Columns
Category: General Medicine
Thyroid ills catch many by surprise
To listen to Lisette Mancini, a 40-year old Walpole audiologist and mother of three, you might be tempted to conclude that thyroid troubles are a blessing. Years ago, as a student at Boston College, her metabolism was cranked so high she “flew through school because I had so much time to study. I never slept….
Talk about what really ails you
You sit there in that silly little gown, trying to act normal. The doctor comes in. You exchange hellos, then launch into why you’re there. Within 18 seconds, according to a study of more than 1,000 doctor-patient encounters, the doctor interrupts. Suddenly, you blank out on that chest pain two weeks ago and start babbling…
When a staple of diet can be lethal
Max Collins, now 8 and a second grader in Burlington, was a baby when a tiny taste of peanut butter nearly killed him. No sooner had his mom, Lisa, now 32, spread a smidgeon on Max’s lips than he began vomiting and screaming. Huge hives sprouted on his skin. “It was almost simultaneous,” Lisa says….
Four new drugs promise major relief for arthritis
For years, millions of Americans with arthritis have been caught in a troublesome trap. If they don’t take medication, they often suffer severe pain and life-wrecking disability. Yet if they do, they risk worrisome side effects. Some drugs, like methotrexate and high dose prednisone, can suppress the immune system. Others — notably painkillers like aspirin,…
The other ways the sexes differ
Women, at least in America, outlive men by six years. So how, then, do you account for this: Women are five times as likely as men to get migraines and osteoporosis, two to three times as likely to get seriously depressed, and much more likely to get diseases like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and scleroderma, in…
The debt we owe the guinea pigs
Fifty years ago this month, a band of researchers fanned out through the neighborhoods of Framingham, urging residents to sign up for a study designed to track ordinary people to try to detect early signs of heart disease – then, as now, the No. 1 killer of Americans. One of the 5,209 who agreed was…
Fish oil seen cutting risk of Mental Illness
Fish oils that are already believed to reduce the risk of heart disease may help combat a number of serious psychiatric illnesses as well, researchers said yesterday. At an international conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, scientists said that though the data are preliminary, a growing body of evidence suggests that higher consumption…
Good for you, no matter how you slice them
Ripening in the late-summer sun, filling garden baskets and salad bowls, reddening gazpacho in kitchen blenders, simmering in saucepans for spaghetti sauce, tomatoes might just be the best, maybe the only, reason for welcoming the end of summer. And beyond the tempting taste – a blessed relief from the cardboard baseballs we get the rest…
Ginkgo stock is continues to rise
Like many others at midlife or beyond, Wendy Fink, a health educator in her 50s, was appalled at the way her memory kept conking out. “I was having trouble getting words,” says Fink, who lives in Royalston. “I was feeling very stressed about this.” So she tried ginkgo, an herbal memory-booster that’s getting new respect…
A childhood with no cones or hotdogs?
When the seventh and posthumous – edition of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s “Baby and Child Care” was published recently, the guru’s endorsement of a vegetarian diet for kids over 2 caused many nutritionists and doctors to choke on their leafy greens. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, professor emeritus of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, thinks it’s “absolutely…
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