The Weekly Check-Up Podcast

The impact of diabetes in America today is nothing short of apocalyptic. It’s a scourge, an epidemic, a catastrophe, a preventable tragedy of enormous proportion, and none of these statements are exaggerations. More than half the country is pre-diabetic or diabetic,  and more than 3/4 of Americans are obese. The extent of obesity in American youth suggests the trend is likely to worsen.

The penis refers to the male sex organ, which combines with the testis and prostate gland to complete the male sex anatomy. It’s a relatively simple organ comprised of the head or glans, the shaft, and the base, which surround the urethra through which urine and semen flow. Despite its anatomical and physiological simplicity, its cultural influence remains profound as does its central role in men’s health.

Throughout the history of man, most disease was a medical mystery characterized as either a divine response to sin and disobedience, an imbalance of bodily humors, or an unknown pestilence. As we recently learned from Covid, mysteries still persist in medicine. And those who were fond of the TV show “House” may recall that medical mysteries are often of a personal nature. On this episode, several callers share their own.

When you think about blood, what comes to mind? Blood contains the elaborate systems for clotting and immune regulation that prevent us from bleeding to death or dying from infection. Blood is also integrally linked to the lungs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged, as well as to the heart, arteries, and veins through which it flows. Blood is life.

Cholesterol was the first measurable biological marker of heart disease discovered in medical research. Biomedical research became obsessed with cholesterol. In fact, studies of cholesterol’s role in disease have garnered 13 Nobel Prizes. This episode touches on what we know about cholesterol, what we don’t know, and the mythology that has been built around it and around the drugs that treat excess amounts of cholesterol.

“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 our human design that has food, water, and air all having a common entry point into the human body.

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 which lead to ill health.

In 1660, a German physician first described an itch as an unpleasant sensation that inevitably prompts the desire to scratch. Itching and scratching were believed inseparable from one another. Together they constitute a cycle whereby the former is the cause and the latter is the effect. This cycle can become viscous whereby scratching creates an inflammatory response, which induces more itching. Identifying the cause of an itch becomes paramount as the cycle must be broken and prevented if possible.

On this episode, we focus on the critical function the lungs serve in the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen.  Respiration or breathing is an involuntary action that occurs in the lungs, a critical organ for living, that we too often take for granted as we inhale air contaminated by smoke, chemicals, and microorganisms.

For thousands of years, urine was the primary tool physicians used to diagnose disease. It was referred to as the divine fluid and the window to the body. Tasting of urine to detect sweetness was common practice in the diagnosis of diabetes, giving it its medical name: diabetes mellitus. Mellitus is Latin for honey. On this episode, we explore the urinary tract, the organs that produce then excrete urine.

Veins are low pressure pipes that remove waste and carbon dioxide from our bodies’ cells, while arteries are high pressure distributors of nutrients and oxygen. Arteries get more attention as their associated disease states are responsible for life threatening conditions like heart attacks and strokes. But veins should not be overlooked as we will learn in this episode.

Signs and symptoms – observations of changes in our body that compromise our sense of wellness – are nature’s way of warning us that our bodies are under stress. However, they can be difficult to navigate. On this episode, we discuss when to ignore and when to act. 

Breast cancer has been at the forefront of cancer research and prevention strategies. On this episode, we discuss the changing treatment paradigm of earlier systemic therapy and the ever-increasing issues that have developed around surviving a disease that just decades ago was a death sentence.

Few medical concepts have so captured the public’s attention with its promise of eternal life and eternal youth as has regenerative medicine. On this episode, our callers discuss the first widely commercialized applications of regenerative medicine: platelet rich plasma and stem cell injections.

Aches and pains, cough and congestion, weakness and fatigue. There are an infinite number of ways we describe illness, but what does it mean to be well? Is wellness a state of mind, a state of being, does it exist? We explore wellness and the different ways patients pursue it.

Remarkably, nearly one-third of U.S. adults experience heartburn with such frequency that it creates a multitude of problems from chronic cough to cancer. It thereby constitutes a disease: GERD (gastrointestinal-esophageal reflux disease). This episode finds three callers struggling with GERD.

As the entire body is a working machine, all of it is subject to wear and tear, but the joints deserve special attention in this regard. On today’s episode, we’ll skim the surface of joint health as our three callers entertain discussions about feet, shoulders, and spine.

In poetry and song, in phrase and idiom, and yes, in the more mundane statistics of medicine, the heart reigns supreme among the body’s organs. It's the leading cause of disease death, disability and healthcare cost. It is thereby no surprise that questions regarding heart disease are among the most frequent topics of our callers. In this episode, we discuss the three most common chronic heart diseases.

One way to think about the body's functions is as a collection of integrated anatomic and physiologic systems like circulatory, respiratory, musculoskeletal, etc. The nervous system is the most complex of the body’s systems and is comprised of two parts: central (the brain and spinal cord) and peripheral (the nerves exiting the spinal cord innervating every cell of the body.)  This episode touches on both as callers ask about common and obscure neurologic diseases.

We are now three generations without witness to the crippling fear and loss created by polio, small pox and measles.  We were then a society embracing science, the space race and new medical technology. Post-Covid vaccine hesitancy has worsened an already disturbing trend and as a result we are now witnessing the lowest childhood vaccination rates in decades.  In this episode Dr. Feinberg has frank conversations with callers on both sides of the vaccine controversy.