It's that time of year when activists, academics, and social media mavens hoping for media coverage begin to promote worry about Thanksgiving. Some risks are real, even if relatively slight; a lot more people driving mean more accidents and if you have a family member who is an International Agency for Research on Cancer epidemiologist, they will ignore the greater amount of driving and just...
read moreLike the CDC manufacturing a prediabetes epidemic and pregnant women getting a scarlet letter if they have a glass of wine while pregnant, flossing seems to be a distinctly American phenomenon. Are we right? The British are famous for bad teeth, for example, and fiscal conservatives will say that's because dental care is not free under their socialized medicine. They must not floss, right?Well,...
read moreHarvard University, and its anti-science allies like The Guardian(1) paper in England, are again claiming that meat causes diabetes.read...
read moreIf you are a parent, or know a parent, you have had someone claim that if their kid eats sugar they get 'hyperactive' - that may happen, but only because a child has been told they get hyperactive and act that they, the same way if you tell a child rum cake has rum they may act drunk.Biologically, it doesn't work that way. Sugar can certainly help you if you are diabetic(1) and "anti-sugar...
read moreControversial social media video site TikTok has one supporter - a public relations academic at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.A recent paper, ironically in a journal from a publisher that has also been called predatory, argues that TikTok may be effective for encouraging women to get a pap smear, which aids in early detection of cervical cancer, which kills some 4,000 women each year in...
read moreIf you go to social media, you can see a lot of suspect claims about fad diets, unapproved medical devices, therapies, and conspiracy theories. Many of them have names with "Dr." attached.How is the public to know a "Dr." may be a PhD or an EdD or an osteropath or someone else who didn't go to medical school and become an M.D.? How should physicians respond? From the years 1998 to 2021, coastal...
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