I was recently invited to a series of talks on how to prevent and treat cardiovascular diseases like high blood pressure, heart failure and other types of heart diseases by drug and nondrug treatments.
Many late-middle age adults and seniors are being prescribed the class of drugs called statins. These are supposed to be cholesterol-lowering drugs.
A few days after the new year, a middle-aged patient came back to our clinic for follow-up, around six months after her last. Based on her chart, her weight increased from 55 to 66 kg. Her body mass index (BMI), a measure to determine if one is overweight or not, increased from 24.8 to 28.9, a jump from just being marginally overweight to significantly overweight, bordering on obesity.
In last week’s column, we wrote about “comfort food products” which some people eat when they are under stress or feel depressed. A patient told me that, after reading the column, her “comfort food” is chocolate, and she eats small chocolate bars when she’s under stress.
One of my embarrassing moments as a young doctor at the Manila Doctor’s Hospital decades ago, was when I consulted our ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist, Dr. Felix Nolasco, for some aching pain in my left ear. After taking a quick look in my ear canal with his otoscope instrument, he asked me, “Are you using cotton-tipped applicators to clean your ears?”
More than a year ago, an elderly patient we’ve been treating for years for high blood pressure and diabetes suddenly fell unconscious in the bathroom.
Breaking one’s heart may sound like a figurative expression—a favorite phrase in many love songs.
I first saw patient Ricardo A. around 25 years ago, when he first discovered he had high blood pressure (BP). He was in his mid-30s then. He did not feel any symptoms, though his BP would reach alarming levels of more than 180/100 mm Hg. And because he had no symptoms, he felt it was not necessary to take the medicines we prescribed. “The medicines made me feel sicker because of the side effects,” he once told me.
You may not be taking “shabu,” cocaine or other substances, but you may unknowingly be a “drug user” or “drug pusher,” too.
March of each year has been declared Colon Cancer Awareness Month. I have committed to do whatever I can to increase awareness for this killer disease.
