“I love everything in the world … except for ticks.” – The Dalai Lama New England has the highest incidence of Lyme disease in the world, with Martha’s Vineyard and Westchester, NY leading the way. This summer we will have another difficult season with Lyme and...
A Hypertension Solution In my last newsletter, I explained how the new American Heart Association Hypertension Guidelines will fail to reverse our growing high blood pressure problem. Milton Packer, MD, cardiologist and provocative blogger on Medpage, has labeled it...
There is a Way to Fix the Hypertension Crisis. New Guidelines Won’t Do It. In a famous psychology experiment, subjects watch a video of students, moving in circles, pass two basketballs around. The task is to count the number of passes that are made. At the end...
Predictions for this weekend are for windchills of -20 degrees in cities, -30 degrees in the suburbs. You have a significant risk of rapid hypothermic injury. Hypothermia is a nasty, subtle, and potentially fatal condition. The sequence of hypothermia is: You can get...
Adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to die from heart disease than adults without diabetes. At least 68 percent of people age 65 or older with diabetes die from some form of heart disease; and 16% die of stroke. Diabetes is the seventh leading cause...
“Enemy of the People” In the Henrik Ibsen play “Enemy of the People.” the citizens of a small Norwegian town believe that bathing in the local mineral springs is good for one’s health. The town’s doctor discovers that the springs make people ill. The doctor, simply by...
I. Welcome to the Microbiome Science is full of surprises. Right about the time we developed radio telescopes that can look back 15 billion years to the origin of the galaxy, we discovered that the galaxy we can see is only one third of the universe. Suddenly...
A recent publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no benefit of 1 gram daily of fish oil in a review of 20 previous studies. Numerous major news and media outlets are interpreting these results to show that omega-3 is ineffective as a...
Last year, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology released new guidelines for the treatment of an increase in the risk of heart disease with statin lowering drugs like Lipitor. The previous guidelines (Adult Treatment Panel Guidelines (ATP...
Headline: Testosterone Doubles the Incidence of Heart Attack (2014) Reality: Testosterone Group had 0.7% more Heart Attacks A paper by Finkle et. al. (Increased Risk of Non-Fatal Myocardial Infarction [Heart Attack] Following Testosterone Therapy Prescription in Men)...
For ten years, Merck has been pursuing one of the Holy Grails in pharmaceuticals. Aspirin is one of the most recommended drugs in the world. Merck has been developing laropiprant to replace aspirin. But laropiprant was a long shot as it has a paradoxical dose-...
Between diving for basketballs, rock climbing, and riding dirtbikes, I have had some hard landings, but none recently until last June. I was riding my bicycle, when a woman, with her infant in a papoose, decided to stop directly in front of me in a crowded crosswalk...
