Author: Jeffrey Sterling

The elderly are living longer and more productively. Part of being able to do so is by maintaining an understanding of how your actions  affect you. One common action of many of the elderly is taking medications. You should be aware that medications have changing effects with aging, and there are many different reasons for that … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Do Medications Work Differently in Older People? →

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Guys, it’s not condescending to note that it’s really tough to be a woman. There are so many different medical conditions women have to deal with that men don’t. Many of these just don’t even make sense (well, they make medical sense, but not common sense…). Take the example of endometriosis. This is a condition … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Endometriosis →

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Three question sets on hiccups of all things Why do I get hiccups? You get hiccups because everyone gets them.  You get them because basically you’ve agitated your main breathing muscle (You have one on both sides, between the chest and abdominal cavities.).  Something’s caused it to spasm, which produces a reflex vocal cord closure.  … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Quick Tips – Learn the ABCDEs of Hiccups →

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Every time you take medication or allow someone to administer it to you, you are taking a significant leap of faith. Think about it. How many individual things do you do daily that are as potentially dangerous as ingesting medicines that, if taken in the wrong dose, have effects that can include death? These types … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Defending Yourself From Medication Errors →

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It’s National Sleep Awareness Week, and Straight, No Chaser wants you to wake up, pay attention and learn why sleep is such an important part of your life! Do you ever think about why we sleep? Our bodies are highly efficient machines that utilize a lot of energy over the course of a day. In particular, … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Understanding Normal Sleep and How Much Sleep You Need →

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Introduction This Straight, No Chaser post discusses the success of the HPV vaccine in eliminating cervical cancer. In the news is information about the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. It prevents the sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that cause genital warts. This is especially important because these warts cause cervical, anal, penile, mouth and throat cancers. Here’s … Continue reading Eliminating Cervical Cancer with the HPV Vaccine →

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Straight, No Chaser has spent quite a bit of time on conditions involving abnormalities of male and female sex hormones. We do so again today in discussing fibroids (aka fibroid tumors, leiomyomas, fibromyomas and myomas). Fibroids are noncancerous growths on the female uterus (the womb). Fibroids are extremely common. In fact, by age 50 approximately … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Uterine Fibroids →

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We’ve discussed many components of sleep and sleep disorders. A very common condition that many of you are walking around with undiagnosed is sleep apnea.  Sleep apnea is a common, recurring sleeping disorder in which your breathing temporarily pauses during your sleep. Have you ever awakened and felt as if you were choking or coughing? … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Sleep Apnea →

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This is part of a Straight, No Chaser series on sleep disorders. When you hear about narcolepsy, it’s usually in the context of some joke, but it’s a horrifying condition. Looking at the lead picture, imagining blacking out while driving a car.  A diagnosis of narcolepsy should prompt certain lifestyle changes. Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder that … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Narcolepsy – The Sleep Attack →

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I used to love to work third shift. Generally, I’d be the only “boss” around, so I really got to enjoy my staff in a way that wasn’t possible during the day shifts. The only real problem was that after two shifts, it was hard to function during the days in between shifts. After three … Continue reading Straight, No Chaser: Late Night Shift Work and Shift Work Sleep Disorder →

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