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Your primary care provider retired, and now you need to find a new one. One of the providers recommended to you is an internist. But what is an internist exactly?
Within the practice of medicine, there are many different specialties. It’s common to hear about providers who specialize in skin health (dermatologists), the urologic system (urologists), heart health (cardiologists) and other parts of the body. But typically, your care starts with a primary care doctor, who focuses on your overall health and can address many problems before you need to see a specialist. Even within the field of primary care, there are different types of providers—and an internist is one of them.
Understanding the Role of an Internist
An internist, sometimes referred to as an internal medicine doctor, has specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing health issues in people age 18 and older.
As part of their training, internal medicine doctors develop deep knowledge about chronic health conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, that are common among adults. Internists are especially proficient in managing care for patients who may have multiple chronic health issues.
Because internists serve as primary care providers, they can refer you to other specialists when necessary. So, if you’re seeing an internist for your general health needs but develop a heart condition, he or she can refer you to a cardiologist when you need more advanced care.
What’s the Difference Between a Family Physician and an Internist?
Internal medicine and family physicians have very similar backgrounds and often provide similar care. The main difference is the age of their patients.
While internists have specialty training in caring for adults, family physicians are general practitioners who undergo training that allows them to care for patients beginning at birth. Because family physicians care for patients at all ages and stages of life, they receive training related to many different health needs, including pediatrics, women’s health and geriatrics.
In fact, family medicine got its name from the fact that one medical provider—the family physician—could provide diagnosis and treatment for health conditions affecting the entire family, from babies to older adults.
It’s important to note that some internists provide care for children. Doing so requires undergoing additional training in pediatrics, allowing them to be credentialed in both adult and pediatric care.
Which Provider Is Best for Me?
Choosing a medical provider is a very personal decision. Since both internists and family medicine physicians can serve in primary care provider roles, there’s no definitive answer to which type of provider you should choose.
Consider the stage of life you’re in. If you are a young adult raising kids, it may be easiest to work with a family medicine physician who can care for your needs as well as your children’s. If you’re an older adult, do not have children or already have a trusted pediatrician for your kids, an internist may be a good option for you.
Ultimately, you want to choose a provider who makes you feel comfortable. Narrow your choices to primary care providers, then look for one who meets your specific needs. You may want to interview a few before deciding on one to provide your ongoing care.
Looking for an internist or another medical provider? Find one at Magnolia Regional Health Center.
If you are a middle-aged woman, you may expect occasional blasts of intense internal heat—otherwise known as hot flashes—which are considered a common part of going through menopause. But the menopausal transition isn’t the only time when hot flashes can occur. The causes of hot flashes are abundant.
What Is a Hot Flash?
Hot flashes can cause you to feel uncomfortably warm, even if the environment around you is cold. Researchers aren’t quite sure why, but hot flashes are incredibly common among women during the menopausal transition. In fact, up to 75% of women experience hot flashes during perimenopause.
While the exact cause of hot flashes isn’t well understood, fluctuating hormone levels related to menopause are thought to play a part in disrupting the body’s temperature.
What About Night Sweats?
If you have ever woken up very sweaty in the middle of the night, you have experienced what is known as a night sweat. Night sweats often happen when a hot flash occurs at night, leading to sweating even though you’re resting.
Night sweats aren’t always the result of a hot flash. In some cases, the external temperature of the room (or an excess of blankets) can leave you hot during the night, causing you to sweat. But in many cases, particularly during menopause or illness, night sweats are caused by changes within the body, not the temperature around you.
Can Hot Flashes Be a Sign of a Serious Health Issue?
Many women experience hot flashes for months and even years leading up to and following menopause. In most cases, hot flashes and night sweats are simply an annoyance. But if you experience them regularly during menopause and find they disrupt your normal routines, talk with your medical provider.
He or she may recommend making changes to improve your quality of life, which can be as simple as lowering the thermostat or avoiding things that trigger your hot flashes. Your provider may also recommend hormone therapy to manage your menopausal symptoms. Hormone therapy can be prescribed on a temporary basis to limit menopause-related symptoms, such as hot flashes.
While menopause is a common cause of hot flashes, both hot flashes and night sweats can also be associated with other medical conditions, blood sugar swings and certain medications. When your immune system is revved up to fight off a virus like the common cold, you may experience temperature swings that include hot flashes and sweating.
If you aren’t sick or going through menopause but still experience hot flashes, check in with your medical provider. Since many conditions can be most effectively treated during their earliest phases, having your provider investigate unusual symptoms is an important step to protect your health.
Wondering whether your hot flashes could be a sign of something serious? Turn to Magnolia Women’s Center, which offers care for women at all ages and stages of life.
If diet and exercise alone aren’t helping you achieve your desired weight loss goals, bariatric surgery may be a good strategy.
Sometimes called weight-loss surgery, bariatric surgery can be a good option for many people who are looking to lose weight and improve their overall health.
In the United States, there are three types of bariatric surgery performed most often—gastric sleeve, gastric bypass and adjustable gastric band placement. A fourth procedure, known as biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch, is less common.
To keep it simple, we’re going to talk through the gastric bypass procedure and the gastric sleeve procedure.
What Is Gastric Bypass Surgery?
A gastric bypass procedure, also called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, is performed in three steps:
- The surgeon compartmentalizes a portion of your stomach, creating a small pouch in the top section and stapling it off. This makes your stomach much smaller than it was previously, which will limit the amount of food you can eat without feeling full.
- Next, the surgeon divides the small intestine into two sections and connects the lower part to the new stomach pouch. This will cause food to bypass the larger portion of your stomach and the other portion of your small intestine, so the body will absorb fewer of the calories in the foods you eat.
- The last step of gastric bypass is to connect the upper portion of the small intestine to an area located near the lower part of the small intestine. This allows the stomach’s digestive juices to flow in from the bypassed portion of the small intestine to help digest food. This is important because the bypass procedure changes the balance of hormones and the bacteria in the GI tract that are related to metabolism.
How Does Gastric Sleeve Surgery Work?
Gastric sleeve surgery, also called sleeve gastrectomy, offers an incredibly effective weight-loss solution that works differently than gastric bypass. It’s also a much simpler procedure and is less likely to cause nutritional deficiencies after surgery.
During the gastric sleeve procedure, roughly 80% of the stomach is permanently removed and the remaining portion of the stomach is sewn into a banana-shaped pouch. The procedure requires no other alterations to the GI system.
Gastric sleeve works to promote weight loss in two ways—the stomach can physically hold less food, which means fewer calories are consumed. In addition, the part of the stomach that is removed is responsible for most of the hormone that causes hunger, so your appetite decreases after surgery. As you begin to eat less, you will also shed excess body weight. Plus, gastric sleeve surgery can be helpful in maintaining normal blood sugar levels.
Top Benefits of Gastric Sleeve
While both gastric bypass and gastric sleeve can help people achieve substantial weight loss, the gastric sleeve procedure offers several advantages.
Because gastric sleeve does not involve the small intestine, the risk of complications is lower than other weight loss surgery procedures. For example, people who undergo gastric bypass may experience vitamin and mineral deficiencies, a risk of small intestine-related complications or blockages, and an increased risk of developing ulcers.
Gastric bypass is also associated with unpleasant symptoms related to what’s called “dumping syndrome.” This syndrome occurs when someone who has undergone weight loss surgery feels sick after eating certain foods.
If diet and exercise alone haven’t helped you lose weight, gastric sleeve surgery could be your next best move. Set up a consultation with the Center for Surgical Weight Loss at Magnolia Regional Health Center to learn more.
If you’ve ever had a broken heart after the end of a relationship or the death of a loved one, you may have felt like your heart was physically breaking. But can you die from a broken heart?
You may be surprised to learn that there is a heart health condition related to heartbreak. The so-called broken heart syndrome, which is more formally known as stress-induced cardiomyopathy or takotsubo cardiomyopathy, can indeed be fatal in some cases.
While it isn’t tremendously common, sometimes the surge of stress hormones associated with intense emotions and extreme stress—like those caused by the death of a loved one—can weaken the heart. This effect was recently in the news in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, when the husband of a teacher who died in the shooting passed away from a heart issue days after the tragedy.
How a Broken Heart Affects the Actual Heart
There’s no question that our mental and emotional health have a significant impact on our overall health. In the last few decades, we’ve learned how important it is to take care of both body and mind to stay truly healthy.
But there’s still a lot to learn when it comes to how a traumatic event can impact the heart. Research has shown that intense stress and shock can induce cardiomyopathy, a condition that disables the heart muscle and makes it harder for the heart to pump blood effectively.
Contrary to the name, broken heart syndrome occurs even in those who don’t have a broken heart. It can also be triggered by other shocks to the body, including severe pain, a major injury or illness, a car accident, a major financial loss, intense fear, or even something as seemingly innocuous as public speaking or a surprise party.
This phenomenon, first discovered in the 1990s, is much more common in women than in men. The majority of people who experience broken heart syndrome survive and go on to live healthy lives.
The Symptoms of Broken Heart Syndrome
People with broken heart syndrome often have symptoms that may be mistaken for a heart attack. Symptoms can include an irregular heartbeat, sudden chest pain and shortness of breath.
But unlike a heart attack, which occurs due to blockages in the arteries of the heart, this type of cardiomyopathy occurs when severe stress sends the heart into short-term heart muscle failure.
When the body experiences a shock, it can weaken the heart suddenly and seemingly inexplicably, making it much more difficult for the organs of the body to get the blood they need. This is caused by a weakening of the left ventricle.
How Broken Heart Syndrome Is Diagnosed and Treated
If stress-induced cardiomyopathy feels like a heart attack, how is it diagnosed? In most cases, emergency diagnostic testing is performed.
In a heart attack, imaging scans show evidence of the coronary arteries being obstructed and blood test results suggest heart damage. That’s not the case in someone who has broken heart syndrome. Instead, tests reveal a ballooning of the left ventricle.
In most cases, the symptoms associated with broken heart syndrome don’t last for long. Generally, the person recovers within weeks. Treatment depends on individual symptoms and the severity of those symptoms. The person may receive medications, including those to lower blood pressure, slow the heart rate, decrease fluid buildup and manage the underlying stress that caused the condition.
Because the symptoms of broken heart syndrome are serious, it’s important to seek immediate medical attention if you’re experiencing them.
When your heart’s at stake, you need a medical team you can count on. The Magnolia Heart & Vascular Center is here to offer state-of-the-art heart care in Alcorn County.
Not a golfer? Believe it or not, you can develop golfer’s elbow even if you’ve never picked up a club. Golfer’s elbow, more formally known as medial epicondylitis, is a form of tendonitis that affects the elbow.
If playing a mean game of golf (or even one significantly over par) isn’t required to develop golfer’s elbow, what causes it? Let’s take a look.
Q: What Causes Golfer’s Elbow?
A: To understand what golfer’s elbow is, it’s helpful to have a little knowledge about the anatomy of the arm. Tendons are the structures that attach muscles to bones. In your arm, tendons in the forearm connect the muscle to the bone on the inner side of the elbow.
Occasionally, tendons anywhere in the body can swell or become inflamed due to an injury or other factor. When this happens, it’s called tendonitis. When this happens in your elbow, it’s called golfer’s elbow.
And no, golf is not required, but it gets its name from the repetitive movements golfers make when swinging their clubs. You may develop this form of tendonitis from any repetitive movement that causes you to use your wrist and arms. It also affects people who participate in other sports involving throwing or lifting, such as baseball, softball and tennis.
Q: Who Else Gets Golfer’s Elbow?
A: The condition affects a small percentage of the population each year—less than 1%—and is most common in those between the ages of 40 and 60.
It’s not exclusively a sports injury either. Even those who don’t play sports can develop the condition if they frequently make bending, twisting or grabbing motions, which cause the tendons in the elbow to tear slightly.
In general, neither the right nor left arm is more likely to develop golfer’s elbow, but the condition most frequently affects your dominant arm.
The cause is repetitive motion, so it isn’t necessarily tied to a particular action. But golfer’s elbow can occur when you make the same motions repeatedly, particularly over a long period of time.
Q: What Does Golfer’s Elbow Feel Like?
A: If you have golfer’s elbow, you may experience a wide range of symptoms affecting the elbow and arm. These can include:
- Pain on the inside of the elbow and difficulty moving the elbow
- Stiffness and weakness in the hand or wrist of the affected arm
- Tingling or numbness in the fingers
While pain normally originates in the elbow, it’s not uncommon for it to radiate down the arm, affecting the wrist and fingers. Every person experiences the discomfort of golfer’s elbow a little differently, so in some cases the pain may feel similar to a strained elbow.
If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, check in with your primary care provider. He or she can perform a physical examination and a test to diagnose golfer’s elbow. The exam typically involves moving the arm in specific ways to gauge pain.
Q: How Is Golfer’s Elbow Treated?
In most cases, golfer’s elbow will improve after a few weeks with some basic at-home care. Your provider may recommend resting the arm, applying ice, using over-the-counter pain relievers or anti-inflammatory medications to alleviate symptoms, and performing strengthening exercises to build up the tendons in the elbow and restore range of motion.
Preventing golfer’s elbow from recurring is also a good idea. If you have developed golfer’s elbow more than once, your provider may also recommend physical therapy to help you adjust your movements to avoid tendonitis flare-ups in the future. This can include making changes to your golf swing if you are a golfer.
After treating golfer’s elbow, using correct form, stretching regularly and building up your arm strength can help prevent it in the future.
If you think you may have golfer’s elbow, the team at Magnolia Regional Health Center’s Orthopaedic Center of Excellence can help with a diagnosis and treatment plan. Get in touch today to schedule an appointment.
It’s entirely normal to feel concerned when you feel a lump in your breast. But while some breast lumps are signs of cancer, that’s not always the case.
Many lumps in breast tissue are the result of some other medical condition that’s benign, or noncancerous. In fact, as many as 80% of breast lumps turn out to be benign after they’ve been tested.
If you feel a lump, it’s important to have it checked out by your OB-GYN or another provider. But have peace of mind in knowing that it may be something other than breast cancer.
Finding a Breast Lump
Breast tissue changes all the time, particularly as a woman moves through different stages and phases of life. Because of that, it can be difficult to know what’s normal and what’s cause for concern.
The best thing you can do to protect your breast health is to be proactive. If you’re age 40 or older, talk with your provider about a breast screening regimen, which may include an annual mammogram or ultrasound, depending on your risk of breast cancer. Regardless of your age, it’s also a good idea to stay familiar with your breast tissue.
While formal monthly breast-self exams are no longer recommended as part of breast cancer screening guidelines, you should still check your breasts regularly. Know what they look and feel like and report any changes to your provider.
When you’re examining your breasts, you want to check for lumps or other symptoms, including pain or tenderness, skin irritation, redness on the breast skin, nipple pain, and discharge from the breast.
All of these signs can be symptoms of breast cancer, but they can also be related to benign breast conditions, which is why it’s best to have them checked out promptly.
Different Kinds of Breast Lumps in Women
There are a number of common benign breast conditions that can cause lumps and other related symptoms, including:
- Cysts. Fibrocystic breast changes or breast cysts are the most common cause of noncancerous breast lumps. These cysts often occur during ovulation. Fibrocystic lumps may enlarge and become more painful during a woman’s period, decreasing after the period is over.
- Fat necrosis. This noncancerous condition often occurs after breast tissue is damaged or injured.
- Fibroadenomas. These are benign tumors made up of fibrous and glandular tissue. They’re most common in young women and are the most frequent cause of breast lumps in those younger than age 25.
- Papilloma. This type of wart-like lump grows near the nipple. Those who have a papilloma may experience clear or bloody nipple discharge.
- Mastitis. This condition occurs when the breast tissue is inflamed, usually due to an infection. While it’s commonly related to breastfeeding, it can occur in women at other times and may cause swelling around the milk ducts, pain and redness.
Aside from these common causes of noncancerous breast lumps, sometimes breast tissue can simply thicken and have the appearance and feel of a lump. This is why it’s important to know what your breasts look and feel like, so you can spot changes.
While a lump in the breast isn’t always cancer, it’s important to have it checked out! The Cancer Center at Magnolia has the screenings and diagnostic tests you need for peace of mind.