Dr. Joel Kizner

I am known as a proponent of family oriented, natural childbirth with a minimum of medical intervention. I have received a "best practice" designation from Long Beach Memorial Hospital for having the lowest Cesarean section rate among all the obstetricians practicing there. My Cesarean section rate, since I first began practicing, has consistently been in the 10-15% range, well below the national average, which is now about 30%.



I am married and I have three daughters. My wife, Ronna, is a physical therapist. I am an avid long distance runner. Since moving to California, I have run the Long Beach marathon nine times, the Palos Verdes marathon seven times, and the LA marathon three times. My personal best marathon time was in Palos Verdes, 3:29. My last race was the 2010 Long Beach Marathon (3:55 finishing time) . The website www.active.com often has a lot of interesting information for you runners out there.



My other passion is music. For the past ten years I've been performing with the Long Beach Jewish Community Center Klezmer band. I play banjo and guitar in the band. The band has played in many appearances in and around Long Beach. We have also played at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood for their Sunday Klezmer Brunch series. Klezmer refers to eastern European, Jewish dance music. Klezmer is currently enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity. It's cheerful, melodic, toe-tapping, easily accessible music. Click on the following link to download mp3's of the band's music: Music.



The issue of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HRT) has been in the news lately. 7 years ago, a large study, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) had shown that HRT, specifically a drug called Prempro, increases a women's risk of getting heart disease, breast cancer, and venous thrombosis. These findings confirmed what has long been suspected regarding breast cancer. The surprise was the heart disease risk, because up until a few years ago, it had been widely accepted that HRT should help prevent heart disease. Thus, the risk-benefit equation for HRT has changed. HRT is certainly helpful for prevention of menopausal symptoms (hot flashes,insomnia,irritability,vaginal dryness) and osteoporosis. It should probably not be used long-term (more than 5 years). There are other medications that are at least as effective for osteoporosis prevention. Note that the results of this study may not apply to other hormone formulations (ones that use different types of estrogens and progestins), lower doses of HRT, or to estrogen without a progestin. In addition, the link between heart disease and HRT may be more complicated. There are data suggesting that women who begin HRT at younger ages (40's and 50's) may actually have a reduced risk of heart disease whereas women who start later may have an increased risk. For more information on hormone therapy and many other issues affecting women,  the American College of Ob-Gyn's website, www.acog.com, is a good place to look. I also highly recommend the website of the American Cancer Society   for unbiased, non-commercial, comprehensive information on screening, prevention and treatment of virtually any type of cancer.

The Genetic disease Foundation has a new (June 2011) and useful site for information about genetic diseases and genetic testing (for couples planning to have children) - www.KnowYourGenes.org .

Joel Kizner MD