Topic: Health Disparities
Benefits of Zinc for African Americans: What It Does and How Much You Need
Zinc and infections Zinc is essential for a healthy immune system and for wound healing. African Americans face higher rates of many infections, including sexually transmitted diseases, bacterial vaginosis, HIV, and diabetes-related wound infections that can lead to amputations. Zinc…
Why Black Patients’ Pain Is Under-Treated, and How Your Genes Affect Pain Medicine
A Black doctor needed pain medicine and didn't get it When I suffered from appendicitis a few years ago, I was admitted to the hospital and had emergency surgery. I woke the next day with all sorts of tubes and…
Can Better Nutrition Lower STD Risk in African Americans? What the Evidence Shows
Do you keep getting STD infections? Do you have trouble with recurrent sexually transmitted disease (STD) infections? Is bacterial vaginosis a recurring problem? African Americans have the highest reported rates of HIV, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and genital herpes in the country,…
Bacterial Vaginosis in Black Women: Causes, Vitamin D and Precision Care
Bacterial vaginosis is not a classic STD, but sex plays a role Bacterial vaginosis (BV), often called bacterial vaginitis, is an imbalance of the bacteria that normally live in the vagina. In a national survey of women ages 14 to…
Low Potassium and African Americans
Potassium doesn’t get enough credit as a very beneficial nutrient to good health and potassium deficiency (low potassium) has been directly related to high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, muscle weakness, fatigue, and much more. Multiple studies have confirmed that…
Diabetes Differences in African Americans
There has been some startling discoveries lately in the differences in how diabetes is diagnosed and treated in African Americans. Because of genetic nuances that we normally may ignore as insignificant, hundreds of thousands of African Americans remain under-diagnosed and…
More Sleep Apnea in African Americans
Sleep Apnea is more common in African Americans A recent study confirmed there is more sleep apnea in African Americans than in Whites. Sleep apnea (also call Obstructive Sleep Apnea / "OSA") is a condition where people repeatedly stop breathing…
Heart Failure in African Americans
Heart failure in African-Americans occurs more often and is more deadly. African Americans have a significantly higher risk and earlier onset of heart failure and heart-related death compared to all other populations in the United States. In fact, African Americans are two…
Kidney Disease in African Americans: Blood Pressure, Diabetes and the APOL1 Gene
Kidney disease in African Americans is one of the clearest examples of a health gap, and it causes a great deal of suffering and early death. Most kidney failure is caused by diabetes and high blood pressure, and both are…
African American Healthcare Negatively Impacted by Bias-Driven Data
Hospitals across this nation use protocols and algorithms aimed at improving outcomes in their patients, but because of nuanced differences in the care of African Americans, those protocols have now been shown to negatively impact African American healthcare. A recent…
