Did you know that physical activity can reduce your risk for memory loss and dementia? I had the chance to speak to ABC’s Let’s Talk Live team about important lifestyle choices that can keep the mind healthy and active. The good news is that you really can teach an old dog new tricks, and those new tricks can stimulate growth of new brain cells. Watch the video and check out the Alzheimer’s Association website for more information about dementia prevention:
Check out this darkly humorous advertising campaign from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. How do you convince men to go to the doctor and get the preventive healthcare that’s known to save lives? You make it all about television. Men + HD TV = “Yes.” This video is funny on so many levels.
California recently declared an epidemic of whooping cough (pertussis) which resulted in the death of five infants under the age of 3 months. The pertussis vaccine, which is already given routinely to infants, is first given at 2 months of age, then 4 months and 6 months of age, with an additional booster at 15 to 18 months of age, and then again at 4 to 6 years old.
The vaccines for Bortella pertussis bacteria, which causes whooping cough, does not confer lifelong immunity. In other words, fully-vaccinated children who then become teenagers and then adults lose immunity, can acquire the infection and then spread it. Should babies acquire pertussis, as the public has discovered, it can be deadly. The persistent cough tires the baby, causes difficulty breathing, and can make them turn blue or cyanotic resulting in pneumonia or convulsions. According to CDC, about half of children aged 1 year and younger need to be hospitalized if infected with the illness. Although older children and adults can handle the cough, the infection can cause them to cough for weeks or months. Read more »
It’s time to ask patients whether they text and drive. An important perspective piece from the New England Journal of Medicine urges doctors to include that question during preventive health exams. The data surrounding texting and driving is grim:
Although there are many possible distractions for drivers, more than 275 million Americans own cell phones, and 81% of them talk on those phones while driving. The adverse consequences have reached epidemic proportions. Current data suggest that each year, at least 1.6 million traffic accidents (28% of all crashes) in the United States are caused by drivers talking on cell phones or texting. Talking on the phone causes many more accidents than texting, simply because millions more drivers talk than text; moreover, using a hands-free device does not make talking on the phone any safer.
The author of the piece, Amy Ship from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, says that doctors should update traditional preventive questions to keep up with the times. The simple question, “Do you text while you drive?” is a way to start this important conversation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
Headlines every day in the New York Daily News are luring men in as part of a mass prostate cancer screening campaign that the American Cancer Society not only does not endorse, but its chief medical officer recommends against. Yet the paper brags that it’s beginning its second decade of this non-evidence-based campaign. Sample headlines:
• Doctors urge New York men to take advantage of free, city-wide PSA testing
• What you don’t know can kill you. Get a FREE prostate cancer test. It can save your life
• Bring dad in for FREE prostate cancer test across the city on Father’s Day
and
• Don’t skip the PSA test! My prostate cancer is treatable because simple test caught it early (written by a Daily News staffer). Read more »
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