Articles related to Family Medicine/General Practice

What do you and your patients know about the ever-increasing generic drug movement? Keeping costs down is one thing, but with many generics now being manufactured overseas, should you be concerned with their safety and quality? Before you write out or send in your next prescription, here are some things you and your patients should know about generics.

Your patients love spicy food, but they hate the heartburn that comes with it. Diet is the first line of defense when it comes to managing acid reflux symptoms and gastroesophageal reflex disease (GERD), so be sure to have your patients — and yourself! — stock the pantry and the fridge with these foods to avoid the hunger and eventual pain. And in case of a slip, the list includes some home remedies they can try to help soothe the burn.

A study published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings found that 93% of respondents believed this skill to be very important, yet only 43% felt they had the right training to effectively do so. Despite methods like SPIKES and the ABCDE system, many oncologists still struggle with this skill and with the pandemic still hanging around, it’s a case of “bad news” all around. How do you handle it?

This drug was first approved in the US in the 1970s for anesthesia and pain relief, and last year, the FDA approved it for patients with major depression that are treatment resistant. If you said ketamine, you’re correct, and because more than 30% of patients are resistant to SSRIs, finding an effective treatment for major depressive disorder is challenging. Could this old drug be the answer?

COVID-19 has led to severe mental repercussions, which is made worse when considering what types of challenges people were having before the pandemic even hit. Considering this, it’s a good time to review the drug-drug interactions (DDIs) psychotropic drugs can have with each other, not to mention other drugs for the most common conditions. Here are 20 such interactions for your review. 

The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) is a diagnostic indicator (0-100) of how well Americans conform to dietary advice, and the latest US numbers in 2015 were low: 59. Older Americans were better than young, but the fact remains we could all do better with the choices we’re making in our daily intake. Here are five foods that rival medicine when it comes to their health benefits.