Our concierge family practice doctors in Jupiter understand that conversations about bowel habits can be uncomfortable, even embarrassing. But when it comes to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), you need to know that we can help alleviate your symptoms.
Drowning is one of the leading causes of death in children. Our concierge primary care doctors in Jupiter, want to emphasize the importance of teaching children not only the rules associated with being in and around
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently released updated guidelines recommending swimming lessons for toddlers, revising long-standing guidance against swimming lessons for children under age four.
The earlier guidelines were based on the belief that children under four could not master the skills required to hold their breath and coordinate their limbs properly to develop adequate swimming skills. There was also a lack of evidence that swimming lessons would help prevent drownings in the under-four age group, as well as the suspicion that swimming lessons for such young children might confer a false sense of security in their parents.
But one study reported that lessons between the ages of one and four produced an 88 percent reduction in drownings. These findings, coupled with the fact that children between the ages of one and four are at the highest risk for drowning, eventually changed the thinking and led to the revisions. Of course, they’re not all going to be mini-Michael Phelps, but the AAP stresses that they can be taught basic water skills and water safety skills.
“Floating, grasping the wall, climbing in and out of the water, turning back to the wall . . . a lot of times children end up falling into the water and they look to the furthest point, and if they just turned around they would be better off,” Katie Lee of the Goldfish Swim School in Long Island, New York, told CBS News.
It’s a matter of allowing very young to feel comfortable in the water, and not panic if they find themselves in it unexpectedly. You can start by holding your baby in your arms, moving them slowly back and forth, allowing them to feel the silky sensation of water on their skin. You can sing to them, and even bob them up and down, reinforcing the feeling that being in water is fun.
Slightly older children can be taught to blow bubbles in the water, thus learning how to avoid swallowing water. You can also teach them how to float on their backs and kick their legs as you hold them up. Formal swimming lessons with a certified swimming instructor can start as early as age one, depending on the child’s physical abilities and emotional development.
In addition to teaching your child basic water skills, it is critical to be vigilant at all times to prevent a tragedy. Young children can drown in as little as two inches of water, and within 90 seconds without breathing, oxygen in the brain begins to drop. Other experts cautioned that the perception of children flailing around in the water when they fall in is largely myth. Very young children tend to fall in and immediately sink.
“Don’t even run into the house for a second to go to the bathroom or grab the phone,” Dr. Mark Waltzman, a pediatric emergency medicine expert, told CBS News.
Other suggestions from AAP to prevent drowning include the following:
Tips for homes with pools include these useful guidelines:
If you have questions about age-appropriate swimming lessons and activities for your child, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Our concierge family practice doctors in Jupiter understand the temptation to pop a pill—whether a prescription medication or a supplement—to stay healthy, instead of following more difficult suggestions regarding exercise and diet.
And to be sure, the long-standing belief that taking a daily low-dose aspirin can prevent heart attacks has some scientific basis for those who’ve already suffered a heart attack. In addition, some earlier research did seem to support daily aspirin use for reducing the risk of numerous cancers as well as Alzheimer’s disease.
But the good thing about science in general and medical research in particular is that researchers are constantly reviewing and refining established knowledge. In the case of the aspirin-a-day approach, for example, several new studies in the last year have challenged the practice of taking a low-dose (81 mg.) aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD). And this month the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) released new guidelines recommending against the use of daily low-dose aspirin, based on these studies.
One study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), for example, found that people without heart trouble who took a daily dose of aspirin had a lower risk of heart attack, stroke, and death. These benefits, however, were canceled out by the increased risk of bleeding in the intestinal tract or the brain, which can often be deadly.
Researchers in that study performed a meta-analysis of 13 studies that included 164,225 participants, none of whom had CVD when the studies began.
“For every 256 patients treated with aspirin for five years, one heart attack, stroke or death from cardiovascular disease would be prevented,” Dr. Sean Zheng, lead author of the study and and academic clinical fellow in cardiology at King’s College Hospital in London, told CNN. “On the other hand, for every 210 patients treated with an aspirin over the same period, one would have a serious bleeding event.”
“This calls into question the net benefit of taking aspirin, and whether people who have not previously had cardiovascular disease should take aspirin,” Zheng said.
Another study published last fall in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) reported similar results, even finding that older patients experienced no health benefits at all from daily aspirin use. These and other recent studies are what led to this month’s revised recommendations from the AHA/ACC.
“We knew there would be an increased risk of bleeding with aspirin, because there has always been,” recommendations co-author Dr. Anne Murray told NBC News. “But not only did it not decrease risk of disability or death, it did not decrease the risk of heart attack and stroke, and there was an increase in the rate of death.” Murray is also a geriatrician and epidemiologist at the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
In their statement, the AHA/ACC advised against taking a preventive aspirin a day, saying it may actually cause more harm than good.
“We’re talking about healthy people who don’t have known heart disease or stroke, who might have been considering or [are] already taking an aspirin to prevent that heart attack or stroke in the first place,” said Dr. Erin Michos, another of the authors of the new AHA/ACC guidelines.
The AHA stressed that the new recommendations do not apply to people who have already had a heart attack or stroke, or who have undergone such procedures as receiving a coronary artery stent or bypass surgery. But for the elderly (people over 70) and those with a high risk of internal bleeding, the AHA cautioned that “aspirin may do more harm than good, but there are no absolutes, so these decisions need to be tailored to individuals.”
Another co-author of the revised recommendations suggested that doctors might advise their patients who have a strong family history of heart disease to take a daily aspirin. This could also apply to those whose tests reveal considerable plaque build-up in their arteries. But for those with a low or moderate risk, lifestyle changes could have a more salient effect.
“Eat a heart-healthy diet, get regular physical activity, control blood pressure and control cholesterol,” Michos said. “If [people] need a statin, take it. Those are much more important when compared to recommending aspirin.”
As with so many other over-the-counter remedies, we always recommend you check with us before taking them. Each person is different and their needs and sensitivities are also different. We can help determine the best course for you.
When loved ones are experiencing long-term health issues, we naturally feel compelled to devote every moment we can to see them through this difficult period. The stress of dealing with their care, however, either in person or long distance, can lead to problems the caregiver doesn’t even recognize.
If you knew how much even the smallest amount of exercise could improve your health, you’d no doubt be willing to pay a great deal to obtain it. But exercise is free. Even better, you don’t have to exercise to exhaustion to reap the many study-proven benefits of regular movement.
If you haven’t come across CBD oil at a health food store, in your social media feed, or even at the grocery store yet, you soon will, judging by the number of questions our concierge family doctors in Jupiter have been getting from our patients.
Because cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in America, a great deal of emphasis is placed on not only maintaining cardiovascular
You’re sitting there watching your son’s basketball game, chatting with friends in the stands, when suddenly you have an overwhelming urge to flee. You don’t know where or why, but you just know you have to leave. Now!
As humans, we look to a new year for a fresh start, especially regarding our health. Toward that end, we make resolutions, which we have every intention of keeping but which are often forgotten by February.
Our concierge doctors in Jupiter, Florida at MD2.0, would like to offer you some ideas on small ways to improve your overall health that we hope you’ll find easier to stick with.
If you have a painful throbbing in your head, you may be very uncomfortable but think it couldn’t be a migraine because it’s not debilitating. Or you don’t have the shimmering lights in your vision or nausea and vomiting that you’ve heard usually accompanies a migraine.
Regardless, you could still be suffering from a migraine and not know it. Or you could have an ordinary headache with several of the symptoms of a migraine. The symptoms of headaches and migraines can vary so much from person to person that it can sometimes be difficult even for doctors to tell the difference.
So why does it matter, then? Can’t you just pop a couple aspirin, slap on an ice pack and say you’ve got a painful headache? No, because the treatments are different for each, and sometimes a headache is more than that. That’s why your concierge doctors at MD 2.0 in Jupiter, Florida, want to explore the different types of headache, including migraine, and help you decide when to get seek medical attention.
Migraine
A migraine is not technically a headache, but a neurological disorder that includes a constellation of symptoms, with a painful, long-lasting headache at the center. Its main symptom is a severe throbbing pain or pulsing sensation in the head, which feels like a very bad headache, usually on one side of the head, but in a third of migraine attacks, both sides are affected. It is often—but not always—preceded by what is known as an “aura,” strange tricks of vision that can encompass anything from a blind spot in the vision to flashing or shimmering lights to wavy or zigzagging lines. Migraines are also usually, but not always, associated with such symptoms as nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to lights and noises, and can also include a pins-and-needles sensation in the arms and legs or a weakness or numbness on one side of the face or body.
One or two days before the onset of a migraine, patients often experience subtle body signals (called “prodrome”) that can alert them to an upcoming migraine. These changes can include neck stiffness, constipation, increased thirst and urination, food cravings, frequent yawning, and mood swings from depression to euphoria. To complicate the issue even further, it’s possible to have many of the migraine symptoms, especially the aura, without the headache. The primary signature of a migraine, however, is the extreme incapacitation associated with the headache pain involved.
Other headache types
Just because a headache isn’t officially classified as a migraine doesn’t mean it can’t be painful or even somewhat debilitating. And there are several types:
• Tension headache, the most common, is usually felt around the head and scalp and the back of the head or neck. Often called “stress” headaches, they are further divided into episodic and chronic, depending on how often they occur, and can be uncomfortable but don’t normally restrict regular activities.
• Cluster headaches, most often experienced by men, are called that because they tend to occur in clusters or groups, sometimes several in a day over a period of weeks or months, then they disappear, often for years. Because they can be quite painful and occur on one side of the head, they are sometimes difficult to distinguish from migraines.
• Sinus headaches are frequently misdiagnosed, but in general, they must be accompanied by nasal congestion, watery eyes, and fever, due to the infection in the sinuses that causes them.
There are a number of other types of headaches, categorized by their causes, such as menstrual headaches, ice cream headaches, and caffeine headaches, among others. The most serious (i.e. dangerous) is the so-called “thunderclap” headache which occurs suddenly like a clap of thunder and causes extreme pain. This is a medical emergency that must be investigated immediately.
Treatment
For common headaches, many people find relief with over-the-counter (OTC) pain-relief-med.com, ice packs, and rest. Others swear by less conventional treatments such as caffeine, ginger, hot showers, acupuncture, or even massaging the temples with lavender or peppermint oil. It’s helpful to determine the cause of frequent headaches, so keeping a diary of symptoms can help pinpoint triggers.
Because symptoms and treatments of the different headache types overlap, if these typical home remedies don’t work, it’s best that you come and see us for an evaluation. There are numerous new prescription drugs available to treat migraines, as well as other more stubborn headaches.
Sometimes a headache isn’t “just a headache,” so if your headaches are debilitating, let us know. We can help.
