Prime Healthcare Internal Medicine Group

Sinusitis

Sinusitis is a condition that refers to an inflammation of the lining within the paranasal sinuses. Sinusitis can be classified by location:

Maxillary, which causes pain or pressure in the cheek area
Frontal, which causes pain or pressure above and behind the eyes
Ethmoid, which causes pain or pressure between or behind the eyes
Sphenoid, which causes pain or pressure behind the eyes

Sinusitis can also be classified by duration: acute lasts for four weeks or less, subacute lasts four to twelve weeks, chronic lasts more than twelve weeks, and recurrent, which consists of several acute attacks within a year.

Most acute cases of sinusitis are caused by an inflammation of the sinuses that eventually lead to a bacterial infection. With chronic sinusitis, the membranes of both the paranasal sinuses and the nose are thickened because they are constantly inflamed, possibly due to allergies, nasal polyps, or asthma.

Sinusitis can be treated through courses of antibiotics, decongestants, saline sprays, or in cases of severe chronic sinusitis, oral steroids. When pharmaceuticals fail, surgery may be an alternative. The goal of the surgery is to improve sinus drainage and reduce blockage. Thus, a surgeon will enlarge the opening of the sinuses, remove any polyps, and correct any defects that contribute to the nasal obstruction. While many people have fewer symptoms as a result of the surgery, many others experience a recurrence of their symptoms post-surgery.

Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)

A urinary tract infection is a common infection of the urinary system, which includes the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra. The urinary tract refers to just the bladder and the urethra, and an infection can develop in either of these areas. These infections occur much more frequently in women than in men and can cause intense pain.

Symptoms of a urinary tract infection include:

Burning with urination
Strong, constant urge to urinate
Blood in the urine

Back pain
Fever

If you are experiencing symptoms of a urinary tract infection, see your doctor right away. If left untreated, this condition can lead to kidney infections and cause permanent damage to the kidneys. A urinary tract infection can usually be treated with antibiotics.

Weight Gain

Obesity is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide and responsible for over one hundred thousand American deaths each year. The management of one’s weight is becoming more and more medically relevant, as it seems our inability to do so is quietly killing off significant numbers of the population

The majority of weight control methods focus very heavily on calorie intake and expenditure, as the only logical and proven method of weight loss is a negative energy balance between the two. This negative energy balance can be manipulated in many ways, mainly through both diet and exercise.

Dieting

The overall goal of dieting is to decrease the total calorie intake of an individual relative to their current calorie intake. If a person weighs a static 100 kilograms, then that person must be consuming and burning approximately equal values of energy. If one reduces the calories taken in, the balance will result in more calories being removed each day and a gradual, healthy pattern of weight loss can ensue. This subtracts from the proverbial “positive side” of the energy balance.

Many people will argue that their “metabolism will slow down” when they diet to make up for the reduced calories; a completely logical conclusion based on our evolutionary requirement to survive on little food. However, physical activity can greatly aid in controlling one’s basal metabolic rate so as not to be caught up by your own body’s effort to save itself from its perceived starvation.

Exercise

Exercise refers to any physical activity that improves or maintains physical fitness and overall health. Exercise has been strongly correlated with reduced disease affluence, reduced occurrence of obesity and positive psychological well-being. In addition, physical activity can also help reduce the body’s levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that builds fat in the abdominal area. This increases the “negative side” of the energy balance, creating an even greater deficit, and thus loss of stored energy.

The two main categories of exercise are aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic exercise tends to be longer in duration and focused on cardiovascular endurance, whereas anaerobic exercise consists of short bouts of high intensity activity. It was once believed that aerobics were much more efficient in weight loss than anaerobic, but recent studies have shown anaerobic activity can produce very similar energy expenditures due to elevated post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). It is suggested that both aerobic and anaerobic activity should be preformed for the maximum benefits of exercise to be attained.

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