Another Article on Steroid Injection Risk
We’ve covered the hazards of epidural steroid injections here. But this article is a good summary of the questionable efficacy, the skyrocketing usage, and the horrors of the fungal meningitis cases. How Back Pain Turned Deadly ..There are the doctors who overprescribe an invasive back-pain therapy that, in studies, has not proved useful…
Read MoreAntidepressants: #1 Drug
Rate of antidepressant drugs has increased 400% if you compare 1988-94 to 2005-2008. Depressing…Some concerns about antidepressants here, here, and here. 1st Antidepressant ranking among prescription drugs among U.S. adults up to age 44. Antidepressants are the most common prescription medication for Americans age 18-44, and the third most common drug across all ages….
Read MoreChernobyl Clean up Crew: Leukemia
This comes as no surprise. There are some anti-nuclear activists who won’t even drink French wine since the fallout was all over Europe. One positive to come from so much suffering is that it may have slowed the nuclear industry, and now with Fukishima the momentum has reversed. The other positive is that we…
Read MorePediatricians Using More Caution With Antibiotics
We have discussed the perils of too many antibiotics in the blog quite a bit, for example here, here, here, and here. Pediatricians and parents are cutting way back, as this article shows. Antibiotics Are a Gift to Be Handled With Care Over the past 15 years or so, spurred by new realizations –…
Read MoreFlu Shots Provide Little Protection
I am hoping that we are entering an era where data and science matter again. From election results to weather patterns, scientists have been dismissed as biased or corrupt by agents who are biased or corrupted by the industries they represent. Too many aspects of medicine have been accepted on faith because they should…
Read MoreBacteria Friend or Foe? Part II
Discussion of the first part of the New Yorker article here. The rest of the article discusses the future of using select bacteria combinations to actually treat illness. They discuss that probiotics, to date, are nonspecific and somewhat crude. Two prominent examples where this could be helpful are in children who develop pediatric antibiotic-associated diarrhea…
Read MoreBacteria: More friend than foe? Part I
File under “First Do No Harm” and the hazards of antibiotics, I will try to summarize the fascinating article in the October 22nd issue of the New Yorker Magazine about the importance of bacteria in our bodies for everything from Vitamin production, to mood, to suppression of disease, to digestion, to forming and bolstering our…
Read More“Spinal” Steroid Shots Leading to Meningitis and Other Ills
“Not only were these people killed, but there was no ethical reason to give this treatment” There has been an outbreak of meningitis cases linked to shoddily prepared steroids used in epidural steroid injections for pain. This article discusses some of the other dangers apart from these recent cases, such as ongoing nerve problems, paralysis, strokes and intractable pain, and arachnoiditis…
Read MoreSinusitis: Not enough Bacteria?
In the ongoing discussion of whether or not we are too clean, there is an interesting study from UCSF looking at the actual types of bacteria in the sinuses finding that certain types of bacteria are beneficial and may be deficient in patients with chronic sinusitis. One might ask the question of whether antibiotics, whether…
Read MoreBPA and Childhood Obesity
I did a previous post on the dangers of BPA found in food cans and even receipts from cash machines. A new study reported on today found obesity levels higher in children with higher levels of BPA in their urine. ..But the study does hint that causes of childhood obesity may be more complicated, he…
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