Back pains are common as one ages.

Sitting hunched over reading a book can flatten your spine and make you likely to have significant back problems such as early arthritis. If you have pain after studying or reading for prolonged periods, use a heating pad to the affected area. Try to sit straight when doing something like studying. You should gently stretch and move your head and neck every four hours.

The skin is the site of evaporation of water. It is our own natural air-conditioner. In the winter when the humidity is low and the air is very dry, the skin becomes itchy because it also becomes dry and, in some patients, very scaly. Certain conditions like diabetes, high fevers, or alcoholism, where the body becomes dehydrated means that the skin of such patients will itch more.

A lot of people believe that a smartphone is dangerous. There have been endless discussions about cell phones and cancer, for example. In reviewing the data, there is none to show that microwaves such as those used in cell phones cause brain tumors. On TV about 10 years ago, a cell phone was shone to cook popcorn on a table. What was not shown was the radiant heater underneath the table. This was hardly convincing and made cell phones as a cause of brain tumors highly unlikely.

This is the season for Lyme disease, and one should be careful walking through glens or high weeds with exposed skin. Saddle River’s deer population is huge and the incidence of Lyme could be quite high. You can be bitten by a tick and not know it until a targeted bulls-eye lesion appears on your skin. This lesion is fairly typical and should not be missed, but sadly it is missed in over 60% of cases. Generally, in the early stages after the tick bite with infection there are no symptoms. Blood tests immediatly after a tick bites you are generally negative. It takes a few days to weeks for the tests to become positive. If the rash is typical and/or you present the deer tick to a doctor (which you have just removed from your body) antibiotics can be given empirically until the disease is confirmed.

Believe it or not, there are significant effects to hugging another person. In a study from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015, people who had great social support in the form of a hug, had fewer colds than a control group. Four hundred and four adults were studied. Dr. Sheldon Cohen who was the lead author of the study concluded that “hugging protects people who are under stress”.

As we age, we sometimes see small threads cruise across our eyes. They are most visible when looking at something that is bright. They can be distracting and annoying, but they usually do not interfere with sight. They are actually strands that come from the vitreous, a gel like substance that keeps the eyeball round. Most people get used to them and short of finding them to be an occasional annoyance, pay no attention to them. They cause no medical conditions.

Graying hair is a big concern for both men and women. After age 30 hair begins to gray 10-20% every decade. The process by which hair grays revolves around the presence or absence of a cell type in the hair shaft. The pigment is derived from melanin in cells called melanocytes. These cells are the same cells that produce skin pigment and make us brown or give us olive complexions. When the pigment in the hair shaft dies the hair becomes gray or loses pigment.

Polyps are collections of cells, small clumps within various organs like the nose, the bowel, the ear, the uterus, and the vocal cords. There are essentially two kinds of polyps, pedunculated and sessile. Pedunculat-ed polyps are cells on a stalk like a lollipop. The sessile polyps are flat and part of the tissue on which they arise. Some polyps have cancer producing potential, and this depends on where they are, the size, and the tissue of origin.

This is summer time and the biggest concern we have here in Saddle River is about the huge numbers of deer. They seem to be everywhere, causing accidents, offering themselves up as food for the new crop of coyotes, and causing disease. All deer are carriers of ticks and ticks cause several diseases, the most important one being Lyme disease. I informally took questions from our residents and those of some neighboring towns that also have deer problems.

Both osteopenia and osteoporosis refer to decreased bone strength and it is one of the most important issues facing both men and women as they age. It is the health of their skeletons. No one wants to break a bone from trauma; a car accident, a fracture while jogging, or because of a tumor that has spread to bone or in rare cases originates in the bone itself. However, there are conditions in which one’s bones get weak and sometimes break. Some of it has to do with age, but most of it has to do with gender and nutrition.

Spring is finally here and with it come the sneezes, coughs, runny noses, and symptoms that affect the entire body; symptoms like fever and muscle aches. We all suffer from allergies, which are immune reactions to normally innocuous environmental antigens. These foreign substances are called antigens or allergens and some examples might be pollen, mold, cat dander, dog fur, peanuts, etc. When we have a lot of rain, our gardens and lawns flourish, and our bodies are exposed to huge amounts of normally non-harmful agents. In the spring go out and run your finger along a surface and note the green stuff that you can easily lift off the surface of a lawn chair or a car hood. That’s what goes into your lungs and up your nasal passages.

One of the most vexing aspects of our busy lives is our inability to get a good night’s sleep. It amazes me that many patients live on Ambien or Lunesta as sleep aids.

It’s terrible to be fat. Most people are trying to lose weight, at least the patients that I see. There are a few individuals that aresvelte, but they are in the minority. Forty percent of adults and 19 % of children are now obese and with these numbers more than 50% of today’s children will be obese by the time they are 35 years of age. This is very striking data and the major reason that diabetes type 2 is on the rise. It is of course genetic in many families, but also the result of obesity and our bad diets.

Look out for colds and flu this winter season. Both can be nasty and run the gamut from mild to severe. While there is no known cure or orthodox method to prevent the common cold, there is the flu vaccine and every reason to be immunized.