Columns
“Cutting” – Understanding Self-Mutilation
Years ago, Boston University psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk tried a simple experiment to understand one of the most disturbing, and bizarre, of all psychiatric disorders: self-mutilation, or more simply, cutting. He asked his cutters, mostly young women, to come see him when they felt the urge to scratch, slash or burn themselves. When…
Meditation and the Brain ….?
For decades, open-minded Westerners – patients and doctors alike – have been touting the medical benefits of meditation, an ancient Eastern practice that comes in hundreds if not thousands of different flavors but consists basically of quieting the mind through moment-to-moment nonjudgmental awareness. Considerable research suggests that regular meditation, or even just 10-20 minutes a…
New Approach Could Reduce the Need for Chemotherapy
There’s a revolution brewing in the diagnosis of cancer that could dramatically change how doctors figure out which tumors are truly life-threatening – and need chemotherapy — and which are not. In the Netherlands, the new tool – called by various names, including gene expression profiling – is expected to be available for some women…
Telomerase – a Promising Cancer Drug Stuck in Patent Hell?
Molecular biologists aren’t a particularly grumpy lot, but they are grumbling these days that corporate interests – particularly those of the California-based Geron Corp. – may be stifling development of a promising new class of anti-cancer drugs called telomerase inhibitors. Telomerase is a weird enzyme – part protein (called hTERT), part RNA (hTR). Its job…
Blood Pressure Drugs – Confusing but Crucial
In December, a study of more than 42,000 white and black Americans found that old-fashioned, cheap diuretics – “water pills” – work at least as well and sometimes better than more expensive drugs to treat high blood pressure and certain heart problems. The study, dubbed ALLHAT, was published in JAMA, the Journal of the American…
The Glycemic Index – Should You Worry?
If you haven’t heard of it yet, get ready to grapple with the “glycemic index,” the latest wrinkle in America’s endless diet debate. On the surface, the glycemic index is a simple concept – a way to measure how much blood sugar goes up in the two hours after eating carbohydrates. Carbohydrates with a high…
Sleep and Memory – Are they Intertwined?
In July, researchers led by Robert Stickgold, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, reported that a full eight hours’ sleep after learning a motor task boosts performance by 20 percent the next day. Even a one-hour nap can improve scores on a simple visual task, others reported in May. Perhaps even more…
New Trial to Detect Early Lung Cancer
Sadly enough, it often seems to take a celebrity patient to get the rest of us to sit up and take notice of certain diseases, especially diseases in which the patient’s own behavior contributes to the risk. This time, the celebrity is an active, young mother, Kara Kennedy , 42, the daughter of Sen. Edward…
Our Columnist Goes Under the Knife
I was very scared, shivering as much from fear as from the chilly room temperature. I was waiting on a gurney at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to be wheeled in for a catheter ablation, an invasive cardiac “procedure.” (Ah, the euphemisms.) In a totally bizarre twist of fate, I had several weeks earlier interviewed Dr….
New Fixes for Electrical Problems in the Heart
Until last winter, Joseph Moniz, 50, a Fall River man with congestive heart failure was waiting, like 4,000 other Americans, for a heart transplant to save his life. He never got it. But he got something better: a small device called an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) like the one Dick Cheney got, a familiar gadget…
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