Blog About Health & Medicine

Once a diagnosis is made regarding the knee’s status, treatment can take one of many forms. Since the knee is an easily damaged joint, you should see your doctor, who will probably take an X ray of the knee and manually examine the knee as well as the way you’re walking. She will tell you to test the knee and take aspirin or Advil to ease the pain and inflammation.

If, however, your doctor determines that your X rays reveal a torn meniscus that requires surgery to remove, you will undergo arthroscopic surgery, which involves inserting a stainless steel surgical tube through a tiny incision at the side of the kneecap and suctioning the torn cartilage out. This popular operation has enabled people to indulge in their chosen sport within a week after surgery, if not the next day.

Tips and Precautions

Preventing knee injury consists of two components: warm-up and conditioning. Walking rapidly for five minutes will serve as a warm-up before your regular exercise session, and being in shape will give you sufficient strength to get through your workout. Injury occurs most often when you’re tired or when you push past your energy reserves.

Stretching the hamstrings and other joints that surround the knee will also lessen the chance of injury to the knee. And if you strengthen the inside of the quadriceps, or thigh muscle, with a combination of stretching and walking, it’ll pave the way for smoothing the movement of the femur within the groove of the kneecap.

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For some reason, Mother Nature had it in for women when she designed their external genitalia. I once heard someone compare the urethra, vagina, and rectum to a highway where the exit tamps are all too close together.

A fourth physical flaw can be added: the woman’s urethra, or the tube that leads from the bladder to the outside of the body, is very short compared to a man’s. This shortness is what helps create urinary tract infections, since the bacteria don’t have very far to travel before they start to cause an infection in the urethra. The major symptoms of a urinary tract infection are a burning pain during urination and foul-smelling urine. A urinary tract infection can occur in different parts of the urinary tract. An infection of the urethra is called urethritis; if it spreads to the bladder, a bladder infection can occur. An infection of either the bladder or the urethra can be quite painful. Because urethrtis is often caused by intercourse, when bacteria are pushed up into the urethra, it is often called honeymoon cystitis.

Rarely, the infection will proceed to the kidney; this condition is called pyelonephritis. This can cause permanent kidney damage, so it’s important to treat urethritis in the early stages before it has a chance to spread.

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Description and Possible Medical Problems

A health columnist at a popular women’s magazine has said that two of the most commonly asked questions from readers are (1) Why do I have hairs growing around my nipples? and (2) What can I do about my inverted nipples?

Although she could answer the same two questions in her column every month, making her readers happy, she limits the appearance of each question to once a year. Her answers: (1) They’re perfectly normal—pull them out with tweezers and (2) They’re perfectly normal— ignore them.

Inverted or retracted nipples are perfectly normal if you’ve had them since puberty. Only if the inverted nipples have developed recently could they be a sign of trouble—that is, cancer.

Treatment

If your nipples have recently turned inward, see your doctor right away. Any change in the skin of the nipple—whether a color change or an inversion—could be a sign of cancer. She will do a routine breast exam and a mammogram if she suspects you have a tumor.

Otherwise, if you’ve had them all your life, you have nothing to worry about.

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When I first began my medical practice, one of the first patients I saw was an elderly gentleman who came into my office off the street because he couldn’t stop belching; he was also mildly short of breath. He thought all he had was a severe case of indigestion. However, I admitted him to the emergency room because he was actually having a heart attack, though he didn’t believe me. At times a person may have heart attack symptoms—such as belching—without any significant chest pain.

In fact, if you have been diagnosed with heart disease and show some of the risk factors for a heart attack, if you start belching and can’t stop, go to the hospital immediately!

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Because there are so many reasons why your throat may be sore, the treatment will depend on the cause. If you think pollution is causing your sore throat, your only remedy is to stay inside more and to venture outside only in the early morning and on days when the air pollution index is low.

If you have a sinus infection, antihistamines can help alleviate a sore throat by stopping the postnasal drip. If your mouth is dry because of the sinus infection, sipping water frequently during the day will help keep your throat moist and more comfortable.

If I think a patient has strep throat, I’ll take a throat culture. It’s important to seek treatment for strep throat right away, since it can lead to scarlet fever or rheumatic fever if left untreated. If the culture comes back positive, I’ll treat it with penicillin or erythromycin for a 10-day period. Although strep throat occurs more frequently in children than adults, you should know that if you have strep throat, you can easily pass it to your children.

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