Doc Gurley

I’m NOT going to suck it up

AP News issued a warning to consumers to switch to the new kind of inhalers before the end of the year. In Understatement Of The Year Award-winning fashion, the article states that the new inhalers “tend to cost more.” If you, like me, are appalled at the FDA’s decision to ban generic production of asthma inhalers – and thereby hand a price-gouging sole production agreement (read: brand new patent for the same old drug) to three Big Pharma companies, you may be wondering what you can do with all that frustration. Weed your garden twice as fast? Curl into a victim-ball and hide in the broom closet until hell freezes over drug company execs decide they’re rich enough?

Boycott breathing?

Well, here is a plan for channeling that frustration, because feeling helpless is bad for you – and good for them. Action is the best revenge. Continue reading I’m NOT going to suck it up

Fidget Fitness

Here’s my kind of weight loss – and a nice, pragmatic follow-up to the Annual Bikini Bamboozle. Prevention magazine noticed that a lot of medical literature about weight deals with the way our daily lives prevent us from moving around. It’s not hard to spend entire days doing nothing more than a series of [...]

International Grand Rounds!

Grand Rounds is coming to us this week from the Phillipines! Take at look – Grand Rounds, the best of the medical blogosphere, is being hosted at Parallel Universe, a site run by Dr. Emer from the Phillipines. Check out the selections and then poke around the site to see healthcare from a new [...]

We Did Something. But We Won’t Tell You What.

This is why reasonable people tear their hair out. Reuters has announced that the World Health Organization did something HUGE about the high cost of patented drugs for developing countries – we’re talking a major breakthrough, baby, this is the Godzilla of international agreements, crushing special interests underfoot, but heart-warming too, you know? It’s like if Jaws met the Bridges of Madison County, only with more je ne sais quoi. Or is it savoir faire?

Problem is, no one will say what the agreement actually is. You think I jest? Check it out.

In the absence of actual facts, here are some Doc Gurley-style ideas for what this WHO “breakthrough” might be:

Continue reading We Did Something. But We Won’t Tell You What.

The Annual Bikini Bamboozle Begins

Everywhere you look, photoshopped thighs prance along pristine beaches in ads. Weight loss supplements promise you the ability to sport a string bikini in only weeks. Some of us have gotten resistant to the annual bikini con (heck, without lighting crews, spray-on foundation, and post-photo pixelated perfecting, no one looks good in a string bikini), so the weight loss promises are spreading to other venues: Lose Weight For Your Wedding! As we all get wiser and wiser, my belief is these con artists marketers will run out of events for crash dieting. Inevitably, we’ll be reading ads that say Lose Weight For Your Coffin!

There are so many products – hoodia, orlistat, white kidney bean extract, yohimbine…and so on and so on. Do any of these over-the-counter weight loss supplements work? A lot of them aren’t exactly cheap either. Is there a hidden cost to your health that doesn’t show up on that receipt? Here’s a nice review of all the data put together by the good people at Medscape – check it out for the in-depth, gritty stats. But if you want just the review’s low-down, I’ve summarized the take-home messages for you (including 30-day cost) with my own personal interpretation of the results. At the end, I’ve listed things that DO work. Continue reading The Annual Bikini Bamboozle Begins

WARNING: This Will Give You Nightmares

It sure did me. I was working at the Schweitzer hospital in Africa when a mother brought her two-year-old child to us. Even wrapped in a sheet, it was obvious that he was unnaturally thin, his elbows too pointy, his back too bony. The odd thing was that she had a sheet over his head. He cried weakly and pushed at it every so often, but she kept the sheet in place. This mom didn’t speak, or make eye contact. She wasn’t impatient, like she knew there was nothing anyone could do. She just sat, listless in a chair, waiting for her turn. The other moms, as if they already knew, had edged away from her in the crowded waiting room, leaving a circle of empty chairs around her. I thought for a moment, when I walked to her, that I smelled a whiff of something. A sickly sweet smell – the smell of human decay and rot, the smell of a corpse left in the sun. But surely that wasn’t possible. This kid was moving.

I’d been in Africa for months already. I’d seen things that I thought had hardened me, permanently. I’d seen worms slithering in people, maggots foaming out of a child’s ear, leprosy that ate away limbs – you name it. Nothing could shock me. Or so I thought. She followed me to the exam room. Why did this woman ignore my greeting and carry her child, wordless, as a tear slid down her cheek? What was under that sheet?

It was a nightmare. One you personally can stop from ever destroying another child again. And I’m going to tell you how.

Continue reading WARNING: This Will Give You Nightmares

Yes, You ARE A Lemming

Raise your hand if your mother ever asked teenaged-you “Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean you have to – what if everyone was running off a cliff – would you?”

Is there anyone who didn’t raise their hand? Well, much as it sticks in the craw (or is that beak?) the fact is, our mothers were right. But maybe not in the way you might expect. In an ingeniously designed study based on Framingham data (for more info on the famous Framingham study, read the Doc Gurley post on Black Future Month), researchers discovered that smokers don’t quit in isolation – they quit in droves. Kind of like running off the cliff – and discovering you can fly.

HealthDay states: “If your spouse stops smoking, you’re 67 percent less likely to continue smoking. If your friend kicks the habit, it’s about 36 percent less likely that you’ll be smoking. When a sibling gives up cigarettes, your risk of smoking decreases by 25 percent, and it drops by 34 percent if a co-worker in a small office quits smoking, according to the study in the May 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.” But the downside to this information is that, by quitting in droves, we leave the remaining smokers more marginalized, where they clump (yes, like lemmings) together and become more resistant to quitting – kind of like they’ve chosen a different cliff to run off together. So how do you pragmatically use this information?

Continue reading Yes, You ARE A Lemming

Dino Grand Rounds

If you closed your eyes and imagined the voice of last living dinosaur, how would he sound? Witty (because how else could he have survived this long?), insightful (given all the changes he’s seen), and cranky (nuff said). In other words, entertaining. You get all this and more at Musings of A Dinosaur – [...]

Dog Lost – Dog Found

Ever stand in front of the bulletin board at the local coffee shop and see two side by side notes tacked up with pushpins? Dog Lost. Dog Found. Makes you want to call both and let them know things would work out much better if they just got together and compared info. Similar things [...]

The Greatest Drug In the World Is…FREE!

More exciting news on the cancer front. How would you like it if someone told you there is a drug available to you free - and this drug is not just any drug. This drug is associated with a massive decrease in breast cancer, prostate cancer, autoimmune diseases (including juvenile diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis). This drug is even associated with decreases in such common, chronic problems as high blood pressure and low-birth weight babies. But wait – there’s more. What if this drug has been studied for decades - this is no johnny-come-lately finding, but one that has be shown over and over again? AND what if I told you this drug is not making more news because…it’s free! Think about it. Who’s going to make a profit off it? No one – so no ads, no mega-headlines, no incessant “ask your doctor” taglines at the end of commercials. The only way the word’s going to spread with this is by word-of-mouth. And this week, women diagnosed with breast cancer who don’t have enough of this drug were found to have a 94% increase in breast cancer spread and 73% greater chance of death. Yeowza! What is this amazing freebie, and, more importantly, how do you get some for yourself and those you love?