Beth Kowitt, in Fortune, explores food manufacturers’ race to find a better sugar stand-in. But if sugar is a known health hazard, why don’t we just put less of it in food?
health
Posted inBlog Post, Commentary, Nonfiction
Everything in Moderation, Including Moderation
Why beer is better for some of us than abstinence.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Mysteries and Truths of Illness: A Reading List
In her essay “This Imaginary Half-Nothing: Time” (#10 on this list), poet Anne Boyer quotes another poet, John Donne: “We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew, and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and a […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Debate Over Alternative Medicine
The Laidlers’ story is a microcosm of the changing debate over so-called alternative medicine and its cousin, integrative medicine. In 2007, Americans spent $2.9 billion on homeopathic medicine, a treatment based on the belief that minuscule amounts of what causes symptoms in a healthy person will alleviate symptoms in someone who is ill. From nutritional supplements […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Very First Blood Transfusion
The world’s first experiments with blood transfusion occurred in the mid-1660s in England. The procedure, which was first carried out between dogs, was gruesome: the dogs were tied down, the arteries and veins in their necks opened, and blood transferred from one to another through quills (most likely made from goose feathers) inserted into the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes
Venom That Heals: How a Swarm of Bees Saved One Woman’s Life
For three days, she was in pain. Then, she wasn’t. “I had been living in this… I call it a brown-out because it’s like you’re walking around in a half-coma all the time with the inflammation of your brain from the Lyme. My brain just came right out of that fog. I thought: I can […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Understanding the ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ of Error
The human lapses that occurred after the computerized ordering system and pill-dispensing robots did their jobs perfectly well is a textbook case of English psychologist James Reason’s “Swiss cheese model” of error. Reason’s model holds that all complex organizations harbor many “latent errors,” unsafe conditions that are, in essence, mistakes waiting to happen. They’re like a forest […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Testosterone Is Helping Power a New Medical Model in America
The emerging popularity of testosterone has opened up whole new business models for entrepreneurial doctors. Chains of shops that provide the hormone have exploded all over the United States, especially across the South. How many millions more men might be willing to try testosterone if it was easy to acquire, and a clinic happened to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Doctor with Terminal Cancer Writes to His Baby Daughter
Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence — and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Would a More Efficient Clinical Trial System Look Like?
What might a more-efficient trial system look like? One collaboration in Chicago offers a possible way forward. Working together, several of the city’s academic medical centers have established a joint network for conducting clinical trials. Participating institutions now routinely interview all of their hospitalized patients, regardless of diagnosis, to keep detailed records on their health […]