The Weekly Check-Up Podcast

On this episode, we continue our exploration of the body’s circuitry moving from the heart and its circuitry disruptions causing arrhythmias to the brain where circuitry disruptions cause seizures. Maybe you’ve witnessed a seizure in a family member or friend, or you’ve seen them portrayed on TV or in a movie like the Paul Muni classic, “The Last Angry Man.” Whatever your exposure, your understanding is likely more informed by fict...

The complexity of the human body makes it perfect fodder for analogies and metaphors to explain its workings. The urinary tract removes liquid waste, gaining its analogy to plumbing and urologists as plumbers. The muscles and bones of the skeletal system are not unlike the beams and girders of a building, resulting in orthopedists being called carpenters.  All of which begs the question: Who are the electricians, and what body syst...

The external human ear is a shell-shaped structure composed of cartilage covered by skin that lies on the lateral aspect of the head. Inside the head lie the middle and inner ear. All together they are the organ of hearing or audition and equilibrium or balance. When it comes to common disease associations, the outer ear is skin cancer, the middle ear is otitis media or earaches, and the inner ear is hearing loss, tinnitus (hearing...

The skin is the largest organ in the body, covering its entire external surface. The skin’s structure is an intricate layered network that serves as the body’s suit of armor protecting against everything from bacteria and fungus to ultraviolet (UV) light, to chemicals and mechanical injury, while also regulating temperature and hydration. In aggregate cancers of the skin are the most common cancers. Fortunately, they can be prevent...

The expression “the cure is worse than the disease” is often associated with cancer treatment and rightly so as the first decades of cancer care were as likely to shorten a patient's life as lengthen it.  Most of us have some past or recent experience that justifies the statement. Due to these experiences, we conclude that anything bad that happens to someone once their cancer treatment begins is the result of the treatment, as...

Cancer is among the most complex of diseases. For 5,000 years, cancer was thought to be just one disease. Over time, thinking changed, and cancer was viewed as different diseases distinguished by the organ in which it arose. The advent of the microscope revealed cancer to be a cellular disease, different in each of the 200 cell types in the body. The unraveling of the human genome revealed that mutations in genes that governed cell...

The foundations of trauma care in America began with caring for injured military personnel during war. During the Civil War, President Lincoln drove creation of the first trauma manual. During World War II, researchers started going into the battlefield to study care processes and clinical outcomes. The Korean and Vietnam Wars brought advances in medical transportation, including use of helicopters. On today’s episode, experts in t...

At the biological level, aging results from the impact of the accumulation of molecular and cellular damage over time. This leads to a gradual decrease in physical and mental capacity, a growing risk of disease and ultimately death. These changes are neither linear nor consistent, and they are only loosely associated with a person’s age in years. The diversity seen in older age is not random, it’s about your genetics, how you are a...

The phrase “caveat emptor” comes from Latin and means “let the buyer beware.” It originated as a legal principle in ancient Rome. Before the Industrial Revolution, caveat emptor became the common law for most land sales and purchases. It is based on the idea that buyers usually have less information about the product than the seller. In healthcare, the patient as a consumer of healthcare always seems to be at a disadvantage for inf...

Effective communication is essential in any business, but even more so in healthcare. The effects of poor communication in healthcare can have extremely serious consequences. Poor communication results in misdiagnoses and other medical mistakes that can easily lead to avoidable health complications and the death of patients. Health literacy refers to the ability of individuals to obtain, understand, and use health information and s...

Few body parts have been as useful to our function and the representation of our world as has the foot. In literature, a person’s manner or speed of walking or running is known as the fleet of foot. The historical military definition of an infantryman is a foot soldier. In measurement, a unit of linear measure equal to 12 inches is referred to as a foot. However, for this edition of the podcast, we will focus on the following defin...

When we think of the body's organs, we think of the heart, lungs, kidney, and liver.  When we think of the body's systems, we think of nervous and vascular. The musculoskeletal system is an organ system that provides structure, support, and movement to the body and much more. It consists of bones, muscles, joints, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments. On this episode, we explore the various aspects of the musculoskeletal syste...

Possibly the most intricate and elegant of the body’s functions is the immune system. It's designed to recognize and protect your body or “the self” from all that is not the self, such as bacteria, viruses, even splinters. It can also run amok reacting to non threatening invaders like peanuts or even "the self" in what is called auto-immune disease like rheumatoid arthritis. Among the ways in which the immune system isolates foreig...

The differential diagnosis is a systematic method used by physicians to specifically identify or explain a patient's clinical complaint where multiple explanations are possible. Akin to a police who-done-it procedural, the differential diagnosis uses the evidence of symptoms, clinical signs, patient history, family history, and medical knowledge to find the culprit. On this episode, we’ll explore the use of the differential dia...

Research shows that self-advocacy in healthcare can lead to significantly improved health outcomes, including better quality of care, increased patient satisfaction, reduced symptom burden, and a greater sense of control when patients actively participate in decision making about their goals, treatment, and needs.  However, self-advocacy is often misinterpreted to include self-diagnosis, self-prescribing, and reliance on Dr. Google...

Atop the textbook list of medical emergencies are the following: bleeding uncontrollably (including coughing or vomiting blood); breathing problems (difficulty breathing, shortness of breath); change in mental status (unusual behavior, confusion); fainting or loss of consciousness; chest pain for two minutes or more; feeling of committing suicide or murder; and accidents and injury (including poisoning, burns, smoke inhalation, and...

There is a unique emotional conflict with diseases of the brain and central nervous system, a need to understand and put a label on the process and a dread or denial when that label is placed.  Whether it’s schizophrenia or dementia, depression or ALS, the pronouncement of the label is as fraught as the absence of one. On this episode, we’ll hear from patients who struggle with both the fear and functional loss of neurodegenerative...

The first joint replacement surgeries were performed 135 years ago in Germany, shortly followed by efforts in France and England using rubber and steel joints. Refinements in materials and methods progressed slowly, but by 1969 the FDA finally approved the first hip prosthesis, the technical name for the artificial joint. In 2025, it is projected that 2.5 million Americans will undergo hip and knee replacement surgeries with countl...