John Roberts

The next two weeks, I’d like to address shoulder pain and injuries. Most people experience shoulder pain at some point in their lives. Doctors see it in mostly in athletes and people who overuse their shoulders. We also see it in those who suffer trauma, particularly from taking a blow directly to the shoulder or…

We are definitely living in a post-truth world. It’s not just in the political sphere that we have to be careful of facts and “alternative facts,” it also extends to the scientific and medical realms as well. The public is being constantly bombarded with scientific information via mainstream media, social media, and other internet sources.…

Sometimes I get asked questions in unusual places. A few months ago I was pulled aside at a store and asked if I could write about hot flashes. Women typically describe hot flashes as a feeling of intense heat, usually with sweating and a rapid heartbeat. They can last a few minutes up to a…

It’s once again time to run my annual column on allergies. Some of our readers may already cursing the annual return of allergy symptoms. Tree pollen levels (Oak, Cedar/Juniper and Birch) in Indiana have been high recently. Spring allergy symptoms can make it even more difficult to differentiate who might have an upper respiratory infection,…

Snoring can certainly be annoying, but it doesn’t always indicate a serious medical problem. However, sometimes snoring can be due to sleep apnea, a condition that can lead to significant medical problems. Sleep apnea is a condition when people have pauses in their breathing while sleeping. Most people have pauses to some degree but people…

I’ve been seeing some news stories recently describing stem cell therapy. This week I will describe what they are, where they come from, how they might be used to treat disease and finally, touch briefly on the social and ethical challenges surrounding their use. Stem cells are critical to our development and tissue repair. They…

Last week I tried to explain the very complex non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL). This week I want to cover Hodgkin lymphoma, more commonly known as Hodgkin’s Disease (HD). It gets its eponymous name from Dr. Thomas Hodgkin who first described it in 1832. Hodgkin’s is a potentially curable malignant lymphoma that carries a much better prognosis…

Someone recently asked me what lymphoma is. My knowledge of the subject was a bit dusty before I started doing some research for this column. Medical knowledge of non-Hodgkin lymphoma has rapidly evolved over the last decade or so. It is a very interesting disease and a type of cancer that is illustrative of recent…

Insomnia is a huge problem in the United States. We spend over $10 billion a year on sleep-related treatments and it’s estimated the economy loses over $40 billion in worker productivity due to sleeplessness. Insomnia is a very complex subject that I can address only briefly in this column. This week I’ll focus on some…

I’m running through my list of suggested topics from readers, and this one goes out to a reader from Sheridan. It’s a common problem, but one of those topics that doesn’t usually come up in casual conversation – constipation. There are three usual times in a person’s life when constipation can become a problem. The…