Should people with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) be permitted to use their tax-deferred dollars to buy dietary supplements and herbal medicines? It’s a question that will once again confront members of Congress in the months to come. Under current federal tax rules, supplements are excluded from HSAs and also from Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), unless […]
According to the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, there are roughly 27 million American women in the peri- to post-menopausal years–that’s 20% of the US work force. And each year, roughly 2 million American women reach menopause. Women betwen the ages of 50-60 years have a 3.5-fold higher risk of osteoarthritis than men of […]
Gun liability insurance makes enormous sense. If you get a trampoline in your yard, or a pool, insurance companies will raise your rates. These things have injury rates much lower than guns.
People living with chronic digestive disorders like inflammatory bowel disease often figure out the hard way—by trial and error—which food groups trigger their symptom flares. And since many go for years without competent medical and nutritional guidance, they rely on their own experience, the advice of friends, or online information to create their own elimination […]
Massage provides many benefits. In addition to simply loosening tight muscles, it can help calm the nervous system, improves range of motion, correct postural imbalances, reduce stress, increases self-awareness, improve blood flow, speed healing time, improve the appearance of scars, and much more. But with so many different styles of massage now available, this field […]
A massive new study of data from over 19,000 individuals shows that chronic pain is associated with loss of hippocampal volume and increased risk of dementia. Compared with pain-free control subjects, those who had five or more areas of chronic pain showed neurological changes equivalent to eight years of excess brain aging (Zhao W, et […]
If naltrexone was still patentable, you can be certain that the pharmaceutical industry would make sure that every physician was using it to treat patients experiencing chronic pain. It would also probably cost around $24,000 a year. But this drug is 60 years old, and available for about 75 cents per day. Since it is […]
Vitamin B12 deficiency is more common than many people realize. Large epidemiological surveys suggest that roughly 6% of all US adults under age 60 years are deficient, with the number rising to about 20% in people over age 60. Some estimates put the prevalence as high as 25%. Those are certainly big numbers, but recent […]
In recent years conventional biomedicine has begun to recognize that disruptions in the composition of the microbiome and the integrity of the gut lining are key factors in the pathogenesis of certain chronic disorders. For example, we know that in celiac disease, exposure to gluten induces an immune response which in turn triggers inflammation. This […]
It’s a common clinical scenario: A middle-aged patient comes in, saying something like, “I used to be so thin and now I’m not. I exercise as much as I did when I was younger, and I eat the same. But I keep gaining weight. I just can’t keep it off. It must be my metabolism.” […]
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