Need a new doctor? To help find a good fit, trust your intuition, say advocates for patients. Start with a primary care provider -- whether a doctor or other health professional -- who asks questions and listens responsively to what you say.
It matters. In many ways, that person is your guide to the right tests and treatments and your gateway to the right specialists. If you don’t feel comfortable with your doctor, research suggests, your health may be at risk.
Maybe your mom or dad or other relative died of Alzheimer’s dementia. Would you get tested for the APOE4 gene, which conveys a significantly higher risk of developing the disease?
Though there’s currently no cure for Alzheimer’s, a few thousand people who enrolled in a clinical experiment called the Generation Program agreed to take that gene test. NPR’s Jon Hamilton sat down with several of the study's participants as they received their results.
High heat is the current “gold standard” for fighting bedbugs, says one exterminator. He uses big room heaters in infested homes to raise temperatures to 122 degrees F for two hours, then blows hot air into any bedroom crevices or cracks where the bugs might be hiding. That’s just one stage of home treatment, which often also includes insecticide.
Some scientists eager to find better solutions are finding inspiration in folk wisdom from the Balkans, where people once spread the leaves of certain beans around their beds.
The leaves of kidney beans and green beans, it turns out, are covered with tiny hooks that can pierce a bedbug’s foot – and stop the wee beasties in their tracks.
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