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Pop Quiz: Preventing prescription drug abuse in your home

IT’S A STARTLING FACT: Prescription drug abuse is a problem that affects people from all walks of life. Unfortunately, prescription drug abuse oftentimes occurs in the home, with pills and medications being pilfered or stolen from their legally prescribed owners. Sadly, the culprits of medication thefts could be children and other family members, friends, neighbors,…
Putting together the pieces of dementia

| Keeping our brains fit as we age | BRAINS AGE. As people get older, they may start forgetting appointments, or lose track of days and months. For a while, they may put on a good show. “They’ll tell you what they think,” says Dr. Jeffrey Reddout, a neuropsychologist at Winter Haven Hospital’s (WHH) neurorehabilitation…
Q&A: Weighing your risk for osteoporosis

We interviewed Dr. Raul B. Tallo, a rheumatologist with Lakeland Regional Health, about the bone disease osteoporosis. Central Florida Health News (CFHN): Who is more prone to osteoporosis? Is it an elderly person’s disease? A women’s disease?

Ask a Nurse: The evolution of modern medicine

Did you know that an anesthesiologist (the doctor that puts you to sleep and keeps you alive during surgery) wasn’t even considered a field or specialty in medicine until 1941!1 Could you imagine undergoing surgery without anesthesia? Barbaric! Thoracic surgery (chest surgery) wasn’t approved until 1970, and bariatric (obesity) medicine has yet to become an official…
Medical Advice: Avoiding mosquitoes and chikungunya virus

I was first introduced to a disease known as chikungunya during my medical training. Initially, I dismissed this foreign illness as something I would probably not see in my career. Chikungunya was originally found in Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. This changed on December 2013, when there was…
Editor’s Dose: Adventures with school physicals!

It’s school physical time already! Am I the only one who feels like summer went by way too fast? Maybe it’s because “time flies when you’re having fun.” Or, maybe it’s because time flies when you have four kids . . . maybe it’s a combination of both. Either way, our house is in full…