Harvard Health Blog
Read posts from experts at Harvard Health Publishing covering a variety of health topics and perspectives on medical news.
Most parents know when their child needs to be seen by a medical professional, but certain symptoms should be considered warning signs that require immediate attention. If your child perks up, or stops crying, or otherwise looks completely fine once you see a doctor, don’t feel silly. These symptoms terrify doctors, so it’s always better to be safe than very, very sorry.
In mid-January, health headlines announced that nearly one-third of adults diagnosed with asthma don’t actually have this respiratory condition at all. This announcement appeared everywhere from Fox News Health to the Chicago Tribune.
When I was in college, my cooking skills were limited to a giant skillet of Tuna Helper. Meals were chosen by how quick and how cheap. Nutrition? Never heard of it.
With back pain affecting so many of us, it’s eye-opening that a new review of dozens of studies is reporting that many people who took NSAID medications did not feel any better, or felt only slightly better, after treatment.
Back pain is remarkably common. It’s estimated that up to 80% of people will seek medical attention for back pain at some point in their lives.
Many people struggle with being overweight, or even obese. It’s a common topic at office visits. As a doctor, I know that excess weight is associated with potentially serious health conditions — high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol — not to mention sleep apnea, fatty liver disease, and back and knee problems, among other things. Patients may also worry about their appearance.
As marijuana becomes legal or is decriminalized in more states, teens are less likely to view its use as risky, so parents need to talk with their children about safety, especially if they use it themselves.
In September 2016, a woman in her 70s died of septic shock in Reno, Nevada, from an infection which was fully resistant to 26 different antibiotics. She had spent much of the previous two years in India, where she was treated for a hip fracture. The hip became infected, and after several more hospital stays, she returned to her home in Nevada.
Outdoor activities can be spoiled by getting Lyme disease from a tick bite. Know what to do to protect yourself (and your pets) from this infection and its unpleasant symptoms, as well as what to do if you have already been bitten. If you do end up with a tick “on board” it is important to remove it correctly and know when to call your doctor.
A sleep study is required to correctly diagnose sleep apnea, but laboratory sleep studies can be awkward and uncomfortable. Efforts to lower costs and make study subjects more at ease have led to the advent of in-home sleep studies.
Children are usually active and, as they explore the world, don’t have the common sense and good judgment of most adults. So, it is very common for kids to experience minor injuries throughout childhood. Parents need to know when and how to handle injuries at home and when medical advice or attention is needed.
Our nephew Christopher died of a heroin overdose in October 2013. It had started with pain pills and experimentation, and was fueled by deep grief. He was charismatic, lovable, a favorite uncle, and a hero to all the children in his life. His death too young was a huge loss to our family. I have always felt that I didn’t do enough to help prevent it, and perhaps, in a way, even contributed.
Men who have high levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in their blood face troubling uncertainties. While it’s true that prostate cancer can elevate PSA, so can other conditions, including the benign prostate enlargement that afflicts many men as they get older. PSA levels also vary normally from one man to the next, and some men have unusually high levels even when they’re perfectly healthy. To rule out cancer, doctors might recommend a biopsy. Yet prostate biopsies pose risks of infection, and they can also miss cancer in men who truly have the disease. Most prostate biopsies are guided by transrectal ultrasound, an imaging technology that allows doctors to see the gland while taking tissue samples (called cores) with specialized needles. Tumors may not show up on ultrasound, however, so the biopsy needles might never hit a cancerous target.
What do you think of when you hear the term “weekend warrior”? Maybe it’s a person who exercises intensely on the weekend but is otherwise sedentary. I tend to think of an overweight, middle-aged guy resolving for the 100th time to get in shape. But because he only has time to work out over the weekend, that’s when he does it — or overdoes it.
An insect known as the kissing bug has the ability to pass along Chagas’ disease to unsuspecting people. While it affects more people in Latin America than in this country, this parasitic disease can still be a problem in the southwestern United States. Most cases of Chagas’ disease pass without much incidence, but it can cause lasting problems. The rates of Chagas’ disease could go up with climate change, and more research is definitely needed. Charles Darwin may be one of the first “researchers” on the subject, but he’s not to be the last.
The CDC and the AAP update their vaccine recommendations every year, and here are the latest changes. These updates show just how important it is to stay on top of research and help increase the effectiveness of each vaccine. The schedule for routine immunizations and catching up kids who get behind can be found on the CDC and AAP websites if you’d like more information.
As a doctor and a parent, I feel a certain obligation to model healthy behaviors. Even if I were neither, I’d do my best to make healthy choices. And, mostly, I do. I exercise regularly, I pay attention to what I eat and I try to eat reasonable portions of healthy foods. But I regularly break a cardinal rule of healthy living: I skip breakfast.
For most new mothers, the first several days after having a baby is an emotional roller coaster ride. Thrilling moments of happiness and joy are abruptly interrupted by a plunge into moments of depressive symptoms including weeping, anxiety, anger, and sadness. These “baby blues” usually peak in the first two to five days after delivery, and in most women, go away as quickly as they came.
Most exercises are considered gender neutral. Except for kegels — those exercises that strengthen pelvic floor muscles. They have long been tagged as “just for women,” but older men may be wise to reconsider as they can help with some common unpleasantries that can come with age. “Men can also have issues with these muscles, which can cause urinary leakage, bowel issues, and even erection problems,” says physical therapist Celia Brunette with Harvard-affiliated Spaulding Rehabilitation Center.
Just before Christmas, our hospital sent out an email alerting staff to an “increase in gastrointestinal illness consistent with Norovirus in the staff and in the community,” followed by reminders of how to avoid getting (or spreading) it.
For some people, a “self-help” program can be a useful addition to professional services, or even be enough by itself. Despite the good intentions of the creators of such programs, the degree and quality of research backing up their claims vary. What’s more, people also vary in how well they use such programs.
If you’re like most nutrition-minded shoppers, the word “healthy” on the front of a package can be a big draw. “When you’re stuck in a situation where processed foods are the only thing available to you, it can be helpful to know which foods are healthier than others,” says Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
If you want to know how your baby is doing, checking your smartphone app may not be your best bet.
Early in December, Ms. Silva (not her real name) came to the hospital for a bladder infection that just kept getting worse. She’d been having symptoms — pain when she urinated, feeling constantly like she had to go to the bathroom — for about a week. She did all the right things. She called her doctor, picked up her prescriptions at the pharmacy, saw her doctor for a follow up appointment soon after, and swore that she was taking her antibiotic. But the pain got worse and she started having fevers. She needed to be admitted to the hospital.
