Columns
Category: General Medicine
Loneliness Can Be The Death Of Us
A little over 100 years ago, a small band of Italians left Roseto Val Fortore, a village in the foothills of the Apennines, in hopes of a better life amid the slate quarries of eastern Pennsylvania. Naming their new village Roseto, the group soon recreated the strong community ties they had nurtured in Italy. They…
Winners
Heaven knows that every one of the 38,500 official entrants (and even the 10,000 “bandits”) in today’s Boston Marathon should get some kind of a medal just for getting out there and doing what the rest of us can’t – or won’t. But for many on the sidelines, it’s the athletes with handicaps – 106…
A battle plan for surviving the repetitive strain wars
Jeff Del Papa’s hands and forearms gave out five years ago, after 15 years of pounding keyboards as a computer programmer for a company in Wilmington. Today, Del Papa, a 38-year-old Watertown man who once played medieval muscial instruments and opened jars with a flick of the wrist, is back working as a programmer, only…
Trying everything, more and more cancer patients seek out ancient Chinese remedies to augment modern medicine
For Ingrid Schorr, 36, an actor and writer who lives in Arlington, the bomb dropped last September: a totally unexpected diagnosis of breast cancer. The diagnosis was traumatic enough, she says, but she also felt “desperate and sad” about having to undergo chemotherapy. She knew it would leave her weak and drained. Her instincts were…
All vision problems are not equal
After 33 years in the rough and tumble of Cambridge politics, including several stints as mayor, Walter Sullivan, 73, has developed a new — albeit unwanted — preoccupation during retirement: eye troubles. In fact, there are four major vision problems that often plague older people — cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy — and…
We may be putting too much stress on stress
You spend months, maybe years, trying to get pregnant, watching in despair as friend after friend accomplishes this most elemental of biological tasks with apparent ease. Sooner or later, one of these blissfully fertile souls will look you in the eye and, with the best of intentions, diagnose your problem: Stress. Or perhaps you cough…
The guru does lunch: hold the fat — all of it
Dr. Dean Ornish, the California guru whose radical approach to diet has been shown to reverse heart disease, settles in at the corner table at the Ritz cafe, facing Temptation. Temptation, his luncheon partner one recent winter day, points to the lobster bisque, the special Ritz cheeseburger with aged cheddar, the Boston cream pie. “They…
Wax, pluck, zap. Hair today, gone tomorrow
Middle age is a time of many ironies – like increasing wisdom amid shrinking job options – but one of the most medically bizarre is this: At midlife, we start losing hair where we want it and start growing it where we don’t. Many men, especially those with genetic bad luck, start growing hair on…
In medical laboratories, garlic is coming up roses
Garlic, the “stinking rose” beloved by gourmets and health gurus for nearly 4,000 years now, is finally getting respect from the mainstream medical establishment. First mentioned in 1550 B.C. in an Egyptian medical papyrus, then given a whiff of credibility in 1858, when Louis Pasteur discovered that its juice kills bacteria, garlic is now one…
Fear of aids is no reason to avoid dentist
At 2:30 on a Monday afternoon in the summer of 1989, James Sharpe, a convenience store owner from Northampton, settled back in the dentist’s chair to have three teeth extracted. AIDS was, presumably, the last thing on his mind, and he certainly had no risk factors for the disease.His dentist, Dr. Anthony E. Breglio, was…
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