Plyometrics: Three explosive exercises even beginners can try

As a kid, I spent many Saturdays romping around my Florida neighborhood imitating Colonel Steve Austin, better known as The Six Million Dollar Man to avid TV watchers in the 1970s. The popular show featured a bionic man — half human and half machine — who could jump from three-story buildings, leap over six-foot-high walls, […]

Prostate cancer: A new type of radiation treatment limits risk of side effects

When it comes to limiting side effects from radiation therapy, the name of the game is precision. Doctors want to treat the cancer while avoiding healthy tissues, and fortunately technological advances are making that increasingly possible. One newer technique called stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) can focus precisely targeted beams of high-dose radiation on a tumor […]

Tourette syndrome: Understanding the basics

Just about everyone has met or seen someone who has a tic disorder. Many tic disorders are diagnosed during childhood. Less often, a tic disorder like Tourette syndrome is diagnosed in adulthood — as was the case for Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi. What are tics? Tics are very common, with as many as one in […]

Validation: Defusing intense emotions

Brittany Jordan-Arthur was at loggerheads with her 7-year-old daughter one recent morning. The little girl simply did not want to head out the door to summer camp, finding any and all excuses to hang back. But instead of expressing exasperation or annoyance — knowing that would make her daughter dig in her heels even more […]

Prostate cancer: An emerging surgical alternative shows promise in older men

Think of prostate cancer surgery and what likely comes to mind is a radical prostatectomy, which is an operation to remove the entire prostate gland along with the seminal vesicles that produce semen. However, men with localized prostate cancer — meaning cancer that is still confined to the prostate — have another surgical option. Called […]

Harvard Health Ad Watch: Why are toilets everywhere in this drug ad?

If the first goal of a drug advertisement is to grab your attention, this ad for Entyvio (vedolizumab) works. You see a young woman getting into her car, sitting in her work cubicle, sitting in a restaurant, and finally in the waiting room of her doctor’s office. But she’s not sitting on the seat of […]

Leprosy in Florida: How worried should we be?

The media uproar that swirled a few weeks ago around leprosy in the US drew attention away from ongoing heat and extreme weather that pose far more danger to most of us. But does a single case of a man diagnosed with leprosy in central Florida suggest that anyone anywhere in the US could get […]