I’ve been prescribed an antibiotic. Should I take a probiotic?
We are not one organism, we are many organisms. And when we disturb the relationship with our symbiotic partners, we can suffer unpleasant and sometimes life-threatening consequences. One of the most fascinating areas of medical research is the study of how our bodies interact with the the various organisms that we carry around, on us and in us. A focus is the...
Ask the (Science-Based) Pharmacist: What are the benefits of coffee enemas?
It might not occur to you, sipping your morning coffee, that you could derive tremendous health benefits by simply shooting that coffee directly into your rectum. Yet many people believe this. Suzy Cohen, who calls herself, “America’s Pharmacist™” and also “America’s Most Trusted Pharmacist®” is a proponent. Her syndicated column Ask the Pharmacist recently contained this question and response:
Melatonin for sleep disorders – Safe and effective?
It’s summertime, and the living is easy. Forget the solstice. For most of North America, this week is the real start of summer – July 1 in Canada, and July 4 in the USA. Vacation time means breaking out of that those usual routines of work and school. I’m amazed after a few weeks of vacation how much sleep my body will...
Coenzyme Q10 for heart failure: The hype and the science
Could a product sold as a dietary supplement really be delivering the benefits that advocates have claimed for decades? That’s what you might be wondering about coenzyme Q10, following recent stories like: The energy-boosting supplement that could HALVE the number of deaths from heart failure screamed The Daily Mail. It’s Official: Coenzyme Q10 Improves Heart Failure Survival from the “orthomolecular” advocates AOR....
Kombucha: A symbiotic mix of yeast, bacteria and the naturalistic fallacy
If you grew up in the seventies, you may remember the same food fads as I do. There was the oat bran buzz that was replaced by the wheat germ movement, the family fondue set and the homemade yogurt maker. And for a while I remember my father making what I called “aquarium water” – a foul-looking jug sitting on the kitchen...
A closer look at vitamin injections
Vitamins are magic. Especially when they’re injected. Roll up the sleeve, find a vein, insert a needle and watch that colourful concoction flow directly into the bloodstream. It may sound somewhat illicit, but that person infusing it is wearing a white coat, and you’re sitting in a chic clinic. There must be something to it, right? Intravenous vitamin injections are popular with...
Is thyroid replacement a performance-enhancing drug?
Has one physician uncovered the secret to Olympic Gold medals? And is that secret as simple as undiagnosed low thyroid function? That’s the question posed in a recent Wall Street Journal column entitled U.S. Track’s Unconventional Physician. Like the story that Steven Novella described yesterday, this narrative describes the medical practice of Dr. Jeffrey S. Brown, who sees thyroid illness where others...
What’s in your supplement?
It could be the ingredients on the bottle. It could be drugs. It could be ground-up snails!
Cranberry, the alt-med zombie
If there’s a characteristic that’s common among proponents of alternative medicine, it’s tenacity. The willingness to stick with an idea, no matter the evidence, must give one a certain clarity. The naturalistic fallacy is often the foundation. Natural is good, synthetic is bad, no matter the evidence. In some cases, in spite of the evidence. How one deals with contradictory evidence is...
Behold the spin! What a new survey of placebo prescribing really tells us
One of the recurring topics here at SBM is the idea of the placebo: What it is, what it isn’t, and how it complicates our evaluation of the scientific evidence. One my earliest lessons after I started following this blog (I was a reader long before I was a writer) was that I didn’t understand placebos well enough to even describe them...