Prostate Cancer Treatment Choices
A new study followed more than 1500 men with prostate cancer for ten years (New England Journal of Medicine, September 14, 2016). This is the first study to compare treatment with surgery or radiation to no treatment at all (“watchful waiting”).
Charmian Carr and Lewy Body Dementia
Just about everyone has heard her sing “I am Sixteen, Going on Seventeen” as Liesl, the eldest daughter of Captain Georg von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music. The song is about the first love of a 16 year old girl. In real life, she was a college student who had never been in any movie and her first audition for anything got her accepted for the part of Liesl because she was 21 and looked like she was 16.
Big Sugar Paid Harvard to Say that Sugar is Healthful
My faith in several of my Harvard mentors during the 1950s and 1960s has been shattered by an article that appeared this week in JAMA Internal Medicine (September 12, 2016). Cristin E. Kearns, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, discovered letters in the archives at...
Triclosan Banned by the FDA
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that it will ban triclosan and 18 other antibacterial chemicals in soaps and liquid hand or body wash products because they are ineffective and potentially harmful. The banned chemicals are also found in hand sanitizers, detergents, deodorants, antiperspirants, lotions, creams, toothpastes, dishwashing liquids, shampoos, mouth washes, shaving cream, after-shave lotions, hair conditioners, foot odor products, cleaning supplies, pesticides, kitchen utensils, toys, bedding, socks, trash bags and even baby pacifiers, but the FDA ban does not affect these products.
More Reasons to Eat Plants
Two strong studies show that 1) giving people with heart disease a diet that is high in fruits and vegetables and low in red meat is more effective than taking statin drugs in preventing heart attack deaths, and 2) eating red meat regularly increases risk for death from a heart attack.
Jacques Servier and the Fenfluramine Scandal
What would you think about a man who was worth almost eight billion dollars repeatedly denying that his company’s weight-loss drug caused heart damage? Fenfluramine was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 1997, but the French parent company, Laboratories Sevier, continued to market its similar product under another brand name until 2009.
Knee Osteoarthritis: Exercise Therapy More Effective than Surgery
With aging, a person wears away the shock-absorbing cartilage in the knees, which increases risk for pain and swelling. Many studies present overwhelming evidence that surgery for torn knee cartilage (torn meniscus) does not reduce knee pain or swelling in the long run.
Healthful Fats
A report from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study of more than 126,000 men and women who have been followed for 32 years shows that increasing total fat intake is associated with decreasing risk of death.
Gene Wilder: Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Alzheimer’s
Gene Wilder was a beloved American stage, screen and TV actor who made people laugh just by being himself. He was also a successful screenwriter, film director and author. He is best remembered for the movies where he appeared to be naive and childlike: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Young Frankenstein . . .
Artificial Sweeteners Linked to Higher Blood Sugar Levels
Obese people who have taken aspartame or saccharin in the last 24 hours had higher blood sugar rises after taking sugar than those who had not used artificial sweeteners. Lead author Dr. Jennifer Kuk says, “Our study shows that individuals with obesity who consume artificial sweeteners, particularly aspartame, may have worse glucose management than those who don’t take sugar substitutes.”