The Cruelty of Managed Medicare
By HANS DUVEFELT MD
Jeanette Brown had lost twenty pounds, and she was worried.
“I’m not trying,” she told me at her regular diabetes visit as I pored over her lab results. What I saw sent a chill down my spine:
A normal weight, diet controlled diabetic for many years, her glycosylated hemoglobin had jumped from 6.9 to 9.3 in three months while losing that much weight.
That is exactly what happened to my mother some years ago, before she was diagnosed with the pancreatic cancer that took her life in less than two years.
Jeanette had a normal physical exam and all her bloodwork except for the sugar num...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 18, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Holt Tags: Health Policy Medicare Hans Duvefelt Managed Care Source Type: blogs
Is the ketogenic diet dangerous?
Answer: No—unless you do it for more than a few months. After a few months, the upfront metabolic and weight benefits will begin to reverse and new health problems arise. We know this with confidence. I raise this question once again because more and more people are coming to me reporting problems. It may take months, even years, but the long-term consequences can be quite serious.
Achieving ketosis by engaging in a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat lifestyle is—without a doubt—an effective means of losing weight, breaking insulin and leptin resistance, reversing type 2 diabetes and fatty liver, redu...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - March 12, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: ketones bowel flora ketogenic ketotic undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Mental Health and Hyperhidrosis
Hyperhidrosis is defined as abnormally excessive sweating unrelated to heat or exercise. If you have this condition you might find yourself sweating so much that it soaks through your clothes or drips off your hands. Hands, feet, underarms and the face are areas that are typically affected, and the sweating usually occurs on both sides of the body.
The most common form of hyperhidrosis is known as primary focal (essential) hyperhidrosis. The nerves responsible for signaling sweat glands become overactive, even though they haven’t been triggered by physical activity or a rise in temperature. It’s interesting to note...
Source: World of Psychology - March 9, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Janet Singer Tags: Mental Health and Wellness Dehydration Hyperhidrosis Sweat sweating Source Type: blogs
Let ’ s Make American Thin Again
No, no political commentary here, just insights into health regardless of whether you are conservative or liberal or somewhere in-between.
But we are indeed doing it on the Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles: Making America Thin Again—MATA—and getting people to lose weight, often considerable amounts of 30, 50, 70, 130 pounds, by essentially REJECTING conventional dietary advice.
What conventional pieces of dietary advice are we rejecting in order to achieve this? Here are a few:
Limit fat and calories—No way. This is a path to misery. It works in the short-term, fails in the long-run and, of course, ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - February 10, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates gluten-free grain-free grains undoctored Weight Loss wheat belly Source Type: blogs
Let ’ s Make America Thin Again
No, no political commentary here, just insights into health regardless of whether you are conservative or liberal or somewhere in-between.
But we are indeed doing it on the Wheat Belly and Undoctored lifestyles: Making America Thin Again—MATA—and getting people to lose weight, often considerable amounts of 30, 50, 70, 130 pounds, by essentially REJECTING conventional dietary advice.
What conventional pieces of dietary advice are we rejecting in order to achieve this? Here are a few:
Limit fat and calories—No way. This is a path to misery. It works in the short-term, fails in the long-run and, of course, ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - February 10, 2019 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates gluten-free grain-free grains undoctored Weight Loss wheat belly Source Type: blogs
12 Ways to Keep Going with Depression
About once a week I hear the same question from a reader, “What keeps you going?” The short answer is lots of things. I use a variety of tools to persevere through my struggle with depression because what works on one day doesn’t the next. I have to break some hours into 15-minute intervals and simply put one foot in front of another, doing the thing that is right in front of me and nothing else.
I write this post for the person who is experiencing debilitating symptoms of depression. The following are some things that help me fight for sanity and keep me going, when the gravity of my mood disorder threatens to stop ...
Source: World of Psychology - February 7, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Therese J. Borchard Tags: Depression Inspiration & Hope Mental Health and Wellness Motivation and Inspiration Personal Self-Help Stigma Depression Support Depressive Episode Personal Growth Sleep stress reduction Source Type: blogs
Immunotherapy: What you need to know
Not all that long ago, chemotherapy was the only option to treat most advanced (metastatic) cancers. Because these drugs work by destroying rapidly dividing cells, they harm some healthy cells — such as hair follicles — as well as cancer cells. In the past two decades, cancer treatment has been transformed by targeted drugs and the emergence of chemotherapy. Targeted drugs are designed to home in on specific genes or proteins that are altered or overexpressed on cancer cells. Immunotherapy has been very successful for certain types of advanced cancers, such as lung, bladder, and skin cancers.
One form of immunotherapy ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 22, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Guru P. Sonpavde, MD Tags: Cancer Immunotherapy Managing your health care Source Type: blogs
LetsGetChecked Provides Easy At-Home Lab Testing and Consultations
At-home lab tests are growing in popularity. While many companies focus on specific tests, such as genetic testing or specific screenings, LetsGetChecked, a company with offices in New York, Dublin, and Toronto, hopes to be a central hub that allows people to regularly and affordably check a variety of basic lab work.
As with most at-home testing companies, customers go online to order a test kit. Within a few days, they receive a box with the necessary tools and instructions to collect a fingerprick blood sample. That sample is sent back to LetsGetChecked labs, analyzed, and the results are posted to the customer’s onl...
Source: Medgadget - December 17, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Cici Zhou Tags: Diagnostics Exclusive Medicine Pathology Source Type: blogs
University of Missouri Research Reactor Now Supplying Iodine-131 for Thyroid Treatment
Medical radioisotopes are widely used in cancer treatment, but their production has been hampered to the point that obtaining them has become a challenge. The lack of Technetium-99m is probably the most widely known, but there’s also a shortage of Iodine-131 (I-131), a radioisotope commonly used for diagnosing and treating thyroid conditions because the thyroid absorbs iodine naturally.
Things are now looking up as the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR), a 10 megawatt reactor, has just produced the first commercial batch of I-131. International Isotopes, Inc. is the buyer and distributor. This is t...
Source: Medgadget - November 12, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Nuclear Medicine Oncology Public Health Radiation Oncology Radiology Source Type: blogs
Better Sleep . . . With Benefits
There are a handful of strategies that can augment or improve sleep quality while remaining consistent with the Wheat Belly lifestyle. Many people who banish all wheat and grains from their diet experience improvement in sleep duration and quality, further enhanced by our efforts to cultivate bowel flora. (Bowel flora metabolites have a major influence on sleep and dreams.) But, given life stress, transitional changes as you get further into this lifestyle, bad habits, and other factors sometimes make additional efforts necessary. But getting sufficient quality sleep can take you further down the path of health.
Melatonin ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - September 20, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates 5-Hydroxytrptophan Dr. Davis health melatonin Natural Sleep Aides oxytocin reuteri tryptophan undoctored wheat belly yogurt Source Type: blogs
The Best Natural Sleep Aides
Melatonin should be the first nutritional supplement choice for restoring sleep patterns.
Melatonin is not a sleeping pill, as it does not share the characteristics of prescription sleeping pills: It does not adversely modify sleep patterns, it does not become habit-forming, and there is no withdrawal process when stopped. It simply “resets” your circadian clock to make your brain and body receptive to sleep. Numerous other benefits have been identified, including 70 percent reduction in tension headaches, 50 percent reduction in migraine headaches, reduction in chronic pain, and reduction in symptoms of irritable bowe...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - September 20, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates 5-Hydroxytrptophan Dr. Davis health melatonin Natural Sleep Aides tryptophan undoctored wheat belly Source Type: blogs
What's in a name?
From time to time I have commented on the controversies over cancer screening. Most people assume that screening is an unqualified good, that early detection of cancer saves lives. Whenever some panel proposes recommending less screening, we hear screaming and yelling from advocates who claim they are trying to " ration " health care to save money at the expense of people ' s lives.In fact,as a bunch of Australians and a Minnesotan explain in BMJ, there are a few conditions called " cancer " that you are better off not treating, or perhaps treating very conservatively. These include what is called ductal carcinoma in situ ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 13, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Susanne: Goodbye, gluten-free
It’s no exaggeration to say that lives are transformed by the Wheat Belly lifestyle. Look what happened to Susanne after her health was ruined by being gluten-free, reversed by following the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox.
Food manufacturers, out of ignorance or ruthless profiteering, have chosen to replace wheat and gluten with cornstarch, rice flour, tapioca starch, or potato starch—among the few foods that provoke high blood sugar and insulin more than even our favorite grain to bash, wheat. It means that people who are gluten-free and consume such garbage replacement products gain weight in visceral inflamm...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - August 12, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates Detox gluten-free grain-free grains Inflammation Weight Loss Source Type: blogs
Common food additives and chemicals harmful to children
What do a can of corn, a take-out pizza, a reusable water bottle, a bright green yogurt, and an inflatable pool toy have in common? They all contain food additives or chemicals that can be dangerous for children.
Over the last few decades, the number of chemicals added to foods and other products has skyrocketed. We have created all sorts of plastics that are used in innumerable ways. We add preservatives to foods to keep them fresh. We add chemicals to foods to make them look more appealing. We have made food packaging to keep food fresh. We add chemicals to lotions and beauty products to make them feel, look, and smell ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - July 24, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Environmental health Parenting Source Type: blogs
I Started a New Blog
I started this blog when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. Blogging really helped me cope with my cancer and its treatment.However my life has moved on. I have blogged about it in the past - that my life was changing - breast cancer is no longer the main focus in my life.My chronic ailments have replaced that focus. While breast cancer never really goes away it turns more to be chronic illness than a terminal one, unless metastases appear. So I have a total of four chronic illnesses - breast cancer, thyroid cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia. I also have chronic physical ailments - bone spur, desiccat...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - June 25, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: ailments blogging breast cancer chronic conditions Source Type: blogs
