Health HEADLINES

Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson’s Disease Helps Patients Regain Control

An increasing number of Bahamians are being diagnosed with Parkinson’s – the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s.

“We are seeing more people presenting with it. Some of that is due to awareness on the part of family members, ‘Internet doctors’ searching symptoms online,” said Dr Edwin Demeritte, chief physician at the Bahamas Neurological Centre and one of three neurologists in The Bahamas. “It’s the tip of the iceberg though. I think there are a lot more who are out there,” he adds, admitting hard statistics are difficult to come by. There is no public registry and research into the disease .... [Read more]

Cleveland Clinic gastroenterologists and oncologists are using new tools and techniques that require no stitches or long recovery times to treat digestive diseases.

EMR, short for Endoscopic Mucosal Resection, is one of the most successful and widely used techniques. It involves elevating the lesion either with submucosal injection of a solution or with cap suction, and then removing it with a snare. Most lesions smaller than 20 mm can be removed in one piece. Larger lesions are removed in multiple pieces .... [Read more]

A clinical study is underway making available a new type of treatment for patients suffering from diabetic foot ulcers.

This exciting new topical treatment combines two components, PDGF, and collagen. Both have already been approved by the U.S. FDA for treatment of chronic wounds.

The clinical study is conducted in part to seek an approval for the combined use for poorly healing diabetic foot ulcers that have been non-responsive to standard therapies.

The study is being conducted at the Freeport Family Wellness Center in the Bahamas.

The clinic has been offering functional medicine to patients from around the world since 1999. Dr. Kevin Bethel,.... [Read more]

Cleveland Clinic Florida Details New Advanced Screening, Treatment Options

It is estimated that 200 million people worldwide have some form of thyroid disease with a recent 2017 study showing a significant increase in thyroid cancer in the last 50 years.

Despite widespread incidence of thyroid disorders, doctors fear that far too many cases go undiagnosed. According to Dr. Arlington Lightbourne of The Wellness Center, Nassau, thousands of Bahamians suffer from thyroid disorders.... [Read more]

The most common type of hearing loss is noise-induced hearing loss, caused by exposure to excessively loud noise or music.

In today’s world of everything digital, half of children ages eight to 12, and two-thirds of teenagers, listen to some form of music or other digital media at least one to two hours every day; even children as young as two years... [Read more]

As leading scientists warn that lack of sleep is leading to serious health problems, The Sleep Council says it’s time to Take Sleep Seriously.
The advice comes with the news today that leading researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Manchester and Surrey universities believe society has become “supremely arrogant” in ignoring the importance of sleep.

Prof Russell Foster of the University of Oxford, told the BBC’s Day of the Body Clock that people were getting between one and two hours less sleep a night than 60 years ago.
“We know from our own extensive research that people are simply not setting aside the time they need to get the sleep their body requires,” said Lisa Artis of The Sleep Council. “

The results of our Great British Bedtime report last year showed that a third of us get by on just five to six hours sleep a night which, for most of us, is not enough to feel or perform.... [Read more]

Grab a rag, spray it with disinfectant, wipe down a counter and you are far more likely to admire the shine than consider what that act has just done to your waistline. But it may just be time for a re-think when it comes to cleaning, according to a national expert on wellness.

According to wellness and nutrition physician Dr. Arlington Lightbourne, many common cleaning products contain a chemical that disrupts the endocrine system causing it to produce extra insulin which, in turn, turns calories into fat.

“There is a growing body of evidence suggesting the harmful effects of key ingredients frequently found in common cleaning materials from bleaches to disinfectants to .... [Read more]

Kidney disease ranks among top 10 leading causes of death in the United States along with an estimated 31 million people (10% of the adult population) living with chronic kidney disease.

As a kidney becomes diseased, they lose their ability to function, a condition called end-stage renal disease (ESRD) or kidney failure.

The two leading causes of kidney failure are diabetes at 44% and high blood pressure at 28.4%. An estimated 29.1 million people have diabetes; 8.1 million of them don’t even know they have it, and about 40% of them will suffer from chronic kidney disease. On the other hand, an estimated 70 million (29%) people have high blood pressure – that is every 1 in 3 American adults.

Treatments for this condition are hemodialysis, a mechanical process to clean the blood of waste products, peritoneal dialysis in which toxins are removed by .... [Read more]

A leading international oncology and hematology specialist is urging medical practitioners in The Bahamas to persuade patients to act immediately on early signs of breast cancer, noting that many women are adept at avoiding follow-up scans and exams, leaving themselves vulnerable to more advanced stage cancers that are harder to treat.

Dr. Zeina Nahleh, who serves in a dual capacity as Chair of the Department of Hematology-Oncology and Director of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Maroone Cancer Center, ranked among the best in the nation, made the comments while addressing the Grand Bahama Medical Conference in Freeport February 23.

“Indicators that the medical community recognizes but patients often do not include hereditary factors, the likelihood of diagnosis before .... [Read more]

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