Search Results

When a patient needs skilled medical care but doesn’t need round-the-clock supervision in a hospital, home healthcare can provide the solution. A serious illness or injury may mean you can’t get to outpatient services but still need intermittent nursing, skilled nursing or therapy care. Skilled nursing means the services require a physician’s order and are provided by a licensed professional.

Are you standing up straight? Are you sitting correctly? We’ve all heard about the importance of good posture, but most of us eventually forget or dismiss the advice. Poor posture can affect our wellbeing in a variety of ways — from pronated feet and collapsed knees to depressed or elevated shoulders and muscle imbalances. A clinical evaluation of your posture can detect problems and help determine ways to make corrections.

Mention “rectal exam” and many people cringe and even avoid making that doctor appointment. But what exactly does a digital rectal exam entail, and who needs one? Doctors may perform a rectal exam to look for tumors or cancers inside the rectum, assess the functioning of your anal sphincter, evaluate for hemorrhoids or determine other causes of pain or bleeding. Both women and men may find themselves in need of this exam. However, due to the increasing risk of prostate cancer that comes with age, men are the more likely candidates for a rectal exam. 

Every 40 seconds. That’s how often someone in the United States has a stroke. Strokes affect nearly 800,000 people each year, and for many of them, it is their first event. Strokes are the leading cause of long-term disability in this country, so it’s important to understand what they are, what causes them and most importantly, how to prevent them.

Food allergies are common, with 4% to 6% of children and 4% of adults having one. A food allergy is a response from your immune system to eating a particular food or additive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), most food allergies are caused by milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, soy and wheat. Allergic reactions to these foods can vary from a tingling around the mouth to hives to difficulty breathing and even death.

You know the drill. To reduce your risk of cancer, don’t smoke. Don’t drink alcohol excessively. Don’t char your meat on the grill. Don’t eat a steady diet of high fat foods. While these recommendations are all valid, they also focus on what NOT to do.

Maintaining our bone density is increasingly important. When we experience bone density loss, our bones tend to become more brittle and are more likely to fracture as part of an injury or fall.

A bump to the funny bone may feel weird, but a more severe elbow injury is no joke. The elbow is made up of bones, cartilage, ligaments, fluid, muscles and tendons. When any part of these areas is injured or diseased, even the most casual movements can hurt.

You may be in the shower, getting dressed or getting intimate with your partner when you first discover a cluster of bumps . . . down there. Genital warts, the result of contracting one of over 70 strains of human papillomavirus (HPV), is a sexually transmitted disease (STD) that almost a half million people a year contend with and worry about to the point of sometimes avoiding medical care out of misplaced embarrassment.

Both men and women produce testosterone, but for males the hormone plays a star role in puberty when it enables the development of hair growth, libido, muscle mass, bone strength and, most importantly, sperm production. A natural decline in male testosterone occurs after age 30 and begins to drop 1 to 2 percent a year around age 40.