December 3rd, 2011 by PeterWehrwein in Research
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Some medications are well known for being risky, especially for older people. Certain antihistamines, barbiturates, muscle relaxants—take too much of them, or take them with certain other medications, and you can wind up in serious trouble (and possibly in the back of ambulance).
But researchers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Emory University reported in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine that those high-risk medications are not the ones that most commonly put older Americans (ages 65 and older) in the hospital.
Warfarin is #1
Instead, they found that warfarin is the most common culprit. Warfarin (the brand-name version is called Coumadin) reduces the blood’s tendency to clot. Many older people take it to lower their risk of getting a stroke.
After warfarin, different Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
September 29th, 2011 by Paul Auerbach, M.D. in Health Tips, Opinion
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Perhaps the greatest thrill in attending a summer meeting of the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) is listening to new, enthusiastic and exciting speakers. They bring new insights and opinions to numerous topics and discussions, which is an essential part of the educational process. This past summer, at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the WMS held in Snowmass, Colorado, Dr. Drew Watters from the Indiana University School of Medicine approached the audience with his observations about neurobiology and survival. It was an innovative approach to a very common topic within wilderness medicine. How does one account for and handle emotions in a time of stress, including the most stressful situation of all—namely, a survival situation? When is it better to think, rather than to react? The objectives of his presentation were to understand to a certain extent survival, the anatomy of thought and perception, the neurobiology of emotions, behavior, emotive and cognitive decisions, and implementation of interventions in situations dominated by emotion.
Anyone who has practiced wilderness medicine knows that bad things happen, sometimes despite the best preparations and intentions. People make bad decisions that can too often be characterized as dumb. If they follow with more bad decisions, the situation Read more »
This post, Handling One’s Emotions In A Survival Situation, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Paul Auerbach, M.D..
