Paid for by Johnson Memorial Hospital
A fresh year is the ideal time to focus on your health and wellness. As a Johnson County resident, you’re lucky to have a wealth of seasoned health experts right in your backyard at Johnson Memorial Health (JMH).
CANCER SCREENINGS
Cancer diagnoses have been on the rise in recent years. According to the American Cancer Society, two million patients were diagnosed with cancer in 2023, up from 1.9 in 2022 and 1.8 in 2021. This is why it’s crucial to get early detection screenings.
Experts now advise you to begin getting colonoscopies at age 45. If no abnormalities are found, you won’t have to get another one for ten years. Women should begin getting annual mammograms starting at 40. Men should get prostate screenings at 50. Visit a dermatologist regularly for skin checks. If you’re between 50 and 80 and have a smoking history, get a lung screening.
JMH also offers heart scans. While they’re designed to look at your heart, they get a picture of your lungs too.
“I’ve had several patients who were getting a routine heart scan, but we found lung nodules that turned out to be lung cancer,” says Dr. Stephen Eberwine, oncologist at JMH. “They had no symptoms, but this scan enabled us to catch the cancer early.”
Some people avoid getting screened out of fear.
“Most people assume if they have cancer, they’ll have to endure caustic treatment, but that’s not true,” Eberwine says.
While chemotherapy works well against fast-growing cancers, an alternative to chemotherapy is targeted immunotherapies like Keytruda, which is now approved to treat 20 to 25 different types of cancer. Eberwine recently treated a patient who was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Keytruda melted away his cancer, and he’s been in remission for nearly five years.
LIFESTYLE MEDICINE
Dr. Joanna Campodonico, a family medicine doctor with JMH, helps patients with obesity management. “Obesity is now being viewed as a disease, so treating it is becoming more accepted,” says Campodonico.
She treats from a holistic perspective because so many factors can lead to obesity, including poor lifestyle habits, limited access to nutritious food, little physical activity, not enough sleep, excess stress, medications and genetics.
“If you can prevent obesity and/or help someone achieve a healthy weight, that could prevent a lot of diseases down the road, including 13 types of cancer that are associated with obesity,” Campodonico says.
It’s wise to take a comprehensive approach to weight loss by asking questions like: How much sleep do you get? How’s your stress level? How’s your mental health? Do you stop eating when you’re full? Do you avoid eating in front of the television? Do you try to eliminate processed foods? How much do you exercise?
Significant weight loss can result in pain reduction, increased energy and overall mood enhancement.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Campodonico says. “Continuing to help someone maintain their weight is just as important as the loss.”
OVERCOMING JOINT PAIN
More than 50 million people in the U.S. experience joint pain related to arthritis. That’s about one in five adults, or 20% of the population.
“If people don’t experience arthritis, they may not realize how it debilitating can be,” says Dr. Nicholas St. Germain, orthopedic surgeon at JMH. “It can take away a person’s independence and sense of self.”
Arthritis, which is the leading cause of disability in the United States, is inflammation inside the joint space. More than 100 different forms of arthritis exist. However the three most common are osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and post-traumatic arthritis. Osteoarthritis is the degenerative loss of cartilage over time. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that tends to affect multiple joints within the body. Post-traumatic arthritis occurs after an injury to the bone surrounding the joint or to the cartilage itself, and becomes degenerative in nature over time.
The first way patients should try to overcome joint pain is through lifestyle modification. “Often patients need to switch from high-impact exercise like running to lower impact exercises like swimming and cycling,” St. Germain says. “Weight loss can also significantly improve joint pain.”
When lifestyle modifications and assistive devices like canes and walkers don’t help, you can try non-steroidal anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen, aspirin, and Naproxen, or COX-2 inhibitors, which can cause fewer gastrointestinal issues. Cortisone injections, directly injected into the painful joint space, can help to decrease inflammation.
When nonoperative modalities fail to improve pain and function, the next step is joint arthroscopy. With advanced arthritis, however, the only viable option is joint replacement surgery. St. Germain performs direct anterior hip replacements as well as robotic joint replacement.
St. Germain had a patient in his early 50s who had advanced bone-on-bone hip arthritis. After having anterior hip replacement surgery, he reported that his life completely changed.
SOUND SLEEP
Nearly a quarter of the population struggles with getting a good night’s sleep, which then affects daytime alertness, focus and energy. Poor sleep may be due to many factors, but topping the list are sleep apnea and insomnia.
Sleep apnea occurs when a person stops breathing during sleep due to blockage in the windpipe. Left untreated, these people suffer mood disorders and sometimes fall asleep while driving. Those with moderate or severe apnea are at greater risk of heart issues, high blood pressure and strokes. To diagnose sleep apnea, you must do an at-home sleep test to see how many interruptions in breathing you experience per hour.
According to the Sleep Foundation, two-thirds of adults occasionally experience insomnia. At JMH’s sleep center, doctors can help reset circadian rhythms using cognitive behavioral therapy for those who struggle with delayed sleep phase syndrome (staying up late and waking up late) and advanced sleep phase disorder (getting sleepy early in the evening and waking up early in the morning).
“You want to modulate that sleep cycle to fit in with the rest of society,” says Dr. David Kristo, pulmonary and sleep medicine specialist at JMH.
Following a good sleeping plan requires rising first thing in the morning and getting a lot of bright light to set your internal clock. Avoid caffeine after midday and use dim lights at night. If your eyes pop open in the middle of the night with racing thoughts, get out of bed and read a boring book until you feel drowsy. “And definitely turn the clock away so you’re not amping up anxiety,” Kristo says.
Kristo has seen patients who needlessly suffered with insomnia or sleep apnea for years.
“Poor sleep doesn’t have to be a way of life,” Kristo says. “We can help you.”
MENTAL HEALTH
“There is no health without mental health,” says Tricia Duncan, mental health counselor at JMH. “I think people forget that.”
According to Mental Health America, roughly 23% of adults (or 60 million Americans) experienced a mental illness in the last year, while one in five youths had at least one major depressive episode.
Common issues facing people today are anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse, and grief, which includes the death of a loved one or pet, a job loss, or a divorce. It’s important to improve your physical well-being by getting proper sleep, eating healthy and exercising regularly, which can be as simple as going for a walk around the block.
“Just getting out in nature can have a positive effect on your mental health,” Duncan says. She also suggests implementing meditation, relaxation techniques and therapy. “Often people envision therapy as lying on a couch talking about childhood problems, but there’s a practical side to counseling that can help you further develop coping strategies,” she adds.
Duncan, who is on the Suicide Prevention Coalition for Johnson County, does crisis interventions, handles suicide risk assessments, and helps patients navigate the mental health system. She’s had patients who have gone to the emergency room because they thought they were having a heart attack when it was actually a panic attack. After working with Duncan, they now know how to harness the power of their mind to manage their anxiety when they feel panic attacks coming on.
“It’s a great relief when people realize that they have control over some of this and the power to do something about it,” Duncan says.
Johnson Memorial Health’s main campus is located at 1125 West Jefferson Street in Franklin. They also have locations in Whiteland, Greenwood and the Center Grove area.
