Dr. Paul Auerbach is the world's leading outdoor health expert. His blog offers tips on outdoor safety and advice on how to handle wilderness emergencies.
There is an excellent publication available entitled Wilderness Medicine Newsletter. I have been reading it for years and find it to be high quality, accurate, informative, and well written. You may check it out at http://www.wildernessmedicinenew...
Hand injuries are common in outdoor enthusiasts. Some of these injuries are easy to diagnose, and others are more difficult, usually because the signs and symptoms are subtle or because the examiner is inexperienced. Emergency physicians, such as ...
Probiotics are live microorganisms that are purposefully ingested by humans to improve their health—the thought is that probiotics improve “digestive health.” The specific microorganisms are commonly of the genera Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, a...
We have long been taught that the typical symptoms for a heart attack are substernal (beneath the breastbone) chest pain that is pressure-like or “squeezing” in nature, radiation of the chest pain to the left arm or jaw, sweating, nausea, and weak...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a constellation of symptoms that occurs in persons after they have suffered a traumatic event (or multiple events). Some of these symptoms include (among many likely others):
Seizures, particularly of the grand mal variety, are serious business in any setting and particularly when they occur away from access to urban medical support. The vigorous, sometimes violent, muscle contractions, alteration of consciousness, dif...
In addition to recognition of definitive clinical signs and symptoms of venomous snakebite, the way to determine whether or not a biting snake is venomous is to identify it properly. In the United States and Canada, that is usually determined for ...
Improvised Medicine, subtitled Providing Care in Extreme Environments, a new book (McGraw Hill Medical; $54 U.S.) by Dr. Kenneth V. Iserson, is intended for health care practitioners who will “operate outside your comfort zone and devise effective...
Texting is dangerous when driving an automobile, as dramatically portrayed in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (2010;362:23) entitled “The Most Primary of Care – Talking about Driving and Distraction” by Amy Ship, MD. In the State...
Neti pots are devices used to irrigate the sinuses with saline solution or other liquid for cleansing purposes. They rely upon gravity and head positioning to facilitate flow of the liquid into one nostril, which is sometimes allowed to drain out ...
