It has long been known, or at least felt, by the medical community that the “dietary supplement” industry used widely varied but fairly dubious practices in their dealing with people. That comes from the majority of them realizing they can pretty much obtain the equivalent of winning the lottery if they can just use the right advertising slogan or (more…)
I bet you feel pretty safe around someone with the “flu” if you don’t touch them, they don’t cough or sneeze and you stand at least six feet away. I know I always have and most others I know have as well. Not so!
In an absolutely amazing new study some infectious disease experts have found that (more…)
Despite the relatively luxuriously life we live here in the US, as far as food standards go, foodborne illness (food poisoning) is common and can happen to anyone. How common is it? Well, about 1 in 6 Americans (48 million) get sick yearly. One hundred and twenty-eight THOUSAND are hospitalized and three thousand die. (more…)
One of the great things about writing these “current development” blog entries is that I get to read lots and lots of interesting medical articles about all kinds of things, big and small.
Everyone knows that tremendously-huge strides have (more…)
Here’s a great new finding that is bound to draw some ire from practitioners of alternative treatment’s for children with ADHD. I say that because it’s happened before any time someone tries to actually put some scientific investigation into areas of very lucrative sacred cows. What I’m referring to are: cognitive training, neurofeedback, behavioral interventions, and exclusion of foods associated with hypersensitivity. All of these “promise” ADHD treatment.
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In medical school I ran across a wild article by a “doctor” claiming he could “cure” hyperactivity by having them stop using things like toothpaste and anything else containing salicylates. The results and claims seemed wildly simple and too good to pass up to me; so I convinced my pediatric honors mentor to let me do a study for my honors project. She did.
Dr. Feingold, the proponent, proved to be most unhelpful so I used the best professor sources, his literature and all their procedures to set up a double-blind study which would “prove it.” Problem was, of our 30 patients who signed up for the trial we couldn’t get even one to actually respond so we could give them the real or placebo salicylates that would prove which it was.
My mentor reported the results after I had graduated and went on to become one of the country’s authorities on ADHD. I’ve written several posts on this blog covering various aspects and they are now curated into this series.
This article is not so much for anyone I know – except, perhaps someone entering the Peace Corps – but to provide “closure” so to speak for an issue that I saw a lot of during my medical training (Vietnam War era). I wanted to write about some new research in the treatment of severe malnutrition (Marasmus and Kwashiorkor) in (more…)
What I have been trying to say for the past couple of days, and kept getting side-tracked, is that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has just released this years immunization schedule (2013) which not only takes into account all the recent scientific studies but tries to make them understandable–as understandable as Read more→
Childhood immunization guidelines once considered a godsend of protection against all-to-common childhood death, these days might be considered an annoyance they’ve become so commonplace.
Polio, heart disease, Rubella, chickenpox, meningitis… all caused death in addition to misery. Almost every family had a child die in childhood.
I’ve written about immunizations many times, as this series of articles displays. The last article gives a synopsis of the CDC and other official entities who make the guidelines; so you can get them direct, skipping the middlemen, and avoid all the out of date “klinker” websites on the interned (they never erase any outdated stuff).