Raw Milk-Why Mess With Udder Perfection?
If you’re lucky enough to live in a state where raw milk is available in stores and you don’t buy it, you are passing up a huge opportunity to improve your health immediately.
How starting a low-cholesterol diet leads to weight gain
The advice to cut cholesterol almost always leads to eating more carbs, which increases triglyceride and often LDL levels, which leads to being placed on cholesterol pills, which can cause diabetes.
New Hope for Alzheimer’s?
According to a leading researcher of Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, Dr. Paul Aisen (photo), our drugs don't work because doctor’s like me are not prescribing them early enough. But I think doctors should not promote extended use of drugs without proven benefit.
One more vital food source down the drain: The health effects of the BP oil spill
When I first saw those helicopter shots of red oil plumes staining the ocean, my only thought was: How could any animal survive in that? As a person who loves animals, this tragedy is too awful to think about. But as a doctor concerned with the prevention of human illness, I can’t help thinking about it. I can’t help but wonder: If the entire Gulf ecosystem is trashed, how will that affect us? It’s impossible to measure, let alone predict, the long-term human health effects that emerge from a major environmental catastrophe like the one we are now witnessing in…
No more free lunch for doctors
I don’t actually know anyone who sees drug reps anymore. The programming by we are influenced these days is much harder for our patients to see—even reporters seem not to know to write about it. It’s called “Pay for Performance,” or P4P.
Do you want your doctor to think for herself?
If you are the kind of person who wants to see an independently minded physician who treats you as an individual rather than a disease state to be fitted into a predetermined algorithm, you might not like the direction medicine will be headed if people like Dr. Pearson have their way.
Papillary Thyroid Cancer: More Common Than You Think
If you're wondering if cancer can go away by itself, you may be very interested to learn that some cancers seem to do that MOST of the time.
If diabetes medications make you tired, read this:
If you have diabetes, fatigue may be a sign that your medication dosages may bee too high and you are at risk of dying from fatal arrhythmia. If your medications make you tired, schedule an urgent visit with your doctor and bring the reference I cite at the bottom of the article so they are up to date.
Dr. Cate and Luke Bid Farewell to Beloved Kauai
After relocating to New Hampshire I'm finally bidding farewell, officially, to beloved Kauai. It was a wonderful 10 years of living in paradise, enjoying beautiful scenery, weather, fresh local foods and of course the company of so many wonderful people that make up this very special island community. Thanks to Malama Kauai, Unity Church, Borders Books and Music, and to everyone I befriended during a decade of aloha—and especially to West Kauai Medical Centers who have been so good to me and to now (semi-) retired Drs. Robert and Linda Weiner who first hired me way back in Sept 2000!…
Low Carb Diets Reduce Blood Pressure
A new study suggests Dr. Atkins was right: A high carb diet is not a healthy diet, and cutting carbs trims more than just your waistline. While both low-carb and low-fat diets can help you loose weight, Duke University's well-designed study makes it pretty clear that if you want to reduce your weight and your pressure, a low-carb diet is a better choice. From Today's Medscape Family Medicine: "January 25, 2010 (Durham, North Carolina) — A new randomized trial comparing a low-carbohydrate diet with a low-fat diet in combination with the weight-loss drug orlistat has found that both strategies produced meaningful weight…
FDA Officially Unconcerned that Crestor Causes Diabetes
Imagine a world where everyone is on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs. Not just sick people. Everyone. Astra Zeneca has imagined it, and now they're going to see their dream come true. On December 16, the FDA announced their approval of Astra Zeneca's cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor for use in people without high cholesterol despite the fact that a new study showed conclusively that the drug causes diabetes. By a vote of 12 to 4, the panel judged that even people at very low risk of heart disease should take the cholesterol medication anyway. "I do think the diabetes problem is real, but…
Humans as GMOs? New Vaccine Technology Alters our DNA
I am not a vaccine skeptic. I think that most of our vaccines are safe enough for widespread utilization as long as they don't do anything stupid during the production process, like contaminate them with squalene or mercury which they often do.
Can Cancer Go Away Without Treatment?
The USPSTF has recognized that by treating tiny, early stage breast cancers so aggressively, doctors may also have unknowingly subjected hundreds of thousands of American women to unnecessary procedures, leading to needless complications including disfigurement and even death, all the while assuming they were saving people’s lives.
Tiger Woods’ Concussion: What kind of recovery can he expect?
Tiger Woods recently had a single car accident--a nasty one. Reports say he was out for as long as six minutes when his wife found him. When a doctor hears that a patient has suffered a brain injury severe enough to alter consciousness, they get concerned. Loosing consciousness altogether suggests a significant insult to the brain. With an injury like that, I would tell a patient to expect between six weeks and six months of after effects, including headaches, irritability, and concentration deficits. This can be frightening and frustrating for both patient and the people they live and work with.…
Sore Feet: Are shoes the cause of running pain?
One of the most important overlooked factors in running is that of connective tissue strength.
Is the H1N1 flu vaccine safe?
The two big questions I've been getting about the flu this year are, Should I get the H1N1 vaccine? and Is the H1N1 flu as scary as people seem to be saying? Let's start with the second question first. Is the N1H1 flu especially dangerous? The N1H1 swine flu virus is, like any other flu virus, potentially deadly -- particularly to very young children, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with certain chronic diseases, like diabetes. But this particular flu has the potential to pack a little more punch than other flu viruses because, to put it simply, our immune…
Does Caloric Restriction Prolong Life?
You may have heard Oprah’s Dr. Oz talking about an amazing new diet that, he claims, might allow us to live 150 years. I noticed that Dr. Oz seemed to be doing his best to highlight the benefits of this diet and downplay any risks, though he wasn't following the diet himself - and I think I know why. The diet he’s referring to is called “the calorie restriction diet,” a diet that requires you to limit your calories to 20 or 40 percent fewer than what’s currently recommended as a healthy amount, often as low as 1200 calories per…
Who Should Get Vitamin D Testing?
We all know our skin makes vitamin D during sun exposure, so you’d think that most of us here in Hawaii would have plenty of vitamin D, right? Wrong. A study done on prototypical surfer-dudes in Honolulu, titled: Low Vitamin D Status Despite Abundant Sun Exposure (Binkely, 2007) found that, amazingly, more than half (51 percent) had less-than-optimal blood levels of vitamin D and were therefore putting their bodies at risk. At risk for what? Low vitamin D has been associated with overweight and obesity, as well as a variety of serious medical conditions, including cancer, heart failure, mental illness,…
