The Weekly Check-Up Podcast

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...

“Don’t talk with your mouth full” is an expression we’ve all heard. And if we have children or younger siblings, we’ve also spoken it.  Did it arise out of decorum so the listener is not visually confronted with half eaten food or worse, spat upon? Or was it addressing the resulting mumbled and garbled speech? Or was it a medical admonition to prevent choking? The origins are unclear, but it’s fascinating to give consideration to o...

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) encompass a broad set of practices and beliefs that are outside evidence-based medicine as they are rarely subjected to well-designed and well-conducted multi-phase clinical trials. On this episode, we focus on a variety of CAM practices that share a common thread in the belief that their benefit is achieved through detoxification: the removal or rendering harmless things in the body whi...