Please enjoy this post from the Clinical Correlations archives first posted March 19, 2009
Aditya Mattoo MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
For our first post, I wanted to address the age old belief that changes in the weather can affect arthritis pain. Since the time of Hippocrates, who wrote about the effects of hot and cold winds on people’s health, this topic has been debated. Even Osler suggested in 1892 that arthritis sufferers of wealth vacation in the south to avoid the cold damp weather of …
By Carolyn Bevan, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
It starts with a tickle in your throat. You feel a bit more tired after a day’s work, maybe your forehead feels a little warm. You try to will it away, but over the next few days, it hits you: the congestion, runny nose and annoying cough. Much to your dismay, you have a cold. Determined not to give in without a fight, you drag yourself to the nearest drug store and buy the first mega-dose vitamin C …
By Manisha Patel
Faculty Peer Reviewed
A woman in her 60s with a history of fibromyalgia presented with productive cough and fevers for one week, and also complained that she had been experiencing diffuse, chronic pain since she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia 2 years ago. After assessing her acute symptoms, I began asking routine questions regarding the characteristics of her chronic pain. Upon asking her about alleviating factors, her unexpected response was simply “meditation.” She stated that meditation helps not only to manage her pain …
By Aditya Mattoo, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Not too long ago, a patient came to my clinic and said (I’m paraphrasing of course), “I never cared for alcohol, doctor, so I haven’t had much to drink since my college days. Maybe champagne or wine on the rare special occasion, but I keep hearing about how wine is good for your heart, so I am thinking I should start drinking regularly.” For years I have been telling patients don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t …
By David Ecker, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Over the last several decades, Westernized countries have become 24-hour societies. Approximately 21 million workers in the US are on non-standard work shifts, including almost 4 million on regular overnight shifts. In 1972, Taylor and Pocock published a mortality study, in which they reported a significantly increased incidence of neoplasms in shift workers compared to the general population. After several published cancer incidence studies, Kerenyi explicitly proposed that changes in light exposure could be an important etiologic factor …
Daria B. Crittenden
Although children today have never known a world without cell phones, the rest of us remember when these devices were created and have watched their popularity soar. The ability to have constant communication, anytime and anywhere, is now taken for granted. Many have asked the question, are we putting our health at risk with this technology? Specifically, with cell phones cradled against our ears many times a day, and sometimes for many hours a day, are we at increased risk for developing …
Chau Che MD
Faculty peer reviewed
Despite the numerous medications available for the treatment of nausea and vomiting, some patients and doctors insist that ginger ale will alleviate gastrointestinal symptoms. As early as the first century AD, the Greek physician Dioscorides praised ginger root because it “gently stimulates the gut and is profitable for the stomach” (4). During the 16th century, the physician Lonicerus similarly wrote, “Ginger does good for a bad stomach” (4). Ginger has long medicinal roots in both India and China and …
Cindy Mui MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Hiccups, or singultus, are sudden, involuntary contractions of the diaphragm, which are terminated by abrupt closure of the glottis, producing their characteristic sound. Hiccups serve no known physiologic purpose, and descriptions of their causes and “cures” date back to the time of Hippocrates. The sheer number of remedies for hiccups prompted Dr. Charles Mayo, a physician at the turn of the 20th century and one of the founders of the Mayo clinic, to state “there is no disease which …
