Preventative Care. Dr. David Samadi will explore the new and often debated areas of preventative care. Prevent cancer, check your blood pressure, eat the right foods and other prevention tips. Get a medical doctor's take on herbal treatments, yoga, homeopathy, acupuncture, vitamins, supplements, massage therapy, spiritual treatment and other forms of alternative therapy for prevention.
Vaccinations are the best way to prevent infection with this virus.
Read MoreIt is the fourth leading cause of death and its consequences are among the top causes of disability in the U.S. The good news is that there are preventative measures you can take to reduce your risk of stroke, and most of them are simple lifestyle modifications.
Read MoreAs it turns out, there is more truth behind this saying than you might realize. Perhaps the most shocking fact about stress is that it can affect all parts of your body, not just in one area.
Read MoreGiven that it takes about two weeks for the vaccination to build the antibodies necessary for protection, what better time than now to get vaccinated?
Read MoreAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 79 million American adults have pre-diabetes. As you might guess, pre-diabetes can, and often does, develop into diabetes. Unfortunately, chances are that the cardiovascular damage that occurs with type 2 diabetes is already occurring with pre-diabetes.
The good news, however, is that a diagnosis of pre-diabetes does not sentence you to a diagnosis of diabetes; rather, with some lifestyle changes, diabetes can be prevented.
Read MoreThe FDA approved two new weight-loss medicines: Qsymia and Belviq. Until recently, there was a 13-year stretch in which the FDA did not approve any new medications to help people struggling with obesity.
Read MoreOr that seizures are the most common reason for ambulance calls? Witnessing someone having a seizure can be frightening – especially if you don’t know what to do.
Read MoreThis amazingly complex mechanism, however, can be disrupted by many factors ranging from illness, cancer or hormonal changes, as seen in normal aging. When this occurs, hot flashes or night sweats can come on.
Read MoreA new survey demonstrates increasing acceptance and utilization of acupuncture for treatment and health promotion. The analysis was published in the journalEvidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine and looked at utilization rates, demographics and reasons for using acupuncture.
Read MoreEvery year, more than 37 million Americans suffer from at least one episode of sinusitis. Typically, the symptoms include nasal congestion, runny nose and pressure or pain felt behind the eyes or teeth. These symptoms are caused by inflammation and infection of the sinuses.
Read MoreVaccinations are finding a new role in medicine. Traditionally, vaccines have been used as a preventive tool to protect us from disease like polio, tetanus, or small pox. These vaccines work by challenging one’s immune system with an inactive agent similar to the real pathogen. Thus, when faced with the real disease agent our body is able to effectively and efficiently mount an offensive to prevent illness.
More recently, strides have been made to harness the body’s defense system to better fight current illnesses, such as cancer, through the development of therapeutic vaccines.
Last week, the preliminary data on a vaccine to treat a type of brain tumor was presented at the American Association of Neurological Surgeon’s annual meeting.
Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common and aggressive type of brain cancer – this type of tumor claimed the lives of both Senator Ted Kennedy and the Met’s catcher Gary Carter.
The disease progresses very rapidly and even with aggressive treatment (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy), most patients survive only a few months following diagnosis. Novel therapies represent the only hope for prolonging survival.
Currently, a vaccination, HSPPC-96, against a tumor specific protein is being tested against Glioblastoma multiforme in a phase II clinical trial. At the meeting, the authors revealed that those treated with the vaccine experienced a 50 percent improvement in survival times compared to those treated with other therapies.
HSPPC-96 contains proteins purified from a patient’s own tumor tissue and is designed to activate the immune system, specifically target the cancer cells. The goal is that the immune system will attack the cancer cells while sparing the normal neural and glial cells, it is truly personalized medicine.
The goal of this type of immune therapy is not to eradicate the disease but to transform the cancer into a manageable chronic condition. The same philosophy has been applied to many other tumors, including lymphoma, melanoma, colon cancer and prostate cancer. For instance, experimental vaccines are currently being studied to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Small clinical trials have shown that vaccines directed at lymphoma specific surface proteins are associated with tumor shrinkage, prolonged treatment responses and improved survival. As the vaccine solely targets tumor cell, the hope is that patients will experience fewer side-effects, as compared with traditional therapies.
While promising, the majority of these vaccines are still in their infancy and require further testing before they are ready for widespread use. Sipuleucel-T (Provenge) is currently the only FDA approved cancer vaccine used to treat metastatic prostate cancer. For this vaccine, the patient’s immune cells are collected and exposed to a prostate cancer protein. The newly educated immune cells are infused back into the patient, where they mount an immune attack targeting prostate cancer cells anywhere in the body.
In clinical trials, patients receiving the therapeutic vaccine had a significantly decreased risk of death as compared to placebo, resulting in its FDA approval in 2010.
Current therapies, radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy, have been proven to provide effective treatment for many cancers. Unfortunately, treatment deficits still exist and we have yet to gain complete control of this disease.
Personalized medicine represents the future of cancer therapy. At this time, we don’t always know why some patients have full recovery while other relapse after the same treatment.
However, efforts are underway to refine current protocols to better pair ones specific disease characteristics with the optimal treatment, in order to maximize ones response. Further research is needed in this field to better understand the natural history of cancer and develop therapeutic solutions to current obstacles.
To learn more about ongoing clinical trials visit the National Cancer Institutes at www.cancer.gov.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than19 percent of children have untreated cavities and approximately 41 percent of children have decay in their “baby teeth.” This is a health statistic that has not improved since the 1970s and recent studies are indicting a new rise in cavities in children.
Read MoreAccording to the National Institute of Health, Americans spend more than $33 billion dollars on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) annually, accounting for more than 10 percent of out-of-pocket purchases. CAM is comprised of a diverse set of treatments and supplements, such as vitamins, chiropractors, acupuncture and herbal therapies.
Read MoreOne area in which there remains a substantial difference, however, is often overlooked. Women live, on average, five years longer than men. Why is this? My colleague Dr. Ridwan Shabsigh and I addressed this issue in a series of papers we recently published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice. I'll go over some of our more relevant findings.
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