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Some people drink coffee, and the next thing you know, they're trying to climb the Empire State Building. But others feel little or nothing. What's going on?

Advil, aka, ibuprofen, is one of the most widely used drugs in the world. It's effective for relief of pain, inflammation, and fever. It can also wreak holy hell on your stomach. Unfortunately, the two effects go together. Grab the Rolaids. It's time for an Advil lesson.

Flu shots perform inconsistently because it's hard to anticipate which strains of the virus will be circulating in a given year. So far in 2023, it appears that the latest round of vaccines are working well. The FDA has determined that Sudafed PE doesn't work. Questions and accusations are flying as a result: why were we sold a useless decongestant in the first place? And more importantly, who's to blame for this public health blunder?

An email from Dr. Kan Shao, a professor at Indiana University School of Public Health, states that EPA’s current version of Benchmark Dose Software modeling is “extremely misleading and not scientifically justified.” It is very unusual for a scientist who has been deeply involved with the EPA in developing risk assessment modeling to openly criticize the EPA. This requires a deeper dive into this issue.

Sickle Cell Disease is an awful genetic disease that disproportionally affects black people. It's caused by a single-point mutation in DNA, which results in a modified hemoglobin protein, differing by only one amino acid. While this may sound insignificant, it's anything but. Simple organic chemistry explains why this change profoundly affects those unfortunate enough to inherit the disease, which is characterized by abnormal hemoglobin.

A recent study from JAMA Internal Medicine documents that in many cases in which a patient has died, the electronic medical record – the baseline truth for Big Healthcare Data – lists them as alive. Does the term "garbage in, garbage out" ring some bells?

What is our most important organ? Every time there was a new lecturer in medical school, they began by pointing out why their organ of interest was the most important. After all:

Those buildings we call supermarkets are laid out to encourage us to buy. It is not a coincidence that magazines and candy are displayed at the register, nor the fact that the food you really want is in the back, so you have to transverse the whole store to find it. Are our online purchases, without that physical organization, the same? Short answer: no.

The weight loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic portend a massive impact on the “obesity epidemic.”  Users may even be able to get insurance coverage, as the FDA just approved a third drug specifically for weight loss treatment, signaling greater coverage for all drugs in the class. Sounds promising, right? But, alas, there are unintended consequences.

A teenager died recently after taking the "One Chip Challenge," eating Paqui's uber-spicy tortilla chip and going as long as possible without eating or drinking anything else. The cause of death remains unclear, but there's an interesting lesson here about the uselessness of "non-GMO" food labels. Meanwhile, actress Jessica Biel sells all-natural Tylenol — which is identical to plain ole' Tylenol. Another case of dubious health marketing? Yep.

Our behavior seems to be built by evolution, and it's sometimes paradoxical. To borrow from the hard sciences, our behavior exhibits complementarity. We are largely felicitous to our family and friends, yet stand-offish (if not aggressive) to “others” we may encounter. Willful ignorance straddles that complementarity borderline. A new study offers insight into what's really going on.

Many cancers are treated with DNA-damaging drugs. But one, testicular cancer, responds so well to the drug cisplatin that the cure rate for early-stage disease is about 100%. Even if the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, there is a five-year survival of 74%. What makes this combination of a particular drug and cell type so unique?

COVID-19 vaccination significantly lowers the risks of severe neonatal morbidity, neonatal death, and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit in infants during the first month after birth. Protection continues for six months after birth. 

Sleazy manufacturing and marketing practices are hardly news when it comes to the dietary supplements industry. But a company called Evig, which makes Balance of Nature supplements, seems to want to take it a step further. Actually, several steps …

This past month, Stanford Medicine posted the following press release headline: “A Stanford Medicine-led trial of identical twins comparing vegan and omnivore diets found that a vegan diet improves overall cardiovascular health.”

Most respiratory viral diseases, like influenza, take their greatest toll on the ends of the lifespan, the frail elderly, and the not-quite-as-frail infants and toddlers. But COVID was different and had little impact on the mortality of the very young. A new study sheds some light on why.

If you need further evidence that politicians don't understand the fentanyl crisis they helped to create, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has you covered. Meanwhile, we already sell some body fluids in select circumstances; will the day come when we sell body parts to the highest bidder?

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) running solely on electricity are the cornerstone of the effort to reduce vehicular emissions. Prediction of electrical use and environmental benefit base their calculations on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), assuming that the number of miles driven with electrics is the same as those by conventional fossil-fueled vehicles (CV). A new study questions that assumption.

The Fourth Turning and Complexity
Can a medication change our brain’s anatomy?
Are colonoscopies helpful?
Can the value of chicken soup be quantified?

Roadside drug tests are unreliable, so why are they so widely used in the U.S.? Meanwhile, researchers who make "health disparities" the focus of their work sometimes misrepresent their results. Here's a textbook example from a study that used pulse oximetry to measure disparities in COVID-19 treatment.

The flawed concept of banning drugs inevitably leads to the appearance of new and worse drugs. Now a class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes, some of which are far more potent than fentanyl, are making their way into the supply of street drugs.

Like many creatives, life experiences influence my work, in this case, my writing.  This year, the dominant emotion was stress (and adventure), which leached into my articles and drove some of the focus.

Interest in our evolving understanding of the interstitium has led proponents of alternative medicine to take a victory lap. However, the evidence for these modalities (i.e., chiropractic, osteopathic manipulation, and Rolfing’s structural integration) remains unchanged and still unconvincing.

Science speaks on behalf of the Radium Girls
Fun Facts 2023
Geometry as art
Data Leakage, Oh My!

Hearing loss, frequently due to exposure to loud noises, is a significant health problem. Its biological underpinning may well be due to what we consider a trace mineral: zinc.