1998 General Medicine



 
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12/28/98 Clues, but still no cure for autism
12/21/98  Medical needs, politics collide
12/14/98 For some, it's sneezing all the way 
12/07/98 Freezing, blasting, peeling away scars
11/30/98 At last, help for the fungus among us
11/23/98 That second concussion could be a deadly one
11/19/98 Finding a combination to fight hepatitis C
11/16/98 Meditating helps, but how is a mystery
11/09/98 'Deep pockets' that nobody wants
11/02/98  The midwives' time has come -- again
10/26/98 Herbal Hazards; Taken alone or with prescription drugs, some of those innocent-sounding 'natural' remedies can be dangerous
10/19/98 Thyroid ills catch many by surprise
10/12/98 Talk about what really ails you
10/05/98 When a staple of diet can be lethal
09/28/98 Four new drugs promise major relief for arthritis
09/21/98 The other ways the sexes differ
09/07/98 The debt we owe the guinea pigs
09/04/98 Fish oil seen cutting risk of Mental Illness
08/31/98 Good for you, no matter how you slice them
08/10/98 Ginkgo stock continues to rise
07/27/98 A childhood with no cones or hotdogs?
07/20/98 Your health history - up for grabs?
07/13/98 Stretching your fitness routine
07/11/98 Studies question tamoxifen data
07/06/98 Damaged brains the outcomes are better and the outlook is better still
06/29/98 'Routinely' covered by insurance? Not always
06/22/98 Vaccines won't win war on ticks
06/15/98 Kava root is hot herb for anxiety
06/08/98 New depression therapy intriguing
06/01/98 Diapers not only option
05/25/98 Endoscopy emerges as safer way to gather grafts for bypasses
05/18/98 If you feel the urge to fast, keep it short
05/11/98 The water fad has people soaking it up
05/04/98 Skin cancer hits many, but it can be very curable
04/27/98 When the cure is a killer, avoid adverse reactions to valuable drugs
04/20/98 Treating impotence getting easier
04/13/98 Frustrating skin disease begins to yield it's secrets
04/06/98 Women do have more pain, but they cope
03/30/98  Sneezing early? It's el Nino's fault
03/23/98  Treatment options are growing for women with bleeding disorders
03/09/98 Tinnitus: it's not just in your ears
03/02/98 The caffeine brouhaha is percolating again
02/23/98 Is there a "hidden epidemic'' of male depression? sad or bad
02/16/98  Midlife women finding estrogen alternatives
02/09/98 Effects of a child's illness on siblings aren't all bad
02/02/98 Sometimes a patient just says no
01/26/98 New tissue uses reopen circumcision debate
01/19/98 Dental lasers - are they the safest way to fill your cavity?
01/05/98 Making a place for nursing mothers

12/28/98 - Clues, but still no cure for autism

  • Parker Beck, now 5, seemed normal when he was born, say his parents, Victoria and Gary Beck of New Hampshire, who run an educational-products business out of their home. He grew, learned a few words, did all the usual ``toddler things.'' Then, at 15 months, he suddenly stopped speaking. He developed chronic diarrhea. Most bizarrely, he began spinning in circles.

12/21/98 - Medical needs, politics collide

  • Sixteen years ago, Doris Laird, a humanities professor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee, developed a benign brain tumor the size of an orange. She had surgery -- an operation that took 22 1/2 hours. It worked, or so she thought. But four years later, the tumor, a meningioma, was back. She had more surgery; 12 hours this time. Six years ago, it came back again, growing so much it threatened her vision -- and her life. She had another 12-hour operation.

12/14/98 - For some, it's sneezing all the way 

  • You're running around getting ready for Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Ramadan -- or just a generic holiday party. You shop. You cook. You get the candles from the bottom drawer, the decorations from the basement. If Christmas is your tradition, you probably get a tree, too, all fragrant and piney.

12/07/98 - Freezing, blasting, peeling away scars

  • Ken Glasser, a 39-year-old Billerica man who works as a buyer of components for aircraft instruments, has been through hell trying to get rid of the stubborn scars on his chest. He tried laser treatments, which reduced the thick, ropy scars, called keloids, for a while. But when the treatments ended, the scars -- which often occur after injury, vaccinations, or even an infected hair follicle -- got itchy again and started growing again.

12/05/98 - Unlikely candidates for repetitive strain

  • Children who play on new kiddie computers are unlikely to suffer repetitive strain injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome because, unlike adults, they don't usually sit still at a computer hour after hour, day in and day out. At least, that's the prediction of Robert Follansbee, director of the computer learning program in the communication enhancement center at Children's Hospital in Boston.

11/30/98 - At last, help for the fungus among us

  • So you think toenail fungus is a joke. Not even a blip on the radar screen. Of interest only to your pedicurist, if that. Well, try telling that to Gertrude Patenaude, a 57-year-old teacher-librarian from Portsmouth, R.I. who had the fungus on every toe. ``It was brutal,'' she says. ``I couldn't put my feet in shoes because of the pain.''

11/23/98 - That second concussion could be a deadly one

  • It was five years ago, a classic football afternoon. With his mom and stepfather cheering from the stands, Brandon Schultz, a lineman for Anacortes High School in Washington state, took what his mother, Lane Phelan, recalls as a "hard tackle." Brandon looked "shook up" and sat out the rest of the game. Later, he told his parents he'd blacked out. For the next few days, he had bad headaches, took Tylenol, and skipped practice.

11/19/98 - Finding a combination to fight hepatitis C

  • Until now, there has been no truly effective treatment for hepatitis C, the blood-borne virus that is spread in the same ways as AIDS, and that is believed to infect about 4 million Americans. A drug called interferon helps in 40 percent of cases, but the benefits are short-lived. Only 10 to 15 percent of patients remain in remission, six months after treatment is stopped.

11/16/98 - Meditating helps, but how is a mystery

  • The idea of standing stark naked in a little booth soaking up UV light three times a week doesn't seem all that bad as medical treatments go, especially since it can help ameliorate psoriasis, an itchy, scaly, disfiguring skin disease. But many people do find the experience stressful, which is why meditation guru Jon Kabat-Zinn wanted to see if calming the mind during treatments might speed healing of the body.

11/09/98 - 'Deep pockets' that nobody wants

  • It was the ``Floss or Die'' poster that got to 54-year-old Jack Kelsch of Wareham. Kelsch works as a grants administrator at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, where the perils of periodontal disease are standard water cooler fare and ``deep pockets'' means gum disease, not money.

11/02/98 - The midwives' time has come -- again

  • Carol Rose, a Harvard-trained lawyer from Melrose, was pregnant with her first child two years ago when her health plan pulled a switch. She was in the exam room, waiting for her female doctor when a male doctor walked in. She's not anti-men, or anti-doctor, but this guy was a bad match. ``I had a bunch of questions,'' she says. ``He said, `I have limited time.' I felt so dehumanized and medicalized that I left.''

10/26/98 - Herbal Hazards; Taken alone or with prescription drugs, some of those innocent-sounding 'natural' remedies can be dangerous

  • If your doctor suggested that you take two different sleeping pills that have never been tested in combination, would you do it? If she recommended an energy-booster, but you couldn't tell from the label what was in the bottle, would you take that? What if she told you to ingest a medication normally used on the skin - would you want to know it might cause liver failure?

10/19/98 - Thyroid ills catch many by surprise

  • To listen to Lisette Mancini, a 40-year old Walpole audiologist and mother of three, you might be tempted to conclude that thyroid troubles are a blessing. Years ago, as a student at Boston College, her metabolism was cranked so high she ``flew through school because I had so much time to study. I never slept. I was never tired,'' she recalls. She got all A's, carried a double major, and did an honors thesis.

10/12/98 - Talk about what really ails you

  • You sit there in that silly little gown, trying to act normal. The doctor comes in. You exchange hellos, then launch into why you're there. Within 18 seconds, according to a study of more than 1,000 doctor-patient encounters, the doctor interrupts. Suddenly, you blank out on that chest pain two weeks ago and start babbling about your toenail fungus and how many colds you get. You anxiously scan the doctor's face as he probes your belly.

10/05/98 - When a staple of diet can be lethal

  • Max Collins, now 8 and a second grader in Burlington, was a baby when a tiny taste of peanut butter nearly killed him. No sooner had his mom, Lisa, now 32, spread a smidgeon on Max's lips than he began vomiting and screaming. Huge hives sprouted on his skin. ``It was almost simultaneous,'' Lisa says. ``I never knew foods could cause something life-threatening.''

09/28/98 - Four new drugs promise major relief for arthritis

  • For years, millions of Americans with arthritis have been caught in a troublesome trap. If they don't take medication, they often suffer severe pain and life-wrecking disability. Yet if they do, they risk worrisome side effects. Some drugs, like methotrexate and high dose prednisone, can suppress the immune system. Others -- notably painkillers like aspirin, Anacin, Advil, Motrin IB and others -- can cause stomach ulcers and bleeding.

09/21/98 - The other ways the sexes differ

  • Women, at least in America, outlive men by six years. So how, then, do you account for this?

09/07/98 - The debt we owe the guinea pigs

  • Fifty years ago this month, a band of researchers fanned out through the neighborhoods of Framingham, urging residents to sign up for a study designed to track ordinary people to try to detect early signs of heart disease - then, as now, the No. 1 killer of Americans. One of the 5,209 who agreed was Ida Leach, now 83.

09/04/98 - Fish oil seen seen cutting risk in mental  illness

  • Fish oils that are already believed to reduce the risk of heart disease may help combat a number of serious psychiatric illnesses as well, researchers said yesterday. At an international conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, scientists said that though the data are preliminary, a growing body of evidence suggests that higher consumption of essential fatty acids in the oils, notably one called omega-3, appears linked to a lower risk of depression and better treatment of manic-depression and schizophrenia

08/31/98 - Good for you, no matter how you slice them

  • Ripening in the late-summer sun, filling garden baskets and salad bowls, reddening gazpacho in kitchen blenders, simmering in saucepans for spaghetti sauce, tomatoes might just be the best, maybe the only, reason for welcoming the end of summer. And beyond the tempting taste -- a blessed relief from the cardboard baseballs we get the rest of the year -- tomatoes are actually good for you.

08/10/98 - Ginkgo stock continues to rise

  • Like many others at midlife or beyond, Wendy Fink, a health educator in her 50s, was appalled at the way her memory kept conking out. "I was having trouble getting words," says Fink, who lives in Royalston. "I was feeling very stressed about this." So she tried ginkgo, an herbal memory-booster that's getting new respect in mainstream medicine, albeit for genuine dementia, not run-of-the-mill "senior moments."

07/27/98 - A childhood with no cones or hotdogs?

  • When the seventh -- and posthumous -- edition of Dr. Benjamin Spock's ``Baby and Child Care'' was published recently, the guru's endorsement of a vegetarian diet for kids over 2 caused many nutritionists and doctors to choke on their leafy greens. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, professor emeritus of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, thinks it's ``absolutely hopeless'' to try to get kids to eat enough vegetables to offset the loss of nutrients they would suffer from giving up meat and milk.

07/20/98 - Your health history - up for grabs?

  • Today, the federal government is taking the first steps toward a national system that would give each of us a single number or ``identifier'' linked to every medical record ever kept on us. It's a prospect that privacy advocates fear may destroy what little confidentiality remains in the era of computerized medical records.

07/13/98 - Stretching your fitness routine

  • Twenty years ago, the gurus at the American College of Sports Medicine told us to get off our duffs and get those lungs and hearts pumping. Eight years ago, they told us to pump iron, too. Now, they've added a third cornerstone to their fitness guidelines -- get flexible.

07/11/98 - Studies question tamoxifen data

  • Two European studies published yesterday cast doubt on the idea that the drug tamoxifen prevents breast cancer, as American researchers found in April. But a number of cancer specialists said yesterday that there is still reason to believe the American findings are solid and that women at high risk of breast cancer who take tamoxifen to lower their risk should not stop doing so on the basis of the new studies, nor should women at lower risk start. Tamoxifen can raise the risk of uterine cancer and cause potentially dangerous blood clots.

07/06/98 - Damaged brains the outcomes are better and the outlook is better still

  • Susan Rioff, a 51-year-old mother in Lexington, was enjoying her last ride at a Wyoming dude ranch four years ago when her horse bolted, tossing her onto her (helmetless) head. For 24 hours, she hovered near death. For another 24, she slipped in and out of consciousness. Slowly, amazingly, she recovered, and today she is once again performing with her choral group and caring for her kids.  

06/29/98 - `Routinely' covered by insurance? Not always

  • Hanna Gremp, a 6-year-old from Modesto, Calif., is a gorgeous child. Big brown eyes. Long blond hair. Button nose. But she was born with incomplete outer ears. She could hear with a hearing aid, but her ears looked deformed. She was an obvious candidate, it would seem, for reconstructive surgery.

06/22/98 - Vaccines won't win war on ticks

  • New Englanders and others who live in areas plagued by Lyme disease have been eagerly anticipating the advent of a vaccine, hoping perhaps to be able enjoy the woods and marshes again without eternal vigilance. Two vaccines are indeed on their way, but anyone who thinks they'll put an end to Lyme disease anxiety is doomed to disappointment.

06/15/98 - Kava root is hot herb for anxiety

  • Traditionally, whenever the people of the South Pacific islands wanted to welcome a visitor or provide a social lubricant for communal rituals, they drank a potent potion made from the roots of an intoxicating pepper plant, kava kava. The jaw-breaking job of turning the tough root of the piper methysticum into homemade brew fell to young virgins -- male or female, depending on the island -- who spent hours chewing the root, then spitting out the masticated mush into a communal pot.

06/08/98 - New depression therapy intriguing

  • For years, severely depressed people have had one last resort if antidepressant drugs and talking therapy failed: ECT or electro convulsive therapy -- better known as ``shock'' therapy. In ECT, electrodes placed on the scalp send electrical pulses to the brain, which, to be effective, must be strong enough to trigger a seizure. To prevent pain and injury from convulsions during the therapy, the patient is given general anesthesia.

06/01/98 - Diapers not only option

  • Over the years, Kathy Duffy, a 38-year-old school teacher in Reading, tried many treatments for her severe incontinence -- pills, injections, exercises, even ``retraining'' her bladder. Everything helped some. Even so, she was always ducking out on her second graders to rush to the bathroom. She didn't sleep much, either. The urge to urinate woke her every hour or so.

05/25/98 - Mining veins - Endoscopy emerging as safer, less painful way to gather grafts for coronary bypasses

  • WORCESTER -- It's early afternoon, a perfect spring day. Outside the UMass Medical Center, employees savor the last of their lunch break, faces tipped toward the sun, legs splayed on the grass. Inside, in operating room 3, Evelyn Kolat, 74, lies inert, dwarfed by a vast array of surgical instruments, anesthesia paraphernalia, and a heart-lung machine.

05/18/98 - If you feel the urge to fast, keep it short

  • Jesus thought fasting was good for the soul. So do Jews, who fast on Yom Kippur; Muslims, who fast by day during Ramadan; and Catholics, who fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Ghandi fasted for political reasons -- to liberate India in the 1920s and 1930s. IRA member Bobby Sands did, too, fasting in prison in 1981 -- he died after 66 days -- to protest being denied prisoner-of-war status.

05/11/98 - The water fad has people soaking it up

  • We've become a nation of water drinkers, so bitten by the bug to imbibe that we lug plastic bottles around all day, not just to stave off dehydration but to avoid just about every other ill from dry skin to constipation to fatigue, muscle weakness, and colds. Are we really that desiccated? Or just deluded?

05/04/98 - Skin cancer hits many, but it can be very curable

  • Sally Loring, 70, a retired volunteer for the historical society in Manchester-by-the-Sea, is one lucky lady. Seven years ago, while on vacation in Australia and New Zealand, Loring knocked the head off a mole that she'd had for decades but that hadn't been checked by a doctor for four years. The headless mole wouldn't heal.

04/27/98 - When the cure is a killer, extra vigilance is the key to avoiding adverse reactions to valuable drugs

  • Betty Moody, a 40-year-old partially disabled veteran from Sidney, Maine, had been taking little blue pills for her arthritis for five years and expected no problems when she asked for a refill in March from the Togus veterans' hospital. She noticed the new pills -- a drug called Piroxicam -- were green.

04/20/98 - Treating impotence getting easier

  • Not long ago, when researchers were testing a new heart drug in men, they noticed something weird. The drug did little to offset chest pain, but the guys wouldn't give it back. It turned out the drug, now called Viagra, had an unanticipated side effect: it enhanced erections.

04/13/98 - Frustrating skin disease begins to yield it's secrets

  • Gloria E. Grubbs, a Vietnam Vet from Dorchester, is 50 now, has ``raised two kids up'' and made a life for herself, despite a 19-year struggle with scleroderma, the disfiguring disease that can turn the body into a mass of stiff, scar-like tissue, inside and out. It started with a tightening and thickening in her skin, then moved on to her joints and internal organs. Her heart is now so rigidly encased that she needs an operation, and fibrous tissue is threatening her lungs and kidneys, too.

04/06/98 - Women do have more pain, but they cope

  • Jean Cummings, a 38-year-old urban policy analyst from Cambridge, lives in almost constant pain. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 10 years ago, she's had two hip replacements and will have both knees replaced in June, right after her wedding.

03/30/98 - Sneezing early? It's el Nino's fault

  • Just when you thought there was nothing left to blame on El Nino comes this: We're in for an unusually early -- and perhaps long and nasty -- allergy season this year. Granted, everybody always thinks whatever allergy season they're suffering through is the worst ever, but this year, it really will be bad -- and in some places, already is -- because El Nino created perfect growing conditions for trees and molds -- a mild winter in the Northeast, rains in the South and North.

03/23/98 - Treatment options are growing for women with bleeding disorders

  • Teresa Menz, a 34-year-old teacher from Sidney, N.Y., tried almost everything for her fibroids -- benign uterine tumors that cause pain and bleeding in millions of women. With more than 100 fibroids, Menz's belly was as big as that of a woman 26 weeks pregnant and she hemorrhaged during every menstrual period. She tried hormone treatment for a year and had four major operations. Nothing worked.

03/16/98 - Dancing to siren song of pheromones

  • In the late 1960s, Martha McClintock, then a Wellesley College student, was captivated by the dormitory buzz: Women who hung out together got their menstrual periods at the same time. It wasn't the first time women had noticed this, but McClintock was intrigued. And it only made her more so when male researchers with whom she studied one summer at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, pooh-poohed the whole thing.

03/09/98 - Tinnitus: it's not just in your ears

  • Until four years ago, Dr. Stephen Nagler, 49, was a busy breast and colon cancer surgeon in Atlanta. Suddenly, he began suffering from tinnitus, which most people describe as a ringing in the ears, but for him was ``a cross between the sound of a teakettle and a jet turbine.''

03/02/98 - The caffeine brouhaha is percolating again

  • Malcolm Noriega, 35, a consulting engineer from Manchester, used to wake up on weekend mornings with wicked headaches, complete with nausea and a light-sensitivity so intense he had to wear sunglasses indoors. ``The damned things were Tylenol-and ibuprofen-resistant,'' he says. ``Maybe by afternoon I'd be able to function.''

02/23/98 - Is there a "hidden epidemic'' of male depression? sad or bad

  • Alan Schlingenbaum, a 43-year-old computer consultant in Wellesley, was a regular guy. Which is to say, he got his work done and acted ``the way a male acts on the world,'' he says. What he ``wasn't so good at'' was intimacy -- with his wife, his friends and himself.

02/16/98 - Midlife women finding Estrogen alternatives

  • For the past year, Barbara Lash, a 49-year-old ex-nurse from Franklin, has been determined to fight her hot flashes with anything but the standard prescription drugs like Premarin. On the advice of her nurse practitioner, Lash drinks a soy shake and eats tofu every day. She also nibbles cereal with flax seed, uses herbs like black cohosh and chaste tree berry, takes walks daily and lifts weights when she can.

02/09/98 - Effects of a child's illness on siblings aren't all bad

  • "There's not much that Nicholas can't do," his mom, Patti Capano, 36, says brightly. Except walk, swallow, and breathe. Born with spina bifida, a condition in which the spinal cord is not enclosed within the backbone, Nicholas, 9, a third grader in Lynn, needs a weelchair to get around, a ventilator to breathe and tubes to get food to his stomach.

02/02/98 - Sometimes a patient just says no

  • It's hard to imagine anyone better equipped to make a complex medical decision than Dr. Mary Catherine Raugust Howell. Howell, a pediatrician, was associate dean for student affairs at Harvard Medical School in the early 1970s, the first woman to hold such a post there. She was also a psychologist and a lawyer, earning a juris doctor from Harvard at age 59.

01/26/98 - New tissue uses reopen circumcision debate

  • If a government advisory panel gives the high sign, an unusual product may soon hit the medical marketplace: skin-like tissue made from human foreskins. The tissue, donated by mothers who had already decided to have their babies circumcised, could be a boon to people with unhealed wounds such as skin ulcers caused by damaged leg veins.

01/19/98 - Dental lasers - they might fix your phobia but are they the safest way to fill your cavity?

  • Until recently, Glenn Gustafson, a 56-year-old Boston man who manages a Weston country club, was your basic dental phobic. It used to take him weeks to make an appointment, says Gustafson, whose fear of needles and drills mirrors that of 7 to 10 percent of the population. And once he did commit to going, he says, he would be a wreck by the time he got there.

01/05/98 - Making a place for nursing mothers

  • When Barbara Doherty, 32, returned to her job at John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. last year three months after having a baby, she encountered a modern woman's dream. Like a growing number of companies, the Hancock provides a ``mother's room,'' where Doherty used a company-funded electric breast milk pump three times a day -- 20 minutes per session -- to express milk for her infant son. She then stored the milk in a refrigerator and took it home at night for the babysitter to give her son the next day while she was at work.