Deja Vu isn’t always pleasant. As a disease, Shingles is a perfect example of this statement. The peculiar name, Shingles, is derived from a Latin word, cingulum, meaning girdle or belt. An outbreak is actually a reactivation of a chickenpox infection that has been dormant in a
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This time of year, you can throw a rock and hit somebody who’s sick. There’s coughing and sneezing everywhere! Additionally, this ‘home stretch of the year’ between Thanksgiving and New Years is probably the most stressful time of the year for all of us. It’s well-known that
Read more →Sometimes in the course of medical progress, we find new uses for old drugs. A five year trial named HOPE (Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation) enrolled 9297 men and women over the age of 55 to see if a class of drugs called ACE Inhibitors might decrease incidence
Read more →There are millions of Americans who have at least periodic jaw pain. Various names have been given to this phenomenon including: TMJ Syndrome, TMD (Temporomandibular Disorders), or I’ve just heard folks say, “I’ve got TMJ”. In any case, TMD is not just one disorder, but a group
Read more →Summer remains in full swing in the SE United States, and in many other parts of the world as well. And, with the summer heat and humidity comes a much greater likelihood that one will develop either tinea cruris, tinea pedis, or both. . .especially if one
Read more →Did you know that at least 240 people in the United States die of heat-related illness every year? In fact, during the prolonged heat wave of 1980, 1,700 people died as a direct result of those increased temperatures. Unfortunately, heat stroke is also the third ranked cause
Read more →“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” Virginia Woolf Did you know that summertime is the prime time for food poisoning? If you think about it logically, you would have surmised such already. After all, when we are trying to
Read more →Aphthous ulcers (aka Canker Sores) are those painful, shallow ulcers that occur periodically on the mucosal surfaces of the mouth. . .sites which include the soft palate, the inside of lips and cheeks, and the tongue. They’re painful in their own right, but just add a spicy
Read more →She was already dead when the ambulance attendants rushed her through the emergency room doors. A massive hemorrhage had replaced the area in her skull that was once her brain. I later learned that she was the single mother of two grown daughters and an expectant grandmother.
Read more →Have you ever wondered about the symbol of medicine, the caduceus? It’s two serpents entwined on a staff. Rooted in Greek and Roman mythology, one snake is Knowledge and the other isWisdom. According to legend, Hermes (messenger of the other gods as well as the god of science,
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