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The Weekly Check-Up Podcast

The Weekly Check-Up Podcast
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Dr. Bruce Feinberg, a healthcare thought leader and talk radio personality, hosts “The Weekly Check-Up Podcast,” a bi-monthly healthcare talk program featuring practical answers to a wide range of health issues. Dr. Feinberg explores topics ranging from skin conditions to the musculoskeletal system to body fat to heart disease and all points in between. New episodes of “The Weekly Check-Up Podcast” appear every other week on all major podcast platforms.
29 Episodes
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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 near drowning). On this episode, we talk with three callers whose situations challenge the textbook list of medical emergencies.
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 countless more undergoing replacement surgeries of other joints.
Body fat is not a four letter word, it’s a critical part of human design. When the body consumes more calories than it needs, those calories are stored as body fat and too much storage fat results in obesity. The obesity epidemic, the causes of that epidemic, and the modern miracle of new classes of obesity drug therapy are the topics of our callers.
Like the skin, the musculoskeletal system is often taken for granted and not understood as another complex organ system that plays a critical role in things such as blood production and immunity. Aging bones can have as much impact on life expectancy as an aging heart. Our callers share personal stories about their aging bones and the complexities of managing their bone health in a fragmented and confusing healthcare environment.
From acne to rashes to cancer to nail fungus, the largest organ of the body is given too little attention. In this episode on skin, we’ll hear from three callers with three very different conditions that range from the mundane to the obscure, but all share a commonality as the skin condition is complicated by the human condition.
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 disease.
Out-of-network doctors or hospitals, surprise billing, limited benefits, and off-formulary medication are all-too-familiar healthcare hurdles. The list of potential financial disasters awaiting the healthcare consumer is so profound it has earned its own name on the list of medical complications: financial toxicity. Possibly more than other consumer sector, healthcare is fraught with buyer beware situations at every turn.
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.
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