With knives or branding irons, ancient Greeks would mark criminals or traitors to indicate that they should be shunned and not welcomed in society. The Greeks called that mark a stigma. Today, to stigmatize a person is to classify them by a negative attribute and devalue them on that basis alone. Stigmatizing is a cross-cultural and cross-species...
Read MoreKidney Stones and the Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke
As I laid on the emergency room’s hospital bed, a volunteer said, “I’ve had seven children and kidney stones. I’d take labor pains over kidney stone pain anytime.” Although I’m not sure I completely agree, I do know that pain from kidney stone, called renal colic, can be excruciating. Over half a million people in the US...
Read MoreVegetarian Diet Great for Type 2 Diabetes
Critical benefits may be had from eating a vegetarian diet for people living with type 2 diabetes, a recent meta-analysis of randomized control trials* indicates. Published in Clinical Nutrition, the meta-analysis of nine studies involved over 600 participants taking insulin, oral glucose lowering drugs, lipid-lowering medications or medications to...
Read MoreCommon Tests: Liver Function
The largest solid organ in the body, the liver has at least 500 distinct functions. [See 5 Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Your Liver] It produces bile to break down fats in the small intestine, stores glucose in the form of glycogen, processes hemoglobin and manufactures proteins and enzymes. There are several liver tests conducted to assess...
Read MoreI Keep Getting Up At Night To Go to the Bathroom: Nocturia and Nocturnal Polyuria
By Professor Steven Kaplan, MD “I never get a full night’s sleep…I’ve got to get up two or three times a night.” “As soon as I lie down, I feel like I need to GO!” “When it was just once a night, I could handle it. Now it’s once every hour!” If any of these statements describe your experience,...
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