When Pill = Sleep In America alone, tens of millions take sleeping pills to sleep each night. Yet sleeping pills don’t produce natural sleep. They worsen memory. They increase the risk of death. But people can’t stop. Physically or behaviorally addicted, they know pill = sleep. Here are some reasons why that happens – and […]
Who’s Using All Those Sleeping Pills? (10/3/12)
So Who Is Using Sleeping Pills? Lots of people – especially people not prescribed them. According to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (reported in the BBC), a full third of adult Britons complain of insomnia. Fully half of these insomniacs take prescription sleeping pills their doctors don’t know about. Thirty percent take them for at least […]
Gimme the Pill! Seductions of Supplements (8/22/12)
Every Work Day Just about every day I’m in the office patients come to me clutching a new pill bottle. Inside will be tablets or capsules purportedly containing anywhere from one to 50 or more ingredients. What Do People Want To Know? Will these pills work to cure their sleep problems/Crohn’s disease/heart disease/cancer/irritable bowel syndrome/memory […]
Smoking Is My Retirement Plan (8/8/12)
Better Living Through Denial? Smokers, one fifth of American adults, often tell me they’re not worried about the future. Why? Because, as my webmaster and other smokers tell me, they don’t foresee a long term future. Retirement? Long term care insurance? Pointless. As many explain, “Smoking is my retirement plan.” Sorry, guys. It doesn’t work […]
A little knowledge can go a long way (the story of John Snow – 3/19/12)
Getting Healthy – Simply Europe’s medieval cathedrals were built without the benefit of Newton’s “modern” physics. Masons constructed holy edifices of stone without truly understanding what kept them aloft. They still stand. They still provoke amazement. And people can restore their health and regenerate their bodies without complete knowledge of how the process works. Like […]