Can E-Cigarettes Help Smokers Quit? Electronic cigarettes – now known as e-cigarettes – make many uneasy. Some think brilliant designs and candy tastes will make smoking so “cool” innumerable teenagers will plunk down their credit cards – and become hooked for life. Others think e-cigarettes might immediately decrease public harm by cutting the number of […]
To Sleep – Perchance to Drive (8/26/13)
Safe to Drive? The FDA has recently requested sleeping pill manufacturers conduct more “morning after” driving tests. Getting sleep is important, but remaining sleepy while operating a vehicle is another story. They should have spoken to the police in New Zealand. Recently police in Hamilton received an odd call. A woman called about her friend. […]
Bugs in the Brain (8/25/13)
Gums Want to avoid cardiovascular disease? One way is to keep your gums healthy. Teeth gnash, bite, rip and shred the foodstuffs that let us live. And the gums that support them are necessary to keep the critters in those foods from making us sick. But gums also become ill. About 30% of adults have […]
Medical Overuse (8/12/13)
Three Trillion a Year How did American health care come to cost nearly three trillion dollars a year? One place to look is at procedures – diagnostic tests and therapeutic treatments. In terms of costs, “procedures” can be as simple as a red blood cell count or as complicated as a liver transplant. Hospitals, drug […]
What You Don’t Know (8/5/13)
Stumped We didn’t know what was causing his death. When we walked on to the medicine wards of the San Diego VA many years ago, most interns were pretty ignorant. Yet we believed someone else knew what to do. As in what was causing the large stock of misery before us. In VA medical wards […]