Tagged: Health

  Pam Kee calls herself a “mixologist.”

But the concoction in her blender comes together at a hospital.

Kee is a nurse at Carolinas Medical Center-University, where she assists Dr. Barry Schneider with an unusual therapy that can cure a potentially deadly gastrointestinal infection.

The treatment is called a fecal transplant – and it’s just what the name implies.

Feces from a healthy donor is transferred into a sick patient to create a new, infection-free environment in the gut.

It may sound disgusting, but it works.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control warned us about the spread of a deadly, antibiotic-resistant "nightmare bacteria." The strain called CRE has been on the rise for the past decade - tracked in at least 42 states, including North Carolina - and the CDC is urging hospitals to act now. In Charlotte, CRE has infected 18 patients since 2012; seven of them died. The threat has been compared to that of MRSA, a staph infection that has also shown resistance to antibiotics and is now considered a common hospital germ. We'll learn more about these rare but dangerous drug-resistant bacteria - what they are, how they spread, what makes them so strong and how our environment and use of antibiotics might be making them worse. We'll also talk with people on the front lines, dealing with these bacteria in hospitals about what they're doing to try and control them and what patients should know. The rise of superbugs and what to do about them, when Charlotte Talks.

Not everything can be cured with a pill. At least, that’s what we've been finding out in recent years. A new movement has started: the whole health movement. This wave of education and awareness brings with it the encouragement of individuals taking more control of their own health. And how do they do this? Through a plethora of activities and choices like eating less meat, practicing yoga, drinking tea and integrating more preventative measures into their daily routines. Some call this alternative or integrative medicine, but what is integrative medicine? Where did it begin? A conversation about health and integrative medicine, when Charlotte Talks.

Viagra, Cialis and Levitra... those erectile dysfunction commercials that air while you're watching sitcoms aren’t just awkward and uncomfortable, according to a new study, they are breaking rules too. Those rules, designed by the pharmaceutical industry itself, are meant to ensure the campaigns educate consumers and avoid targeting audiences for which the message is not age appropriate - like children. But the study out of UNC Charlotte says that 'Big Pharma's' efforts to self-regulate are "an industry-sponsored ruse" with the intention to deflect criticism and block any new Federal regulations. We'll talk with the researchers about direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing - about the effectiveness and the ethics behind the ads. Sex, Lies and Television, when Charlotte Talks.