Healthcare Reform

Heathy Habits for Healthy Skin and Cancer Prevention

Skin cancer is a major problem in this country that many times can be prevented if the proper steps are taken. The National Cancer Institute estimates 40-50% of Americans who live to age 65 will have skin cancer at least once. Yet nearly all skin cancers are preventable if detected and treated early.1 Key lifestyle techniques, including nutrition have been found to be an important piece of skin cancer prevention. Read below for more information, including a healthy recipe full of cancer fighting compounds.

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LYME DISEASE - AN URGENT APPEAL FOR REFORM: We Need Your Help!

The Lyme Disease Treatment Guidelines, authored by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), are currently undergoing review. While there are multiple perspectives regarding the best treatment protocols for Lyme disease, and two professional medical societies that specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease, the CDC and the nation's insurance companies have historically selected the guidelines authored by the IDSA to be the sole voice for treatment advice for this highly complex and insufficiently understood illness. This has laid the groundwork for a lack of adequate treatment for hundreds of thousands of Lyme disease patients who have endured, and will continue to endure serious, persistent illness.

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Evolving Objectives in the Treatment of Lyme Disease

As often happens in medicine, scientific evidence evolves; the continual flux of new patients with symptoms suggestive of Lyme disease is growing and new research has proven that Lyme disease is more complex and prevalent than we thought. The time has come to move beyond the divisiveness of the past, listen to the suffering of our patients and their families and move forward with all sides of the discussion into an evidenced-based paradigm for research, education, and patient care. The question is no longer whether Lyme is a complicated disease, or whether the current testing is adequate or whether the Lyme bacteria can survive a single antibiotic challenge in order to become a persistent infection. High quality studies show not only that it happens, but they also show how it happens, and why we should not be surprised that it happens. Our objective now is to determine which patients suffer from acute and or persistent LD, and to keep pressing for evidence-based wisdom to guide physicians and allied health care providers called upon to treat them.

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Treatment of Leaky Gut is Not a Mystery

The title of the story in this Sunday’s NY Times magazine, The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints,  suggests that the patient story is an anomaly-an atypical medical case. I want to report that this is far from the reality of the clinical experience in my office.

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Stram Center Hosts Escape Fire Film on Health Care Reform

Update: 10/19/12: Escape Fire played to a sell-out crowd! You can see our pictures from the evening on our Facebook page (even if you’re not on Facebook, you can still view them)

 

The Stram Center will host the first local showing of award-winning healthcare film, Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare

 

 

This multiple award-winning, riveting film on the nature of America’s broken healthcare system will be presented by the Stram Center, Thursday, Oct 18th at Spectrum 8 Theatre in Albany, NY.

Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare

This film tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time: how can we save the badly broken healthcare system? American healthcare costs are rising, yet our health outcomes are worse. A Sundance Film Official Selection for 2012 and a four time film-festival winner, Escape Fire is a must see!

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Action Requested Not an Apology – Lyme Forum

What’s going on here?

On Monday, I attended a forum hosted by Honorary Chairman Congressman Chris Gibson and the LymeNext Organizing Committee at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. I was struck by the association one of the speakers made between the current treatment denial by insurance companies for  LYME Disease and  the government sponsored Tuskegee research performed from 1932 to the 1970′s which looked at the long term effects of syphilis in the black population.

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ILADS 2011 Conference Impressions

TREATMENT OPTIONS

Having attended the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS) conference last month in Toronto, we came home both reassured about the treatment options we offer and with additional therapies to improve our treatment options for our growing number of lyme patients at the Stram Center for Integrative Medicine, Delmar office. One of many interesting developments was discussed by Dr. Richard Horowitz on the topic of Babesiosis diagnosis and treatment, for example: usage for an herbal supplement used in Ethiopia to treat malaria, cryptolepis, has been shown to be effective in this co-infection.

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The Right Practitioner for You

How Do I Find a Good Practitioner?

I’m often asked by people who are moving, or who live too far away from the Center for regular visits, “what should I look for in an acupuncturist?”

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Acupuncture for the West

I was interviewed today by a student at SUNY Albany who was doing a paper on natural healing.  At the end of a series of very well thought out questions, she asked me if there was anything else that I would like people to know about acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.  I had to pause for a moment to consider the question before beginning to answer.

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Is it Possible to Have Acupuncture Covered by Insurance?

Is it possible to have acupuncture covered by insurance? Yes! In light of the plethora of news about the reformation of health care, where does Chinese medicine stand?

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