Depression: Failure to Learn Depression stops you. You can’t start. You can’t think. You want to rest but can’t sleep. Simple acts become unendurable. You retreat, then hide. You can’t burden others with what you are now – stuck. In previous centuries personality changes so abrupt led depressed people to be burned at the stake. Things […]
Is Much of Health Due to Luck?
Dementia and cancer have more in common than most people recognize. Two thirds of tumors appear to be the result of random mutations. And two thirds of dementia cases also appears to be basically random, with only about 35% responsive to lifestyle changes (so far.) The implications of this “odd” convergence is wide. First, for diseases with difficult or ineffective treatments, […]
How to Prevent Depression
In the 1990 Global Burden Disease study, depression was listed as the fourth largest cause of disability worldwide. In the 2000 study, it was third. In the 2010 study, second. Perhaps a third of Americans will eventually get clinically depressed. It’s also hitting younger ages. Recent surveys point to perhaps 17% of American female secondary students […]
Do Gut Bugs Change Cancer Therapy?
It appears your gut bug population changes cancer therapy effectiveness. A trial of immunotherapy on metastatic melanoma found those with greater variety of GI bacteria did far better than those with more limited populations. If you had a lot of ruminococcus around, you were more likely to stay alive. What Happened? People with immunotherapy trials […]
Now – You Must Use Drugs
The health insurance companies know exactly how you should practice. These days, despite the admonitions of Nancy Reagen, they are pointedly telling you to use drugs – and quite peeved when you don’t. A recent postal arrival from a major insurer arrived on properly forbidding stationery. The declaration – it was incumbent that I put patient […]