Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Five Reasons You Might Need a Colonoscopy as You Age - wellbeing


A colonoscopy is a procedure doctors use to get a view of your large bowel and the beginning of your small intestine. It isn’t comfortable and there are risks involved in this procedure, but having it done can help diagnose and treat you for a variety of serious health problems. There are several reasons your doctor may order this test for you as you age.

Crohn’s Disease

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Five Reasons You Might Need a Colonoscopy as You Age


A colonoscopy is a procedure doctors use to get a view of your large bowel and the beginning of your small intestine. It isn’t comfortable and there are risks involved in this procedure, but having it done can help diagnose and treat you for a variety of serious health problems. There are several reasons your doctor may order this test for you as you age. Read More-->>

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

How Can We Better Leverage Advances in Cancer Diagnostics and Treatment

Investment in research has led to advances in detection and treatment of cancer that are leading to earlier and more accurate diagnoses and more targeted treatments that often carry less side effects. I’m so pleased that guest blogger Joydeep Goswami from Thermo Fisher Scientific is able to offer greater insight into these advances and the importance of making sure broad populations have access to these exciting new tools.

President, Clinical Next Generation Sequencing and Oncology
Thermo Fisher Scientific

Technology Advances

Over the last several decades, scientific research has revealed that cancer is a disease primarily caused by mutations found in genes. Further studies have helped identify which key mutations develop into potentially deadly cancers. That information has helped researchers in the pharmaceutical industry to develop specially tailored therapies designed to target those mutations.



Saturday, August 26, 2017

When medicine and doctors almost kill you


People don’t want to know about this, but it’s not really unusual. Medically induced illness: iatrogenic injury (third cause of death)

I discovered that an article from 2012 was getting traffic and so I read it again for the first time since I wrote it. (This is what it’s like — the article from 2012) … it gave me pause and then I started tweeting.

I tweeted these thoughts:

I was so fucking sick. Sometimes I think about it and just the thought of those times is traumatizing. It’s still often very difficult too which keeps it fresh.

I’ve come so far but when I think about what it was like it’s just horrifying. Horrifying, still, because it remains incredibly alienating…

And horrifying because I know that so many others are being made ill like I was made ill…yes MADE ill by psychiatric drugs and treatment…

and the fact remains that most people don’t want to even know that it’s possible to get so sick. it’s too frightening to face.

and so those of us who become this ill by any route are largely abandoned by all society because we are too terrifying to contemplate…

and then when we speak of it people hate us…want to tell us to shut up and to tell us we are an anomaly…but we really are not…I know of 10,000s of us…and there are many more who are not apparent on the internet.

Read More By Monica Cassani Shared by Paul Richard

Saturday, August 19, 2017

COLORECTAL HEALTH ALERT: Opdivo Approved for MSI-High Colorectal Cancer Patients


Bristol-Meyers Squibb’s Opdivo (nivolumab) has just been approved by the FDA for patients with a microsatellite instability-high tumors (also known as MSI-H) or mismatched repair deficiency (dMMR). The approval was specifically for patients whose cancer has progressed following Fluoropyrimidine, Oxaliplatin, and Irinotecan.
Opdivo joins Merck’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) as the second immunotherapy drug to be approved within four months. Here’s what you need to know.

Monday, July 31, 2017

Upper GI (Endoscopy) Results


Went into my 'home away from home' for the Upper GI yesterday afternoon. The endoscopy team was running a little late as they had an emergency issue earlier in the day that put the scheduled appoints behind. Very understandable in a hospital setting. As I told the doctor performing the procedure when she was apologizing "I've been the reason for delays, so can't really complain". Turns out the doctor that did my procedure was one of the liver transplant docs. That's kinda cool.

Upper GI Endoscopy Results
Read More-->>

Saturday, July 22, 2017

World Kidney Day 2017 - All About Kidney Disease


World Kidney Day is a global awareness campaign aimed at raising awareness of the importance of our kidneys to our overall health and to reduce the frequency and impact of kidney disease and its associated health problems worldwide. World Kidney Day is celebrated every 9th of March and was started in 2006 and has not stopped growing ever since. Every year, the campaign highlights a particular theme.

Are you someone who has had diabetes for more than 10 years? It is time for you to get your kidneys evaluated. Diabetes is becoming the most common cause of chronic kidney disease. Many people have an undetermined cause for kidney disease.

Environmental factors have been postulated in its causation. With the change in lifestyle, kidney disease I spreading to more and more people. A population based study calculated that in India the dialysis population is growing at the rate of 10-20 per cent annually.

What is Chronic Kidney Disease?