Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Your Health
If you like video games but need some exercise, try this “game.” You can win and get in shape.
As you walk to and/or from work, pick up the pace because
- for each person you pass, you get one point.
- for each person who passes you, you lose one point.
When a light stops you at the curb,
- you get a point for waiting safely on the sidewalk.
- you do not lose any points for people who pass you to wait on the street.
- you do not lose any points for people who pass you to walk against the light.
- you get a point when you pass those people on the next block, even if you are passing them for a second time.
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Health Tips, Your Health
Dr. Cindy Feely
In my daily practice at Primary Care Associates, I get asked many questions about the flu and the flu vaccine. Despite improved access to accurate, responsible information in the media and on the web, a number of myths about the flu and the vaccine still exist. So here it is, point-by-point, information for you to make informed choices for your healthcare.
Myth #1: The flu vaccine gives you the flu
Facts: The vaccine, including this year’s version, consists of a dead virus which cannot infect you. What it can do is make your body produce the antibodies necessary to fight that virus if you come in contact with a live version of it. The live virus is included in the Flu Mist – a nasal spray, not an injection – but it is engineered so that it will not make you sick.
Myth #2: If you weren’t vaccinated by November, there’s no point in getting it now
Facts: While we are seeing a large number of cases right now, the flu often doesn’t hit its peak until February or even March. And while it does take two weeks to be fully effective, the vaccine will help lessen the severity if you do get the flu.
Myth #3: There’s no treatment for the flu
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Health Tips, Your Health
Influenza has officially reached epidemic proportions in several regions of the United States. Approximately 7.3% of deaths (exceeding the 7.2% threshold) are now attributed to pneumonia and the flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mount Sinai is taking a number of actions in order to continue to provide optimal care to all of our patients and to protect our patients and staff from exposure to influenza.
What can you do to protect yourself and others from influenza?
- It’s not too late to get vaccinated. Click here to make an appointment online with one of our primary care doctors or call 212-241-6585
- Dr. Prarthana Beuria recommends being vigilant about washing hands every time you’re out in public and around lots of people, whether in the subway or at the office, and to avoid touching your face with your hands.
- If you have the flu, Dr. Beuria recommends that you “stay home from work until the fever has been gone for 24 hours. If people around you have compromised immune systems, stay away.”
Click here to view the full infographic
Aquí está la influenza gráfica en Español
Who is at risk of getting the flu?
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Your Health
Don’t just take a Weight-and-See approach to losing pounds in 2013. Two-thirds of adult Americans are overweight and one-third are obese. Tip: Exert portion control. A single portion should fit on your palm; a restaurant meal is usually the size of multiple portions. Here are more weight management tips from expert Dr. Robert Yanagisawa. Read more at http://ow.ly/gupUd
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Your Health
Type 2 diabetes, often associated with obesity, is one of the most rapidly emerging health crises in our community. For many years, the goal in treating type 2 diabetes has been to use medication and lifestyle changes to control this chronic disease. Mild disease has been treated with oral medication while injectable insulin was used for more severe disease. Such conventional therapies were used without any intent to cure the underlying diabetes; rather, the therapeutic goal was to achieve medical control of blood sugar levels. Recently, however, there has been a fundamental advance in our understanding of this widespread disease. New data suggest that the use of metabolic surgery – historically used to treat obesity but now used as an intervention for type 2 diabetes – may result in better control of blood sugar, and even in complete remission of the disease.
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Research, Your Health
When yet another team sets off from the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science for some remote location in Africa or Central America, its thoughts are on how to provide the superior standard of care, considered to be the routine at home, to women in drastically resource poor settings. Upon returning, what our teams often realize is that the tremendous expertise they develop in these countries is the very thing that makes them the experts in their own fields at home. Fistula repair is the perfect example of this.
“Obstetric fistula is a tremendous problem in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Charles Ascher-Walsh MD, Assistant Professor, Director of Gynecology and Urogynecology, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science. “In many countries there is very little maternal health care and, as a result, maternal mortality rates top 1% in some of these countries. These rates are unfathomable in the United States.” If a woman is lucky enough to survive childbirth, the rates of developing some type of post-partum fistula vary between 2 to 5 per thousand births. This equates to between 50,000 and 100,000 new cases of vesico-vaginal fistula in West Africa alone every year. These women, constantly drenched in their own urine, become social outcasts and live a life of physical and social misery. This problem, however, often has a surgical cure that can reinstitute these women into society.
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