Pain Management is a way of life for over 100 million Americans who live with long-term pain. Since the 1990s, physicians’ go-to treatment for constant pain has been prescription opioids, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone. Though the evidence that opioids work for long-term pain is scarce, Americans get more prescriptions for them than anyone else …
Pneumonia starts when a virus, fungus, or bacterium get into one of your lungs. (If it’s in both lungs, it’s called double pneumonia.) It causes the tiny sacs inside to get inflamed and fill with fluid or pus. If you’re healthy and get treated right away, it usually isn’t serious. But it can be dangerous for seniors, …
Triglycerides are a type of fat in your blood. Oil, margarine, butter, are triglycerides. Your blood absorbs them after you eat. But that’s not the only source. Your body also turns extra calories, especially from “simple carbs” such as pastries, white bread, candy, sugar, and alcohol into triglycerides and stores them in fat cells. …
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal hereditary and progressive brain disorder. You can’t “catch” it from another person. Every child of a parent with HD has a 50/50 chance of carrying the faulty gene. There are approximately 30,000 symptomatic Americans and more than 200,000 at-risk of inheriting the disease. Although symptoms may first show up in midlife, …
Cholesterol levels tell your doctor about the fats in your blood. Unhealthy levels are linked to hardening of the arteries, which can cause heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes. Your numbers include “bad” (LDL) and “good” (HDL) cholesterol, plus triglycerides, a common fat in your body. If you understand where your numbers are and what …
Smartphones are a necessity in our lives today. But with the convenience also come risks to our health which can lead to chronic illness. We outline the smartphone negatives below. Smartphones: Germs, Germs, Germs Your cellphone probably goes with you everywhere. When’s the last time you cleaned it? Ever? It makes sense that …
Graves’ disease is an autoimmune disorder that causes the thyroid gland to over-produce thyroid hormone. This condition leads to overactivity of the entire thyroid gland (hyperthyroidism). It is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism in the United States. It is named after Robert Graves, an Irish physician, who described this form of hyperthyroidism in 1868. …
Antibiotic drugs have been used for the last 70 years to treat patients who have infectious diseases. Since the 1940s, they have greatly reduced illness and death. However, excessive antibiotic use is so prevalent that infectious organisms have adapted, making the drugs less effective. Consequently, each year in the United States, at least 2 million …
Blockchain is being promoted as the next frontier in healthcare that will solve some of the industry’s challenges. So what exactly is this technology? Blockchain technology is a permanent record of online transactions or exchanges. It started in 2009 as the foundation for trading the digital currency bitcoin. An entered record can …