Merck Knows More about Zetia than They’re Telling Us

(or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Pharmaceutical Industry) I'd like to try to change the way you think about preventative medications. The goal of prescribing blood pressure-lowering medications is not to lower blood pressure.  The goal of prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications is not to lower cholesterol.  The goal of prescribing medications for osteoporosis (low bone density) is not to raise bone density.  Let me explain.  The goal of medications that low...
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Shocking Study: Pedometers Motivate People to Walk More

Last week's post generated many comments from you, and I appreciated them very much. With Thanksgiving approaching and New Year's resolutions around the corner many of us are reviewing our commitment to our exercise program (or realizing that for the last few months we've had no commitment and therefore no exercise program).  With this perfect timing, this issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association published a More

Turning that Frown Upside-down

A patient of mine told me yesterday that she thought too many of my posts were negative:  this supplement doesn't help, that medication doesn't work, this intervention doesn't make a difference.  She's right.  A lot of my posts are negative.  There are two reasons for that.  One is that we're constantly bombarded by advertisement and bogus information in the mass media about the latest and greatest medical wonder, usually long before any evidence exists about its effectiveness.  So I partially s...
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Neither Spinal Manipulation nor NSAIDs Help in Acute Low Back Pain

Acute low back pain is a very common problem, so one would think that we would already know how to treat it optimally.  Sadly, we don't. A study in this week's Lancet raised serious doubts about two of the most common therapies sought out by patients with low back pain: non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and spinal manipulation.  The study received much coverage in t...
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