for 30. The first pregnancy from a frozen egg occurred in 1986. But it’s been only in the past few years that fertility specialists have begun freezing eggs…
High Water Marks
There’s no question swimming is good for you. Is it better than running or walking? Not so fast. Is swimming the best exercise for lifelong health? After all, you can swim with just your arms if you have a bum knee, or with just your legs if you have sore arms. You can swim with arthritis….
Those Restless Legs…
Restless legs syndrome keeps you going (even if you want to stop). The symptoms of restless legs syndrome sound so bizarre — creepy-crawly feelings and an uncontrollable urge to move the legs, especially at bedtime — that until recently, many people who experienced it simply weren’t believed when they described it to others. Betsy Dunn,…
Trick or Treatment?
A spate of recent studies reinforces the idea that what we think about our medical care really can affect our health. The new research into the power of placebos is giving scientists new insights into how patients’ expectations their beliefs about whether an inactive, sham treatment will work can have an actual, observable effect on…
FDA loosens reins
The US Food and Drug Administration once had the power to force manufacturers of over-the-counter dietary supplements, including herbal remedies, to prove those products were safe, if the agency felt such a pre-market review was warranted. That changed in 1994, when Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which gives sellers of vitamins…
Detecting, treating bladder cancer early
Four years ago, Ellen Pinzur, a Cambridge woman who had been a lifetime smoker, got a most unwelcome surprise. When she went to her gynecologist for a routine exam, he suspected she had a fibroid, a benign growth in the uterus. He sent her for an ultrasound. Sure enough, she did have a fibroid. But…
E-therapy is hardly a bargain
We’ve got e-commerce, e-banking, e-pharmacy and of course, e-mail. So why not e-therapy? Actually, there are lots of reasons why not. But that’s not stopping the latest trend in electronic medicine – virtual therapists, some 150 to 200 of them, who offer assessments, generic advice and even ongoing individual psychotherapy online. The mere idea of…
Trendy pill should be taken with a grain of salt
She’s a young woman from the South Shore, finally able both to work and to study for an advanced degree. But for years, she’s been plagued by severe depression that stems, she says, from physical abuse she suffered as a child, and from sexual abuse when she was 17. She tried Prozac and, by her…
The unhealthy side of health concerns
It’s been years now, but I can still picture the articulate young woman with the mysterious disease who came to the Globe to see me. She was armed with a stack of medical papers and spoke with the ease of a scientist about possible causes, symptoms, and tests. But what was most striking was how…
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