Columns
Category: General Medicine
The water fad has people soaking it up
We’ve become a nation of water drinkers, so bitten by the bug to imbibe that we lug plastic bottles around all day, not just to stave off dehydration but to avoid just about every other ill from dry skin to constipation to fatigue, muscle weakness, and colds. Are we really that desiccated? Or just deluded?…
Skin cancer hits many, but it can be very curable
Sally Loring, 70, a retired volunteer for the historical society in Manchester-by-the-Sea, is one lucky lady. Seven years ago, while on vacation in Australia and New Zealand, Loring knocked the head off a mole that she’d had for decades but that hadn’t been checked by a doctor for four years. The headless mole wouldn’t heal.When…
When the cure is a killer, Extra vigilance is the key to avoiding adverse reactions to valuable drugs
Betty Moody, a 40-year-old partially disabled veteran from Sidney, Maine, had been taking little blue pills for her arthritis for five years and expected no problems when she asked for a refill in March from the Togus veterans’ hospital. She noticed the new pills – a drug called Piroxicam – were green. In fact, she…
Treating impotence getting easier
Not long ago, when researchers were testing a new heart drug in men, they noticed something weird. The drug did little to offset chest pain, but the guys wouldn’t give it back. It turned out the drug, now called Viagra, had an unanticipated side effect: it enhanced erections. Just approved last month by the FDA,…
Frustrating skin disease begins to yield it’s secrets
Gloria E. Grubbs, a Vietnam Vet from Dorchester, is 50 now, has “raised two kids up” and made a life for herself, despite a 19-year struggle with scleroderma, the disfiguring disease that can turn the body into a mass of stiff, scar-like tissue, inside and out. It started with a tightening and thickening in her…
Women do have more pain, but they cope
Jean Cummings, a 38-year-old urban policy analyst from Cambridge, lives in almost constant pain. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 10 years ago, she’s had two hip replacements and will have both knees replaced in June, right after her wedding. She’s tried every medication in the book — and some in the pipeline. “There’s almost nothing left…
Sneezing early? It’s el Nino’s fault
Just when you thought there was nothing left to blame on El Nino comes this: We’re in for an unusually early – and perhaps long and nasty – allergy season this year. Granted, everybody always thinks whatever allergy season they’re suffering through is the worst ever, but this year, it really will be bad –…
Treatment options are growing for women with bleeding disorders
Teresa Menz, a 34-year-old teacher from Sidney, N.Y., tried almost everything for her fibroids — benign uterine tumors that cause pain and bleeding in millions of women. With more than 100 fibroids, Menz’s belly was as big as that of a woman 26 weeks pregnant and she hemorrhaged during every menstrual period. She tried hormone…
Tinnitus: It’s not just in your ears
Until four years ago, Dr. Stephen Nagler, 49, was a busy breast and colon cancer surgeon in Atlanta. Suddenly, he began suffering from tinnitus, which most people describe as a ringing in the ears, but for him was “a cross between the sound of a teakettle and a jet turbine.” “It was incredibly loud. It…
The caffeine brouhaha is percolating again
Malcolm Noriega, 35, a consulting engineer from Manchester, used to wake up on weekend mornings with wicked headaches, complete with nausea and a light-sensitivity so intense he had to wear sunglasses indoors. “The damned things were Tylenol-and ibuprofen-resistant,” he says. “Maybe by afternoon I’d be able to function.” Finally, friends suggested his problem might be…
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