I recently got an email from a gentleman who told me I was wrong about many things because I “come from an era of incomplete medical education and information.” He rambled on but had two main points: modern doctors fail to recognize a kind of allergy that defies standard diagnosis and that is the cause
Depression can kill. Antidepressants can help. A meme that continues to appear regularly in the media and in the comments section of this blog is “antidepressants are no better than placebo.” It is a false belief based on a faulty interpretation of the evidence. A new study has just come out that should put
Flowers of the bloodroot plant, Sanguinaria canadensis. You’re welcome, I could have used a very different image (warning: gross bordering on horrifying). I first wrote about escharotic treatment for cervical dysplasia in 2015. A caustic substance is applied to the cervix. This produces an uncontrolled chemical burn and the dead tissue sloughs off, hopefully taking
Las pulseras de cobre se usaron durante siglos en la medicina folcórica. Supuestamente reducen el dolor de las articulaciones y la rigidez asociada a la artritis, y usando cobre en la muñeca presuntamente beneficia a todas las articulaciones en el cuerpo. Existen afirmaciones que el cobre tiene propiedades anti-inflamatorias y anti-oxidantes. Se dice que las
Copper bracelets have been used for centuries in folk medicine. They allegedly reduce the joint pain and stiffness associated with arthritis, and wearing copper on the wrist supposedly benefits all joints in the body. There are claims that copper has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. The copper from the bracelets is said to be absorbed through the
Instead of a new post this week I decided to recycle and revise what I wrote about Answering Our Critics a few years ago, here and here. I thought it was time to visit this issue again, because our critics didn’t get the message. They are still flooding the comments section with the same
Patients with heartburn are often diagnosed with GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) and treated with a drug called a proton pump inhibitor (PPI) to reduce stomach acid production. It is pretty effective, but it doesn’t always work. When it doesn’t, standard practice has been to double the dose of PPI. Doubling the dose only improves symptoms
The Puritan’s Pride website has a Vitamin Advisor that claims to provide a personalized supplement plan, with expert recommendations chosen just for you. In my opinion it is deceptive, designed not to provide evidence-based personalized health advice, but to sell their products; and one can only wonder what kind of “experts” would support such ill-advised recommendations. Stephen
One of our regular commenters forwarded to me an email that had slipped by her spam filters. It was from MyMedLab, whose slogan is “Lab Tests the Easy Way.” It starts out: What is glyphosate? Glyphosate was patented as an antibiotic Glyphosate kills bacteria in the soil The same bacteria exists in our gut
I like to read. I read a lot. I am retired and have time to read. And I like to tell others about the books I have read. (My teachers made me write a lot of book reports in high school and I guess the habit stuck.) As a result, I seem to have
