I recently engaged in what I can call a heated, respectful discussion with a group of students on the subject of the word “health.” Health typically comes to mind as an identifier of whether or not someone or something is OK; we breathe a sigh of relief when we hear that a new baby is healthy. We daven for the health of our loved ones,

In the young Orthodox Jewish community, a significant mental health issue is bubbling up from just below the surface. Its roots lie in the recent past. Many grandparents who immigrated from Europe came to the U.S. near penniless. They and their children had nowhere to go but up. Many proved so successful that it became hard for their

Over the years, a number of so-called tumor markers have been identified for various cancers. Tumor markers are proteins which circulate in the blood and are elevated in the presence of certain cancers. These markers tend to be identified with specific cancer types—prostate specific antigen (PSA) for prostate cancer, carcinoembryonic

(Courtesy of SMGH) A familiar statement that we have all heard is “You are what you eat!” According to various studies, we can add to that statement—“You are or will be what you eat!”

Growing evidence points to certain dietary habits as increasing or decreasing cancer risk. And nutrition is

(Courtesy of Forever Living) Have you ever left a pot of cholent sitting out for a few days?Not a pleasant experience! Well, that’s exactly what our digestive system looks like. When you mix flour and water together, you get glue. So, too, when you eat too much pita, pasta, white flour, starches, junk

In the last year, the world has been on global shutdown due to COVID-19. Israel’s doors closed to tourists in March 2020. But now that Israel is beginning to reopen, Dr. Jeffrey Cahn of Stamford, Connecticut, has the distinction of being the first dentist in over 13 months from outside Israel to volunteer at the Dental

This piece was originally published on the CCSA blog and can be found at www.jewishccsa.org/blog

A nurse that I worked with asked me to give a lecture to nursing students about addiction. She wanted me to focus on how to screen for addiction, the symptoms a patient might present with, and a general

I’ve created a sleep hygiene guideline for myself recently—to turn my cell phone on “airplane mode” before getting into bed, and to anticipate the visualization techniques I can use should my mind begin to wander with racing thoughts. Otherwise, I know that I will mindlessly drift toward the social media apps on my phone, scrolling

There are few topics in medicine more controversial than screening. This is for a number of reasons. The first is that early detection or screening has an intuitive logic to it for both laymen and physicians that is irresistible and that argues for the commonsense use of putative screening tests, even in the absence of evidence supporting

(Courtesy of SMGH) The advisory board at St. Mary’s General Hospital recently had a virtual meeting to discuss progress at the hospital and to obtain ideas from the board that will help us serve the frum community. We welcomed two new members who replaced Dr. Elliott Samet, z”l, whom we lost to COVID last year, and Esther East,

We discussed in last week’s article the potential use of autologous bone marrow transplantation (BMT) for giving dramatically higher doses of chemotherapy than would normally be possible with conventional methods. This has been successfully utilized for hematologic malignancies, like leukemia. For most solid tumors, there is not good

As a hospital chaplain I have entered countless patient rooms, ranging in age from newly born to 105 years old. I have seen people with all sorts of sickness and disease in every part of the hospital. However, I knew that the patient I was about to see would be different for me. I have heard thousands of stories—stories of pain,