Naturopathic Maine

It's still early in the COVID-19 epidemic to really say for certain whether people can have COVID-19 in a truly chronic manner . But it is silly to say that the process is mysterious or even puzzling. Within the huge patient base of COVID-19 sufferers around the world, a few patients are more than likely to have lingering symptoms. All disease processes follow a spectrum and clearly COVID-19 runs the gambit from asymptomatic to death. So a few people will likely fall into the "not dying and not fully well" spectrum. A few people of the millions who have been infected will mean thousands of individuals will suffer a more low grade, chronic form of the illness.   Despite the clear likelihood of its occurrence, we're seeing a disturbing pattern of disbelief about chronic COVID-19. Laypeople are largely disbelieved by both medical personnel and their families. That disbelief leads to a lack of follow up and testing so that we can know if someone who continues to have symp...

Researchers studying autism found that a lack of allopregnanolone caused autistic behavior in mice . This raises the simple solution for autism: get a shot during pregnancy. It also raises the specter of parental guilt because premature babies are more likely to be deficient in allopregnanolone. As the article says, 1 in 10 babies are premature, 1 in 59 have autism. So maybe there's a direct connection to how long the baby stays in the womb? There's a simple answer to whether this allopregnanolone is going to be the key factor in curing autism. Since premature babies are far more deficient, we would expect far more autism in premature babies. Less allopregnanolone, more autism. That's the connection we need to explore. Let's start with the less extreme cases of prematurity. B abies born less than 37 weeks are considered premature . So let's look at babies born between 27 and 37 weeks. Well, " studies tend to use different cutoffs to define prematurity, mak...

A new study confirmed something I've suspected for some time. Getting a shot to relieve pain may not resolve the issue. CNN reports that 8% of patients receiving steroid injections may have serious side effects from them. But they go on to say that it's really about patient preference. Sure, you might need to get a knee replacement later, but you'll have less pain now. Really? Patients are qualified to make that sort of long-term, life-changing decision? Isn't that what we have doctors for? If my mechanic asked me if I wanted sawdust injected into my engine because it would help it run smoother now but I might need another engine later, I wouldn't know how to make that decision. How is a patient supposed to decide if the short term benefits outweigh the long term risk? That's why they pay the doctor the big bucks. Claiming that it's patient preference really means that doctors can keep racking up the injections until research proves conclusively that p...

Let me start by saying I didn't believe it. But with hot flashes in the news as causing all sorts of heart problems  and dementia later on, I'm going to share what I can to help. A patient told me that she was taking apple cider vinegar for her hot flashes and it helped. Since I couldn't see the immediate connection, I reacted like a regular doctor and pooh pooh'd it in my brain. But, unlike a regular doctor, I keep a list of strange possibilities and pass them on to other patients as well as the things I think will work. My job is to help people get better, not to assume I know everything. So I passed on the recipe to another patient, as well as discussing the many other treatments she could do. I have a starter list of things I do besides hormones for estrogen imbalance. These are just the start, but it gives women an idea of how much they can do to affect their hormones. (For your ease, I've recopied the list below this article.) Here's the recipe: 4...

Short answer: Neuroendocrine Tumors and cancers (NET) are an extremely rare orphan disease. Longer answer: It sucks to get an orphan disease that few doctors have ever seen. NET is less than 2% of overall cancers. It affects fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S. So it's a zebra, not a horse. (For those unfamiliar with medical euphemisms, if you look out in a farm field you expect to see a horse, not a zebra. Young doctors are famous for trying to say patients might have a rare zebra disease. The overwhelming majority of patients don't, they have much more common horse diseases.) In recognition of this fact, the neuroendocrine community uses the zebra to increase awareness about the disease. The symptoms of Neuroendocrine problems can show up anywhere in the body, most often in the gut. They are nonspecific enough they can be mistaken for many, many other things. It sucks even more to get the even rarer aggressive, systemic form of an orphan disease. Rainè Riggs had the mos...

I just had another "random" person mention Fopobiacne Secrets on my comments page today. Since it seemed spammy, I deleted the comment. But it made me think that Fopobiacne Secrets is paying people to spam the internet with this product. So I decided to go looking and see what's going on. First, going directly to their official website is a weird experience. It's not a secure site, and hasn't been verified online, so it feels sketchy (I know, I use google, and I do so because they're verified and have the best security on the planet).  Most product pages feature a one page click through process. You see the product, read the reviews, and buy or pass on the product. Not on the Fopoiacne Secrets page. The top of the page warns "This is not for everyone!" then in the text they say, " Fopobiacne Secrets  is the best choice for you." So which is it? Not for everyone or the best choice for everyone? If you press the continue button, you...