Innholdsfortegnelse for 2022 i 5280 Health

You may have heard the news: Protecting yourself from the sun is actually detrimental to your health—at least, according to a 2016 study in the Journal of Internal Medicine that’s part of a growing body of research re-examining the role sunlight plays in our well-being. But while there’s mounting evidence that not getting enough sun could be a serious risk, there’s a lot to unpack before you decide to leave your parasol behind on a trip to Dillon Reservoir. At the heart of the controversy is vitamin D, the nutrient we get from food, supplements, and ultraviolet radiation (aka sunshine). Higher levels of vitamin D have long been correlated with everything from reduced inflammation to lower rates of skin cancer and heart disease. But researchers haven’t been able to verify…

A blazing midsummer sun shines overhead as 35-year-old Ietef Vita rattles off the fruits growing in his backyard—apricots, plums, peaches, apples. On one tree hangs wine-colored globes, tapered like teardrops. “The red pears are just coming in,” he says. This urban orchard is only half of Vita’s idyllic Westminster home garden. In the front yard, a veggie lover’s paradise, bees dart between onion and echinacea flowers. It’s not easy tending to such diverse flora, but Vita has years of experience coaxing plants to edible maturity: From 2008 to 2016, he was a gardener for Elyria-Swansea based GrowHaus, a nonprofit education center and farm co-founded by his mother, artist and cultural activist Ashara Ekundayo, to improve the neighborhood’s access to nutritious fare. Even before gardening became his profession, Vita’s family taught…

In 2000, Katie Couric famously got a colonoscopy live on the Today Show after her husband died from colon cancer. So I guess you could say I rode her coattails (or is it entrails?) by posting a photo of my procedure to Twitter in August 2021. Anyway, 12 years ago, I nearly lost my mother to the disease. She’d been exhausted and, we later learned, was on the verge of cardiac arrest when the doctor ordered a colonoscopy. She was bleeding internally, which is common with colon cancer. In her words, she “basically had no blood left.” The latest recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is regular colonoscopies for men and women starting at the age of 45. My mom was 64 and had never been screened.…

The majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer are women without a history, which is what I am. No one in my family has had the disease. Well, in March 2021, I went in for a routine mammogram. It came back abnormal—there was a suspicious lesion. At that point, we didn’t know if it was cancer. It was just an area of concern. I had no lumps or bumps. After going back for more images, a biopsy, and an MRI, I decided to get a lumpectomy, and that’s when it was upgraded from an area of concern to a carlobular carcinoma in situ. Then there are these algorithms they put you through that weigh factors, such as when you started your menstrual cycle, so everything really becomes very specific. For…

NOTE: Each listing includes the physician’s name, the hospitals at which the physician has privileges, the doctor’s office, clinic, or hospital address, and the best phone number to call for an appointment. Full listings, including information about how many years each physician has been on the Top Doctors list, are available at directory.5280.com/doctors. ADDICTION MEDICINE Susan Calcaterra UNIVERSITY 1635 Aurora Court, Sixth Floor Aurora 80045 720-848-2300 Alexis Carrington-Ford UNIVERSITY 1693 N. Quentin St. Aurora 80045 877-999-0538 Kaylin Klie DENVER HEALTH 667 Bannock St., Pavilion K Denver 80204 303-436-6000 Julie Taub DENVER HEALTH 777 Bannock St., Pavilion A Denver 80204 303-436-4949 ADDICTION PSYCHIATRY Joseph P. Cannavo ST. JOSEPH, GOOD SAMARITAN, LUTHERAN 10350 E. Dakota Ave. Denver 80247 303-338-4545 Christian Thurstone DENVER HEALTH 667 Bannock St., Pavilion K Denver 80204 303-436-6000 ADOLESCENT…

DENTAL ANESTHESIOLOGY Page 64 Manages pain and anxiety during oral surgery or other dental procedures using general and/or local anesthesia ENDODONTICS Page 64 Treats issues related to nerves and the inner portions of the tooth; root canals are a common procedure GENERAL DENTISTRY Page 65 Performs preventive dental care and basic upkeep of teeth, including cleanings and X-rays ORAL AND MAXILLOFACIAL SURGERY Page 75 Removes impacted teeth (such as wisdom teeth) and performs reconstructive surgeries, like rebuilding broken jaws ORAL PATHOLOGY Page 76 Studies, identifies, and treats oral diseases ranging from potentially cancerous leukoplakia to canker sores ORTHODONTICS Page 76 Modifies your bite or coaxes unruly teeth into alignment using braces and other devices PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY Page 82 Provides therapeutic and preventive care for kids PERIODONTICS Page 86 Specializes in…

ETHAN PAN A food writing and cognitive science major at Brown University, Pan got a literal taste of his subject’s work while reporting “Digging Deep” (page 26), a profile of Denver hip-hop artist, gardener, and vegan chef Ietef Vita (aka DJ Cavem). “While showing me his herbs, he was adamant I try them,” Pan says. “It showed not only his generosity, but also his understanding that sharing flavor makes a special moment.” MADI SKAHILL Skahill, a digital assistant editor for 5280, says that researching “Rise With The Machines” (page 22) was a wake-up call: “Apparently, I’m losing bone strength by the minute.” Luckily, she found three local gyms with state-of-the-art equipment that garners results almost as quickly. “I love that these exercise machines help me work my body smarter,” Skahill…

People suffering long-term effects of COVID-19 have a new co-pilot: the Post-COVID ICU Clinic at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. There, UCHealth specialists in cardiology, pulmonology, physical rehabilitation, and behavioral health come together to see those who struggle with symptoms a month or more after recovering from the coronavirus. “There are patients in their twenties, thirties, and forties who were highly productive and are now unable to walk across the room without feeling exhausted,” says Dr. Natasha Altman, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist. The clinic is the brainchild of Dr. Sarah Jolley, a pulmonary and critical care medicine specialist at the CU School of Medicine who was developing a post-ICU clinic to aid long-term recovery when COVID-19 hit in spring 2020. The project quickly…

OSTEOSTRONG If you want to work out: Your skeletal system  The technology: Osteogenic loading machines How it works: The average human’s bone density peaks around age 30, and as your skeleton starts to weaken, your muscles do too (think of your skeletal system as the foundation of your house). Research has shown that brief bursts of high-impact activity stimulate bone growth, and the machines at OsteoStrong’s Lakewood, Denver Tech Center, and Lowry outposts safely replicate that pressure by exerting the ideal amount of force against you while you perform full-body moves. OsteoStrong says one 15-minute visit per week can boost strength, balance, and agility; increase bone density; and alleviate joint pain. Details: Memberships start at $129 per month; osteostrong.me GOLDEN BIOHACK If you want to work out: Each cell and synapse…

Why didn’t you choose my doctor? We don’t pick the docs—Denver physicians do. For the past 27 years, 5280 has surveyed doctors and asked them, specialty by specialty, which metro-area physicians they would trust to treat themselves and their families. Our theory is that medical professionals are best qualified to judge other medical professionals. The ballot is posted on 5280.com from the end of January to mid-March each year. Every metro-area doctor with a valid Colorado medical license can fill it out. Once the doctor hits “save,” the votes are entered into our database and tallied. So doesn’t that make it one big popularity contest? In some respects, yes. We hope that doctors give us careful, responsible answers, but there’s little we can do to stop them from recommending their…

Born with Down syndrome and weakened muscles, Izzy S. couldn’t sit up atop her mount when she began visiting the Temple Grandin Equine Center (TGEC) interim facility in Elyria-Swansea a year and a half ago. By this past July, however, the four-and-a-half-year-old was able to stand in the saddle for 10 seconds. Her progress can be attributed to equine-assisted services (EAS), a form of therapy designed to treat a range of physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities, from autism to spina bifida. (For Izzy, a horse’s gait helps her understand what walking feels like.) Determined to become the world’s foremost EAS provider, in February 2021 Colorado State University debuted an approximately 14,000-square-foot TGEC facility—named for the school’s famed animal sciences professor and autism advocate—near its Fort Collins campus; a permanent TGEC…

In March 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the country, Hosea and Lauren Rosenberg’s world had already come to a halt. Days before the pandemic forced the couple to shut down their Boulder restaurants, Blackbelly and Santo, they learned that their then two-year-old daughter, Sophie, had multicentric carpotarsal osteolysis (MCTO), a painful, progressively crippling genetic disorder that can be life-threatening due to its accompanying kidney failure. Sophie shares the disease with approximately 30 to 50 other people on the planet. In the past, the heartrending prognosis might have been the final word. Today, however, parents like the Rosenbergs are leading searches for treatments and cures—and in the process, they’re changing how the medical community thinks about these under-researched diseases. “[Sophie’s doctors] basically printed out a stack of papers and said, ‘Here’s…

In 2015, Chris Riopelle’s best friend called him with a question about his kidneys. The subject wasn’t as weird as it might sound, because Riopelle was an executive at Denver-based DaVita, the nation’s largest dialysis company, at the time. The friend’s doctor had recommended he see a nephrologist about some lab numbers, and Riopelle asked to look at the test results. Within hours, on Riopelle’s advice, his BFF was headed to the emergency room in a race against kidney failure. The friend eventually received a transplant, but the experience reinforced to Riopelle the warped manner in which health care handles kidney disease: Mostly eschewing early detection, the industry focuses on end-stage care (i.e., dialysis). “Of all people, I’m the one who said, ‘Hey, buddy, your kidneys aren’t working,’” Riopelle says.…

When the most devastating health care crisis in generations hit, Coloradans responded by steering clear of the doctor. That might sound ironic, but shortly after COVID-19 first appeared in the Centennial State, Governor Jared Polis signed executive orders that, from March 23 to April 26, 2020, prohibited providers from performing many routine medical services. Some doctors who would have been allowed to treat patients during that time voluntarily closed to preserve personal protective equipment for essential workers. And even after all medical offices were allowed to reopen, many patients demurred on seeking treatment out of fear of contracting COVID-19 while, say, getting their teeth cleaned. The aggregate result of these actions was that visits to health care providers along the Front Range in 2020 plummeted 25 percent compared to 2019…

A THE BENEFIT IS SUBSTANTIAL Women ages 21 to 29 should get screened for cervical cancer every three years, but a Pap test alone is enough for this age group. Women 30 to 65 require a Pap test every three years or can opt for high-risk human papillomavirus testing every five years (doing both is OK, too). Every adult ages 50 to 75 needs to undergo screenings for colon cancer. This ranges from yearly fecal occult blood testing to a colonoscopy every 10 years. (If you are especially concerned about colon cancer, the USPSTF gives a B to the 40 to 49 demographic receiving these same screenings.) B THE BENEFIT IS MODERATE TO SUBSTANTIAL To detect any indication of amblyopia (when one eye is weaker than the other; it’s often referred to…

At least one health care interaction hasn’t declined during the pandemic. In fact, telemedicine visits on the Front Range increased from fewer than 100 per week before March 2020 to more than 30,000 by July 2020, according to data compiled by the Colorado Health Institute. Many physicians, Denver-based Dr. Scott Joy says, believe virtual preventive care appointments will continue to increase in popularity due simply to their convenience. Soon, however, we won’t need to wait to see a doctor—virtually or in person—to be alerted that our health is in danger. The latest preventive medicine technology impacts us as we go about our everyday lives, vigilantly monitoring and treating our bodies from head to toe. HEART Kaiser Permanente Colorado is sending select cardiovascular disease patients home with Bluetooth-enabled scales that monitor…

A HEALTHY INVESTMENT WALLET-FRIENDLY WELLNESS Garden of the Gods Resort & Club’s state-of-the-art medical spa, Strata Wellness, recently launched annual Wellness Concierge Medical Memberships for well-heeled individuals who want health care that’s as carefully tailored as their suits. Both at the Colorado Springs resort and remotely, Strata’s team of physicians, fitness and nutrition coaches, physical therapists, and energy healers helps you achieve objectives like improving heart health or strengthening immunity via various classes and treatments. From $3,000 to $15,000 annually Crested Butte–headquartered Eleven Experience is known for its dozen or so jaw-dropping adventure properties (think: helicopter fishing in New Zealand and mountain biking in Iceland). Now, its 2.5-year-old wellness-focused arm, Eleven Life, is taking guests’ physical and mental health to, yes, an 11 as well. At its Taylor River Lodge…