Most of us at some point in our lives have felt extreme anger because we felt like we were treated unfairly. Usually with time the anger will subside. But sometimes people can get “stuck” in their anger and it will disrupt their whole health. An example is Wade who worked for a local construction company. …
I don’t know if you have noticed, but over the last 6 months there has been a flurry of ads on television, radio, and medical advertisements stressing the need for patients with symptoms of acute stroke to seek medical attention for immediate therapy. The treatment they are referring to is the administration of t-PA within …
Atopy is a medical term that refers to an allergy for which there is a genetic predisposition. Typically atopic disease will manifest as asthma, rhinitis, and chronic skin disease like eczema and hives. Over the past several decades there has been an increasing rate of atopic disease. Among children aged 4 years and younger, the …
Scientists have known for years that both the male and female brains have estrogen receptors that have wide-ranging effects on our physical, emotional and cognitive health. Estrogen influences language skills, mood, attention, and a number of other functions, in addition to memory. Estrogen receptors are present in several regions of the brain, including the …
A compound that naturally occurs in grapefruit and certain other citrus fruits may be helpful in fighting chronic hepatitis C infection by blocking an important pathway in the virus’ life cycle. New studies show that the common flavonoid naringenin inhibits the secretion of hepatitis C virus from infected cells, a process required to maintain chronic …
Quite a few people are proponents of raw milk. However, I am not quite convinced as to its safety. A recent study found that more than 1/3 of raw milk samples tested positive for H. pylori. Four hundred raw milk samples were screened and 139 of those samples tested positive for the presence of the …
About 5 years ago while preparing a talk on the excessive use of statins in the United States I came across evidence suggesting that this class of cholesterol lowering drugs can have dramatic effects on memory. However, the pharmaceutical industry has somehow managed to keep this information from the public. Last week I was surprised …
Since we are on the subject of fat I came across this whimsical poem written by David Harris Ebenbach of Richmond, Indiana titled Belly I finally notice it at a dinner party, They way it stretches my shirt, Its urgency from the cake I’ve eaten, Its nerdy gurgles all the way home. My wife has …
So often diet and lack of exercise are faulted for the obesity epidemic in American. However, there is at least one other culprit that we can blame – psychotropic medications. Psychiatric medications can cause substantial weight gain. These include antidepressants (such as amitriptyline, doxepin, and imipramine), mood stabilizers (including lithium and valproate) and antipsychotics …
Irving Kirsch of Hull University, UK, studied all data submitted to the US FDA for the licensing of the antidepressants fluoxetine, venlafaxine, nefazodone and paroxetine. He states, “Compared with placebo, antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression.” It seems that Antidepressants did substantially outperform …