Yesterday's LA Times health section had an important article about what to do in the event of a heart attack. In the last decade our understanding and treatment of heart attacks has improved dramatically. The best treatment for a heart attack is immediate angioplasty, a procedure that inserts a tiny balloon in the closed artery, opens it and leaves a metal stent to keep the vessel open...
More
Human Growth Hormone is Unproven to Improve Strength
Human growth hormone (HGH) has been receiving a lot of media attention recently because of the controversy of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. This made some researchers curious about how much evidence existed that HGH actually improves athletic performance. They reviewed the scientific studies on HGH in an analysis published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study received a lot of co...
More
Even a Little Exercise is Better Than None
I am constantly encouraging patients to exercise. Usually, the motivation is physical health -- the patient's weight, or blood pressure, or cholesterol, or sugar is too high and exercise is the healthiest way to normalize it. But I'm increasingly impressed by the ability of exercise to improve mental health. Patients tell me all the time that their mood is better, their anxiety lower, and their thinking sharper when they exercise than when they don't.
A recent study adds evidence to that bel...
More
More Options for Colon Cancer Screening
Colon cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in the US, second only to lung cancer. Fortunately, there are effective tests that can diagnose colon cancer early, or even prevent colon cancer while it is still a pre-cancerous polyp. Given that this is one of the few cancers for which effective screening exists, I have been very enthusiastic about recommending colon cancer screening to all my patients over 50.
The options for screening thus far have been colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, fecal occu...
More