Roll Out Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer Researchers, especially epidemiologists, look for patterns. And they found patterns when they looked at the places where people are most likely to get cancer. They found that there is more cancer in people living in higher latitudes, that is, closer to the arctic. So they started thinking and figuring out this...
Read More
On Your Mark, (Lather Up) Get Set (Grab That Razor), GO… SHAVE! It’s December and all the men who grew their mustaches in November get to shave! What? You didn’t know about this? It is because of Movember. Has anyone seen this typo recently? Well, it’s not a typo…it is actually a fund-raising campaign with an International...
Read More
Help us help others! Please spread the word: Autumn Harvest Celebrations of autumn, the harvest, and the blessings of the passing year are found in many cultures. In China, there’s the celebration of the harvest moon. In the Jewish culture, a festival called Sukkot celebrates the wandering in the desert and the harvest. The ancient Greeks celebrated a...
Read More
Or Patient-Centered Cancer Care: IOM’s recommendations Last week, we looked at the recent Institute of Medicine’s report and wrote the post about “How the US Got Its Cancer Care Crisis“. This week we get more practical. With specific recommendations you can use! The general recommendations include: (1) becoming engaged patients. (2)...
Read More
Did you know… In a study conducted in 2012, 69% of patients diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and 81% of those diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer did not understand that chemotherapy was not at all likely to cure their cancer? That a national survey showed physicians asked patients what they want in their care only ½ the time? That patients ask...
Read More
So often people who undergo chemotherapy hear something like this from their family, friends or other well-wishers, “Thank goodness that’s over, now you can get on with your life. You can get back to normal.” Although it’s true that chemotherapy is over, the road that the patient is on is not smooth. There are important changes that caregivers and...
Read More
Growing up, Colleen Bronstein spent all summer at her family’s summer home at the beach and when she married they had a pool and visited the beach house twice a year. Fair skinned, freckled and Irish she loved the outdoors. Knowing the Signs “I had an itchy spot on my back for a year or so and when I went to see my family doctor about something...
Read More
There are two phrases making the rounds that describe you, a member of the growing Medivizor.com community. One is “e-patient” and the other is “smart patient.” What is an e-patient? Who created the phrase? Published in March of 1996, Health Online: How to Find Health Information, Support Groups, and Self-Help Communities in Cyberspace, first...
Read More
Almost 10 years ago, secondhand smoke was determined to be a Group A carcinogen by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since then evidence has grown supporting this classification. The reasoning is based on the content of secondhand smoke (SHS). SHS is a mixture of fine particles and over 50 chemicals that are known or probable cancer causing...
Read More
A recent study by researchers at Loyola University found that as many as 63% of prostate cancer websites cannot be read or understood by someone who hasn’t completed high school education. Why is this important? Well, one of the study’s references suggests that as many as 90 million adult Americans have literacy skills that test below high school...
Read More
It’s been awhile since my last blog post. I apologize, I’ve been busy. I’ve spent most of my time helping several startups get off the ground, some of which you’ll hear more about very soon. Among these, and the one I’ve spent the bulk of my energy on, is Medivizor. Over the next few weeks and months I’ll be sharing in this blog about the...
Read More
