Diseases & Conditions Archive

The increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes among Americans has led to an increase in fatty liver disease. Weight loss and exercise are the mainstays of treatment.

If our eyes are healthy, we're producing tears all the time and not noticing it very much, if at all. We need a thin layer of tears to lubricate, protect, and nourish the fronts of our eyes. That "tear film," as ophthalmologists call it, isn't just salty water but a complex mixture of substances produced and maintained by several glands and structures in and around the eyes. If the tear film degrades, we experience dry eyes. The symptoms are familiar to many of us: irritation, scratchiness, a burning sensation. Sometimes vision is affected, getting blurry off and on.

Mild cases — and many are — can be treated rather easily with any of over a dozen different over-the-counter products. In a change from the past, dry eyes are now seen as having an inflammatory component, not just a loss of moisture. To combat the inflammation, some ophthalmologists prescribe drops that contain a very small amount of cyclosporine if the over-the-counter products don't work. Cyclosporine is a drug that organ transplant recipients take to suppress the immune system so the organ is less likely to be rejected.

People who have been taking antidepressants for some time may wish to stop taking them due to unpleasant side effects. This can be accomplished, but it is best to taper the dosage slowly and be aware of the potential for discontinuation symptoms.

Urinary bleeding can be dramatic and frightening, prompting an appropriate call to your doctor. But sometimes the call travels in the other direction; many people are surprised and alarmed to get a call from their doctors reporting that the urine that looked clear in the specimen jar actually contains red blood cells (RBCs). Either way, blood in the urine, known technically as hematuria, requires medical evaluation. Although the results are often reassuring, hematuria is a warning symptom that you should never ignore.

Blood can enter the urine from any place in the urinary tract. So the first step in understanding hematuria is to understand your anatomy.

Diverticular disease develops due to a lack of dietary fiber, and is most common in the elderly, but many people never realize they have it because there are few symptoms.

People with peripheral neuropathy may experience pain, numbness, tingling, and other unpleasant sensations. Often the cause cannot be determined, so the condition must be managed by attempting to treat the symptoms.

The first accurate medical discussion of psoriasis dates back to 1801, but the disease itself is much older. In fact, its very name is borrowed from an ancient Greek word meaning an itchy or scaly condition. About 7 million Americans are plagued by this itching and scaling, and many of them have serious complications involving other organs. Although psoriasis is classified as a dermatologic disease, it doesn't start in the skin, and its damage may be more than skin deep.

Beneath it all

At a basic level, psoriasis is a disorder of the immune system. White blood cells called T-helper lymphocytes become overactive, producing excess amounts of cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor, interleukin-2, and interferon-gamma. In turn, these chemicals trigger inflammation in the skin and other organs. In the skin, the inflammation produces three characteristic findings: widened blood vessels, accumulation of white blood cells, and abnormally rapid multiplication of keratinocytes, the main cells in the outer layer of the skin. In healthy skin, keratinocytes take about a month to divide, mature, migrate to the skin surface, and slough off to make way for younger cells. But in psoriasis, the entire process is speeded up to as little as three to five days. The result is thickened, red skin that sheds silvery scales of keratinocytes that have matured before their time (see Figure 1).

Some men use growth hormone as an anti-aging treatment, even though it is illegal to market it for this purpose. Studies of test subjects who took growth hormone found a high incidence of side effects such as joint pain and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Many people think of gout as an archaic and uncommon affliction, but it is becoming more common, mainly among older men who eat a lot of meat and seafood and drink a lot of alcohol, particularly beer.