Berries are healthful and delicious, even if some of the health claims may be a little bit exaggerated.

Summer is berry season. The prime time for strawberries is winding down here in the Northeast, but July is the month for raspberries and blueberries, and blackberries will be ready for picking in August.

Berries are perhaps the easiest way to fulfill the fruit part of the "eat more fruit and vegetables" mandate. Research has shown that people are more inclined to eat food in bite-sized portions, and berries come that way (packaged foods are okay as long as nature does the ...

Turning off these devices can spare patients pain and suffering.

The front-page article of the March 2011 Health Letter was about implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), devices that jolt the heart back into a normal rhythm if it starts to beat too fast or in an irregular fashion. ICDs, which are about the size of a small cell phone, are surgically implanted under the skin, just below the collarbone. The article touched on several issues, including some research suggesting that too many people are getting ICDs, partly because doctors aren't waiting long enough after heart failure is diagnosed to see if other ...

Editor's Note: Dr. Suzanne Salamon is joining the Health Letter's editorial board. Dr. Salamon is associate chief for geriatric clinical programs at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. We interviewed her in her office.

When should someone see a geriatrician?

The vast majority of older patients are doing just fine with their own internal medicine doctor. We tend to see patients who have many medical problems, are seeing multiple specialists, and are taking many medications. This can get complicated and difficult to coordinate, so some doctors will tell their patients that they would benefit from seeing a geriatrician.

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New criteria divide the disease into three stages.

Doctors take a two-pronged approach to diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. First, they ask patients questions and perhaps have them fill out one of the standardized questionnaires used to assess memory and other parts of thinking. The purpose is to evaluate people's cognitive problems to see if what they're experiencing is consistent with Alzheimer's. Forgetfulness coupled with abnormal social behavior, for example, might indicate a different brain disease. And mild problems with short-term memory could be ascribed to normal aging.

Second, doctors will order various tests to rule out other conditions that can ...

Hopes that vitamin supplements can fend off cancer, cognitive decline, and other health problems keep on getting dashed. The arc is pretty familiar. Epidemiologic studies, often with animal experiments and lab-based research thrown in, suggest protective effects. But results from randomized clinical trials show no effect. The bubble of optimism pops, and the public attitude toward nutrition science and advice sours.

There are several explanations for why this happens. People inclined to take vitamins often have good health habits, and those health habits, rather than the vitamins, may be responsible for the positive effects seen in epidemiologic studies, despite good-faith ...

Weight, warm skin, and the angle of the sun are among the determinants.

When an Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel made long-awaited vitamin D recommendations late in 2010, one of the messages was that most Americans probably have enough of the vitamin circulating in their blood to get its main proven benefit, protection of bones. But in 2011, the National Center for Health Statistics released data that paint a less rosy picture. According to the center's numbers, almost one in three Americans has vitamin D blood levels below 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), the threshold that the IOM panel said ...

 

Comparisons have produced mixed results, but the heyday for both procedures (especially bypass) may be winding down.

Yes, it's an oversimplification, but at one level, coronary artery disease is a plumbing problem. The coronary arteries supply the heart with blood. When they get gunked up with atherosclerotic plaque, not enough blood can get through. If the blockage isn't too bad, the result is angina, the pain caused by a heart working with an inadequate blood supply. If the blockage is bigger or the plaque ruptures, the result can be a heart attack, the death of heart tissue that was ...

Q. I have chronic sinusitis and nasal polyps. I switched doctors and the new specialist suggested trying oral steroids, something that my previous doctor never mentioned. What do you think?

A. I think a short course of five to seven days of oral steroids is worth a try, particularly if your sinusitis isn't getting any better.

As you know, sinusitis is inflammation of the mucous membranes that line the sinuses, and nasal polyps are fleshy growths inside the nasal passageways and sinuses. Sinusitis often causes an uncomfortable feeling of pressure in the face (the exact location depends on the sinus ...