Thank You for Scheduling Your Heart Attack on Wednesday

This week's New England Journal of Medicine has an interesting study about how differently emergencies are handled outside of normal working hours.  The study looked at every patient in New Jersey hospitalized with his or her first heart attack between the years of 1987 and 2002.  The authors separated the patients into two groups: those who were admitted on a Saturday or Sunday, and those admitted on a w...
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Women on Atkins Diet Lost More Weight than on Other Diets

Losing weight is the second hardest thing I ask my patients to do.  (Quitting smoking is the hardest.)  Typically, physicians have generally recommended a low-fat diet which is still the diet recommended by national guidelines.  Despite this, several different kinds of diets have become popular recently with varying amounts of carbohydrates, most notably the Atkins diet which is very low in carbohydrates and very high in fat. This week's Journal of the American Medical Association cont...
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Garlic Doesn’t Lower Cholesterol

Garlic is frequently touted as a natural treatment for high cholesterol, and many garlic extracts are sold with the suggestion that they improve cholesterol levels.  The current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine has an article reporting the most definitive study yet looking at the effects of garlic on cholesterol.  Volunteers were randomized into four groups:  raw garlic, powdered garlic suppl...
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We Could Always Go Back to Leeches

Last week's TIME Magazine has an excellent article about a very important trend in healthcare:  evidence-based medicine.  It's not long, and I urge you to read it. The surprising truth is that the scientific practice of medicine is a very new development.  For centuries medicine was an apprenticeship in which traditional treatments were handed down from teacher to pupil without any objective investiga...
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Skin and Beauty Products Containing Lavender and Tea Tree Oils Should be Avoided

A popular misconception (at least in health-conscious Southern California) is that natural substances are in general safer than artificial ones.  Some people who would never take a prescription medication without educating themselves about the possible side effects use natural products without a second thought. Last week's New England Journal of Medicine published an article which is a startling example of...
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Book Review: A New IBS Solution

In November I wrote about an important study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that demonstrated the effectiveness of an antibiotic for the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).  Dr. Mark Pimentel, the author of the study, is the director of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Gastrointestinal Motility Program.  Last year he published a book outlining his theories about the cause and treatment of IBS:  A New IBS Solu...
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Caution Urged When Giving Infants Cough and Cold Medications

I never write about children's health, since I have no training in pediatrics and my patients are adults. Nevertheless, I thought this story deserves your attention, particularly since many of my patients have young children. The Centers for Disease Control released a warning today in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report about adverse events in infants taking cough and cold medications. If you have a chil...
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Studies You Should Ignore

The media constantly bombards us with studies purporting to show new evidence about medicines we should avoid, or foods we should eat, or behaviors that either protect us or harm us. Many of these studies, because of their design, actually tell us absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, the media is not in the business of downplaying the news, so the studies are inevitably announced in the mainstream press with much fanfare and little scientific scrutiny. So that leaves us, the consumers of the news ...
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