The Old Numbers Racket One way to keep a population unhealthy is to endlessly worry them about getting sick. For the last few decades, purveyors of cholesterol as the core of heart disease have created a medical industrial complex that has been hard to suppress. Now that complex is changing its spots again with new […]
Does Depression Age You? (12/2/13)
The Tale of the Telomeres If you ever get depressed, you will age much faster. Or at least that’s what some recent articles proclaim. The latest – a study from Amsterdam of 2400 people and their genes – looked at their telomeres, the “buffers” of DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes which prevent them […]
Treating Depression Effectively – Getting People To Sleep (11/25/13)
Treatment of Depression Is Often Ineffective The key to successful treatment of depression may be treating the insomnia that accompanies it. What New Research is Changing Attitudes? Rachel Manber at Stanford studied cognitive behavioral treatments for insomniac, depressed people. When their insomnia was fixed following CBT, depression treatment success doubled. Get them to sleep and they stopped being depressed. […]
How Drugs Change You Through Time (11/19/13)
Steroids Can a single dose change your body the rest of your life? My patient wasn’t thinking about that. He just wanted to have big muscles. Really big. He had been caught red handed with syringes in his back pack. His parents wanted to know what they were – and why. Nothing much, he told […]
Life Is So Fast You Have To Rest (11/4/13)
Cleansing the Brain What is sleep for? A few answers: 1. Learning 2. Memory Consolidation 3. Rebuilding Tissues and – 4. A brand new use – Cleansing the Brain (washing out toxins) What Happens When You Don’t Sleep Well? Much higher rates of 1. Heart disease 2. Heart Attack 3. Stroke 4. Depression 5. Infections […]