House Call, MD: Health Carefully Explained

by Marissa Camilon, MD 2011 | camilon@myhousecallmd.com

Cold season seems to last longer and longer each year. Rain or shine, you always seem to find yourself around someone with a case of the sniffles. As miserable as it is for the sniffling individual, the common cold is making an even bigger impact on our society’s finances. Each year, the US spends $7.7 billion on 100 million doctors visits, accounting for an average of 2-4 colds for a single adult each year and up to 12 colds for children. American children can miss up to 189 million school days each year due to cold symptoms, causing parents to stay home and lose126 million workdays. Starting to get the picture?  The seemingly benign common cold is making a sizable impact on us as a society.

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by G. John Mullen, DPT 2011 | mullen@myhousecallmd.com

Headaches suck, period. They have an infallible ability to ruin an otherwise stellar day.  Before you can treat the awful day-buster, we need to figure out exactly what type of headache you’re suffering from.  Headaches come in two varieties: primary & secondary.  Primary headaches, including migraine, tension-type and cluster, exist without outside influence. Secondary headaches, headaches with a clearly identifiable pathological cause, include withdrawal headaches as well as headaches related to high blood pressure, cervical spine issues, tumors, etc.  Luckily, most headaches present in a relatively predictable way, making them easier to identify and properly treat.  It’s about time we had some good news!

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by Michaela Marek, MD 2011 | marek@myhousecallmd.com

What do you think is the most likely type of cancer to affect you and your loved ones?  Lung cancer?  Colon cancer?  It’s not a pleasant thing to think about by any stretch of the imagination yet it is so common (one in five will be affected) AND so preventable (in the majority of cases), that not talking about it is not an option.  The answer is skin cancer.  In fact, there are more cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year than lung, colon, breast and prostate cancers combined.  It’s kind of a big deal.  Lucky for us, most skin cancers are slow growing and do not metastasize (i.e. spread to other parts of your body) very often.  Another nice thing about skin cancer is that the tumors can often be seen and diagnosed without any fancy tools or expensive tests.  However, thousands of people continue to die from skin cancer every year.  What’s the missing link?  Knowledge…which is why we’ve broken down the three most common types of cancers to watch out for below.

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by Courtney Walberg, RD, NASM-CPT | Nutrition for Body & Mind

February is “Heart Month” and it’s time to get your cardiovascular system in shape and ready for that special someone on Valentine’s Day!  It is a day filled with chocolate, sweets, and treats, but remember that it’s only one day, not an entire month. Stay focused on the goals that you made in January and commit to keeping them throughout 2011. Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and accomplished within a specific, designated time frame. Remember, being an active individual will make you more focused, confident, determined, and subsequently more successful.  Sounds like a win-win to us.

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by Tania Houspian, PharmD 2011 | houspian@myhousecallmd.com

We know that the energy drink, Red Bull, has been around since 1987.  We don’t know, however, when the first individual had an epiphany and said to his friend, “Hey, this would be great mixed with alcohol!” Whoever he is, he probably regrets failing to patent his idea. At one point in time, it was the drink to order because it had everything most young (but, of course, over 21) drinkers would ask for. Alcohol to develop a buzz? Yes. Caffeine from an energy drink to make sure the buzz doesn’t make you sleepy? Yes. Flavored? Yes.  Flash-forward a decade or so at which point companies have caught on and have started manufacturing drinks called caffeinated alcoholic beverages (CAB’s) or alcoholic energy drinks (AED’s) that contain both caffeine and alcohol already combined for you (no bartender needed). We’ll be referring to them as CAB’s for the rest of the article for consistency’s sake. There were more than 25 different brands of CAB’s on the market a couple of years ago including popular brands like Sparks, Four Loko, Joose, and Max. Combining alcohol and energy drinks has always been controversial due to concerns over the cardiovascular effects of such a combo. Recently, the controversy has heated up due to multiple hospitalizations linked to consuming CAB’s.  As potential consumers of these drinks, you may be wondering why they are so bad for you and what the future holds for CAB’s.  Grab a drink and keep reading.

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