Quick tips: shingles, dementia & depression, high blood pressure medications

Since you asked . . . here’s another “Quick tips” post from last week’s Healthy Matters broadcast. I have included links to point you toward reliable information if you want to learn more. The Internet is full of not-so-reliable information so I try to include sources that I think you can trust. That’s assuming you trust me. As my texting daughter would say “hahahaha”!

To listen to the podcast of this recent “Open Lines” show, click this banner and look for April 29, 2018 show (Healthy Matters show #485)

On to the questions from listeners . . .

Continue reading “Quick tips: shingles, dementia & depression, high blood pressure medications” →

Quick tips: Shingles and pnuemonia shots, blocked coronaries, antibiotics for dental work, HIV test

Hennepin Healthcare’s Clinic and Specialty Center

Hey, friends! Here’s another “Quick tips” post in which I answer a few of the questions posed by listeners to a recent Healthy Matters radio broadcast. As is often the case, I can’t get to all the questions, but this week’s grab bag of topics is a good one.

Read on. Or if you are aurally inclined, you can listen to the podcast recording at your leisure by clicking the banner below. The questions here are taken directly from listeners from Healthy Matters show #480, March 25, 2018.

I’m going to scatter pictures of our newly-opened Clinic and Specialty Center, which is a state-of-the-art medical facility in downtown Minneapolis. Cool to see a new medical facility that still has that “new clinic” smell – ha!

Continue reading “Quick tips: Shingles and pnuemonia shots, blocked coronaries, antibiotics for dental work, HIV test” →

Quick tips: tremors, blood pressure, constipation

Hey, everybody.

Some of my most popular posts are these Quick Tips in which I do relatively brief answers to health topics raised by listeners to the Healthy Matters radio broadcasts.

This time, I’ll cover these three topics from actual listener questions.

What are essential tremors? [VIDEOS]
Blood pressure variation throughout the day. [VIDEO]
Ideas on treating constipation.

Continue reading “Quick tips: tremors, blood pressure, constipation” →

Quick tips: influenza, angina, kidneys, & blood pressure

Hi, everybody. I’m back with one of these “Quick tips” posts where I answer questions that were sent to me on a recent Healthy Matters radio broadcast. Regular listeners will know that I never can get to all of the questions, particularly those sent by text message, so I will try here to do some brief answers. I’ll keep it to just a few topics, and will do more posts in the near future.

Here are the topics in this post. Click the links to jump right to a specific topic.

Influenza. How long are you contagious? What does it look like on a chest x-ray?
ACE-inhibitors and high blood pressure.
Kidney disease and protein in the urine.
What is angina?

As always, I invite you to listen to the Healthy Matters broadcasts, either live or via podcast. Here are ways to listen:

Live on News Radio 830 WCCO on your AM dial. Sunday mornings, 7:30 Central Time. You’d be surprised how far the WCCO signal reaches from our downtown Minneapolis studios.
Live on WCCO.COM. Sunday mornings, 7:30 Central Time, from anywhere on Earth with Internet
At your convenience, via podcast. Simply click on the “Listen to Podcasts” link right here on MyHealthyMatters.org or go directly to WCCO.COM on the “Audio” link and find Healthy Matters. You can listen directly online or you can download the podcast to your phone, tablet, or computer and listen anytime at your own convenience. Without commercials!
Or just click the logo here:

Podcasts

Continue reading “Quick tips: influenza, angina, kidneys, & blood pressure” →

In case you missed it: our most popular topics

I have been writing My Healthy Matters for nearly two years, and over that time there have been over 50,000 views to the site. To all of you who read along with me, THANK YOU!

I took a pause in writing new posts today to look at the statistics on what most of you are reading on the blog. It is really fascinating to see what strikes your collective fancy, so I thought I’d do a little retrospective post to highlight the most popular posts of the past. You may wish to go back and read what you missed.

I’ll rank them in order of popularity, based on number of people who viewed them in 2017, and I’ll include links to the posts in case you want to read them.

Continue reading “In case you missed it: our most popular topics” →

A variety of everyday health concerns . . . from the Fair!

Healthy Matters LIVE from the Minnesota State Fair!

Last Sunday I joined 197,890 of my closest friends at the Minnesota State Fair. Along with the best radio person in the business, Denny Long, I did a live, in-person broadcast of Healthy Matters. This was our 451th (!) live broadcast and my 9th year doing it from the state fair. I’m serious about the 197,000 figure. That is literally the number of people who attended – on just this one day – the country’s second-largest state fair (Texas is bigger but also runs twice as long).

To all of you who came out to see the show in person, thank you! It was great to meet people from all over the region . . . Moose Lake, Lonsdale, St. Louis Park, Woodbury . . . . but for those who didn’t make it last week, you have another chance! Come out to the Minnesota State Fair on Sunday, Sept 3, at 7:30 a.m. and say hi! We’ll do the show live from the veranda at the WCCO radio booth. If you come up and introduce yourself, I’ll put you on the radio and you can ask a health question. The WCCO radio booth is easy to find on Carnes Ave between Nelson and Underwood. It’s right by the Ye Olde Mill and right next to a Sweet Martha’s cookies.

As always, you can listen to podcasts of all previous shows by going to the WCCO website. Continue reading “A variety of everyday health concerns . . . from the Fair!” →

Special topics: Lyme disease

Back in April I posted about medical science and what I had learned at my latest continuing education conference (the American College of Physicians conference in San Diego). Go ahead and re-read that post to get my thoughts on how to approach medical science. I had said that I’d be doing future posts about some of what I learned at doctor school in San Diego. The first of those was a look at Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections. Now I’m tackling Lyme disease, much at my own peril since there is raging controversy about this one – at least with some folks.

Here’s what you’ll find if you read on:

Lyme disease basics.
Acute Lyme disease.
Post Lyme Disease Syndrome, which some call “chronic Lyme disease.”

Fasten your seat belts, here we go . . .

Continue reading “Special topics: Lyme disease” →

Quick tips: C. difficile infection will gross you out

OK, let’s talk poop.

As promised in my April 2 post, I plan to do a series of short posts about specific medical topics since I recently returned from “doctor’s school” in San Diego at the American College of Physicians meeting. Missed that post? Re-visit it at “Should you trust the latest medical advice?”

Today’s post will cover C. difficile infections, or CDI. This may be the ickiest post I’ve yet done!

First, a warning. What you about to read may make you go “Ewwww” and may make you wonder what kind of people actually talk about this stuff in polite company. I’ll tell you who talks about it . . . a bunch of doctors in a classroom on a sunny San Diego day. That’s who talks about it. Lucky for you, I’ll summarize here. Continue reading “Quick tips: C. difficile infection will gross you out” →