Kansas City Academy of Family Physicians

How flexible are you? Do you accept change easily?  Flexibility is defined as the ability to be modified; your willingness to adapt; your attitude. Fitness Try to get in 30 minutes of stretching every day. Your body is made to endure some tough situations, but it will tell you when it has had too much. Decrease the strain you put on your body by taking time out to breathe, relax, and stretch the elements of your body that hold stress and tension. ‘A little stretch goes a long way’. Nutrition Shake things up! Try to incorporate something new in your diet or exercise regime every week. Pre-planned meals or workouts give us a great tool to maintain healthy eating habits and lifestyles. Just add some new foods or exercises to try once a week to add variety to your menu and fitness goal. ‘Bend but don't break.' Quick Facts Stretching helps decrease risk of injury and improve daily physical performance. Stretching decreases resistance in muscle tissue during activity and ...

June is Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month. Everyone who has a brain is at risk to develop Alzheimer’s, a disease that is often misunderstood. Alzheimer’s disease has become one of the largest health care crises in the world. Did you know…? Every 66 seconds someone in the United States develops Alzheimer’s disease. In Missouri, it is the sixth leading cause of death. It kills more than breast cancer and prostate cancer COMBINED . Alzheimer’s is not normal aging. It is a progressive brain disease, which appears through a variety of signs and symptoms. Alzheimer’s disease is the only top-10 cause of death that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed. Alzheimer’s is not just a disease of old age. Early-onset Alzheimer’s affects people younger than 65 – many are in their 40s and 50s. About 200,000 people have early onset Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Doctors do not understand why most cases of early-onset Alzheimer’s appear at such a young ...

From KCAFP president, Emily Lott: One of the student representatives to the board, student doctor Peter Lazarz from UMKC, recently made an educational presentation to the board about an upcoming mission trip that he and several other UMKC students will be participating in. Peter has been heavily involved with the board for the last year and is a very active member in many student led organizations at UMKC. Through his participation with us, we have heard his experiences on several other mission trips, and he mentioned the upcoming trip to Haiti for which he is one of the main organizers. We invited him to speak at a meeting so that we could learn more. After hearing his presentation along with input from student doctor Claire Smith who is one of the other main organizers, the board voted to help support their endeavors, including by sharing information with the rest of the KCAFP. We wholeheartedly and enthusiastically support their efforts and several members of the board are consi...

We have all heard medical professionals talk about stroke, but do you really know the facts?  An estimated 795,000 Americans will have a stroke each year, with a stroke occurring every 40 seconds.   Stroke is the 5 th leading cause of death in the US and the number 1 cause of disability.  Of the 7 million stroke survivors in the USA, approximately two thirds of them are disabled. During a stroke, brain cells die at a rate of 32,000 per second.  Seeking quick treatment is the key to survival and reducing disability. Stroke is a process that affects the blood vessels leading to and within the brain.  You could essentially call a stroke a “brain attack”. The most common type of stroke is from a blockage in a blood vessel.  This type of stroke is called ischemic.  The blockage could be from a clot that forms in the brain or a clot that formed somewhere else in the body and traveled to the brain. A transient ischemic attack (TIA), also called...

A healthy community does not develop overnight or materialize because of the actions of a single person. It takes time and effort from many different sectors within the community, as well as the community itself. At the Jackson County Health Department we strive to understand the needs of those we work for. We work to improve access to health care, control infectious disease, lower environmental threats, prepare for emergencies, provide access to records and information, and promote a healthy lifestyle for the citizens of Jackson County.   The Jackson County Health Department provides a variety of services. We participate in statewide programs such as Show Me Healthy Women (SMHW) and Adult Head & Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Show Me Healthy Women provides services such as cancer screenings, while the TBI program assists individuals who are living with traumatic brain injuries. Our department also provides clinical services ranging from testing and screenings to immunizati...

Opioid use and misuse is at an all-time high resulting in a record number of overdose deaths in America. From 1999 to 2014 more than 165,000 people died from overdoses related to prescription opioids alone. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid prescribing is fueling the epidemic. In 2012, a staggering 259 million prescriptions were written for painkillers, enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of pills. These numbers are so concerning that the United States Surgeon General has sounded the alarm by sending a letter this month to every physician in the United States requesting their help in stemming the tide of opioid misuse. America’s top doctor is urging his colleagues to educate themselves on how to treat pain safely, to screen patients for an opioid disorder and most importantly, shape how the country looks at substance use disorders by talking about them and treating them as a chronic illness, not a moral failing. The opioid epide...

Zika virus, also known as ZIKV, is the latest infectious disease threat to capture the attention of the American public. With its origin in Brazil, the host country of this year’s Summer Olympics, and its association with potentially severe birth defects, Zika understandably has many people concerned. In the continental United States, there have recently been confirmed cases of Zika infection transmitted by mosquitoes in one Miami, Florida neighborhood. At least for now, however, there is very little risk of a person becoming infected with Zika from mosquitoes here in the Midwest. At this time there are NO locally transmitted cases of Zika Virus in the greater Kansas City area. The most common  symptoms  of Zika virus disease are fever, rash, joint pain, and red eyes. Other symptoms include muscle pain and headache. Many people infected with Zika won’t have symptoms or will have mild symptoms, which last less than a week. However, Zika virus infection during pregnanc...