http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog On this page, Dr. Fuchs provides links to health-related news stories of interest to his patients. He adds a story about once a week, so keep checking back. Obviously, any information you learn online should be used to supplement, not replace, the advice of your doctor. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:01:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This summer a Salmonella outbreak traced to contaminated eggs has sickened over 1,000 people and led to the recall of over 500 million eggs. Eggs are particularly susceptible to Salmonella contamination.  The outsides of egg shells can be contaminated by bacteria if they come into contact with chicken droppings or with ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=500 I’ve written before about how the error rate in the practice of medicine is far greater than that in other industries.  I’m not talking about when doctors make a difficult decision that in retrospect was wrong; I’m talking about just plain mistakes, such as when one medication is ordered but ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=497 Summertime, and the livin’ is uneasy Stocks are slumpin’ Unemployment is high (with apologies to George Gershwin) Reminders of the end of summer are upon us.  Kids are returning to school.  Rain covers are thrown over backyard grills.  Flu vaccines are arriving in doctor offices. This season’s influenza vaccine is here.  It contains the flu ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=491 What sort of diet helps people lose more weight?  Do overweight people lose more weight on a low-carbohydrate diet (like Atkins) or on a low-fat diet (like Weight Watchers and others)? A carefully designed study published in the current issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine answers that question.  The study ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=488 This week I discovered how painful it can be to change a habit.  Not because it means admitting I was doing the wrong thing, but because it means analyzing how feeble my reasons were for the habit in the first place. Ever since I started practice I’ve been recommending calcium supplements ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=485 My regular readers are a sharp bunch, so you probably already know that cardiac arrest – the cessation of a pulse and of blood circulation – is very very bad for you.  Most doctors don’t recommend it.  Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands in the U.S. every year suffer cardiac arrest outside ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=482 Before I review this week’s study, bear with me while I clear up some terms. Type 1 diabetes mellitus and type 2 diabetes mellitus are completely different diseases.  That they have such similar names and are differentiated only by a “type” promotes the common misunderstanding that they are subtypes of the ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=478 Obesity is an increasingly prevalent problem in developed countries, and a safe and effective medication for weight loss is eagerly sought.  Most weight loss medications have been plagued by serious side effects. Fenfluramine, a medication used with phentermine in the popular “fen-phen” combination in the 1990s, was found to cause serious ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=475 This week the American Cancer Society published its annual review of cancer statistics and trends.  This year the big picture was overwhelmingly positive. The three most frequently diagnosed cancers in men are prostate cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer (in that order).  For women the top three are breast, lung and ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=471 My regular readers know that prostate cancer screening has been an active research topic recently.  (My not-so-regular readers who are interested are invited to catch up on the topic by reading my most recent post on the subject.  See the link below.)  Whether testing men for prostate cancer saves lives ... http://www.albertfuchs.com/blog/?p=467