Surrounded by the familiar beeps and glow of the hospital surgical theatres I had a thoroughly enjoyable chat with scrubs-donned Dr Johan Van Den Bogaerde Gastroenterologist and researcher. We discuss probiotics and the various relevant themes around them. Topics we discuss include: - What are probiotics and some important principles - How do they work? - Evidence for different conditions - IBD, IBS, diarrhoeal disorders, helicobacter pylori, atopic eczema and others - Research bias - Working wi...
Mar 11, 2018•54 min
Dr Genevieve Yates is a medical educator, a GP and a writer. Currently she is the RACGP Queensland Censor, RACGP Expert Committee member (Pre-Fellowship Education) and senior examiner, a performance assessor for AHPRA and a member of MDA National’s Education Services Advisory Group (ESAG). She also works as an educator/ facilitator for MDA National and the Black Dog Institute. She is passionate about putting creativity into medicine, and medicine into creativity. Today we discuss assessing fitne...
Mar 01, 2018•27 min
In this episode we discuss non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or NAFLD with Dr Jon Mitchell, Hepatologist and Head of Gastroenterology at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital. We discuss: - What is NAFLD? - What is the prevalence? - How is it caused? - What is the spectrum and complications of NAFLD? - What investigations are useful? - What is the management? - Is coffee good for the liver? - What is the origin of the Fibroscan?...
Feb 14, 2018•27 min
It was a pleasure to have on the show Dr Paul Grinzi who is a GP in Victoria. He juggles a few roles, balancing his clinical work in both rural and urban GP clinics with part-time medical education work. He's recent past chair of the RACGP Vic Drug & Alcohol committee and the key educator for the Victorian Government's 'Medication Assisted Treatment of Opioid Dependence' training program. Today Paul gives us an overview of opioid dependence/use disorder, how to approach patients, being mindf...
Feb 08, 2018•33 min
Today we review considerations in acute vision loss with our friendly ophthalmologist Dr Russell Phillips. He was the previous Head of retinal surgery at Flinders Hospital and frequent lecturer at Flinders Medical School. I feel I must apologise for my ignorance in some areas in this episode and make it clear that it does not reflect the high level of knowledge of some of my fellow GPs. This was partly due to fatigue from an extremely long and busy day at the clinic and running late so I had no ...
Feb 01, 2018•32 min
Associate Professor Craig Hassed is a GP, a Senior Lecturer at the Monash University Department of General Practice, and Co-ordinator of the mindfulness program at Monash University. He is also the writer of 12 books, researcher and international speaker in this field. There are many pearls of wisdom in this episode that are extremely useful to learn and apply. We discuss the principles of mindfulness, how it applies in clinical practice, its role in mental illness, pain disorders and general he...
Jan 23, 2018•32 min
A/Professor Megan Munsie PhD is the Deputy Director for the Centre for Stem Cell Systems at The University of Melbourne and the Head of the Education, Ethics, Law & Community Awareness Unit at Stem Cells Australia www.stemcellsaustralia.edu.au Stem cell therapy is something I am being asked more and more about so I did some research and came across A/Prof Munsie. Are they just another snake oil or do stem cells hold great opportunity for treating a wide range of severe and common disorders? ...
Jan 13, 2018•1 hr 3 min
Today I am joined by Dr Johanna Lynch, GP, completing a PhD in primary care mental health assessment, post graduate training in grief and loss and a special interest in trauma and attachment. At least 1 in 8 consults in GP is related to mental health and this is increasing. According to the World Health Organization, unipolar depressive disorders alone were ranked as the third leading cause of the global burden of disease in 2004 and will move into the first place by 2030. Upskilling in mental h...
Jan 03, 2018•1 hr 6 min
Today I am joined by A/Professor David Colquhoun, Cardiologist, Lipidologist, President of the QLD Heart Foundation, Co-President of the Clinical and Preventative Council of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland School of Medicine. He has dedicated his life to reducing cardiovascular disease, and pleasingly with a strong focus on improving lifestyle factors. Risk assessment and importance of using overall risk instead of single fact...
Dec 18, 2017•51 min
Today I am joined by A/Professor David Colquhoun, Cardiologist, Lipidologist, President of the QLD Heart Foundation, Co-President of the Clinical and Preventative Council of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland School of Medicine. He has dedicated his life to reducing cardiovascular disease, and pleasingly with a strong focus on improving lifestyle factors. Part 1 - Cholesterol and CVD risk, Lipid "hypothesis" - is it still a hypot...
Dec 10, 2017•41 min
Today I am joined by exercise physiologist Tim Douge to discuss what role EPs play in disease management and prevention and how GPs and allied health can work more closely to benefit patients.
Dec 03, 2017•41 min
Had some good laughs with GP, former Headspace worker and all round top bloke Dr Chris Ganora. I was way too ambitious with the list of areas I wanted to cover as youth mental health is wide ranging and deep in content. So this is really more a "concept" overview and we shall have to revisit this area - many many times! We cover building trust and getting a good history as that forms the crucial basis to any therapy and relationship. We discuss the HEADS acronym (or CHEEADSSS now, not quite the ...
Nov 27, 2017•43 min
Non-invasive prenatal testing is becoming more common and cost effective. It detects more than 99% of fetuses with Trisomy 21, and more than 95% of fetuses with Trisomy 18, Trisomy 13 or abnormalities of sex chromosomes. These are much better detection rates than we observe with conventional first trimester screening for these trisomies (85% for trisomy 21, 50% for trisomy 18, and 50% for trisomy 13) Further reading: https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2014/july/noninvasive-prenatal-testing/...
Nov 20, 2017•21 min
Welcome to the first of a new segment I am trying out every now and then. I review the theory and science behind controversial topics and rate it - confirmed, busted or plausible. I have had a lot of requests to cover medicinal cannabis, so here it is. There is some really interesting science here, but it is still early days. In this episode we cover: What is medicinal cannabis? How does it work? What conditions can it be used in and what is the level of evidence? What are the side effects? What...
Nov 15, 2017•35 min
I really enjoyed this online conversation with Professor Felice Jacka from the Deakin University School of Medicine and Food and Mood Centre about how food effects our mental health and what clinicians and patients can do about it. We reviewed the SMILES trial, a randomised control trial showing healthy food choices like the Mediterranean diet can produce remission in people with major depression disorder, which foods are good and bad for our mental health and the suspected mechanisms of action....
Nov 09, 2017•44 min
After making a fool of myself in the first 30 seconds, Dr Tony and I have a good yarn about prostate cancer history, examination, investigations and treatments with the last 10 minutes covering the evidence for PSA testing for screening. For more on PSA screening guidelines and types of PSA testing, DRE in screening and lifestyle medicine interventions in early prostate cancer - check out my earlier podcast on this topic. NB For DRE in this talk the take home point is - not necessarily for scree...
Nov 06, 2017•50 min
I caught up with my old friend and GP registrar Dr Nadim Cody in Central QLD and we talked about his experiences with Medicins San Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in PNG and various regions of Sudan. Informative, touching, hopefully helpful are three ways to describe the talk. Humble, wise and an inspiration are three words I would use to describe Nadim. I apologise for some mic bumping noises, more at the beginning then they are pretty sporadic. Enjoy
Oct 30, 2017•51 min
On December 1 2017 the cervical screening program changes from the current pap smears to HPV testing with a change in frequency and follow up. Join gynaecologist Dr Kelvin Larwood and I having a casual yarn over the new guidelines.
Oct 23, 2017•16 min
A/Prof Bittoun gave one of the most useful workshops I have ever done at the recent Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine conference on smoking cessation. I had to interview her to share some of the principles with you. With 15% of Australians still smoking and 21% in disadvantaged areas - this is still a major disease determinant - but were the people who have already quit the low hanging fruit? Why is it so hard for the rest to stop? Today we cover some incredibly important and interestin...
Oct 15, 2017•50 min
Today we are joined by Dr Hans Seltenreich Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist and founder of the Coastal Digestive Health clinic on the Sunshine Coast, QLD. We have a yarn about the gut microbiome/microbiota and the role of faecal transplants. In particular: 1. What is the microbiome? 2. What is it impacted by? 3. What are its roles in the human body? 4. What is its role in disease? 5. What is the role of faecal transplants? As always - enjoy....
Oct 03, 2017•52 min
