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Sturm and Drang at Whole Foods

Click here for the original post. Sometime during the past couple of weeks you may have caught a downwind draft from the tempest stirred up by a Wall Street Journal editorial written by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. To set the stage and let you know immediately where he stood, Mackey opened with […]

Health Care Reform and You (and Me)

As the Washington battles over health care reform continue, these past weeks have left me seriously conflicted. My moods swing between glee at the thought of health care reform and gloom as it seems we’ve once again capitulated our country’s needs to corporate bottom lines. You’d think that as a lifetime Chicagoan, I’d be used to this by now.

This is Your Moment (And You Didn’t Even Know It)

I’m surprised there’s been no mention in the newspapers or on TV of a newly published article from the prestigious American Journal of Medicine. Maybe it’s that we’re all suffering a bit of bad-news fatigue and the media decided to take mercy on us. Let’s face it. The conclusions from an immense survey (40,000 participants […]

Astonishingly Unhealthful Eating

Click here for the Health Tip link. This all began when one of the pharmaceutical reps brought in some “treats” for our staff. Bringing morning snacks is one of those strange drug company rituals that’s been occurring for decades across the US. And recently, snack dispensing is on the rise because new government restrictions make […]

Saving A Bundle on Your Health Care

Click here for the Health Tip link. A recent public survey revealed that the most pressing problem with our health care system was not that so many people were either underinsured or without insurance altogether, but that health care–all aspects of it–was just too expensive. Patients, including doctors themselves when they or their families become […]

Saving A Bundle on Your Health Care, Part 3

Click here for the Health Tip link. Let’s say that you’re among the numerous unemployed whose COBRA benefits are expiring. Or you’re among the under-employed who aren’t eligible for your employer’s health insurance. For the first time in your life, you realize you don’t have health insurance. Maybe you lie awake at night wondering what […]

Can You Trust the NYT?

Click here for the Health Tip link. After three patients and health tips readers sent me copies of a decidedly smug article in the New York Times blasting the public’s gullibility regarding vitamin supplements, I felt I had to say something. The article reports that the public seemingly ignores numerous large “well-controlled clinical studies” that, […]

Mayo Clinic Sells Its Soul

Click here for the Health Tip link. The moment I saw the title of the “research” article comparing the effectiveness of the non-generic statin Lipitor to the generic version of the statin Zocor on the cover of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, I knew its conclusion without reading it. My first thought had to do with the […]

Our Governor the Sociopath

Click here for the Health Tip link. For many amateur and professional psychologists, Rod Blagojevich’s diagnosis was a snap. I myself muttered it aloud as the indignant US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald related what he had overheard in those fateful wiretaps. A day or so later, in a New York Times op-ed piece, former TV talk […]

Crestor: To Take or Not To Take

Click here for the Health Tip link. When drug research like the recent Crestor study makes headlines in the Chicago Sun-Times and the national media, I know I’ll be fielding questions from patients. The very day after the Crestor study, in fact, the perky Crestor drug reps arrived in my office, barely able to contain […]

Pre-diabetes Prescription Drugs

Click here for the Health Tip link. Q: My doctor told me I need to take drugs for something he calls pre-diabetes. After reading your tips on the pharmaceutical industry, can you give me any advice on whether or not I need to take them? A That’s a great question because it exemplifies how doctors […]

Anti-Aging Industry

I just received a flyer announcing the 16th Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging Medicine to be held next month in Washington, DC. The way this brochure reads (“3000 participants, 300 exhibitors, 60 speakers, global market of anti-aging products to reach $115.5 billion by 2010, your Gateway to Opportunity”), you’d think any doctor failing to become […]

On Their Knees: Doctors and Med Schools before Big Pharma

Big Pharma–the multi-national companies that make up the pharmaceutical industry– gives staggering amounts of money to medical schools for research that virtually always manages to come out favorably for the company. With this much power, physicians-in-training simply don’t learn any means of treating most illnesses short of pulling out their prescription pads. And as a […]

Why I Dislike Drug Companies

If you’ve been reading this series, you already have an inkling that your health, your most precious possession, is being compromised by tacit collusion among the pharmaceutical industry, government, medical profession, and health insurance industry. Most prescription medications are prescribed unnecessarily, and you have the power to stop, or avoid altogether, some of the most […]

Why You Don’t Need Lipitor

Posted 10/28/2008 You could see smoke pouring from the ears of some doctors, myself included, at information released earlier this year. A combination of junk science, the drug industry, FDA, and American Heart Association (AHA) had convinced us that lowering cholesterol actually prevented heart disease. It turns out we’d all been conned. And it’s interesting […]

Why Doctors Avoid Prescription Drugs

The massive Physicians’ Desk Reference is distributed at no charge once a year to every practicing physician in the US. Weighing in at about five pounds, its 4,000-plus tissue thin pages are printed in painfully small type across three columns. With publishing costs underwritten by the pharmaceutical industry, the PDR is essentially one immense drug […]

Before Filling Your Next Prescription, Think Twice

Click here for the Health Tip link. Ponder these two ideas: we take more prescription drugs per person than any other nation on the planet and in the process, rank about 40th in the overall health of our citizenry. Yes, this is partly because 47 million of us don’t have health insurance, but also every […]

Death By Medicine

Click here for the Health Tip link. This letter appeared in the Chicago Sun Times July 31, 2008. I hope readers appreciate the irony behind the news that Viagra may help women suffering low libido because they’re taking antidepressants. Here’s a drug with significant side effects itself to treat side effects for a drug they […]

Stay Skeptical

Click here for the Health Tip link. During the past few months, I’ve been noticing an unusual number of articles and news stories about clinical studies “proving” that a certain alternative therapy (like chiropractic or acupuncture) or nutritional supplement doesn’t really work after all.  Each time a news release like this appears, some people will […]