Regent Medical Centre - Durban North

30/06/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1791hNnw5X/?mibextid=wwXIfr

When can I expect to return to driving after my surgery?

NB: USA Study performed on left hand drive vehicles so would apply to the opposites limbs to operate a right hand drive vehicles eg: South Africa, Uk.

https://osmsgb.com/ortho/doctor-when-can-i-return-to-driving-after-surgery/?fbclid=IwZnRzaASw5wlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe29nruFvNZeMaOFg6wkU9UPEeCosGolaNnNmYTbjtghioa2yrI6X5E7pbUW4_aem_07hoQ_AEEBoIVOFXy8s3Tw

11/06/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1BKnUTxkm3/?mibextid=wwXIfr

A sauna is not a passive activity. Your heart works about as hard as it does during light cardio, and that changes how to read the survival data.

Sauna gets treated as relaxation, which makes the longevity findings look like magic, but the mechanism is plain. When you sit in heat that hot, your body's main job is to get rid of the heat before your core temperature rises, and it does this by opening the blood vessels in your skin and sending a large share of your blood to the surface where heat can escape. That drop in resistance forces your heart to pump faster and harder to keep your blood pressure steady, and your heart rate climbs and stays up the whole time.

One study tracked heart rate and blood pressure through a 25-minute sauna session and compared it to a treadmill-style exercise test in the same people. The strain on the heart matched light to moderate exercise, somewhere around 60 to 100 watts of effort. Sitting still in heat was doing real cardiovascular work.

102 adults who each had a heart-disease risk factor did a single 30-minute session in another study. Afterward their arteries were measurably less stiff, and their top blood pressure number dropped from 137 to 130. One session moved both in a healthy direction.

The survival data lines up with that. In a study of 2,315 Finnish men followed for about 20 years, the more often someone used the sauna, the less likely they were to die during the study. Death rates dropped step by step: highest in once-a-week users, lower at two to three times, lowest at four to seven times a week. Heart-related deaths followed the same pattern. The benefit scaled with how often, not just whether.

This was an observation of one group of middle-aged Finnish men, not a controlled experiment, so it cannot prove cause, and the frequent users may have been healthier to start. No trial has tested this directly against lifespan. What the evidence does show: heat is a real workout for your heart and blood vessels, and the dose appears to be how often you do it.
References:

Laukkanen et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015
Laukkanen et al., Journal of Human Hypertension, 2018
Ketelhut and Ketelhut, Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2019

09/03/2026

01/05/2023

LIVIN' ON THE MD EDGE: Drive, Chip, and Putt Your Way to Osteoarthritis Relief

Lucas Franki, Richard Franki, and Teraya Smith
April 27, 2023

Taking a swing against arthritis

Osteoarthritis is a tough disease to manage. Exercise helps ease the stiffness and pain of the joints, but at the same time, the disease makes it difficult to do that beneficial exercise. Even a relatively simple activity like jogging can hurt more than it helps. If only there were a low-impact exercise that was incredibly popular among the generally older population who are likely to have arthritis.

We love a good golf study here at LOTME, and a group of Australian and U.K. researchers have provided. Osteoarthritis affects 2 million people in the land down under, making it the most common source of disability there. In that population, only 64% reported their physical health to be good, very good, or excellent. Among the 459 golfers with OA that the study authors surveyed, however, the percentage reporting good health rose to more than 90%.

A similar story emerged when they looked at mental health. Nearly a quarter of nongolfers with OA reported high or very high levels of psychological distress, compared with just 8% of golfers. This pattern of improved physical and mental health remained when the researchers looked at the general, non-OA population.

This isn't the first time golf's been connected with improved health, and previous studies have shown golf to reduce the risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity, among other things. Just walking one 18-hole round significantly exceeds the CDC's recommended 150 minutes of physical activity per week. Go out multiple times a week – leaving the cart and beer at home, American golfers – and you'll be fit for a lifetime.

The golfers on our staff, however, are still waiting for those mental health benefits to kick in. Because when we're adding up our scorecard after that string of four double bogeys to end the round, we're most definitely thinking: "Yes, this sport is reducing my psychological distress. I am having fun right now."