Columns
Category: General Medicine
Sugar’s ’empty’ calories pile up
Here’s the so-called problem: The kids in the Colorado Springs schools just aren’t drinking enough Coke, or so says John Bushey, an area superintendent for 13 schools who signs his correspondence, “The Coke Dude.” It seems the Colorado district had been hard up for money for extras like band competitions and debates. So in 1997,…
Sizable risks call for caution on Liposuction
She’s 37, and, at 5-feet-7 and 160 pounds, not as thin as she’d like. So when her new boyfriend suggested liposuction and agreed to foot the $6,500 bill, she agreed. “I was slightly insulted,” says the woman, a graphic artist from Roxbury. But her boyfriend had had the same surgery and she wanted to be…
No one’s watching on-line druggists
It sounds promising: You boot up your computer, go to one of the new prescription drug Web sites, type in your name, health insurer, credit card number and address, and ask your doctor to call or fax in your prescription. Presto! Within a day or so, your medication arrives on your doorstep by mail, UPS…
Stress of surgery hard on the heart
Dorothy Teixeira, a 76-year-old Peabody woman who had a history of chest pains, got even more bad news last summer: She had colon cancer and needed surgery. In many hospitals, Teixeira would have been taken off her heart medications during and after surgery because of the fear that the drugs – called beta-blockers – might…
Antibiotics: Knowing when to say no
You’ve had a cold for days now. You’re sneezing. Your throat hurts. Your nose is stuffy. You’re coughing. And you’re just plain sick of being sick. Is it time to see a doctor? Or, your kid has been in earache hell all winter. She’s just finished a course of antibiotics, but she still has fluid…
New clues, therapies aid stutterers
As a child, Louise Kennedy stuttered so badly that eventually she just stopped talking. Now a 37-year-old administrator at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Kennedy recalls that the other kids in Dundee, Scotland, where she grew up, were merciless. One rode by on his bike yelling, “Stutterer, stutterer.” Others “tied me up and…
For teenager, ‘confidential’ is conditional
Adolescence is hard enough, but when it comes to health care, teenagers are caught in a particularly delicate bind. They’re old enough to face the same serious issues as adults — contraception, abortion, depression, alcohol or drug use — yet not old enough to have the same guarantees of confidentiality when they seek help. Granted,…
Fat and Fit? – It’s possible but not ideal
Susan Magocsi, a vivacious 50-year-old Milton psychologist, loves to exercise. She’s training for a walking marathon in Alaska in June. She lifts weights. She does yoga and ballet. In fact, by a number of measures — such as low cholesterol and blood pressure — she’s admirably fit. But she loves to eat, too. Eating is…
Promises and pitfalls of cyber medicine
You feel sluggish, dizzy, distracted. In fact, you’ve been at work all morning and haven’t gotten a thing done. You e-mail your doctor, describing your misery in excruciating detail. Your employer, quite legally, reads it, and concludes you’re not really sick, just goofing off. Now you’re in deep yogurt. Or, you run out of Prozac….
Clues, but still no cure for Autism
Parker Beck, now 5, seemed normal when he was born, say his parents, Victoria and Gary Beck of New Hampshire, who run an educational-products business out of their home. He grew, learned a few words, did all the usual “toddler things.” Then, at 15 months, he suddenly stopped speaking. He developed chronic diarrhea. Most bizarrely,…
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