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Lactose intolerance is the inability to digest lactose, which is a type of sugar found in milk and dairy products. Lactase is the enzyme that digests lactose. Some people lack the ability to produce lactase and some people produce very little of it.

The symptoms would be like abdominal pain, cramping, bloating, diarrhea, gas, those are the symptoms. Let's say you avoid milk and dairy products for two weeks and your symptoms go away, then most likely you have lactose intolerance. Then what you can do is slowly reintroduce lactose in your diet and see how much you can tolerate.

Certain groups of people are at higher risk of developing lactose intolerance, these include Jewish people, African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and Mexicans.

Yes, it is a hereditary condition. Some people can develop it, but a lot of times, you can inherit genes from both of your parents and you can develop lactose intolerance as a teenager or as an adult.

There are two ways to treat lactose intolerance. One way is to avoid products that contain lactose, such as milk and dairy products like cheese and yogurt. Another way to treat lactose intolerance is by taking the enzyme itself, either in liquid form or a pill form, and it's called lactase.

The most important thing to do is read all the labels. A lot of different things have milk in it, a lot of things have lactose in it, so anything like milk chocolate, a TV dinner, you just don't know what has milk, so you have to read the labels. The other thing is that people with lactose intolerant are at risk for osteoporosis, so you have to take supplements for calcium and vitamin D to avoid that problem.

During perimenopause, there are a lot of things happening. Most importantly there are hormonal changes. And this can cause a lot of symptoms like acne, weight gain, it can also cause insomnia, and all these things combined can lead to someone feeling depressed and anxious.

Perimenopause causes hormonal changes which lead to menstrual irregularities as well as a lot of symptoms, like acne and hot flashes and it can also cause increase in weight. All these things combined can cause a person to feel depressed and anxious.

So the reason it’s difficult to connect these symptoms to perimenopause because many other conditions can cause a woman to feel depressed and anxious.  And we have to rule out those organic causes such as hypothyroidism.  So when you are having these symptoms it is important to discuss it with your doctor because sometimes when you anticipate these symptoms you can bring those symptoms on, however there may actually be an organic cause that needs to be evaluated by blood tests.

If it’s not the right temperature then you will have difficulty falling asleep. If it’s too cold, obviously you’re going to shiver, if it’s too hot, then you’re going to sweat and you’re going to be very uncomfortable. If there’s too much light in the room, that’s a stimulant to your brain and you’re not going to be able to fall asleep. So you need to turn things off.

Well, other things you can do, to help you relax are, following, simple relaxation techniques that you can find in a yoga book or in a yoga video online. Another thing you can do is certain scents can help you fall asleep better, such as lavender.

What they refer to as white noise. Some people need that background noise so that it, everything else is cancelled out. Such as slamming the door or sirens from the outside. So that TV noise can cancel those big sounds out and they are able to fall asleep faster [for some].

Your bedroom environment plays a major role in your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. Your bedroom should be cool, should be clean, dark and quiet.

The main reason that you need to stop screen time 30 minutes before going to bed is that your brain needs to relax. You need to give it some time to wind down. So, you need to start dimming the lights, you need to turn off your TV, you know, turn off your phone, so that that bright light or any sound coming from those devices doesn’t cause your brain to be stimulated.

Antibiotics are prescribed to treat certain bacterial infections. They do not work against viruses such as influenza. Although, in the case of influenza, you could get a secondary bacterial infection in which case, an antibiotic would be warranted.

There're several different classes of antibiotics and the one that's chosen is according to where the infection is in the body as well as any known resistance patterns in the community. That's something that the physician will know. They're usually prescribed in cold and flu season when somebody has an acute bacterial sinus infection or ear infection or known bacterial throat infection, or what we call pharyngitis, which is just a general term for inflammation of the throat.