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

Latest Posts

Ten Things You Might Not Know About Afib

September is Atrial Fibrillation Awareness Month. Lots of folks don’t know too much about the condition, which is an irregular heart beat that can lead to serious complications such as dementia, heart failure, stroke or even death. To help spread the word, StopAfib.org presents these 10 afib facts and figures that will probably surprise even

some healthcare professionals:

  1. Afib affects lots of people. Currently up to 5.1 million people are affected by afib. And that’s just in America. By 2050, the number of people in the United States with afib may increase to as much as 15.9 million. About 350,000 hospitalizations a year in the U.S. are attributed to afib. In addition, people over the age of 40 have a one in four chance of developing afib in their lifetime.
  2. Afib is a leading cause of strokes. Nearly 35 percent of all afib patients will have a stroke at some time. In addition to leaving sufferers feeling weak, tired or even incapacitated, afib can allow blood to pool in the atria, creating blood clots, which may move throughout the body, causing a stroke. To make matters worse, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Atrial Fibrillation Blog*

Multaq Simply Does Not Work To Control AF, So Why Is It Still So Over-Hyped?

Did you know September is AFib awareness month?

As a believer in education as the first, and best treatment of AF, I think it’s great to enhance the public knowledge of this highly-misunderstood disease.

By all means…

Tell people about AF’s risks: stroke and heart failure.

Tell them that their fatigue, poor exercise tolerance and breathlessness might not be old age; it might be AF.

Tell them about the importance of early intervention.

Tell them that obesity, inactivity, sleep disturbances, alcohol, and incessantly worrying about everything makes AF more likely to occur, and to stay.

Tell them that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*

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