ArcaMax

DEAR DR. ROACH: I have benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). In one of your recent columns, you touched upon the long-term use of tamsolusin. I, too, tried tamsolusin, and after several months, I saw no significant improvement to my symptoms. My primary care physician switched me to finasteride, and after three months on this new medication, I ...Read more

Tina Turner may have thought love was not good for her heart when she declared, "What's love got to do with it? Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?" But a new study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology confirms previous findings: When folks are recovering from a broken heart, AKA heart attack or stroke, or working to manage ...Read more

DEAR DR. ROACH: Your recent column regarding edema from venous insufficiency caught my interest since I was diagnosed with venous insufficiency over 25 years ago. Your recommendation was to raise your legs several times a day for 20 minutes a day, if I recall. Also, you mentioned that sometimes furosemide (Lasix) is prescribed but that you ...Read more

Your liver isn't really chill -- in fact, it is very sensitive to stress. But what exactly stresses a liver? A high-fat diet is one major cause. Research out of MIT shows that when liver cells feel imperiled by excess fat careening into your liver, they revert to an immature state that helps them survive the fat bomb -- but also makes them more ...Read more

New research shows that hair can capture a chemical record of human exposure across days, week and even months. Writing in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology, scientists at the University of Texas analyzed snippets of hair and found that for at least one chemical -- a class of common endocrine-disrupting plasticizer called phthalates ...Read more

DEAR DR. ROACH: I am 78 and dislike the short gray days of winter. I know that light therapy is used for seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and I would like to try it. How do I know which light box or lamp is a good choice? (Does it block ultraviolet rays, provide the right amount of light, etc.?) -- K.J.

ANSWER: SAD is a subcategory of major...Read more

For decades, I've been sharing all available information about achieving a younger ActualAge -- especially when it comes to your brain power. The full range of self-care that protects your cognition includes high-quality nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, having a posse and sense of purpose and enjoying speed-of-processing ...Read more

You're stuck under cold, gray skies, dreaming of lying on a beach somewhere feeling the sun's warming rays. But in lieu of that, you figure why not get an indoor tan from a salon? Well, here's why not.

According to a study in Science Advances, tanning bed users develop twice as many genetic mutations (alternations in their DNA) as folks who don...Read more

DEAR DR. ROACH: Why aren't meningococcal vaccines recommended for people over the age of 23? Are they assuming (wrongly) that most people have already received them or that most won't (again, probably wrongly) be exposed?

When I worked in the emergency room long ago before there was a vaccine, we had two patients in a row die from ...Read more

About 70% of emergency department visits for sports and recreation-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and concussions are among children ages 17 and younger! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the sports with the most concussions are (ranked 1-10): boys tackle football, girls soccer, boys lacrosse, boys ice hockey, ...Read more

DEAR DR ROACH: In a recent column, you wrote that hormone replacement therapy should be considered in elderly women to prevent urinary tract infections (UTIs) by stopping bacteria from getting into the bladder in the first place. How does this work? Which is better: pills or vaginal creams? Isn't hormone replacement in postmenopausal women ...Read more

There's a reason "health" and "wealth" rhyme. They may be the same thing.

The personal finance company WalletHub issued its latest survey of cities where people spend the most and least on health care. The company analyzed prices of five key health care components -- average cost of a doctor, dentist and optometrist visits, plus price of ...Read more

When men and women are given exercise routines to reduce coronary heart disease risk, one group does better. It's not men.

Women had a 22% lower risk of coronary heart disease if they logged 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous exercise. Men doing the same amount of exercise had a 17% lower risk.

The caveat: As in previous similar ...Read more

Researchers are now advising folks who get a flu shot to consider refraining from taking a pain reliever like aspirin, Advil or Aleve after inoculation because it can dampen production of necessary antibodies that protect against viral illness.

Many over-the-counter pain and fever reducers are classified as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,...Read more

Even with modern medicine, vaccines and artificial intelligence helping to diagnose diseases early, the risk of dying before age 70 -- called probability of premature death, or PPD -- still varies widely around the world.

In 2019, 12% of people in the world's healthiest countries died before age 70. In sub-Saharan Africa, that number was 52%;...Read more

The so-called "California sober" trend involves swapping alcohol in favor of cannabis consumption in the belief that it's less harmful to the body and reduces the danger of using more potent drugs like opioids, cocaine and methamphetamine.

A small published study suggests the approach actually does reduce alcohol consumption, at least in the ...Read more