Naturopathic Maine

Photo by   Pixabay  from   Pexels When someone reaches the “ripe” old age of 95 and dies , we can feel good that they’ve had a long life. But in medicine we see far too much ageism, decisions being made based on age. A twenty-year-old may get a surgery that an 80-year-old is refused. For stomach cancer, a recent analysis found that elderly patients were as good as younger patients at recovering afterward. But stomach cancer is usually found too late to do anything for any patient. The early symptoms of stomach cancer are so much like heartburn that a patient may let symptoms advance for a decade or more before seeking medical help. Gloria Vanderbilt’s stomach cancer was already advanced, meaning that it had progressed beyond the stomach. Even at earlier stages, the survival rate for patients is 18% . Beyond that stage, virtually no medical intervention could have prolonged her life more than six months . It is common to also look at her life and wonder...

The concept of herd immunity leading to disease eradication is simple. More vaccines, less disease, right up to the point of everybody gets vaccines, no more disease. But that's simply wrong. It's not because herd immunity doesn't help decrease disease, but because the idea of herd immunity is based on too-simple math. We can all get the idea easily. In a homogenous human population, there should exist a level of vaccination at which no more disease can be transmitted. Notice the fatal flaw is not in the concept, it's in the word "homogenous." Human populations will never be like bricks or milk cartons. You can't just line them up and expect everyone to be the same. So the concept of hitting a magic point and having that point mean no more disease is a mathematical graph, not a human reality. But it's such a nice graph. You can see a version here . The more you vaccinate, the fewer cases. But if you look at that graph, you see something like m...

The answer is of course you would, because you have to. Novartis has a patent on the drug, they want 2.2 million dollars for a single dose, so that's the only way to get the drug for your sick child.  Medical cost-benefit number crunchers think that 2.2 million is a good deal because the drug Zolgensma treats a genetic condition. One dose might alter a child's life. Only about 400 kids in the U.S. have the condition, so they need to charge a lot.  But if you think about it, 400 kids at 2.2 million is over 800 million dollars a year from the U. S. market alone. When you price human life at priceless, of course it's worth it. But should they be charging that much?  Even the company itself recognizes the obscene profits they are getting might raise eyebrows in our jaded world. So they " will give partial rebates if the treatment doesn't work ." Wait, what? If these parents have a sick child that isn't helped, you'll refund some of their money...

A video game that works better at diagnosing Alzheimer's disease than all existing testing? Too good to be true? We need to start with a quick summary of parts of my book, The Dementia Diet . I go through all our existing testing and point out that it really doesn't detect Alzheimer's disease. Seriously, I was surprised as well. Even though I know better, I'd like to believe billions spent on big machines would make us safe and wise. As soon as they come up with a diagnostic hand-held device like they had on Star Trek, I know I'll just want it to work. But the bottom line is that the existing tests don't really help us. The most high-tech method for detecting memory loss is having your doctor interview you. So basically this video game might be better than nothing. Is it? The article I read from CNN starts off well . They had 4.3 million users of this video game. That's a huge pool, and impossible to copy in any lab setting. So how did they tell if t...

Yes, we shouldn't feed the trolls. But why are they here? When you think about going online, you probably want to find something, buy something, or connect with someone. Chances are good that you're not looking to be sexually or emotionally harassed. But we are. Half of us have been harassed online. O ne in five of us has received death threats. stalking, or continual sexual harassment . It's just normal. Is it really normal?  Sure, you might think. It's just like the public street. Crazy people can come up to you and harass you. That's life. The internet is not a public street. It's a business. If you go to a website, someone created that website. Someone else hosts that website. There's a big company that provides security for that website. Why do all these people, who have a vested interest in you staying online, ignore the harassment? You pay someone to provide you with that website access.  So do you want to keep paying for people...

When cancer patients complain of losing weight, they are told to go home and eat ice cream. But this advice doesn't work. Why? The loss of weight and muscle mass during cancer has less to do with calories and more to do with the process of fighting cancer. One of the things that happens is that the body starts to use its own muscles to provide essential amino acids for defense. The process of eating your own muscles leads to increased fatigue, less activity, and more muscle loss from inactivity. It's a downward spiral. But simply adding more calories isn't going to reverse that cycle. The body needs amino acids, not calories. Providing the body with specific amino acids, or taking a hormone that forces the body to build lean muscle, may provide more benefit than eating more. Even adding drugs may not help. Two drugs, Megace and THC were not effective at increasing quality of life. Megace did give patients more fat, and THC did help appetite, but neither significantly...

The Lancet just published a comprehensive report that states that 22% of human deaths are directly caused by poor diet . Just to put that in perspective, poor diet kills 11 million people a year, while tobacco only kills 7 million people a year . So eating better is going to make your life better even if you smoke like a chimney? I have to admit, this study is comprehensive. You're going through the data from 195 countries. And it all sounds very convincing. Right up to the point where they estimate that salt kills three million people a year. Wait, what? We had a New England Journal of Medicine report on salt being a killer back in 2014. These researchers estimated that too much salt killed 1.5 million people a year. They assessed every study on salt up through 2014. So we would have to assume that A) either deaths from salt intake have doubled in the last four years or B) either the Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine is wrong. There's a third option, that the...