Conversation Starters

Dear All, Hopefully, I’ll add more specific nutrition tidbits that I learn throughout the year, but I wanted to start by posting these websites below. Unlike some of the other nutrition sites out there, (as far as I know) these ones aren’t selling diets or health food products. They also try to examine the actual research, data and evidence on the topics. As with anything, please be careful about what “evidence” exactly is: it’s easy for someone to take a couple of sentences from a research …

Duration : 0:1:55

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Dear all, Last month, we had lecture on liver injury (hepatotoxicity) and tylenol. Too much tylenol can lead to serious sickness. If you are taking tylenol or giving it to your children — check very carefully, make sure it is truly safe and the right time to take it. For those with liver injury or drinking alcohol, the suggested dose is approximately NO MORE THAN 2 grams every 24 hours. If you accidentally take too much tylenol, go immediately to the hospital and tell the staff that you …

Duration : 0:7:39

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Dear All, I got a chance to listen to a talk by Dr. James Herndon, who is a past president of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery (AAOS). He is a distinguished professor of surgery who wanted us to know more about things to improve upon in reducing surgical errors. Please put this information on your radar screen if you or your friend is going to get surgery because it might be of help. My video is on: 1) wrong site surgery (when the wrong place is operated on by accident) and 2 …

Duration : 0:5:17

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Dear All, Some viewers of InvestServ's Fit365 "What is Nutrition" video have asked me whether pink salt is better than table salt. I thought in this video I would talk about how you can decide if this is true. How to Figure Out If A Health Claim is True: You can go onto the website, www.pubmed.gov, which is a search engine from the National Library of Medicine and National Institute of Health. This search engine has an index of all the papers from 4800 journals written in over 70 countries …

Duration : 0:5:12

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Technorati Tags: fit365, fitness, health, library, medical, medicine, national, nutrition, of, salt, student, training, usmedstudent

4/3/07 I went to a talk by Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, author and professor at Harvard. He did a study looking at why doctors accidentally leave sponges, tools in a patient during surgery, called “Risk factors for retained instruments and sponges after surgery.”
N Engl J Med. 2003 Jan 16;348(3):229-35.
This video is aboout what I learned from him in this paper and from asking him a couple of questions.

For more of a written description:

http://bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/surgical-errors-part-i-leaving-tools-inside-the-patients-body-by-accident/

General idea behind these health videos:
I’m a first year medical student in Boston. Every day, I’m learning exciting and critical topics on medicine and health. But too often, the things I’m learning about never reach the public.

I wanted to try an experiment — sharing health information on youtube, with the sole purpose of trying to get more important health information to you all. Unlike some of the other health videos out there, mine are not about promoting a book, a diet, a pill, an agenda. I hope to answer your questions either through e-mail or through the video updates — please, please, (please!) e-mail me any questions and I will try my best to answer them by asking my professors and by citing credibles sources (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc…)

e-mail:
unitedstatesmedicalstudent@gma il.com

I hope this experiment works — and if it fails, I hope someone sees these videos, says, “hmmm, these are bad videos, but I love the idea,” and decides to go for it.

_____________

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:3:33

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Dear All,

As many of you may know, Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, passed away recently from sudden cardiac death. I wanted to take this time to share with you a little information about sudden cardiac death, and a prevention strategy that may be of help to you, your family or friend — which is that fish oil, 1 g of EPA and DHA a day can reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death greatly.

Here is more information on sudden cardiac death:

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4741

American Heart ociation recommends 1 g of EPA and DHA if you have heart disease:

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4632

In the video, I refer to several different studies;

1) This is the big 1999 fish oil study
that I mentioned

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10465168

2) Here is the link to the review showing that fish oil beats out statins in reducing risk of death:

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/165/7/725

3) Here is a review article talking about benefits vs. risks of fish

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/296/15/1885

More information on primary and secondary endpoints:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1120143

Here is the link to my website: www.bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com

____________

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: that the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Also, I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Best wishes. (more)

Duration : 0:8:32

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Technorati Tags: attack, cardiac, cholesterol, death, fat, fish, health, heart, lipitor, medicine, oil, omega, russert, statins, sudden, tim, usmedstudent

This is my (medical student’s) response to the Grey’s Anatomy Episode, “The Other Side of Life.”

I wanted to find out what procedure Susan Grey had and what exactly happened.

Short medical summary:
Susan Grey had the hiccups! She first was given chlorpromazine, which is normally an anti-psychotic drug, but sometimes works to relieve hiccups.

Hiccups are a sign of some underlying problem and with Susan, her issue was one of acid-reflux — when acid goes from the stomach up to the esophagus (which is the tube that connects the mouth to the stomach).

Miranda decides to do a more drastic intervention called an endoscopic gastroplication
– which in real life has a high long-term fail rate! (go figure).

In the episode, the endoscopy leads to more complications — a bacterial infection of Susan’s heart valves called bacterial endocarditis. This infection became uncontrolled and evolved into probably what was sepsis, which completely overwhelmed Susan’s ability to recover from the infection.

For more information on “sepsis”:

http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/health-info/docs/3800/3887.asp?index=12361

I thought I would throw out the idea of “hiccups” and “acupuncture” for your consideration, as it is something that seems to work in case reports. Several groups have reported anecdotal cases of success using acupuncture to relieve hiccup symptoms.

Case reports are less rigorous forms of research, based on observation. Doctors normally don’t make much of case reports. But given how acupuncture is usually very safe (if the acupuncturist is a certified one in the U.S.), I thought it would be interesting to consider it as a possible option and as an area of further research.

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:5:49

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Technorati Tags: acupuncture, anatomy, grey's, hiccups, medical, medicine, student, surgery, usmedstudent

Dear All — I’m a first year medical student in Boston. Every day, I’m learning important topics on medicine and health. But too often, the things I’m learning about never reach the public.

I wanted to try an experiment — sharing what I am learning on youtube, with the sole purpose of trying to get more important health information to you all. Unlike some of the other health videos out there, mine are not about promoting a book, a diet, a pill, an agenda. I hope to explore your questions on health and medicine with you — please, please, (please!) e-mail me any questions and I will try my best to answer them by asking my professors and/or by citing credibles sources (JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, etc…)

my blog is:

www.bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com

e-mail:
unitedstatesmedicalstudent@gmail.com

I hope this experiment works — and if it fails, I hope someone sees these videos, says, “hmmm, these are bad videos, but I love the idea,” and decides to go for it.

Thank you for your time!

________

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Also, the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:3:18

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Technorati Tags: diet, eating, fat, health, healthcare, medical, medicine, obesity, salud, student, usmedstudent, 身體健康

Dear All,
This is a video about some of the first year medical school classes we are taking. Hope you enjoy it!
Jeff

for more random stuff, my blog is:
www.bostonmedicalstudent.wordpress.com

P.S. I wanted to point out something important: that the opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of Harvard Medical School, its affiliated institutions, or Harvard University. Also, I’m just a medical student, so my posts are hopefully conversation starters, but only conversation starters — not medical advice. If my posts intrigue you, please read more about the topic and discuss about it with your doctor. I’d be happy to send you the information in the journal articles I talk about. Best wishes!

Duration : 0:7:53

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Technorati Tags: class, curriculum, Harvard, medical, medicine, school, student, usmedstudent, 醫學院