If an illness can have a stereotype, gout has one: its poster boy is a portly, wealthy gentleman who drinks too much red wine and eats too much rich food. In literature, gout is an Epicurean affliction, the runoff of opulence and “disease of kings.” In fact, gout attacks the poor as well as the […]
American men need a baseline PSA test and rectal exam to check for prostate cancer in their forties, and then they need follow-up screening at regular intervals – maybe every five years, if the PSA number is low and nothing feels abnormal in the exam, or maybe more often, depending on the number. Men who […]
“Tissue engineering is the ultimate in reconstruction,” says David McConkey, Ph.D., Director of the Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute at Johns Hopkins, “and we have a fantastic team” working to create a new bladder out of a patient’s own cells. Using a scaffold to layer stem cells and similarly “plastic” cells called progenitor cells – kind […]
We are living longer, and 75 is not the ripe old age it used to be. But it’s a cutoff age for PSA screening – and this is missing cancer in men who really need to be treated, say Brady investigators. “There is increasing evidence that this age-based approach is significantly flawed,” says Johns Hopkins […]
Before we start this discussion, please hear these words: this is not about your right to smoke marijuana. I don’t care if you spend every waking moment high as a kite, as long as you don’t operate heavy machinery or endanger anyone else. I do not care. That’s not my business. However, I’m worried about […]
If your mom had breast cancer, that could raise your risk for prostate cancer. If you have aggressive prostate cancer, your daughter might be at higher risk for ovarian or breast cancer. Some “bad apple” genes run in families; doctors know what they are, and there’s a blood test to look for them. For the […]
I’ve had a lot of requests to print a talk I recently gave. Here it is. — Janet Recently, I took part in a large, two-day dementia seminar in Prescott, Arizona, presented by Prescott United Methodist Church for the community. There was a full house both days; hundreds of people came, which shows that the […]