The People's Pharmacy

This week, we look at the new pharmaceuticals that the FDA has approved for treating Alzheimer disease. Although they are effective at removing amyloid plaques from the brain, they don’t seem to help patients function better. Is it time to turn away from an exclusive focus on amyloid to consider other factors that might affect cognitive decline and change the course of Alzheimer disease? At The Pe...

Too many of us are spending our days staring at screens. Little screens on our phones, big screens on the television, medium-size screens on our computers at work. Our modern lifestyles mean that we spend the vast majority of our time indoors–93%, on average. What is the time inside doing to our health? Is there an outdoor prescription to reverse dementia and depression? At The People’s Pharmacy,...

Humans have five senses, but for most of us, sight dominates. That’s why vision problems are so distressing. Have you been dealing with difficulties with your eyes? During this broadcast episode, our guest expert is ready to answer your questions about vision problems. At The People’s Pharmacy, we strive to bring you up to date, rigorously researched insights and conversations about health, medici...

Pain is an important warning signal, helping you protect your body from damage. That’s why we can view acute pain as an asset. Chronic pain, though, can be debilitating. In this episode, a pain psychologist offers a roadmap for managing chronic pain. At The People’s Pharmacy, we strive to bring you up to date, rigorously researched insights and conversations about health, medicine, wellness and he...

Are you concerned about your bone health? Do you worry about osteoporosis? According to the CDC, more than 10 million Americans have low bone density that makes them more vulnerable to fractures. For many older people, a fracture can be devastating, reducing mobility and possibly even leading to death. What does the latest medical science tell us about how you can maintain strong bones? At The Peo...

You may think of allergies as causing sniffly noses and congestion in the spring or fall. But allergies can go far beyond that. As Dr. Kari Nadeau points out in this episode, allergies can affect us from head to toe, including eyes, nose, throat, lungs, sinuses, skin and gut. In the most dangerous instances, the whole body is threatened with an anaphylactic reaction. That’s a medical emergency! On...

Over the years, we have spoken with scores of healthcare experts about chronic illness. Many of them attribute the problems to inflammation, which is after all a natural response to infection or injury. But not everyone has a system for locating and addressing the source of the inflammation. If you want to treat the cause, not just the symptoms of your disease, you might want to consider functiona...

What do you conjure up when you think of music? Perhaps you imagine a singer-songwriter telling her story. On the other hand, you might imagine a parade with a marching band, an orchestra playing an outdoor concert or a mother singing her baby to sleep with a lullaby. Regardless of the format, music acts on the brain in unique ways. Neuroscientists are learning how music heals and why healers arou...

In this episode, a renowned neurosurgeon shares what he has learned in decades of working to restore ailing brains. His new book covers a vast range of neuroscience. Our dilemma was what to pay attention to in all those options. In a sense, that is always the human situation. We are capable of conscious processing of approximately 200 bits per second (bps) of information. Our unconscious brain dea...

Tick season is well underway in many parts of the country. It seems that a mild winter and a warm spring have brought the nymphs out seeking blood. If that blood is yours, you may be exposed to a range of pathogens. What’s more, ticks are not the only creatures ready to bite you. Fleas are an even bigger problem when it comes to transmitting bacteria called Bartonella . That genus is responsible f...

Americans often boast of having the best health care in the world. It is certainly the most expensive health care. We pay twice as much as people in many other industrialized nations. Are we getting our money’s worth? Some population statistics, such as life expectancy, suggest we could be doing much better. How can we make sense of the complexity of American health care? At The People’s Pharmacy,...

If you had to name one thing that could contribute to better health throughout the lifespan, what would it be? We think exercise, or at least physical activity deserves the top spot. Yet in 2025, fewer than half of adults met the guidelines for aerobic physical activity. And less than one-quarter were doing both aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercises on a regular basis. Perhaps your doctor sho...

Many indigenous peoples around the world have developed traditional uses for psychedelic compounds. In Western medicine, these were mostly unknown until Albert Hoffmann synthesized LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in 1938. He later tried to figure out how it might be used after having an extraordinary personal experience. By the mid to late 1960s, psychedelic drugs like LSD or psilocybin had becom...

Hospitals can be pretty overwhelming. Sometimes you may feel like you need a map to find your way around the maze, not to mention a trusty guide to get you to the department or health professional that could actually help you overcome illness. In addition, being hospitalized often means being deprived of fresh air & sunlight. Could that be a mistake for proper healing? At The People’s Pharmacy...

Millions of Americans are in pain. Arthritic joints make exercise difficult, even though moving is one of the best things we can do for joint pain. Pinched nerves can cause excruciating, long-lasting pain. The usual treatments, such as NSAIDs, may help ease the pain momentarily, but do nothing to help heal the underlying condition. What do you know about the new science of regenerative therapies?...

This week, Joe and Terry discuss liver health with two specialists. You may not have spent much time thinking about your liver. It is, however, an absolutely essential organ. When the liver is working properly, every part of the body gets the nutrients it needs and no parts are exposed to damaging toxins. These are among its superpowers. Find out why you should love your liver. At The People’s Pha...

A chance encounter with a stranger on an airplane offers lessons for all of us in how to disagree without fighting. Infectious disease expert Morgan Goheen, MD, was wary when the person in the seat next to hers struck up a conversation with questions about the origins of Lyme disease and the value of being vaccinated against COVID. His views were quite different from hers. Yet they managed, in the...

Chronic diseases make up the bulk of the problems that modern health care must address. Each condition seems to have its own drivers–cholesterol for heart disease, airway hyperreactivity for asthma, neurotransmitter imbalance for depression and other psychiatric disorders, a buildup of amyloid beta in the brain for Alzheimer disease. What if all these conditions had similar origins? Today we’ll co...

Every five years, the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services jointly issue guidelines on what we should eat. The most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2025-2030) have been controversial. [Here is a link: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov] Among other things, the administration decided to flip the food pyramid upside-down in illustrating its recommendations. Why did tha...

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, nearly seven million Americans currently suffer from that type of dementia. Experts expect that more will be burdened with it in the future, as baby boomers continue to reach advanced ages. Many people are eager to protect the brain from deterioration. In this episode, we discuss an unexpected approach to lowering your risk for Alzheimer disease (AD) and o...

Obesity is a big problem in the US. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases says 2 out of every 5 American adults are obese. What’s more, one in three is overweight, with only about 25 percent of us at a healthy weight. It’s not just adults; children are increasingly suffering weight problems as well. In this episode, we ask why we eat too much and what we can do about...

Most medical interventions are either pharmacological–prescribe a drug–or surgical–remove or repair the offending body part. If those approaches are inappropriate, doctors long for a different technology. In this episode, we discuss the development of a relatively new noninvasive technology, focused ultrasound. Doctors use it to treat conditions such as Parkinson disease or essential tremor. It ma...

Medicine has changed enormously over the last several decades. As with other parts of society, digital technology has disrupted previous practices. Clinicians can now care for patients at home, monitoring them with sophisticated sensors for oxygen saturation, heart rhythm, blood pressure and much more. Even more significant, patients now have greater access to medical knowledge as well as to the s...

In this episode, we interview the doctor who first identified seasonal affective disorder (back in 1984!) and went on to develop treatments. Even when days are short (but getting longer, little by little) and skies are gray, you don’t have to suffer with a bleak outlook. Find out what you can do to counteract this common but serious problem. At The People’s Pharmacy, we strive to bring you u...

Inflammation is a double-edged sword. When you have a sudden injury or infection, your body responds by calling immune cells to the site of the problem. It may become red, swollen and painful, but all that is supposed to be part of the healing process. What happens with chronic inflammation is more insidious. Many serious diseases, such as diabetes, depression or heart disease, feed off chronic in...