Unsettling Science
Last week I wrote about the PURE study which followed over 135,000 people in 18 countries for seven years. It found that current dietary guidelines are essentially wrong as there was an increased rate of heart disease stroke and mortality associated with low fat...
Resilient Doctors Or, Doctors On Fire?
There is a lot of talk in recent times about doctors needing to be resilient to be able to handle the stresses and strains of the job better, rather than getting depressed or suicidal. I welcome the attention that is being brought to these important issues. It is...
Pure Galileo
There was a time when we believed the earth was the centre of the universe. To be honest, it was not unreasonable for people in the dark ages to accept this. The technology of the time was limited. When Galileo Galilei proposed that the earth revolved around the sun...
7 Strategies To Cope With Stress
We all know that experiencing a high degree of stress, especially for a prolonged period can be debilitating and even deadly. Scientists have known for some time that conditions such as cancer and heart disease can be induced by living a stressful life. Stress can...
Fathers
There are very few certainties in this world. There are even less in medicine. Yet one absolute is that to create a new human being requires a male sperm and a female egg. This is regardless of whether it occurs naturally or has medical assistance. It is also not...
Rest In Peace – The Art Of Medicine
At the graveside they still talk about judgement, intelligence, and the wisdom that is the practice of medicine. Deans and healthcare leaders wax poetic as they tell stories of great cures to lift in memoriam remarkable healers. Yet, though we bow to Hippocrates,...
Medical Mission Creep!
Some numbers are so big that one can struggle to comprehend them. Fierce Pharma reported that in the decade from 2007, drugs losing their patents had total sales of $US915 billion. Of this over US$200 billion was in sales of statin medications. A tablet for high blood...
Does Poverty & Racism Raise The Risk Of Alzheimer’s For African Americans?
A recent 2017 report from the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference claims stress and poverty can increase African Americans risk for Alzheimers Disease. According to the Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, and Emory Alzheimer’s...
Humans Are Social Beings
There are eight pillars of health. One that does not get as much airtime as movement, sleep and diet is relationships. According to Medical News Today “Two new meta-analyses from Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, UT, reveal that loneliness and social isolation...
Unsettled Science
There is an old adage that the only certainty is change. Last week a new advisory, published in the BMJ, came out saying we do not need to finish a course of antibiotics. Interestingly one of the reasons for this is a compete reverse of the previous view. It was...