Health and Medicine – Page 29

What's the Verdict on Vaping?

The use of e-cigarettes is on the rise with annual sales now totaling over two billion dollars. What do we really know about how these devices affect our health? Many people tout them as smoking cessation success stories, but are they just as harmful as traditional cigarettes?

Dr. Laura Crotty Alexander joins our host Dr. David Grant to discuss new research illuminating the potential health risks of vaping.

Watch E-Cigarettes, Vaping, and MRSA – Health Matters online now.

Explore more programs in the Health Matters series.

Ethicists Confront Cancer: When the Professional Becomes Personal

In 2006, when Rebecca Dresser was diagnosed with oral cancer, her life was thrown off-balance.

As a professor of law and biomedical ethics, she had been teaching and writing for years about the complex ethical, moral, and medical challenges of dealing with life-threatening diseases such as cancer. Yet she found herself personally unprepared for the experience.

Professor Dresser, author of “Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer,” describes her own bout with cancer and how it changed her views about medical ethics. This is the last of The “Exploring Ethics” public lecture series of 2014 focusing on cancer, as seen through the lens of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Emperor of All Maladies.”

Watch Rebecca Dresser in Ethicists Confront Cancer: When the Professional Becomes Personal.

Explore more programs from the Emperor of All Maladies: Moving Forward Against Cancer series.

Eating Disorders Explained

How do we manage our eating behaviors? What processes in the body affect how we view our relationship with food?

Walter Kaye, PhD, explores the biological impulses that affect anorexia nervosa and bulimia as well as new brain imaging techniques to help treat and understand eating disorders.

Watch The Science of Dieting: Why Is It Difficult for Most People, but Not Those with Anorexia Nervosa? online now.

Explore more programs in the Stein Institute for Research on Aging series.

Buzzed Driving – Very Low Blood Alcohol Content Associated with Crashes

There is no safe combination of drinking and driving – even within the legal limits.

A recent study led by UC San Diego sociologist David Phillips found that drivers with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.01 percent – well below the U.S. legal limit of 0.08 – are 46 percent more likely to be officially and solely blamed by accident investigators than are the sober drivers with whom they collide.

Dr. Phillips discusses the methodology behind these fascinating findings and how even minimally buzzed driving increases your chances of being in a fatal car accident.

Learn how buzzed driving is defined and how it impacts everyone on the road. Watch Buzzed Driving – Health Matters online now.

Explore more programs in the Health Matters series.

Can We Talk? Communicating Through the Cancer Journey

As our series on cancer continues, we take a look not at the symptoms of the disease but at the way we talk about the disease. The words we choose and the tone we employ can greatly impact the way patients, caregivers, medical professionals, and families move through the cancer journey.

In this unique look at conversations about cancer, professor Wayne Beach of San Diego State University shares audio and video examples of how communication occurs among those affected in the context of cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. Deborah Mayer, an advanced practice oncology nurse from the University of North Carolina follows with a look at the different meanings of the word “cancer,” the discomfort of difficult conversations, and the challenge of expressing basic fears.

Watch Communicating Through the Cancer Journey: Can We Talk? — Overthrowing the Emperor of all Maladies: Moving Forward Against Cancer Series — Exploring Ethics online now or click here to view the entire series.