Daily Archives: 10 Jan 08

Rahul Parikh MD: Is there a doctor in the mouse?

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Terrible title but important issue: “Arrogant doctors criticize their patients who go online to research ailments. But they’re wrong. The best health sites are a boon to patients and doctors alike.

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A 2004 study showed that almost two-thirds of patients would like to have Internet information provided to them by their doctor. In contrast, a 2001 study of doctors showed that barely half of them encouraged their patients to go online (although the trend has been increasing over time), and 80 percent actually warned them against doing so.

In one regard, this is simply bad business. Pew tells us that patients either fire doctors unwilling to help them with the Web or keep going online without telling them. More important, when patients do venture online themselves, they can sink into a swamp of outdated medical studies, confront a lot of misinformation, and risk creating a rift in the doctor-patient relationship.” (Salon) I’m not sure arrogance exactly captures it. Certainly, there are insufferably arrogant MDs, but I am not sure they are those most threatened by their patient’s use of Google. Insecurity is more to teh point. The old model of the medical profession as an esoteric priesthood guarding secret knowledge should have long since given way to a collaborative model empowering patients, but many physicians do not realize it.

More Sun Exposure May Be Good For Some People

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“The benefits of moderately increased exposure to sunlight – namely the production of vitamin D, which protects against the lethal effects of many forms of cancer and other diseases – may outweigh the risk of developing skin cancer in populations deficient in vitamin D.

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So, how can people get the benefits of vitamin D without running the risk of deadly skin cancer?

“As far as skin cancer goes, we need to be most worried about melanoma, a serious disease with significant mortality,” Setlow says.

Melanoma is triggered by UVA (the long UV wavelengths) and visible light. Vitamin-D production in the body, on the other hand, is triggered by UVB (the short UV wavelengths at the earth’s surface). “So perhaps we should redesign sunscreens so they don’t screen out as much UVB while still protecting us from the melanoma-inducing UVA and visible light,” Setlow says.

Increased UVB exposure may result in an increase in non-melanoma skin cancers. But these are relatively easy to cure and have very low mortality rates compared with the internal cancers vitamin D appears to protect against, Setlow adds.

Another option would be to increase vitamin D consumption while continuing to wear sunscreen. Vitamin D is easily accessible in many foods and liquids, such as cod liver oil and milk, and in dietary supplements.” (Science Daily)