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Health Matters: The dangers of extreme heat

ESCANABA — Spring is upon us, and summer will be here in a week. The days are lengthening, and the flowers are blooming. Everyone welcomes this time of year, with plans being hatched about how best to get outdoors. But residents of this region will all agree, it was the mildest winter on record. Could this be representative of climate change? Political leanings are no longer relevant to this discussion, it is a warming planet. And that means dealing with extreme heat. Wildfires are now a seasonal occurrence in California. Winters in the Northeast grow milder, and less snow is falling ...

Health Matters: New evidence for deadly role of dietary sugars

ESCANABA — The incidence of obesity has risen remarkably over the last century. The obesity epidemic began in the U.S. in the mid-70’s, eventually spreading across the industrialized nations, all having adopted the Western diet of fast foods, ultra-processed foods, and sweetened foods. In lockstep with these changes to our nutrition has been heart disease and stroke. And it has become evident that our diet is the driving force behind this trend towards excess adiposity, the incidence of diabetes and the other major chronic diseases. The data indicates our food choices are leading ...

Health Matters: Many causes and complications to toe callus

ESCANABA — When someone is referred to as being only skin deep, it’s usually considered a derogatory term, but this is unfair. Our skin is an amazing structure, capable of a multitude of vital functions, reflecting many aspects of general health. Maintaining skin health is critically important to our well-being. Skin is susceptible to all manner of problems from simple trauma to innumerable skin conditions. Some are due to auto-immune diseases, in which our skin, the largest organ in the body, becomes a target of the immune system. But the important functions of skin go beyond the ...

Many complications of a flatfoot deformity

ESCANABA — Humanity comes in all shapes and sizes. Some people are tall and some short, some thin and some wide. The same variation holds true for our skeletal structure, which may manifest in a wider foot or a slimmer foot. What about a longer one versus a shorter foot. And what about the height of your arch? It is difficult to quantify specifically what constitutes a flatfoot. Multiple different terminologies exist, numerous measurements cited. Because of human variation, there are going to be some people whose arch is lower than the average, but the joints are well aligned, and ...

Health Matters: Remote patient monitoring: The future of health technology

ESCANABA — The future is now: the technologies of today were the stuff of sci-fi novels a few years ago. Artificial limbs controlled with a thought, genetically modified pigs bred for organ transplantation into humans, and self-driving cars, all these amazing advances, and many others, are part of our world (although perhaps not yet everyday items). To many Americans, owning a cell phone, a necessity to most, is not an option. But cell phones have been an early predictor of personal technology, an area of great interest in the technology sector. Medicine became interested when ...

Health Matters: Ultra processed foods lead to weighty problems

ESCANABA — How well do you eat? An associated question, how important is it to your health? Many would agree nutrition is a topic on which we have much to learn. Theories abound on how best to eat, and the plethora of diets developed in recent years is testament to this. How much do scientists know about the influence of nutrition on health? And then compare this to how much the general public knows about it! A recent study in the prestigious British Medical Journal stated that sixty percent of the calories consumed by the average American comes from processed foods that are largely ...