Over the last couple weeks I have had several patients come in complaining of muscle cramps. The locations were varied, the hand, calf, top of the thigh, arch of the foot, and of course back muscle cramps. This upturn in muscle cramping fits our current weather here in Sacramento right now – hot. We have […]
I have been seeking the underlying motivation for dysfunctional behaviors commonly found in this culture. Why do we do things that obviously don’t work personally, inter-personally, and socially? Its not like anyone believes smoking is good for them, or that being a resistant ass is a winning social skill. Yet it seems everyone has some loosing […]
Last week Ellen and I re-watched the Joseph Campbell / Bill Moyer PBS special “The Power of Myth.” I first saw this almost 30 years ago and the basic message has stuck with me ever since. Joseph Campbell studied the cultural myths all over the world and found certain themes were common to every culture. The […]
The terror of sun exposure is a favorite topic pushed on us by our ever concerned medical establishment. Public health messages focus on the dangers of too much ultraviolet light radiation hitting our skin and causing genetic damage promoting skin cancers and accelerated aging of the skin. Yet curiously when the worldwide health damage caused […]
Few topics are as near and dear to everyone’s heart as how to lose weight. More magazine covers are spent on this topic in the checkout line at your local grocery store than any other subject. The amazing thing is how many weight loss diets there are out there. How can there possibly be so […]
Cholesterol is one of the bogymen of the modern medical delivery system. Be careful or the cholesterol bogyman will get you has been the favorite chant for the last 50 years. Interestingly, as the hard science is busy proving that eating cholesterol has nothing to do with plaque formations in your arteries, the American Heart Association […]
Last week I was writing about how intimately our health is tied to the bacteria that live in our gut. I drew the picture that what we ate determined whether we had “good guy” bacteria supporting our health growing inside us or “bad guy” bacteria tearing down our health. The “good guys” like to eat soluble fibers […]
The more I research leaky gut and the development of degenerative disease conditions, the more I run into our gut microbiome as the key player in this whole problem. The pathways from things like Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, autoimmune disease, and so on keep tracing back to the gut as the starting place for these […]
Well the science is finally pouring in and the myth that saturated fat and cholesterol causes heart disease is broken. The Seven Countries’ study started by Ancel Keys way back in 1958 to promote his belief that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol caused heart disease has been disproven as simply bad science created by cherry picking […]