The annals of documentary film are packed with movies that are formally rudimentary or even threadbare, but contain stories so compelling that they command a regard beyond what the film’s presentation accords them. “That Way Madness Lies …,” directed by Sandra Luckow, begins with my least favorite “here is a personal chronicle” gambit: The director…
A few years ago at a college reunion, I listened transfixed as the silver-haired philanthropist David Rubenstein urged us “to accelerate” as we entered the last chapters of our lives. Pick up the pace? So many of my contemporaries were stopping — if not stooping — to smell the roses. With his admonition in mind,…
“I need you to do everything for him,” the young man told me through an Arabic interpreter. We were at an impasse. We had many tools available to treat our patient’s pain and ease his suffering. But the young man wanted something more — a cure for his father, my patient. I backed away from…
Image Women with cardiac emergencies are less likely than men to receive proper treatment when the ambulance arrives, a new study reports. The analysis, in Women’s Health Issues, used four years of data from a federal government database to compile information on out-of-hospital emergencies involving people 40 and older with chest pain or cardiac arrest.…
Many people living with HIV choose to explore non-conventional therapies to ease the symptoms of HIV and side effects of the medications. Some alternative treatments can complement a person’s standard medical care, but others are not safe. Many people living with HIV use alternative therapies. According to one source, over 70 percent of people with…
Image Christmas may be the peak time for heart attacks — at least in Sweden. Swedish researchers studied 283,014 heart attacks between 1998 and 2013 that were documented in a registry that included the date and time when symptoms started. They found that compared with days in the two weeks before and after Christmas, the…
Image Delaying school start times has helped Seattle teenagers get a better night’s sleep. During puberty, circadian rhythm is altered, and sleeping and waking are typically delayed to a later time. This creates a problem: Adolescent wake-sleep patterns do not coincide with those of conventional social life, and teenagers rarely get the recommended eight to…
MIAMI — The American government employees in Cuba who suffered mystifying symptoms — dizziness, insomnia, difficulty concentrating — after hearing a strange high-pitched sound all had one thing in common: damage to the part of the inner ear responsible for balance, according to the first doctors to examine them after the episodes. Two years after…
LEEP stands for loop electrosurgical excision procedure. Doctors perform them to detect or treat cervical cancer. During a LEEP, an electrical current passes through a loop of wire. A doctor uses the wire to cut abnormal cells from the cervix. They send a sample of these cells to a laboratory to detect signs of cancer…
HIV can cause a dry cough and other symptoms that affect the lungs and respiratory system. A dry cough may occur because HIV reduces the body’s ability to fight off infection and other diseases. However, respiratory problems can have many causes that are not necessarily linked to HIV. A person with persistent or severe respiratory…