12/10/2012

This past week was my last week of the year as a volunteer at Ben Taub. I am leaving town for the next month after finals to spend time with family and enjoy the break. I hope to continue my volunteer service in the upcoming semester, and I will have to see how I can fit it into my schedule. It has been a fulfilling experience to have the opportunity to serve my community. I have met many wonderful people and have had a few memorable experiences in my short time at Ben Taub. These experiences and this blog has given me an outlet to reflect on the issues that face the medically underserved in our community. As an aspiring future physician, it is this portion of the population I feel that I should turn most of my effort to providing proper care for, and I hope that my future career path can lead me to be able to help these who are in most need. Wherever I end up in my career, I will always carry these memories as a volunteer with me.

12/2/2012

For our group presentation on the cellular biology of a disease, we selected hypercholesterolemia. I addressed this a little bit in an earlier post, but wanted to expound why I wanted to select this for our project. Hypocholesterolemia is a metabolic disorder in which serum cholesterol levels are elevated. Long-term elevated levels can cause atherosclerosis, which is implicated in many cardiovascular diseases.

The biggest hurdle in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia is that it is usually asymptomatic until . Patients who don't seek regular checkups will usually wait decades with elevated levels before seeking treatment at advanced stages of illness when they have already developed atherosclerosis. 

CVD is the leading cause of death in the US.Most cases of hypercholesterolemia are preventable through proper lifestyle changes. I wanted to select hypercholesterolemia for our brochure in order to target a wide range of patients who may have this disease, and inform them on some simple options they may have in order to reduce the risks of developing CVD later in life.