“Ask Dr Neuman” Advice Column
And nicotinamide There are good reasons for a doctor not recommending any treatment for a patient he, or she, has not seen. Nowadays, I suppose doctors think first of legal liability. If I recommend some treatment and the patient immediately goes out and has an...
Ask him how he knows. Recently, I was watching a commercial about a product for erectile dysfunction. After a long list of possible side-effects, including blindness and deafness, the announcer suggested that before proceeding further, the man should make sure he was...
The decision on whether or not to sue someone is first of all a legal question; but there are also psychological reasons to sue or not to sue. I am not a lawyer, but I’ve been involved in a number of lawsuits as an expert witness and, more commonly, as a therapist to...
A matter of psychology A lot has been written about the motivation of vampires when they go for the jugular vein. Why the jugular? If the victim has been sleeping, wouldn’t a sharp bite on the neck tend to wake her up, causing an embarrassing incident? Why a vein...
If only I were a mouse. Wow! Good news! Over the weekend three medical reports were published showing that it is possible for someone who is old to actually grow younger, at least if you are a mouse. It seems that if you connect the blood stream of an old mouse to a...
Mitral Valve Prolapse Mitral valve prolapse is a condition which is supposed to occur frequently in the presence of panic disorder. Since it is a heart condition, patients told they have this condition have one more thing to worry about. Uncommonly, in the company of...
There are two medical conditions that come up very frequently in consideration of panic disorder. They are said variously to be confused with the disorder because of a similarity of symptoms or to be related to it because they occur together. They are reactive...
4 things to do A common practice in the treatment of a first major depression is to keep patients who have responded to drugs on them for about a year. Then, because such patients can go a long time before a second depressive episode, they are weaned from the drugs,...
Thinking properly about medical illness. A hypochondriac is someone who, given certain physical symptoms, is inclined to imagine the worst possible disease. If a doctor were to do that when examining a patient, he would be wrong most of the time. For that reason,...
Family members have considerable influence on any one among them who is troubled by health anxiety, or any other emotional problem, for that matter. They can make things better, or worse. The following are guidelines for friends and family to follow in coping with...
Pros and cons—mostly cons. For years I have run a clinic for people who suffer from hypochondriasis and other related conditions. Usually they worry about an illness that can lurk invisibly but that has the potential to be fatal, such as AIDS or pancreatic cancer....
Unexpected and previously unknown calamities. I have been practicing medicine for many years. Nevertheless, from time to time I hear about some awful medical condition that has escaped my attention previously. Usually, it has some strange name. Usually it occurs, or...