Long-term Medial Benefits of Vitamin D
Vitamin D plays a huge role in your health. The most important area in the past has been bone health in children and adults, but many researchers think that vitamin D’s other functions may...
Your Health. Your Lifestyle. Vitamins and Minerals
7 Beauty Treatments to Avoid
If you’re considering a little nip and tuck, you should also think about whether that nipping is really worth trucking away lots of paychecks to cover the costs. Some widely used treatments are not...
Sugar by Any Other Name
A sugary treat may settle your sweet tooth, but that’s where its cordial kiss ends. After peeling away that tooth’s enamel, it slithers into your bloodstream where it raises your risk for diabetes, heart...
New Vitamin D Advice
After vitamin D became hot a few years ago, people started popping supplements. The vitamin made headlines because of research that suggested it protects against some major, heavy-hitting health problems, such as heart disease...
Asthma Alert
If you or someone in your family relies on Primatene Mist epinephrine spray to help control wheezing and other mild asthma symptoms, talk with your doctor about other options. After almost 50 years on...
Diabetes is on the Rise, But Prevention Can Help
Could you or a family member be among the more than 6.2 million people in the United States with type 2 diabetes? Type 2 diabetes is on the rise in the Bay Area. As...
Is Your Daughter Ready to See a Gynecologist?
Puberty can be a challenging stage in a girl’s life. And as a parent, you may find it hard to believe that your little girl is becoming a woman. Still, experts say now is...
Make the Most of Your Medications
Today’s medicines treat a wide range of ailments— from chronic conditions like heart disease or diabetes, to shortterm problems such as infections and rashes. However, the effectiveness and safety of any medication depends on...
Green About the Gills
Air pockets often pick on plane travelers, and seemingly smooth roads can be rough on the car’s occupants. Even an ocean wave isn’t a friendly greeting for some cruise passengers. Unfortunately, more than 50%...
From Panic To Power
If you’re expecting something earth-shattering, a magic bullet to transform the person held captive by anxiety into a self-confident world-conqueror, look elsewhere. Lucinda Bassett’s book, while promising in its painstakingly laid-out approach to overcoming...
Checking Out Where Vitamin D Comes From
Outside the body, vitamin D comes from three major sources: • The Sun • Food • Supplements Sun The sun has provided vitamin D for thousands of years. However, the sun is also known...
Seeing How Vitamin D Affects Your Health
The medical community has known of the benefits of vitamin D on bone health for decades. In more recent years, scientists have discovered that vitamin D may play a role in many other aspects...
Moving vitamin D around the body
Vitamin D, 25(OH)D3, and calcitriol are carried in the blood by a vitamin D-binding protein. This protein is necessary because these substances aren’t water soluble and can’t dissolve in blood. (Vitamin D dissolves in...
Supple-mental Advice
While your brain’s electric pulses produce enough energy to power a lightbulb, they can be tripped up by mental potholes — causing everything from misplaced keys and forgotten birthdays to more severe memory lapses,...
Threatening 3
With the barrage of dietary advice, it’s hard to know what should be on your menu and what shouldn’t. Keep it simple by looking at the top 5 ingredients on any food label. If...
Regulating the production of vitamin D
Several factors strictly control the amount of active vitamin D produced in the kidneys and in other tissues. The biggest factor is the result of self-regulation. As the amount of calcitriol increases, it blocks...
Get to Know the Vitamin D
You think you have enough vitamin D in your body? You’re in for a surprise. You think you know what vitamin D does for you? You’re in for a shock. Many people don’t have...
Right Advice, Wrong Time
The Joint National Conference on Blood Pressure, a group backed by the National Institutes of Health, has just announced that 45 million Americans are at much greater health risk than they thought. With systolic...
Understanding Cholesterol – Doctor Interview
We’ve all seen headlines that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has revised its guidelines. How do the new guidelines differ from the old? Dr. Howard: We are now emphasizing looking at...
Understanding Cholesterol
Do you know what your cholesterol level is? Experts say you should, since high cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, the nation’s number one killer. According to the current national guidelines, however,...
Elderly Treatment Questioned
When someone experiences a heart attack, he or she are often given medicine called thrombolytic therapy to dissolve blood clots. New guidelines have encouraged the use of this therapy more and more. However, a...
Improving Pain Management
There’s a problem coming to the forefront of the healthcare community. Some 50 million Americans suffer with pain, yet only about 60 percent say they get adequate relief. While that may be due, in...
Magnesium: Nature’s Great Relaxer and Bone’s Best Friend
It might be hard to believe, but a substance that could help prevent America’s number one killer, heart disease, is right on the shelf of your local health food store. This natural mineral is...
Taking the Pain Out of Cancer Treatment
Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men. In 1999, it was responsible for at least 40,000 deaths. A drug normally used to treat heroin addicts is included in an approach...
Overcoming Stress
There are two kinds of stress. Short-term stress is what you feel when you, say, miss a train, and it can have an energizing effect on your body. Long-term (chronic) stress can damage your...
Higher Risk of CVD When Siblings Have it
Middle-aged adults with a sibling suffering from cardiovascular disease (CVD) have a 45-percent increased risk for the disease, according to a study. Researchers say cardiovascular disease in a first-degree relative confers increased risk for...
Less Exercise for Arthritis Patients
Middle-aged arthritis patients may need to give up their favorite physical activities to avoid surgery, according to orthopaedic surgeons. At the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in Dallas, Arlen...
Got Your Back
About 80% of Americans suffer from a hostile spine at some point in their lives — from muscle spasms, pinched nerves, and aching kinks to chronic, debilitating disk degeneration. What’s more, your posterior side...
Diet for Premenstrual Syndrome PMS
If you want to eliminate PMS, the most important thing you can do is to follow the hormone-balancing diet, and, in particular, take steps to balance your blood sugar. This means cutting out refined...
Cooking Away Prostate Cancer
It’s estimated that 180,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. So far, doctors say one way to prevent the disease is to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Today, we’ll introduce...