high blood pressure, stages and goals of care

Hello all,

Earlier this week as I was talking to my parents, we got to discussing about high blood pressure. This gave me an oppportunity to blog about the stages of high blood pressure and the interventions needed to do for a particular stage.

Also a popular question that I get from my patients is how many points should I expect to see improve on my blood pressure if I exercise daily or eat well?

These questions are addressed in the article stages of high BP and reduction goals

preventing falls in the elderly

This week we discussed about the falls in the elderly. Falls remain a big cause of hospitalization in men and women over 65 years of age. There is a lot of medical expense and hardship to the person themselves and the family who is taking care of the elderly. This week we discuss 2 things on the wellbeing blog. A recent study that shows supplementing vitamin D can prevent falls in elderly and the second one is tips that once can do to prevent falls, which you can read here ---> fall prevention

Vitamin D prevents falls!

This week in the clinic we talked about falls and the elderly. One thing that came up during the discussion was a surprising topic that vitamin D can actually reduce the incidence of falls in the elderly. how does it do it? How much do we need to take to prevent falls? What is the recommended intake these days?

Check out the answers to the above questions here effectiveness of vitamin D in preventing falls in the elderly.

White rice. Brown rice. Diabetes is on the rise!

Today I happened to come across a very interesting article in the archives of internal medicine, a publication of American medical association. This humongous study was a prospective trial which looked a the effect of consumption of white rice versus brown rice in the development of type 2 diabetes.

Read about this useful result in blog article here --> incidence of diabetes between white rice and brown rice consumption.

"To smoke or not to smoke?" is NOT the question.

"To be, or not to be" is the opening line of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet of the third act, scene one. As Hamlet ponders over dichotomy of his options, there is a no clear concensus regarding timing of cessation of smoking prior to surgery. This latest article discusses the a new meta-analysis that was published in Journal of American Medical association regarding stopping smoking shortly before surgery and post-op complications. check it out.

Things to do if you have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes

Has your doctor told you that you are a pre-diabetic or that your sugars are borderline diabetic? If so, then what are you supposed to do with that information? Do you eat different? what can you do about being a pre-diabetic? Here is a list of things to do if you are pre-diabetic. click here --> plan for pre-diabetics.

Clinical trial of Pre-Diabetes treatment, ACT NOW

This is a trial that was published in New England Journal of Medicine that treated patients who were diagnosed with pre-diabetes with a drug used in diabetes called ACTOS. Did they succeed in reducing progression to diabetes? were there side effects? check it out here --> ACT NOW actos trial

Things to do if you have been diagnosed with COPD

Your doctor just told you that you have COPD! This is a very distressing piece of news but is not the end of everything. Here are some useful do's and dont's you can follow and live with COPD. click here -->living with COPD 

Clinical Trial: COPD exacerbation drug comparison

This is a very important trial that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It compares the two popular inhalers Spiriva™(Boehringer pharma) against Serevent™(GSK pharma). Both have been used as controller medications as they are taken to prevent acute attacks of COPD.

This trial compares one versus the other with some surprising results! check out the results here --> Spiriva versus Serevent