M.D. – Christopher Stubbs

What Is Hypertension?

Christopher Stubbs, M.D., has nearly a decade of experience as a primary care physician. Since May of 2022, Dr. Stubbs has owned and operated a primary care practice in Topeka, Kansas. Christopher Stubbs, M.D. provides patients with traditional primary care medicine for medical conditions like diabetes and hypertension.

Hypertension is defined as high blood pressure. High blood pressure occurs when too much force pushes against the walls of your arteries. Blood vessels become stiffer and narrower, restricting blood flow to vital organs such as the heart, brain, kidneys, eyes, and skin. As a result, your body may not get enough oxygenated blood.

While there are several risk factors for developing hypertension, some individuals may have a higher risk than others. Being overweight and having a family history of high blood pressure can increase risk, as can smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol excessively. Consuming a diet high in sodium can also contribute to hypertension.

Other risk factors include age, gender, race, ethnicity, stress, lack of physical activity, and genetics. By being aware of these risk factors and making lifestyle changes where necessary, you can work towards reducing their risk for hypertension.

Common symptoms of hypertension include headaches, dizziness, chest pain, shortness of breath, leg swelling, vision problems, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, abdominal discomfort, and diarrhea. These symptoms usually occur gradually over time. Some people experience no symptoms at all.

Complications of uncontrolled hypertension include stroke, congestive heart failure, kidney disease, blindness, and dementia. Stroke accounts for nearly half of deaths due to cardiovascular diseases. Heart attacks account for another one-third of deaths due to cardiovascular disease.

Hypertension is a serious condition that requires immediate medical attention. Early detection and treatment can prevent many life-threatening conditions. Talk to your healthcare provider immediately if you notice any of the above symptoms. Your doctor may recommend lifestyle changes, medications, or surgery if necessary.

Treatments for Hot Flashes That Do Not Involve Hormone Replacement

A doctor for nearly 10 years, Christopher Stubbs, M.D. operates a private practice in Topeka, Kansas. Dr. Christopher Stubbs also authors research papers. The M.D. helped research medications for menopausal women who prefer to skip hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Hot flashes can persist for five to seven years. Research indicates HRT is the best way to reduce their severity and frequency. However, the treatment can lead to severe problems, such as cardiovascular disease, breast or endometrial cancer, and thromboembolism (blood clots inside veins).

Two classes of drugs provide a safer alternative – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). Medications in these categories – paroxetine (Paxil), citalopram (Celexa), and escitalopram (Lexapro) of the SSRIs and venlafaxine (Effexor) of SNRIs – are also prescribed for mood disorders. Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq) is a secondary choice among SNRIs for hot flashes.

The paper analyzed several studies that showed these drugs reduced the number and severity of hot flashes by 10 to 64 percent. Patients on those medications did report some side effects in the first week, most often constipation, dry mouth, and nausea.

SSRI and SNRI therapy is not for everyone. Women taking tamoxifen for breast cancer should not take an SSRI, and those with high blood pressure should be careful with an SNRI.

Products That Make Life Easier at Home for Elderly Individuals

Christopher Francis Stubbs, M.D., is a Topeka, Kansas, primary care physician who delivers a full spectrum of services, from pediatric to geriatric care. In the latter sphere, Dr. Christopher F. Stubbs has a knowledge of the specific conditions and risks that accompany aging.

As people grow older and less mobile, they often undertake home modifications that enable them to continue with the activities of daily living and remain in their residence. Personal alert systems worn on the body are one consideration. They generate notifications when changes in health status are detected. For example, they may detect and report falls, or alert caregivers when an irregular heart rhythm becomes persistent.

Safely and flexibly getting around the house is another issue. Shower transfer benches are one way of avoiding the necessity of stepping over the tub’s raised edge when entering the shower stall. Extending past the tub wall, they allow the person to simply sit and slide sideways to take a bath or shower.

Elderly people with limited mobility may also want to consider investing in a positioning transfer sheet. This waterproof or water-resistant bedsheet is crafted from specialized nylon and typically has several handles. This makes the sheet useful in lifting, turning, or simply moving a person when lying in bed. Other types of mobility equipment worth considering include adjustable bed rails, wheelchairs, and tray tables, with the latter designed to enable reading, eating, and using a laptop while in bed.

Challenges of Practicing Medicine in a Small Town or Rural Setting

=Few physicians want to work in a small town or rural setting. In 2019, only one percent of medical students in their final year wanted to live in a community with fewer than 10,000 residents, and only 2 percent wanted to live in communities with less than 25,000 residents. Further, the ratio of physicians practicing in small towns is 40 per every 100,000 patients compared to 53 per every 100,000 patients in large cities.

Ultimately, many physicians do not choose rural areas because their salaries would be lower, and it typically is too expensive to take over a small-town practice from another physician. One major issue physicians face in rural settings is a lack of medical equipment and technology, which makes a difference in the quality of care a physician provides patients. Small community clinics have funding issues, making it difficult to access the best and most up-to-date equipment and technology. Physicians sometimes do not even have basic supplies, such as testing equipment and telecommuting technology.

Additionally, being the only physician for miles mandates that the doctor is always on-call and never has leisure time. This makes it challenging to draw boundaries in a small-knit community relying on the expertise of one physician.

Physicians who are married often find that their spouses have difficulty finding work in small towns, and if they have children, there often is little in educational and community resources. Additionally, some doctors choose to work in hospitals instead of private practices.

However, clinics in rural towns are isolated and usually serve a few hundred residents across a large area. Physicians may need supplemental resources such as mental health funds, VA programs, and community connections for food and housing.

More significantly, physicians who practice in small towns face non-health issues that impact their patients. Many sources cite distance as a factor in seeking care. Some residents are willing to endure pain because the doctor’s office is too far to travel.

Also, many rural physicians serve in impoverished communities. This poverty is debilitating and can stem from generational poverty. If the patient (and family) does have income, the source is usually from multiple part-time jobs or shift work. This inability to access stable employment feeds into stresses that contribute to some of the health conditions these communities face. One expert describes it as the vicious poverty-health impact cycle.

Poverty makes it hard for patients to afford medication. The Affordable Care Act covers people in lower income brackets, but many cannot afford the co-pays or medications that their plans do not cover.

Poverty and unemployment are also connected to the mental and behavioral health of patients in these communities, which is another challenge physicians face when working in rural communities. According to a February 2019 article by The Commonwealth Fund, depression and anxiety are rampant in small/rural communities, and social stressors such as poverty aggravate these issues. Moreover, some researchers have made the connection between mental illness and drug addiction, stating that those addicted to drugs have some sort of mental illness as well.

As a result, the opioid epidemic is ravaging these communities. Since rural areas rarely have drug treatment resources, small-town physicians must become mental health and substance abuse treatment providers.

Crypto Is Everywhere, but When Will It Be Regulated

According to an article published on Insider Intelligence in April 2022, 3.6 million people in the US will have used cryptocurrency as a payment method at the close of 2022. The same article reported that cryptocurrency would have more than $10 billion in transactional value in 2022, an increase of 70 percent since 2021. Financial experts also predict that the number of adults in the US who use cryptocurrency to make payments will spike to double-digit figures in 2023.

With the increasing use of this financial tool, legislators are concerned about the currency’s volatility, citing the need to keep investors safe from losing their investments. Outside of government, financial institutions and businesses have become comfortable with cryptocurrency. Financial institutions and corporations have implemented it within their business model, and it has also become a decentralized financial system in and of itself.

Until 2019 and 2020, many financial institutions and corporations did not take cryptocurrency seriously. In cryptocurrency’s infancy, only an esoteric group of investors used the financial system. By the end of 2019, however, $2 billion had been allocated to the crypto asset class. A year later, in 2020, this figure exploded to $15 billion in assets under management, increasing five times more than the previous year.

Furthermore, traditional financial institutions and corporations are investing in cryptocurrency. For instance, Mass Mutual (around for 169 years) insured $100 million in Bitcoin.

Beyond being an investment tool, cryptocurrency is becoming a decentralized platform where consumers can use cryptocurrency as a form of payment, as seen in the abovementioned data. One of the reasons it is so attractive to many consumers is that there are no financial intermediaries, which reduces fees and other surcharges.

Outside of these transactions, consumers have used cryptocurrency in interest-bearing savings accounts and lending platforms. These are just two other ways that consumers and businesses have adopted cryptocurrency.

Because it has increasingly become an established currency, legislators in the US are taking steps to regulate it. The US government has shown particular interest in regulating stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency backed by assets (house, art, and monetary assets).

In Washington DC, the focus has been on drafting legislation that makes it safer for consumers to invest and more difficult for cybercriminals to take advantage of the digitized platform. According to the Chairman of the Securities and Trade Commission, investors might get hurt financially without more oversight.

In addition to the Securities and Trade Commission, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is also interested in seeing the currency regulated because it is a source of revenue. With regulation, the government will have provided clear guidelines on how tax filers should report this income. Speaking of which, providing clear guidelines to businesses is not only important for tax filers; corporations and businesses that have adopted cryptocurrency need clear guidelines as well.

The only move for regulating cryptocurrency has come through the bipartisan tax provision, which makes it possible for investors to report crypto transactions and make it possible for the IRS to track its use among tax filers. While the IRS has made it possible to report and track cryptocurrency transactions, the US government has not established clear guidelines for filers.

Policymakers have much work ahead in legislating regulations for this modern financial vehicle. Some challenges include providing legislation that guides jurisdictional and state mandates. Ultimately, regulating this market will work for everyone in financial services and business because, with greater protections, consumers will become more confident in cryptocurrency as a monetary tool.