In last week’s Health Tip I described the exhausted state of Patricia, dragging herself through the day and crashing completely in the afternoon. At first, Patricia was oddly supercharged in the evening, unable to relax or sleep. Later, this energy burst vanished and she simply couldn’t sleep. She was tired all the time. Before her […]
Category: Knowledge Base
“Every Afternoon At About Four I’m So Tired I Could Sleep At My Desk”
“Exhaustion is my reality. At four o’clock, I’m wiped, totally wiped.” Patricia is 33, happily married as far as marriages go, one kid, steadily employed in the usual American less-than-satisfying corporate job, good eating habits, and, until recently, a health club goer a couple/three times a week. Now she’s too tired for that. Just looking […]
Harvard Economists Warn (And So Do I): Beware Of Cowboy Doctors!
At some time in your life you’ll be faced with the very painful decision-making processes discussed in today’s Health Tip. Most likely it will involve an aged relative, but because death and dying are so random, you might be making similar decisions about your life partner, yourself, or (hopefully never) a child. You’ve probably seen […]
Make $112,500,000 In Your Bathtub!
There’s a lot you can do with your bathtub besides soaking or playing with your duck collection. Edelberg family legend holds that during Prohibition, a granduncle of mine made gin. You yourself, with a little effort, could raise turtles or tilapia. But if you were as clever and mean as Big Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli, […]
Can Your Diet Actually Prevent Breast Cancer?
An important study published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine confirmed what doctors had suspected for some time but had been unable to prove. You can definitely reduce your risk of developing invasive breast cancer by pledging to follow that Mediterranean Diet you’ve read about but never got around to taking seriously. Researchers in Spain […]
Obamacare: The Losers
In last week’s Health Tip we reviewed the groups that have done remarkably well with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also called Obamacare. Unfortunately, three of the four big winners are industries enjoying record profits as a result of the new law–the health insurance industry, hospitals (and the physician practices they now […]
Obamacare: The Winners and The Losers
Despite the efforts of a few hardliners in Congress, it looks like Obamacare–the Affordable Care Act–is here to stay. After making its best effort to kill the bill at a fetal stage, the big guns of American healthcare (various medical associations, the American Hospital Association, Big Pharma, the health insurance industry) are now enjoying a […]
Depression, Anxiety, Probiotics, and Camel’s Milk
Most thoughtful people who take medication for depression, anxiety, or both do so with mixed emotions. The symptoms of these conditions can be pretty horrible, and when you’re tossed a life preserver in the form of an effective prescription med, you’re thankful to be living at a time when they’re are available. Of course, good […]
Some Good News About DCIS and Worrisome Mammograms
I’ve lost track of the number of women who’ve told me something like this: “My mammogram experience was horrible. They called me back with this get-in-here-right-away sense of urgency. I was terrified. They took lots of pictures, talked about calcifications. I had one biopsy, then had to return for another. The suspense was horrible.” And […]
The Girl Who Smelled Like Pennies
She could not get rid of the awful taste in her mouth. Metallic, she described it, like having pennies in your mouth. Two years it had been. She’d tried a tongue scraper to no avail. Changed her diet, swished an assortment of mouthwashes, rinsed her sinuses with a neti pot, and then, thinking she might […]
Getting Serious About Lyme Disease
It’s hard not to be a bit worried when you read about the dramatic increase in Lyme disease. This year, new cases are up 350% in New England and 250% in the North Central states. If you’re geographically impaired, click on that link to discover that North Central means us. Surveys taken of physicians show […]
How Our Health Care System Created The Nazi Doctor
Last week I reported on the chilling story of Farid Fata, the Detroit oncologist (chemotherapy specialist) sentenced to 45 years in jail for fraud after stealing millions of dollars in medical fees because he administered inappropriate chemotherapy to hundreds of patients, many of whom did not have cancer at all. I mentioned that Fata’s crime […]
The Nazi Doctors Among Us
For weeks, one of the most widely emailed articles on Medscape, the physician-only medical news source, concerned Dr. Farid Fata, the 50-year-old cancer specialist who received a sentence of 45 years for fraud after administering inappropriate chemotherapy to hundreds of patients. Some of these patients had been previously cured of their cancer and yet he […]
Time To Seriously Rethink Prescription Drugs
Over the past few months, you may have noticed a spate of new warnings about commonly used prescription drugs, and even non-prescription drugs. Just last week, the FDA issued urgent precautions about the serious risks of non-aspirin NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), which worldwide are probably the most overused medications of all. Go into any drugstore […]
“They Crawl Under My Skin and Come Out At Night”
Earlier this year, iconic folk singer Joni Mitchell was found unconscious in her California home and immediately hospitalized. Although she was subsequently discharged and seems to be doing well (in late June her spokesperson said she’d experienced an aneurysm), the hospitalization revealed that she’d been plagued for years with Morgellons Disease. She describes her experience […]
Young Docs Vote To Suppress Alternative Medicine Info
Disappointing, but not surprising. In what’s been called a thinly veiled rebuke of physician media star Mehmet Oz, MD, delegates at this month’s meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) supported resolutions that endeavor to hold physicians responsible for advice they dispense via the media. One of the resolutions, sponsored by residents and medical students, […]
A Nutritional Supplement For Memory That Actually Works
You walk into a room, pause, stare blankly ahead, and ask yourself, “What did I come in here for?” Seeing a familiar face in the theatre lobby, you exchange socially acceptable kindnesses and now the first act is ruined as you wrack your brain trying to remember the person’s name so you don’t embarrass yourself […]
Will You Live Another Five Years?
Of course you might not want to know the answer to that. Or, having worked diligently on healthful eating and regular exercise, you may want to know if it will all pay off. Now, in a joint project between Swedish statisticians and a half million (!) volunteers in the UK, there’s a simple questionnaire that […]
Magnesium Deficiency: The Real Emperor of All Maladies?
A great title, isn’t it? I wish it were mine. I happily give credit to article’s author, George Lundberg, MD, a physician known to virtually every doctor in the US as the longtime editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) before he was fired in 1999. The AMA disapproved of his publishing […]
Nutritional Treatments For Mental Health
If you’ve experienced depression, anxiety, or ADD or if you’re just curious about why everyone you know seems to be taking a mental health med these days, you might want to glance at “America’s State of Mind,” a report on our current and incredibly pervasive use of psychiatric drugs. With more than 20% of us […]