Yep.
My doctor told me to take supplements.
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I take supplements, I have advised some patients to do so. Anyone not on supplements for Vit D is deficient, to a great degree of certainty. That said, I have also seen pretty severe side effects from unwise use of supplements, including peripheral neuropathy from B6 and liver damage from Vit A. The thing to remember is that anything, bar none, that has an effect has a side-effect. Balancing those things is most of my job.
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Unfortunately, I think a plausible fourth panel would be âwell, the naturopath actually listens to me and spends time with me, and seems to really care about how I feel. I wish I could get that with a proper doctor, but the medical care system is screwed up in a way that makes it really difficult for providers and for people looking for help to have that kind of relationship.â
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Yep. Calcium and vitamin D.
And a regular old multivitamin. No megadoses.
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For this, I have no argument. A lot of the appeal of woo is that âthey listen to me.â I have been very disappointed in my own interactions with healthcare as a patient, and I have a lot of privilege in that setting. We are in a system that requires us (providers) to see patients on an insanely quick schedule. I get 12 minutes per patient. That is adequate for a straight-forward cold or ear infection. It is utterly inadequate for âno, your child has autismâ or âmy daughter was molested.â And for those, I give them the time they need. And try to make up for it someplace else. Some parents I am sure walk away unhappy that I was in a hurry. But I have a full schedule and my next appt availability is in August. So i have to move quickly where I can. And there is no way to say âjust get more docsâ because I make a fraction of what specialists make, and kids coming out of residency cannot carry the $200-300k student loans and live indoors on what I make. So there is a huge shortage of primary care docs. And for fewer docs to see more patients, we have to move faster. Not looking for sympathy, just understand that âdoctors donât care anymoreâ is not why things are the way they are.
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Free med school if you go into primary care!
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Key moment in the story:
After giving it some thought, DâAmato realized he had myopically narrowed his search. What about a womanâs body? There were drugs that stopped menstrual cycles. Then there were drugs that caused birth defects in pregnant women. In both of those cases, it was possible the drug was inhibiting blood vessel growth.
How many medical treatments could be found if the other half of the human population were considered?
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For the new study, CDC researchers looked at RSV hospitalization rates across two different RSV surveillance networks of hospitals and medical centers (called RSV-NET and NVSN). They compared the networksâ hospitalization rates in the 2024â2025 RSV season to their respective rates in pre-pandemic seasons between 2018 and 2020. The analysis found that among newborns (0â2 months), RSV hospitalizations fell 52 percent in RSV-NET and 45 percent in NVSN compared with the rates from the 2018â2020 period. However, when the researcher excluded data from NVSNâs surveillance site in Houstonâwhere the 2024â2035 RSV season started before the vaccine and treatment were rolled outâthere was a 71 percent decline in hospitalizations in NVSN.
I feel certain this will be targeted for suppression by RFKjr and his minions, but damn it, it works very well to keep kids out of the hospital!
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A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia | Nature
Neurotropic herpesviruses may be implicated in the development of dementia1,2,3,4,5. Moreover, vaccines may have important off-target immunological effects6,7,8,9. Here we aim to determine the effect of live-attenuated herpes zoster vaccination on the occurrence of dementia diagnoses.
Note that this is specifically looking at a shingles vaccine, and its ability to reduce the incidence of dementia, which it does by roughly 20%. Considering that dementia is most certainly multifactorial, a significant reduction by controlling a single element is most interesting. As a pediatrician, I think the fact that these folks already had the zoster virus in their nervous system and were using the vaccine to suppress it requires me to ask, âwhat if we prevented the virus from entering the system in the first place?â You know, like with a chicken pox vaccine! Now, the hard truth is that we wonât know for a while, because the cohort that got the Varivax will not reach the age for dementia for a while yet. If I am remembering properly, they are probably only in their late 30âs or so now. But it is exciting, and another reason to encourage the vaccine. Of course, there is also this:
This protective effect was stronger among women than men.
So I am certain it will not be favored under the current administration, as a DEI vaccine.
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That is incredibly wonderful, but worth noting:
Bueren explains that âthe cost of analogue treatments is over two million euros per patient and, in some cases, reaches five million.â The European Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, he states, is fighting for public institutions to develop these types of treatments on a non-profit basis, with the goal of making their prices âmuch more accessibleâ to national health systems
Iâve said it before, and will again: PROFIT MOTIVE HAS NO PLACE IN HEALTHCARE!!!
I am constantly amazed at the advances we have made in the area of genetic medicine. But also horrified at the price tags, making it unavailable for most kids. There has to be a better way!
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Thank for indirectly reminding me to schedule my second dose!!!
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