Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Is It OK To Drink Any Alcohol When Pregnant?

photo from www.newscientist.com

A recent medical study by Dr. Ira J. Chasnoff of the Children’s Research Triangle asserts that Hispanic women who have assimilated to American culture have a greater risk of having children born with fetal alcohol syndrome. According to Chasnoff, pregnant Hispanic women in San Antonio had the second highest drinking rate of 29 cities in the states that were studied.  I find that rather hard to believe based on my twenty-one year history of taking caring of Hispanic pregnant women. I have seen first, second and third generation Hispanic women and never encountered alcoholism among any of them. However, Chasnoff brings up an interesting point about alcohol and pregnancy.  There are two schools of thought.  According to Good Morning America, there are physicians such as Dr. Jacques Moritz, who think an occasional glass of wine is okay to consume during pregnancy however the U.S. Surgeon General and the American College of Obstetrician-Gynecologists advocate strict abstinence from alcohol while pregnancy.

According to medical literature, more than one-half of women of childbearing age report drinking alcohol and 1 out of 8 women report binge drinking.  Alcohol appears to have negative effects throughout the entire pregnancy, not just during the first-trimester. At present, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*

Patients Need Encouragement To Talk About Depression

More than two in five patients hesitate to discuss depression in the primary care setting, leading researchers to offer practical tips on how to encourage people to broach the subject.

The big reasons for not talking to doctors included fears about patient confidentiality and fear of losing emotional control in front of the doctor, among those with a history of depression. Among those with no prior history, a fear of antidepressants/psychiatry and the perception that primary care isn’t the right setting are two big reasons.

To learn why patients choose not to talk about their depression, researchers Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

Why Racial Disparities Are Alive And Well In Healthcare

It was 1999 when the Federal government first acknowledged our nation had a problem with race and health care. That year, Congress tasked the Institute of Medicine to study the matter, and the resulting report was not good. Minorities were in poor health and receiving inferior care, the report said. They were less likely to receive bypass surgery, kidney transplants and dialysis. If they had diabetes, they were more likely to undergo amputations, meaning their disease had been poorly controlled. And there was a lot more where that came from.

unequal2 201x300 Racial Disparities in Health Care: The Hundred Years WarThe IOM report was a call to action. In subsequent years, lawmakers crafted policies and established goals for improvement. Federal and state governments and numerous foundations set aside billions to fund projects. Health services researchers expanded their efforts to study the problem.

Twelve years later, we have something to show for the effort. Steep declines in the prevalence of cigarette smoking among African Americans have narrowed the gap in lung cancer death rates between them and whites, for example. Inner city kids have better food choices at school. The 3-decade rise in obesity rates, steepest among minorities, has leveled off.

Nevertheless, racial disparities persist across the widest possible range of health services and disease states in our country. The overall death rate from cancer is 24% higher for African-Americans than white people. The racial gap in colorectal cancer mortality has widened since the 1980s. African Americans with diabetes experienced declines in recommended foot, eye, and blood glucose testing between 2002-2007. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles