Q: I’ve been accused of being a couch potato. I suppose it’s true but I’m just not the natural Joe Athlete type. I have no fundamental interest in playing tennis or jogging. But I still want to look good and feel good when I reach (shudder) middle age. Any recommendations?

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Joel stood leaning against the bedroom doorway, thinly disguising his disappointment. Jane had a yeast infection. Again. Their relationship was beginning to feel the toll of this microscopic invader: Candida albicans. Struggling not to weep, because of the deep, raw, itching pain inside that felt like her womanhood was on fire, Jane whispered, “Let’s get some help.”

Candida albicans is a fungus which naturally inhabits, in a controlled quantity, the human intestinal tract. In infants, an overgrowth produces “diaper rash.” In the throat, an infestation is called “thrush,” seen only in immuno-compromised individuals. Candida albicans does not belong in the vagina. It most certainly does not belong in the blood stream. A predominant cause of Candida albicans overgrowth, sometimes refered to as Candidiasis, but most often simply called a yeast infection, is antibiotic abuse.

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Strokes are brief episodes involving a lack of oxygenated blood flowing to the brain (90% are ischemic infarctions), or a sudden bleed within the brain tissue (10% are hemorrhagic) which causes permanent damage to the effected area of the central nervous system. In a classic stroke, the neurologic defects continue to expand for 24-48 hours after the infarction occurs (”stroke in evolution”). The most frequently seen stroke is called a “completed stroke,” whose symptoms develop rapidly and maximally within a few minutes to an hour. The term “completed stroke” also refers to the fully established neurologic deficits after the stroke, whether from the acute or gradual kind. Neurologic symptoms solely relate to the area of cerebral infarction.

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