During the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday weekend, our Atrius Health practices will be closed for routine care on Thursday, November 24th and Friday, November 25th. The following sites are only open for pre-scheduled urgent care appointments, and Dedham Medical Urgent Care Center (in Norwood) will be open for walk-in care as outlined below.

The practices open for urgent care and their hours are:

When I prescribe a new medication for one of my patients or suggest an over-the-counter (OTC) drug, I like to spend some time with them to explain the medication, how it works, possible side effects, and how to take it. A big part of taking a medication involves knowing what you can or can’t take with it, because combining certain foods with certain medications can have an important effect on how the drug works in your system.

Whether it’s at home, at work, or in the gym, that age-old question of whether to use heat or ice for an injury continues to be debated. And there’s good reason for the debate, as there is no one correct answer to the question – it depends on the injury in question.

Below we describe the physiological and therapeutic benefits of both heat and ice to help you decide which one might be most effective to use.

Parents often ask about electronic devices and their effects on vision, as many children are spending a significant part of their day on smartphones, tablets, e-readers, laptops, etc. Parents are often concerned that increased screen usage may make their child nearsighted (myopia is the medical term) and result in their child needing glasses.

These parental concerns are particularly important today as a National Eye Institute (NEI) study has found that the prevalence of myopia in the United States increased 66 percent between 1971-1972 and 1999-2004.