Obesity and Health Many groups, like the Consumers International and the World Obesity Federation, argue food should be regulated as strictly as tobacco. Their claim (BBC News, May 18th) is that deaths from obesity are rising rapidly – about 30% globally from 2005-2010 – and that obesity promotes so many chronic diseases – from diabetes […]
Why You Don’t Light the Night (6/16/14)
Don’t Light the Night White Nights – romance and adventure. These are times where the barriers of fatigue and tradition can be broken. We are overwhelmed by possibility and longing. If dreams can occur at night, so may their unexpected fulfillments. Yet what if white nights, filled with the light of love and literature, […]
Marijuana – the Panacea of Our Times? (5/12/14)
Marijuana – What Does It Treat? “It does everything,” my colleague explained, shaking his head. “It treats pain. It treats headaches. It treats depression and anxiety. Epilepsy. They keep asking me for it, every day.” A novel antidepressant? An extraordinary new anti-anxiety agent? No, marijuana. My internist friend is bombarded with requests to […]
Driving Through Sleep (4/21/14)
Transport and Sleep Chance can kill you. So can sleepiness. People on the Metro-North commuter train into Manhattan were expecting a normal trip one morning last December. Until something “abnormal” occurred. At 7:20 AM, the train turned into a thirty mile an hour flying at 82 miles per hour. They were heading towards Spuyten […]
New Era for Alzheimer’s? (4/14/14)
New Days It’s not just in media, high tech and politics where hype often overwhelms hope. It also happens in medicine. The discovery of abnormalities in amyloid and tau proteins made researchers in the 1980s believe they had a handle on Alzheimer’s disease. A host of medications promised to stall or push back its manifestations. […]