A Landmark Study on Palliation of Bone Mets PainWhen a primary cancer such as cancer of the breast, prostate or lung spreads to the bone (bone mets), treatment strategies become complex. In today’s world of oncology, better systemic chemotherapies can add months and even years to a patient’s life; in addition, local cancer control of […] KEEP READING
What You Should Know About CartilageOne of the most fascinating components of the human body is cartilage, an incredibly versatile material. Trying to describe cartilage is like the six blind men who try to figure out what an elephant is: “The elephant is like a pillar,” said the man who touched his leg. “Oh no! […] KEEP READING
How Stress Makes Essential Tremor WorseEssential tremor (ET) is the most common form of uncontrollable rhythmic shaking, though it is sometimes misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease. The involuntary trembling results from abnormal communication between certain areas of the brain (cerebellum, thalamus, and brain stem). It is estimated that 10 million Americans suffer from ET, though many […] KEEP READING
4 Needles You May Not Want in Your Back One of the conventional treatments for facet joint pain is x-ray guided injections into the inflamed joints. The facet joints are located between each vertebra (backbone) where the small outer projections of one vertebra meet those above and below. These joints, cushioned with cartilage, allow spinal […] CONTINUE
Ten Facts About Your Bones How much do you know about your skeleton and its bones? Most of us don’t think about our inner architecture every day, much like working or shopping in a multistory building without thinking about the framework of steel that supports it. Here are ten fascinating facts about your bones: You […] CONTINUE
Prostate Cancer Bone Mets: Tracking Response to Treatment Using MRI MRI offers new hope for evaluating how well prostate cancer bone metastasis (PCa bone mets) are responding to chemotherapy. An exciting new paper (April, 2017) by a British team at the Institute of Cancer Research (Sutton, England) reports their original pilot study confirming MRI tracking […] CONTINUE
Essential Tremor and CAM, Part I: Acupuncture and Pharmacopuncture I thought it would be interesting to do a small series of blogs on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments for essential tremor (ET). Standard medicine (also called Western, allopathic, mainstream or conventional medicine) was slow to embrace CAM until roughly the last four decades, and […] CONTINUE
First Center to Treat Two ET Patients with MRgFUS on the Same Day The Sperling Medical Group is the first U.S. center to have treated two essential tremor (ET) patients on the same day using MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS). What was truly remarkable was the immediate improvement experienced by each of the patients. In one […] CONTINUE
Do Steroid Injections Damage Facet Cartilage? When patients have back pain that is not responding to noninvasive interventions (oral anti-inflammatories, heat/cold applications, exercise, posture improvement, physical therapy, etc.) the cause may be arthritis of the spine’s facet joints. The standard “definitive” diagnosis is a nerve block (numbing anesthetic) injected into the joint to interrupt pain […] CONTINUE
5 Important Needs of Bone Mets Patients Great health care is not just about taking care of the body. “Comprehensive cancer care” is a phrase that has gained wide use. In large part, cancer patients are living longer with their disease than was possible even two or three decades ago. Clinicians now recognize that quality […] CONTINUE
Facet Joint Injection Benefits are Hard to Prove Those who live in developed nations enjoy many benefits that are easily taken for granted. There is enough food to go around, dwellings are climate-controlled, transportation and travel are expedited by conveyances capable of both speed and safety, technology brings efficiency and imagination to both work and […] CONTINUE
Multidisciplinary Teamwork Makes Life Better for Bone Mets Patients A diagnosis of metastatic cancer from one location into the bone (e.g. from breast, prostate, kidney, etc.) is called bone mets. It is different from primary bone cancer that originates in the bone, and is particularly discouraging because the patient has already been dealing with cancer […] CONTINUE
Essential Tremor and CAM, Part II: Vitamins As I wrote in Part I of this series, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) developed a large following during the last three or four decades. There is considerable interest in the preventive or therapeutic properties of substances such as herbs or mushrooms that occur naturally, and healing practices […] CONTINUE
