The government is considering regulating Kombucha as an alcoholic beverage.
Recent actions against the trailblazing medical testing company Theranos only protect the status quo, drive up the cost of medicine, and thwart better treatments. Action Alert! Natural medicine is said to stand on three legs: a natural diet, nutritional supplements, and integrative treatments. But testing is an essential fourth leg. Some people are seriously deficient […]
No, we didn’t think so. But you might get them in your dinner anyway. Action Alert! “Biosolids”—a euphemism for human waste—are being used by some farmers as cheap fertilizer, according the New York Times, but it is usually done very quietly. In most states and counties, details about where biosolids have been applied is intentionally […]
Is this why brain supplements are suddenly under attack? Action Alerts! Does the FDA want to clear away competition for the new drug? This wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. Just as the first SSRI anti-depressant drug was coming out, the agency banned the amino acid tryptophan. The SSRIs prevented the body from […]
This is a kind of Halloween story, but it is a true one. Chagas disease is the stuff of horror movies, but public health officials are doing very little to address it. A rare and deadly tropical disease once thought to be limited to economically depressed regions of South America is now appearing in areas […]
Sorry, sugar is sugar, whether from fruit or not. And if the “fruit sugar” is actually high-fructose corn syrup—from GMO corn at that—and quaffed down in endless sodas, it just gets worse. A recent meta-analysis published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings confirms this yet again. It notes that both the Institute of Medicine and the […]
The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new class of cholesterol-lowering drugs that will cost more than $14,000 a year. Why did a new class of super-expensive statins need to be developed? Partly because the older statins are coming off patent and cannot be sold at high prices anymore. Also because of the wide […]
California Gov. Jerry Brown recently vetoed the state’s Right to Try Act, which passed both the state assembly and the senate with bipartisan support. In his veto message, the governor wrote, “Patients with life-threatening conditions should be able to try experimental drugs, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s compassionate use program allows this to […]
Two weeks ago we told you how coconut oil is showing great promise in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. New studies show that other natural substances are also offering big breakthroughs, and the drug industry is trying to jump on the bandwagon with them too.
Media outlets indulge in scaremongering, when the actual study data presents a completely different story October 15, 2015 — Yesterday, the New England Journal of Medicine released a statistical analysis of emergency room visits between 2004 and 2013. The study reported that just over 23,000 ER visits per year were linked to dietary supplements—prompting media outlets to run […]