Dr Waseem Mir Rheumatology Specialist
Dr Waseem Mir specializes in integrative rheumatology, a discipline of medicine that incorporates Western medicine with complementary and alternative approaches to treatment. He has a Bachelors Degree in Neuroscience and a medical degree from the University of New York as well as a Rheumatology Fellowship from Mount Sinai Hospital.
Dr Mir has been affiliated with the New York Integrative Rheumatology Center in East New York, Long Island Regional Arthritis and Osteoporosis Care, the Mount Sinai Hospital and Lenox Hill Hospital. He speaks four languages: English, Spanish, Urdu and Farsi.
Rheumatology is the specialty of internal medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the bones, muscles and joints. Some of the conditions that rheumatologists get involved with include arthritis, osteoporosis, Sarcoidosis, Sjogren’s syndrome, Lupus and fibromyalgia. Many of these are autoimmune conditions, in which the immune system misinterprets its own cells as foreign and attacks it.
Normally, the white blood cells of the immune system protect the body from harmful substances, or pathogens. In patients with an autoimmune disease, the body cannot tell the difference between what is host and what is foreign.
There are more than 150 different syndromes that have been identified as possibly being autoimmune disorders. One of the most widely known is Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Lou Gehrig was a famous baseball player for the New York Yankees; he was diagnosed in 1939. The disease is progressive and fatal, with many patients dying of pneumonia within five years of diagnosis.
One of the most common autoimmune conditions is Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). It affects 1 per cent of the population and three times as many women as men. A systemic inflammatory condition, RA attacks numerous tissues and organs but mostly the synovial joints. Treatments such as physiotherapy, analgesia (painkillers) and anti-inflammatory medications, such as steroids, can be used to control symptoms. DMARDs are disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs that halt the immune process and old back long-term damage. The anti-malarial medication, hydroxychloroquine, was discovered by accident to improve the condition of people with RA.
In Multiple Sclerosis (MS), the fatty sheaths surrounding the nerve cells in the brain are the targets of attack by the immune system. The myelin sheaths provide insulation and without them the neurons are unable to conduct signals. The symptoms of MS include cognitive and mood problems and musculoskeletal effects like pain and spasticity. There is growing acceptance in Europe of cannabinoid extracts to treat the spasticity associated with MS.
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