Archives for August 2005

According to a new report from a Pennsylvania government agency charged with tracking health care trends, nearly 12,000 patients in that state contracted infections from their hospital stays in 2004.

In the last Daily Dose, I broached the subject of how too much television is harmful to kids' minds. But inasmuch as eliminating a kid's exposure to TV isn't practical (or even really possible), this raised an interesting question: How much is TOO MUCH?

According to an article in the July issue of the magazine, a trio of recent studies shows that not only does regular television viewing NOT help to accomplish these goals, but it actually hinders childhood learning and development to a significant degree.

It's been a while since I touched on the overuse of antibiotics. In the past (for the last 40 years, actually), I've recommended against the widespread prescription of antibiotics in all but truly appropriate or acute cases. Why?

Food industry and stock-market analysts have been predicting for months now that sales of low-carbohydrate foods would decline, but I guess I didn't really believe it.

That was back before some pointy-headed, bean-counting MBA somewhere figured out that they could sell coffee like ice cream – customizable in a bunch of sizes and with every conceivable kind of topping, and in every flavor under the sun.

Sweat Swindle Time to revisit one of my core issues: The exercise scam. For many Americans, exercise is thought to be the tonic that cures all ills. Anyone can see that this isn't just a whim of the young and beautiful, either.

Despite some recent challenges in both the U.S. and abroad to the efficacy of non-conventional (read: non-drug and non-surgical) healing techniques, support for these therapies remains strong on both sides…

As you know, I'm in the habit of giving you frequent updates about the West Nile virus, a disease that has infected more than 16,000 Americans since 1999…

In the last issue of the Daily Dose, I remarked about the likely future of the state of medical care in the U.S. – a litigious, pill-and-scalpel dictatorship-of-the-dollar that's not a very pretty picture, from where I'm standing.