Every few years I feel obliged to check in on Ensure drinks which claim to be all about nutrition. Over a decade ago I crunched the nutrition numbers and found that to get the same nutrients in a serving of Ensure you could eat a very small spinach salad with a couple of small slices […]
If you’re over the age of 65, the drug most likely to send you to the emergency room is the blood thinner Coumadin (warfarin). According to research done by the Centers for Disease Control and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Coumadin is responsible for 33 percent of emergency room visits among older […]
Goofy looking guy steps out of an elevator with flames coming off his jacket and says: “I ate breakfast and got heartburn. Third day this week. So I took my heartburn pill and some antacids. We’re having Mexican tonight, so, another pill then. Unless we eat later then pill later. If I get a snack […]
Evamist® is an estrogen spray approved by the FDA to treat hot flashes. There are at least two good reasons to avoid it. 1) Although advertised as a low dose spray, Evamist delivers 1.53 mg of estradiol per spray, which is a very high dose. Why does Big Pharma persist in their belief that dosing […]
It’s true, the antifungal drug miconazole in Monistat can cure a yeast infection, and Vagisil probably can’t, since its active ingredients are only there to suppress the symptom of itching, not get rid of the yeast. This is an amazingly dumb concept because…
Back in 2010 I warned that the progestin in Bayer’s birth control pill Yaz® was uniquely dangerous and carried an increased risk of a venous thromboembolism, which is a blood clot, usually in the legs, that travels to the lungs and can be fatal. In April 2011 the British Medical Journal published research concluding that, […]
Baby formulas have to be heated during manufacture to keep out bad bacteria, and now scientists have discovered that the quest for bacteria-free purity leads to the production of toxins than can increase the risk of a myriad of health problems including diabetes. In fact, these are the same toxins found in French fries, the […]
Okay, I do understand why people take Tylenol. If you’re in unbearable pain and have a sensitive stomach it’s the over-the-counter drug of choice. But avoiding Tylenol when at all possible isn’t just about liver damage anymore; it’s also about years of recalls.This week is the anniversary of the 1982 Tylenol poisonings in Chicago that […]
When the neighbor’s dryer vent blows aromas your way do you inhale deeply and enjoy the experience? Or do you wrinkle your nose and slam the windows shut? Recent research suggests you may want to do the latter, as scented laundry detergents, fabric softeners and dryer sheets contain hazardous chemicals, some of them known carcinogens […]
The FDA has issued a new warning about the cholesterol drug simvastatin (Zocor). It recommends that doctors “sharply curtail” prescriptions of 80 mg simvastatin, given to an estimated 2.1 million Americans last year, due to the risk of muscle injury. It’s well established that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs can cause myopathy, or muscle damage in up […]