Trends seen at a Doctor's office in Austin, Texas

Mindi Morrell & she’s a Nurse Assistant              Austin, Texas  Metro Area   

I called my doctor’s office back home in hopes to speak to my physician but instead of letting me talk to him they handed the phone to Mindi who wasn’t the easiest person to speak to but at least she answered my questions. First thing she said that people came in for was cholesterol problems. High cholesterol can be inherited or can be acquired through poor diet and lack of exercise. I actually just found out yesterday that my husband has poor cholesterol problems and that his dad and his grandfather both had the same problem too. High cholesterol causes difficulty in blood flow throughout your body and can lead to heart attack or stroke if not treated with medication or change in life style. My husband’s grandpa passed away 8 years ago from a heart attack and so now I have to be extra cautious about what he eats so that we can prevent Darin from heart disease as well.

The next trend or pattern she said that she sees patients coming in for is issues with blood pressure.  This is a problem that I am concerned about in myself. I have always had a healthy blood pressure but my grandma has had problems with it and so has my mother and they both have had to take pills to help with their blood pressure. My grandma suffered from 3 strokes and after her 4^th stroke it left her paralyzed and caused a lot of brain damage. 1 in 3 Americans suffer from high blood pressure and one way that this can be prevented is by controlling sodium intake and by again living a healthy life style.

The third trend is diabetes. She didn’t say specifically whether it be type 1 or type 2 but diabetes affects more than 20 million Americans so this is not just a trend in my hometown area. Diabetes is caused either because your body doesn’t produce enough insulin or because it does not respond to insulin correctly. Insulin takes glucose from the bloodstream to muscles to use as energy storage but if insulin is unable to or there is none in the body to perform its function then the sugar in the blood becomes dangerously high. Diabetes can cause severe eye problems, nerve damage, or skin and feet infections which can result in amputation. Type 2 diabetes can sometimes be reversed with weight loss surgery or life style changes but Type 1 cannot.

The fourth and fifth trend are allergies and asthma. Allergies in Austin, Texas are horrific. I know because I was a child that was raised there and I always had problems with allergies. I had an Allergy & Asthma specialist back home in Austin and he suggested that I get injections. For the first year of injections I had to go twice a week to get them, then the next year once a week, then the next year once every two weeks, and the last year once a month. It was a long process but I could tell that my allergies were improving. When I moved to Utah my allergies improved even more and now I hardly suffer from seasonal allergies. Asthma is a chronic condition that causes the pathways leading to the lungs to become narrow from swelling.  This leads to coughing, wheezing sounds, shortness of breath. There are drugs to help control asthma but a good way of preventing asthma from acting up is removing environmental triggers such as tobacco smoke, cockroaches, pet dander, and mold.

-Stefany Hiatt