No one wants to admit they’re carrying more pounds than is good for them, yet if the steadily rising obesity rates are any clue, we’re all only getting heavier. And this added weight is upping the risk of not only cardiovascular disease, but many other acquired diseases.

Experts warn that obesity isn’t just a problem on its own, those extra pounds are exacerbating other risks to our hearts as well. Carrying more weight than you should plays a part in almost all the coronary risk factors – boosting levels of bad cholesterol, raising blood pressure and increasing the chances of developing diabetes. All three are considered risk factors for heart disease.

All three respond readily to sustained weight loss.

A study just presented at an annual meeting of American Heart Association found that blood pressure and blood sugar levels keep going up in adults, driven mainly by increases in obesity. This overwhelms improving heart health trends like the drops in bad cholesterol and lower rates of smoking. And while we can replace the machines in our lives with new ones, our body, a truly fantastic machine, can’t be traded for new, its ours for life.

With childhood obesity rates also on the rise, the experts don’t hold out much hope for improvement in the coming years. Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every three kids and teens in the U.S. is obese. These children are far more likely to develop dangerous heart disease as they get older.

The answer isn’t one we want to hear, but if you’re concerned about heart disease, a hard look at your weight (or BMI number) is in order. Once you recover, you’ll want to start making some changes including …

- Eating more fruits and veggies, adding a serving a day and building from there.

- Choosing lean meats, try to eat fish more often.

- Choosing whole grain breads/pastas or brown rice over white.

- Eliminating sugary drinks and fruit juices, go for the diet version or water instead.

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Experts Warn: More Weight, More Heart Risk Continued…

What you eat is only part of the picture… to lose weight you’ve got to be more active.

When it comes to exercise, start slowly and build over time, especially if you’ve been inactive for a long while. Before you begin, talk with your doctor to be sure being active is safe for you. Once you get the okay, start by walking (or doing another enjoyable activity) three times a week and build from there.

Keep in mind that every pound equals almost 3,500 calories, so to lose a pound each week you’ll need to burn 500 more calories a day than you take in.

Remember successful weight loss takes time… after all, that weight didn’t appear overnight, losing it won’t happen that fast either. Experts recommend you start by setting a weight loss goal of 10 pounds in 6 months, and build from there. Losing just 10% of your body weight can have impressive benefits on your heart disease risks, and get you on the track to losing even more.

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We assume these items are lower in calories, so it’s fine to indulge. Exercise is also seen as less necessary after eating a so-called “organic” desert. The disturbing study appears in the journal Judgment and Decision Making.

These findings follow through on earlier work that shows food labels do spur misperceptions.

Calling a food “low fat” on the label makes buyers think it has fewer calories. Those items labeled as “low cholesterol” are often judged as having less fat. American’s as a whole have a strong tendency to associate “organic” with healthiness according to experts.

Researchers Jonathon P. Schuldt and professor Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan conducted two experiments to see if “organic” labels translated into “fewer calories” in the mind of the consumer.

The first, involving 114 college students who were asked to read nutrition labels on cookies – they were described as either “Oreo cookies” or “Oreo cookies made with organic flour and sugar.” Both had 160 calories but participants were asked to rate whether they thought the cookies had fewer calories or more calories than other brands on a scale of 1 (fewest calories) and 7 (most calories).

Not surprisingly, the cookies described as “organic” were rated as having fewer calories than conventional cookies. The “organic” cookies got a rating of 3.9; the traditional ones got an average rating of 5.17. Participants also thought the “organic” cookies could be eaten more than the non organic ones. The impact on calorie judgments was largest for those who held pro environment views, or those who valued organic methods in the first place.

The second of the two studies involved 215 college students who read a story about a character who wanted to lose weight but wanted to skip her after dinner run.

Participants read that she’d eaten either an organic or regular, non organic desert, then they responded whether it was okay for her to skip the run. Readers were more lenient to the character if she’d eaten the organic desert instead of the regular one.

Both studies suggest that “organic” claims might not just foster lower calorie estimates, and have us eating more than we should of this food, but they may also have us thinking that we’ve already made progress toward losing weight, when in truth nothing has changed.

It’s important to keep in mind that the word “organic” on a food label refers to how the food is processed, not to how much fat or calories it has.

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“Organic” Labels Can Lead to Weight Gain… Continued…

A food that calls itself organic must be free of food additives, processed with fewer artificial methods, materials and conditions (chemical ripening, food irradiation, genetically modified ingredients). Pesticides are allowed as long as they’re not synthetic.

Yet experts have found that if people think a food is better… has fewer calories and fat, you’re likely to eat all that much more of it. Often people have the feeling that by eating healthy they don’t have to do other things… like exercise.

Organic food sales in the United Sates have grown rapidly over the past twenty years, from $1 billion in 1990 to a staggering $25 billion just last year. Eating organic food diet items generally cost from 10-40% more than their conventionally produced counterparts. If you do decide to (or continue to) buy “organic” know that it isn’t a free pass to eat all you want.

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Obese kids and teens face a host of struggles… beyond being at higher risk of asthma, hepatic steatosis and sleep apnea, they’re also at increased risk for other dangerous health conditions usually only seen in adults.

More likely to be obese when they reach adulthood, these kids are also the targets of an early, systematic and relentless social discrimination, leading to an understandable lack of self-esteem that is likely to be with them the rest of their lives.

Presented at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, this new research is just the latest argument in the raging sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup debate.

On one side critics claim it contributes to obesity and tricks the body into wanting to eat more. And then there are the health conscious who balk at putting any kind of toxic, man-made concoction into the body. The industry, predictably, says high fructose corn syrup is just fine… perfectly safe… the same as sugar.

You’ve probably seen the TV commercials the Corn Refiners Association has been running, despite questions on the objectivity of the quoted research raised by reports of funding for the studies being supplied by companies with a financial stake in the outcome.

The research on fructose and childhood obesity involved a team extracting preadipocytes, cells that will eventually turn into fat cells, from 32 normal weight children who had yet to go through puberty. The cells were of both types, subcutaneous or just below the skin, and visceral, deeper in the abdominal cavity. The cells were soaked in normal level glucose, high level glucose or high fructose solutions and allowed to grow.

Upon examination the visceral fat cells, the cells that were in fructose divided and multiplied more than those soaked in glucose. Both the subcutaneous and visceral cells exposed to glucose showed increased insulin resistance, known to be a risk factor for diabetes.

High fructose corn syrup is used more often in American foods than sucrose. It’s made from milling corn, processing that starch into syrup and adding enzymes to change it into fructose. Glucose syrup is added to create a mixture that’s 45% glucose; 55% fructose. The industry says that high fructose corn syrup helps prolong the shelf life of products, keeps moisture in and, probably most important, is cheaper than sugar.

The worrisome thing for medicine is that doctors are seeing more type 2 diabetes today than ever before, and claim this is due to kids being overweight.

Our children may be unknowingly increasing their risks for other adults-only conditions, like cardiovascular disease. Experts have seen a rise in cholesterol numbers and blood pressure readings in overweight children… just as they would in the grown up population.

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Fructose Causes Fat Cells To Multiply Faster… Continued…

Dr. James Rippe, cardiologist and consultant to the Corn Refiners Association points out that high fructose corn syrup is not the same as fructose. High fructose corn syrup is half fructose and half glucose. A minor point considering we’re still talking about sugar and how it is often an unavoidable part of the foods and drinks around us.

When it comes to high fructose corn syrup, one expert, Margot G. Wootan, director of Nutritional Policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest suggests that the thinking be “it’s just as bad as sugar”. While trace amounts of high fructose corn syrup are probably not going to hurt you, too much of any kind of sugar in the diet will.

Another important point. The study, while using actual human cells, was conducted in the lab, so you should look on the results with some measure of caution. Experiments in human subjects would be needed to confirm the findings of the effect of sugar in food. This is an important point according to the spokeswoman of the American Dietetic Association, Keri Gans. Still Gans echoes the fear of a growing number in the medical community – that this will be the first generation of children who may not outlive their parents.

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Estimates from the ADA suggest almost 24 million American adults and children are living with some form of diabetes. That’s 7.8% of the population of the United States. Each year 1.6 million more people are diagnosed. Most cases of diabetes are type 2.

What hasn’t gotten a lot of attention according to study author Mary L. Biggs, a research scientist out of the University of Washington, is how the composition of the body, and changing weight over time, might affect the risk of diabetes in the older adult.

The researchers used data that came from the Cardiovascular Health Study, a project that lasted from 1989-2007, and included information on 4,200 subjects over the age of 65.

At the start of the research not one of the participants had been diagnosed with diabetes. The data, collected over an average of a dozen years, included body mass index, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, as well as other measures.

The team saw that those with the highest baseline numbers for weight had a 4.3 times higher risk of diabetes than those who had the lowest measurements.

There were some measures that stood out as being very predictive. Men over 65 with a BMI over 38.7 (overweight) had a 5.6 times higher risk of diabetes than the male with a BMI under 23.3. The risk of diabetes was 3.7 times higher for women with similar BMI numbers..

Having fat about the middle, the so-called visceral fat, is more closely rated to insulin resistance, and this could be a factor in the increased risk in men.

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Weight Gain Later In Life Ups Risk Of Diabetes… Continued…

In the males, those whose waists measured above 104.6 centimeters had 5.1 times the risk of diabetes, when compared to subjects with a waist circumference under 89.1 centimeters. In women, the risk was 3.6 times higher with a waist circumference of 101.1 centimeters, compared to those with measurements of 78.6 centimeters.

Adding weight later in life was also shown to have a big impact on the risk of diabetes. Those who were normal weight at 50 and then added 13-20 pounds increased diabetes risk at age 65 (or older) by 1.3 times. If the weight gained was over the twenty pound mark, the risk increased by 3.2 times.

The impact was even more pronounced if you were overweight or obese at 50 and gained even more weight. The more weight, the more risk.

Study lead Biggs sees the findings as an important public health wake up call, especially considering the risk of type 2 diabetes, and the rates of mortality because of heart disease (that can be related to diabetes) in those of increasing years.

Finding a link between diabetes risk and weight makes it even more important to get the message out that keeping your weight in the healthy range all through life – especially as you age – is a key component to staying healthy, active and mentally sharp.

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Asthma and obesity have both been rising over the last few decades, and many studies have found an association between obesity and asthma according to Dr. Jun Ma of California’s Palo Alto Medical Research Institute.

To study the link, Ma led a team that examined 4,500 men and women who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) during the years 2005-2006. The survey was designed to get an assessment of the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the U.S. and is unique in that it combines interviews with physical examinations.

One third of the NHANES respondents used for this work were overweight, another third obese – holding true to the obesity epidemic identified in the United States.

In terms of health status, 41% of the subjects had some type of allergy; another 8% had been diagnosed with asthma. These two factors are important because allergy and asthma are considered to be related in certain individuals.

The team found that 12% of the obese subjects had asthma, compared to 6% of the normal weight subjects. The likelihood of asthma went up as the body mass index, BMI, rose and waist circumference got larger.

In fact, the risk of asthma was more than tripled for the heaviest of the subjects compared to those of normal weight.

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Have Belly Fat? Chances Are You’ll Get Asthma… Continued…

No one knows why the association exists. Some experts believe that the system wide, low-grade inflammation that happens to the obese may be a part of the picture. Others believe that resistance to blood sugar regulating insulin (it goes up the more weight you carry) is the explanation for the link. It’s true that insulin resistance often comes before the onset of diabetes. Incidentally, 37% of the subjects were either diabetic or had insulin resistance, though researchers stress that insulin resistance is not responsible for the relationship, nor was allergy related to this condition or even carrying extra weight.

Dr. Ma is quick to point out there are many other potential reasons for the link between obesity and asthma. The relationship is complex and researchers are just starting to understand it.

Losing fat in the midsection area is tough… but not impossible. The good news is that the dangerous visceral fat that you can’t see responds well to a program of diet and regular exercise.

A diet rich in unprocessed, natural foods as well as a daily, moderate intensity exercise program is the effective way to do the trick. Spot exercises such as sit ups can’t work alone, you’ll still need to make changes in your overall intake of calories to reduce obesity health risks that include being an asthma trigger. Remember, that fat took a while to accumulate, and it will take some time to lose, but even dropping a few pounds makes a huge difference to your health.

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The campaign was just launched as a combined effort between Diabetes UK, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK that urges us all to measure our waistlines and make the changes necessary if the number is up there. There are four animated videos created by award winning animator Adam Smith being promoted on the internet in an effort to raise awareness of the risks to health associated with having extra fat at the waistline.

The term “Active Fat” comes from the idea that fat around the middle doesn’t just sit there making you look (and feel) awful, it’s also pumping out troublesome chemicals that can have serious effects on your body.

Fat in this part of the body is known to generate oestrogen and extra chemicals in the stomach, putting you at risk for a host of killer diseases. Women are at risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease when their waistlines measure over 80 cm (31.5 inches), men are at risk with measurements over 94 cm (37 inches).

In the most recent UK poll of 2,085 adults, women weren’t worried about the health consequences of that wider waistline, but they did worry about how it looked, and if they could fit into clothing. Some 27% had given up and bought bigger sizes, and 44% of respondents had tried to exercise in order to keep the weight off.

And while our waistlines expand gradually over the years, many seem to be in denial about just how big their own might be. You can check your waist measurement with a flexible tape measure to see where you stand.

To find your natural waist, the point between your lowest rib and hipbone – just put your hands on your hips to locate the right spot. Then put the tape measure around your waistline, relax your belly by breathing out (don’t suck in) and be sure the tape is level all the way around before you record the measurement.

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Belly Fat: Not Just Unsightly But Dangerous… Continued…

If you’re not happy with the number, you’ll want to work with the Active Fat program to…

- Check your own risk of type 2 diabetes.

- See if your lifestyle is bad for your waistline.

- Try and incorporate steps to lose weight.

The UK charities are also calling for standardizing food labeling using a “traffic light” system for nutrition. Red would signal things to enjoy once in a while, amber would be things that would be okay most of the time, and green would appear on foods that could be eaten regularly. Since labels on foods help us make decisions about what to buy, they are a vital part of educating people about the right things to eat to help defeat waist fat.

To your good health,

Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor

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The international guidelines are a lot tougher – about half of white women and more than two third of Latinos in the U.S. would be considered obese under the WHO guidelines. WHO projects that by 2015, almost 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

Why are we all gaining so much weight?

Globally our diets are moving toward a higher intake of energy dense foods that are high in fat and sugar but with few vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.

Look at portion sizes too. The other reason for our weight gain is the trend toward being less physically active – we’re working in front of computers, driving everywhere and generally doing less physical things all through our day.

“It is especially important to accurately assess obesity in reproductive-age women, as they are more likely to be obese than similarly aged men,” explains study author Dr. Mahbubur Rahman, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “These women are at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other obesity-related health conditions, and may forgo or be overlooked for needed tests and treatments.”

We know that carrying extra weight, a little or a lot, is a major risk factor for a host of chronic illnesses, things like diabetes, musculoskeletal problems, heart disease and some (endometrial, breast and colon) cancers.

Where once obesity was only found in high-income countries, today overweight and obesity are on the rise in low to middle income nations, especially in cities.

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BMI Weight Ratings Unreliable… Continued…

The body mass index (BMI) used to determine who’s overweight and who isn’t is in itself a simple calculation involving weight and height. It’s the same formula for both men and women over age 15. A BMI from 25-29.9 is considered overweight; a BMI of 30 or over is considered obese; surprisingly there is evidence that the risk of chronic disease starts going up even at BMIs as low as 21. In terms of body fat analysis, the WHO’s criteria for obesity is a body fat measurement greater than 25% in men, 35% in women.

Many are coming to think that BMI isn’t the perfectly reliable measure of weight we would want. It might not work out to the same degree of fatness in different people. Experts worry that the inaccuracy of this measurement may deny obesity prevention programs to those who might really need them.

The good news is that how much weight you carry is largely under your control.

If you’re an obese women and are worried about your weight, today is the day to make the changes to get your weight under control. Moving forward, understand that all those extra pounds didn’t appear overnight and won’t be dropped in a few days or weeks. Slow, steady weight loss is what you’re after and before long that one or two pounds a week will add up to smaller sizes, feeling better and looking incredible to boot!

To your good health,

Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor

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The U.S. incidence of breast cancer is one in eight, about 13% (or 13 out of every 100 women) over the course of a lifetime. Your own personal risk can be higher or lower, depending on your family and reproductive history, your lifestyle and environment. As of 2008, there are almost 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S. alone.

“Among women who had never used postmenopausal hormone therapy, those who had a body-mass index (BMI) gain between age 20 and 50 had a doubling of breast cancer risk,” explains study lead Laura Sue, M.P.H., a cancer research fellow at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

For this work, the team collected data on over 72,000 women who participated in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial.

At the start of the work the subjects were between 55 and 75 years old, and 3,677 had been diagnosed with a postmenopausal breast cancer.

The team looked only at women who had breast cancer but had never taken hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for menopause symptoms. By eliminating anyone who’d taken HRT (known to boost breast cancer risk), the researchers could better isolate weight as a risk factor.

Weight indeed did seem to play a role. The team found that a woman who’d gained about 30 pounds from age 20 to age 50 had a twofold increased risk of developing breast cancer after menopause as did a woman whose weight had remained stable over those years.

Of the women in the study, about 57% had raised their BMI by 5 kilograms per meter squared (kg/m2) over thirty years. To help you visualize… imagine a woman who is 5′4″ putting on about 30 pounds.

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Steady Weight Gain Boosts Breast Cancer Risk… Continued…

This type of increase brought the risk of developing a breast cancer after menopause up by 88%, compared to women whose BMI was relatively stable during the same period. If you added this same amount of weight after 50, the risk of breast cancer went up 56% when compared to women who had a stable BMI during these years.

No matter when you add the weight, the risk for breast cancer seems to go up. What’s more, Sue believes that the rise in risk isn’t tied to becoming obese, but rather the weight gain itself. The extra pounds increase production of estrogen in all those extra fat cells, known to encourage the growth of cancer.

In terms of your own breast cancer risk factors, it appears that the factors within your own personal control – managing your weight in adulthood, staying active, eating right and limiting your alcohol intake – are proving to be more and more important.

To your good health,

Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor

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Using data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, the team followed 13,549 middle aged (45-65 years) Americans for nearly 20 years, looking to see if ischemic stroke risk was associated with several measures of obesity; body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio.

The intriguing report has just been published online in the journal Stroke.

Medicine defines a stroke as an interruption of the blood supply to a part of the brain. A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain is interrupted because a blood vessel is blocked or bursts open.

If the flow stops for even a few seconds, the brain can’t get the oxygen it needs and the cells start to die. This death can result permanent damage.

“We found that the risk of stroke was increased with each measure of obesity,” explains study lead author Dr. Hiroshi Yatsuya, a visiting associate professor of public health at the University of Minnesota. The degree of risk varied by ethnicity, as well as for men and women, with risks especially high for blacks.

This increased risk has been confirmed by many earlier studies, and has also been seen in Asians, though no one knows precisely why.

In this research, the increased stroke risk that came with added weight was seen in every ethnic group – men and women in the highest obesity categories had almost double the risk for stroke as did those in the lowest category.

For instance, those in the highest BMI category had a 1.43 to 2.12 times’ higher risk of stroke, with variations by race and sex.

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Stroke Risk Increases As Weight Goes Up Continued…

Measure obesity by waist circumference and the stroke risk ratios ranged from 1.65 to 3.19, from 1.69 to 2.55 when the waist to hip ratio was used.

“Degree of obesity, defined by body mass index, waist circumference, or waist-to-hip ratio, was a significant risk factor for ischemic stroke regardless of sex or race,” the study authors point out.

Experts think that obesity increases the incidence of high blood pressure and diabetes, both major risk factors for stroke and other diseases of the cardiovascular system.

When the researchers factored in blood pressure and diabetes the association between obesity and stroke risk was weaker, but sill there.

“Obesity contributes to both diabetes and hypertension [high blood pressure], which are associated with stroke and at an earlier age,” points out Daniel Lackland, a professor of epidemiology at the Medical University of South Carolina and spokesman for the American Heart Association.

When it comes to stroke prevention, the organization stresses the need for controlling your weight by following a healthy diet as well as getting regular physical activity.

Controlled trials would need to be conducted to provide clear evidence that obesity also brings down stroke risk, but until they are, if you’re concerned take steps to reduce your weight, and you’ll very likely reduce your stroke risk too.

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But there are surprising risks to your health from those added pounds that are not nearly as well documented.

Some recent studies have found that overweight woman…

- Might have a harder time getting health insurance, or have to pay more for it.

- Are at higher risk of being misdiagnosed, or getting an inaccurate dosage of a drug.

- Are less able to find a fertility doctor who will help them get pregnant.

- Are less likely to have cancer detected early.

Current numbers have just about 70 million American women considered overweight, which makes for a lot of patients who may not be getting the care they need.

Overweight or not, these findings should have everyone taking note, and taking steps to be sure you get the quality healthcare you deserve. Overweight or not, being mistreated or dismissed by your doctor because of your weight is unacceptable – you don’t want that person in charge of your medical care.

“Our culture has enormous negativity toward overweight people, and doctors aren’t immune,” explains Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of How Doctors Think. “If doctors have negative feelings toward patients, they’re more dismissive, they’re less patient, and it can cloud their judgment, making them prone to diagnostic errors.”

When it comes to just how many diagnostic errors are due to a patients’ weight, there are no hard numbers to attest to the problem, though it’s long past time for the medical community to take a hard look at the biases that might be affecting the treatment they give overweight patients.

Data on diagnostic errors for the general population is sobering. “Doctors make mistakes in diagnosing 10 to 15 percent of all patients, and in half of those cases it causes real harm,” Groopman says.

Carrying too much weight does bring legitimate concerns to the operating table, and those with high BMIs often find that surgeons are reluctant to offer a procedure to very overweight patients as they make for longer, more difficult operations.

Hospitals too, who track data on surgical complication rates may warn doctors off more high risk cases in order to preserve their standing with insurance companies. Patients may be denied procedures like cardiac catheterization, organ transplants of kidney or liver, knee surgeries and more because of their weight.

Being too heavy can even get in the way of effective cancer treatment according to the experts. The most likely culprit is underdosing, basing chemotherapy drug doses on the patient’s ideal weight, rather than their actual weight.

Trials usually only include women of average weight, so doctors don’t have a good handle on the doses for larger women. And since these drugs are quite toxic, no one wants to take chances with the dosing.

Doctors have known that obese women are more likely to die from breast or ovarian cancers. Especially troubling then is the finding that obese women are less likely to get Pap smears than women of normal weight, but the screening lapse isn’t all on the women here. A University of Connecticut study of more than 1,300 doctors found that 17% were reluctant to do a pelvic exam on an obese patient; the number jumping to 83% if the patient herself seemed hesitant about the exam.

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Health Repercussions Of Being Overweight Continued…

That should NEVER happen.

But you can’t blame it all on doctors as being overweight can obscure illnesses like heart disease and some types of cancer. All those extra pounds bring added strain to joints and pain you might not be having if you were thinner.

What’s more, large patients don’t always fit into the small spaces of diagnostic scanning machines. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and even X-rays and ultrasounds aren’t able to deliver as clear a picture, and without that, imagine your doctor driving blindfolded as he tries to treat you.

Ultrasounds are particularly vulnerable to added fat; the beams can’t penetrate the tissue if you have more than 8 centimeters of subcutaneous fat. Naturally this affects more women since ultrasounds are used to spot uterine tumors and ovarian cysts, not to mention to check on the baby’s health during a pregnancy.

Researchers have also confirmed false positives to mammograms in overweight and obese patients.

This leaves a doctor with little to go on except the symptoms you mention and intuition. That isn’t the best option in the emergency room. “If we can’t get the imaging because of a patient’s weight, and we are concerned about a pulmonary embolism or appendicitis, for example, we have to go ahead and treat based on our clinical impression,” explains Dr. Archana Reddy, M.D., a practicing emergency room physician.

Certainly something we all need to be aware of when it comes to medical care.

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