Month: September 2012

Frightening Breast Cancer Patients with Bad Science

No Time to Waste: Avoidant Coping Style Scrambles Circadian Rhythms in Breast Cancer Patients, warned the headline of an article in Clinical Psychiatry News. The article went on to claim Even in the earliest days following a diagnosis of breast cancer, maladaptive coping styles are associated with a disruption in circadian rhythms –which are proven in metastatic disease to be a prognostic...

/ September 28, 2012

Iron supplements for fatigue

How are you feeling today? Tired? Is it your active lifestyle wearing you down? Or is it a sign of something more serious? Complaints about fatigue seem ubiquitous. Perhaps it’s a product of a culture with little downtime. Yet from a medical perspective, fatigue can’t be dismissed with a simple instruction to “get more sleep”. When approached in the pharmacy, I take...

/ September 27, 2012

XMRV Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Update

Sometimes science works the way it’s supposed to. Scientists make hypotheses, test them by gathering preliminary evidence, and then argue about the inevitable conflicting results. Eventually better and better evidence is gathered until a consensus is achieved. Actually, I think that is how science usually works, it’s just that most questions in science are narrow and technical and don’t command media or...

/ September 26, 2012

The Obesity Paradox

Being fat is bad except when it’s good. It’s called “the obesity paradox.” (No, that isn’t a mis-spelling for “two physicians who treat fat people.”) The adverse health effects of obesity are well established, but there are exceptions. Obesity appears to confer an advantage in certain subgroups with conditions like heart disease and diabetes. In the News Casual consumers of some recent...

/ September 25, 2012

News flash! Doctors aren’t all compliant pharma drones!

There’s an oft-quoted saying that’s become a bit of a cliché among skeptics that goes something like this: There are two kinds of medicine: medicine that’s been proven scientifically to work, and medicine that hasn’t. This is then often followed up with a rhetorical question and its answer: What do call “alternative medicine” that’s been proven to work? Medicine. Of course, being...

/ September 24, 2012

The problem of nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates

It’s that time of year again, namely flu vaccine time. My very own cancer institute will be offering the flu vaccine for its staff beginning October 1, and I plan on getting mine just as soon as I get back from the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress in Chicago early next week. In the meantime, it’s always great to read Mark...

/ September 23, 2012

Protect Yourself

Every year influenza makes the rounds, and every year people refuse to get vaccinated for very bad reasons. Don't be a Dumb Ass - get vaccinated.

/ September 21, 2012

Physicians and “CAM”

In the last 20 or so years, the popularity of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” began to lure physicians (M.D.s and D.O.s) into employing CAM treatments, or what is now rebranded as “integrative medicine.” Of course, CAM use by a physician necessarily requires some deviation from the “conventional” standard of care. Because deviation from the standard of care can be grounds for discipline by the...

/ September 20, 2012

The Sweetener Wars – HFCS Strikes Back

The health conscious and trendy public are a bit obsessed with the food they consume. This can be a good thing, to the extent that it results in a more healthful diet, but unfortunately those interested in improving their diet must wade through a great deal of misinformation before getting to accurate and helpful information. For example, I recently gave a lecture...

/ September 19, 2012

Procera AVH: A Pill to Restore Memory

At the recent Amaz!ng (no, the ! is not a typo) Meeting in Las Vegas, Dr. Gorski, Dr. Novella, “Dr. Rachie” (Rachael Dunlop of Australia) and I participated in a workshop on “Dr. Google” about how to find reliable health information on the Internet. In my presentation, I described step by step how I researched a typical diet supplement product, Procera AVH....

/ September 18, 2012