The internet has plentiful resources for an array of topics in psychiatry, but like most of you, I often find a Google search less than helpful due to adds and other methods that game the searcher and prevent them from finding, fact-based resources of information.

 

As I’ve indicated in the past, among the ways to improve the quality of your searches on Google, you can type in the topic you are looking for plus an additional search word like:

NIH (which stands for National Institutes of health)

MAYO

HOPKINS

Or the like.

 

Here is a nice resource for mental healh information on the web, a list of sites provided by the University of San Francisco Psychiatry Department

Look >>>>HERE>>>>

Ellen and I had a bet. She had heard about the measles outbreaks and was worried she could be susceptible to an infection since she did not have measles as a child.

 

Since Ellen was born prior to 1957 she did not get the measles vaccine as it was not available…but that is also why I was sure she had the measles even though she did not recall it nor had she been told it as a child.

 

Measles (rubeola) is a viral infection that is the most highly contagious of viral infections and virtually all people born before 1957 were infected. Some people would have a ‘subclinical’ case, having not seen any rash but they were infected nonetheless.

 

As Ellen is not an ‘only child’ it was statistically impossible to me that she did not have the measles…but Ellen was certain, so to come to an understanding we did a blood test looking for IgG levels (gamma globulin specific to measles) that she had the infection in the past. Ellen was so sure…she wanted to ‘bet’….so we did….2 bottles of diet coke.

 

Sure enough…..her blood test was positive. I was not surprised, but Ellen was. She was certain of her history, but the blood test revealed otherwise. Like any good scientist, being proven ‘wrong’ is among the greatest achievements….as we learn so much from this. Ellen was glad to be found wrong…..and rejoiced in seeing the light. Edison, the great experimenter, found negative results helpful, commenting….. ‘I’ve not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work’

 

Twain said it even better….. “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you in trouble…it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

If you did not received our new Spring Newsletter, you can read it here….

CLICK HERE!

 

For future Newsletters, you can register for your own personal copy….. Click Here!

 

Yours in good health,

Dr. Lakin & staff

Aspirin was invented by Bayer Inc. a little over 100 year ago.  Some of you may remember that in my previous essay  it was expected to be a small seller, compared with Bayer’s more exciting product that had such high hopes…HEROIN!   Yes…aspirin and heroin were born in the same year.

 

But you are concerned about aspirin and whether you should take one every day to prevent heart attacks and cancer to help you live longer.

 

The most recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine sheds more light on this topic and suggests that the pro’s and con’s of baby aspirin fall slightly to the negative due to the increased bleeding that results from regular low dose aspirin use.   They did not see any definitive benefits in heart attack/stroke prevention or in cancer risk to support the use of regular baby aspirin.

This issue has been controversial for many years.  In England, they have never recommended daily aspirin use due to the controversy with the data.

I think this latest study is interesting, but not the ‘nail in the coffin’ for regular aspirin use.   This study was looking at 70 year olds across the board, without specific concerns in which aspirin would test to have a more positive result.

 

So…who should take aspirin:

1.  Anyone with a history of heart disease or arrhythmia or a strong family history of heart disease.
2. Anyone on statin medications
3. Anyone with a strong family history of colon cancer, breast cancer, or prostate cancer
4. Anyone with a history of colon polyps

Who should NOT TAKE aspirin:

1.  Anyone with a history of stomach ulcer
2. Anyone with a history of bleeding issues (gastrointestinal bleeding primarily)

For the rest…it’s a toss of a coin and you could consider taking or not taking aspirin.   For today (until the next study)……if you are in the more general category, you can hold.

I have an amateur interest in aviation so I am following the MAX 8 concerns with great interest.

 

Among the issues raised with the MAX 8 is the interaction of automated technology and imperfect data input. Simply put: An excellent but completely automated system can be undone by imperfect data input, resulting in automatic ‘corrections’ that amplify the error.

 

All of us are going to be seeing these issues of interactions of expert systems in our day to day life, and how they can malfunction with small inaccuracies of input data. It is really the problem of AI (artificial intelligence) which is so very useful, but which does not provide the judgement needed to correct errors that don’t fit in standard models.

 

This is exactly what an expert internist provides. Like the most-seasoned pilot, and expert clinician has seen so many variations of ‘normal’ situations that they can ignore data that is inconsistent, trusting their judgement when crucially important, over a test results that doesn’t ‘fit’.

 

Like Will Rodgers said long ago: Good judgement comes from experience and at lot of that comes from bad judgement. My bad judgement days are behind me (read intership, residency, and my first years in practice). Although I’m in no way ‘perfect’, I am perfecting my knowledge by having an enormous volume of experiences.

 

A busy doctor is ‘practicing’ all of the time. Gaining knowledge incrementally with each encounter. Every year I see a few new things that I’ve never seen before. Integrating this into my storehouse of knowledge improves my performance with time and I know it is allowing me to ‘pilot the ship’ of medicine more ideally.

Every year the Phoenix Magazine publishes a guide featuring over 557 of the Valley’s best physicians. The doctors are selected through a peer-review survey. The theory is that medical professionals are the best qualified to judge medical professionals.

 

The survey asks the doctors to nominate those doctors who, in their judgment, are the best in their fields. Once again, Dr. Lakin has been chosen as a TOP DOC among his peers. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Lakin!