Organ donation in Illinois gets a little help from friends
by Dianna Douglas Forty years ago, discussing your plans to donate your organs if you were to become brain dead was considered extremely poor taste. “People didn’t talk about death and demise in polite company,” said Allen Anderson, MD, associate professor of medicine. He’s director of the advanced heart failure program at the University of […]
Talking the Talk Against Street Violence
By Dianna Douglas The public health threats in Chicago aren’t just diabetes, asthma and hypertension—about 500 lives are lost every year in the city by homicide. The University of Chicago Medicine fights the root causes of deadly violence in various ways. One recent attempt is through a partnership with CeaseFire, a group in Chicago that […]
(NOT) Playing Games with Sexual Health
By Dianna Douglas Maybe you’re the type of person to see a tiny nonsensical phrase in the credits of a movie and actually dig into it online. Be careful—you might find yourself sucked into a mystery story. Over the course of a week, you get a text message from someone you’ve been mindlessly Googling, you […]
Dr. FAQ: When Baby, Mom and Doctor Should Wait
By Dianna Douglas A pregnancy is considered at “term” after 37 weeks. But there are critical growth stages that come next–a baby’s lungs, brain, and liver develop in the last few weeks in the womb. Women in the United States are often induced before the baby has fully gestated, which leads to a host of […]
The All-Out Assault On Diabetes
By Dianna Douglas Imagine your doctor says he plans to increase your oral medication to control your diabetes. You do not like taking pills. Should you: A. Not rock the boat with your doctor and agree to take the increased dosage? B. Agree, but keep taking the same number of pills? C. Try to discuss […]
Glitter and Glam for World AIDS Day
By Dianna Douglas The goal of World AIDS Day 2011 is not to make the public aware of the disease. That was the goal in 1988, back when the international health threat was still new, infections were rising every year, and there was no hope of a treatment in sight. This year, World AIDS Day […]
Reproductive Justice in Law and the Clinic
By Dianna Douglas The Affordable Care Act is nearly one and a half years old, but the complexity of its reforms and their gradual roll-out have made it difficult to grade. Different disciplines are still parsing the legislation, attempting to figure out how it will change the future of their field. Experts in the field […]
A Long Journey of the Heart
By Dianna Douglas Ozzie Rivero found out early Tuesday afternoon that a young patient at a community hospital in Chicago had died on life support. The patient’s heart was still beating as a machine filled his lungs with air, but he would never open his eyes again. In their grief, his family was willing to […]
Sleep and the Male Sex Life
By Dianna Douglas More research practically begging people to get a good night’s sleep has come out of the sleep labs at the University of Chicago. Eve Van Cauter and Rachel Leproult have discovered that a week of inadequate sleep means less testosterone in young men. A lot less. In the study, ten healthy young […]
Restless Sleep, Restless Blood Sugar
By Dianna Douglas Kristen Knutson, PhD, recently added to the growing body of research from the University of Chicago on the long-term consequences of skimping on sleep. She found that diabetics who sleep poorly have a harder time controlling their insulin and glucose levels than diabetics who sleep well. The research was published in the […]
