Traditional wisdom about chronic diseases holds that they usually last for three months or longer and may worsen over time. They are supposed to occur more in older adults and can usually be controlled but not cured. Conditions, which we thought worsen with age, paradoxically provide some protection. As with preventable disease, identifying risks early in […]
Category: Disease
Seasonal change often generates a flurry of diagnosing. It should be okay to be sad about the shortening days, rather than suffering from ‘seasonal affective disorder’. In women, a runny nose and a sore throat transforms into ‘flu’ and in men it becomes ‘manflu’. Once a diagnosis is made it is indelible. Escalation of symptoms […]
Most of the biologic waste generated in our homes has the potential to be toxic. The cooked food scraps, fruit and vegetable peels may be organic but that doesn’t mean they are free from harbouring dangerous bacteria. Clostridium perfringes, enterococci and fecal coliforms, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are all strains of bacteria which have […]
As medicine becomes more complex and the dictionaries of disease become libraries, it’s time for us to change our clinical language. We have a duty to explain the complexities of our treatments to payers, patients and communities in the simplest, most understandable and up-to-date way possible. Some diseases have the audacity to remit and then […]
Well, not exactly but disease should be dead and treatment should be reigning. In the 21st century, as we delve into the minutiae the body, the smaller we can see, the more we describe and define. But by using old methods of disease description we continue to differentiate rather than unify concepts and this results […]
Bloating is becoming a major contemporary health issue largely because of the social stigma attached to a gaseous expulsion that Western culture refuses to accept is a normal part of our digestive process. A study of university students found the majority were embarrassed by their flatulence. We spend a lot of time looking at what […]
The Thinker 