Photo by: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When you are in the midst of a busy holiday season, getting enough sleep is something that can be hard to obtain. Yet for others, this is a year round problem if they have sleep apnea. It has been estimated that this condition, where a person has episodes of stopped breathing during sleep, affects about 18 million Americans (1 in 15 people) yearly. Not only does it contribute to daytime drowsiness and lack of energy, but could be potentially dangerous and affect ones health.…

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Whether be-ribboned with silk or cut out of red construction paper, you can’t help notice the prevalence of hearts this month. Just like all shades of pink have been used to brand breast cancer awareness, “Go Red!” is the mantra of February, American Heart Month.

And with good reason. Heart disease is the number-one cause of death of women 20 and older. In fact, 82 million Americans have at least one or more types of cardiovascular disease. There are certainly many reasons to maintain a healthy heart and many…

Obesity is a condition that is on the rise in all parts of the world. An estimated 5 million teens are obese (>35 body mass Index BMI) in the US (2004). Because of obesity, many people are experiencing some significant health issues. Obesity is in many (not all) teenagers is a food-addiction illness.

Food addiction is difficult to treat but can be an underlying reason for the weight problem. Drug addiction programs with intensive therapy and supervision have proven to be effective models in obesity treatment.  A cycle of poor self…

Prior to the June 22 episode of “Deadliest Catch,” I had, if you’ll pardon the pun, never caught an episode. When I heard in February that the captain of one of the crab boats had a stroke and subsequently died a couple of weeks later, I wondered how and if it would be handled on the show. I was drawn to the episode, the first in a four-episode-arc that promises to show the struggles of Captain Harris’ family, for one simple reason — as Clark Bunting, the president and general…

Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.

–Casey Stengel, Manager of the NY Yankees 1949-1960, 7 World Championships

Atop our monthly team meeting handouts are Old Casey’s words of wisdom which I believe apply both in and outside the world of sports. I am thankful that excellent team work has been a reality not just a slogan during my first year providing home care for the VNS CHOICE program.

Excellent coordination between all parts of a home care team is crucial because the majority of the…

photo by Suat Eman

I spoke to a patient recently who asked “…so are you going to red this Friday?” This may sound like an unusual question, but we were talking about heart disease and its effects on her and her husband. Although her husband had his high cholesterol and high blood pressure under control, she on the other hand, had not been aware of her heart disease until her heart attack. It was a wake-up call that heart disease does not always have symptoms to warn you of a problem. She told me,…

Welcome to a New Year, and new beginnings!  This is the time of year many of us make a New Year’s resolution — some easy to keep and others not so easy. But sometimes it may be that ONE thing that we say or do that can make all the difference.

I was making a visit with a patient the other day, who had diabetes and hypertension. We were discussing her blood pressure readings, which were higher than they should have been. In the past she had a machine and she would…