“I don’t think theaters should be closed at this point,” Robert Lahita, a clinical professor of medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the chair of the department of medicine at St. Joseph’s Healthcare System, told me. “In fact, a month ago, I said they should have been open, especially if we’re taking kids to school and kids are before teachers in live learning. There’s no reason that theaters should be closed.”

Anything traumatic can trigger a fight or flight response within our bodies. Most people recover from PTSD as it’s known, but some people wind up with a stress disorder that causes a part of the brain that controls emotions to be overactive. It also lowers the activity of the front of your brain a decision-making area. This area of the brain is called the amygdala.

It’s interesting that a few cups of coffee per day may slow down the deadly progression of advanced colon cancer. So says new research. Over 1200 patients were studied who drank four or more cups of coffee on a daily basis.

The nose and smell are extremely important to good health. They are often signs of health problems. This has particular importance to Covid19 and the influenza virus. Symptoms usually appear quickly and include fever, aches, and chills regarding the flu. Fever aches, and loss of smell and taste are typical of Covid19 infections. About the flu, antiviral treatments can shorten your illness by one to two days; a disease that can exist anywhere between a few days and two weeks. Covid19 on the other hand can be with you for many weeks and months. We can discuss this further in the month of December when doctors will be busy establishing the difference between the two infections.

If a tick attaches to a mouse, deer, or other animal that is carrying the bacteria called Borrelia, and the tick becomes infected. It may then spread the disease when it attaches itself to you. Tick populations tend to be higher in elevations, in wooded and grassy areas where the creatures they feed on live and roam; including deer, rabbits, birds, lizards, squirrels, mice, and other rodents. They can also be found in urban areas as well as on beaches and coastal areas of the country.

It is important to know how valuable sleep is for the body’s normal functions. In the old days people thought that when you slept your brain and body were inactive. That is not the case, because of today’s research. All night your body and brain do a lot of work that’s important for your health. There are two main types of sleep that we cycle in and out of when we rest, something called rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep.

There are number of foods that are dangerous to your health and this is a large topic unto itself. Let’s start with the hard stone in the center of a cherry for example. It is full of prussic acid, also known as cyanide, a substance we all know is poisonous. But there’s really no need to be upset, because if you swallow a cherry pit they just pass through your system and out the other end. You must avoid crunching or crushing cherry pits as you nosh on cherries to avoid poisoning yourself.

That was in late June. The major theatrical chains were planning to reopen the following month, in time to lure moviegoers back with the double-whammy releases of Mulan and Tenet, then slated for late-July openings. But those plans were scuttled as COVID-19 continued to spread across the country, and the death toll rose. Since then, Disney has moved Mulan to its streaming platform, Warner Bros. has rescheduled (and re-rescheduled) Tenet’s debut date, and cineplexes in many states have remained closed. AMC finally began the staggered reopening of its locations Thursday, with Regal and Marcus Theaters following suit Friday; all are hoping to have significant screens available for Tenet’s American rollout, which is now scheduled to begin Labor Day weekend.

Article published by Vulture Magazine on June 24, 2020

The last time I spoke to Dr. Robert Lahita about going to the movies in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, going to the movies was still an option. When we talked on Thursday, March 12, he advised a “wait and see” approach: “I think people should wait and give it a two-week period — maybe until April 1 — to regroup, because we don’t know how long this thing’s going to last. We really don’t.”

There is a remarkable book by the late Oliver Sacks MD, called Musicophelia, which describes the importance of music in the life of each human. In fact, it is known that people with dementia who cannot recall the date or time, or fail to recognize their sons and daughters, respond to music. It might be tunes from their era or just songs that everyone knows and sings at parties.

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.