The People's Pharmacy

Adequate sleep is essential to good health. That is not a news flash; your grandmother and great-grandmother knew it. It’s simply become more difficult to get the sleep you need in these anxious times. An ongoing pandemic and all the disruptions it has caused to work, school and other aspects of life could keep millions of people awake. Getting the Sleep You Need in Anxious Times: Although we can’...

The COVID-19 pandemic has been raging through the world for more than a year. More than 455,000 people have died in the US, but the vast majority of people who become infected survive. Unfortunately, for a significant proportion, symptoms associated with COVID-19 may last for weeks or months. Physicians have dubbed this post-COVID syndrome, or PCS. Patients are more likely to call it Long COVID an...

There’s an old saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots. This possibility is especially noticeable and potentially harmful when it comes to health claims. How do medical myths get such widespread credence? Why We Fall for Medical Myths: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the problem of medical myths into the spotlight. A year ago, when very...

Imagine a dental diet designed to keep your teeth and gums in good health. What does it look like? Does it have any impact on your health beyond the limit of your tongue? A Dentist Champions the Dental Diet for Overall Health: Few people realize that there is a strong connection between gum infection (periodontitis) and systemic conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Even fewer might consider...

Whoever said growing old isn’t for sissies really got it right. But not everyone has the same experience with aging. Why do some people do well up to and into their 90s, while others are over the hill in their 70s? Genetics certainly plays a role, but it is not the whole story by any means. How can you age better? Starting to Age Better Before You Get Old: If you wait until you already feel old, w...

Do your New Year’s resolutions include getting more exercise? By now, everybody knows exercise is good for us. But a lot of people view it as a chore or a bore instead of a delight. How can you experience the joy of movement? Humans are built to move, and anthropologists have offered a hypothesis that the “runners high” helped our species survive at a time when hunting and gathering both required...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has dominated life around the world this year. Now, the FDA has granted Emergency Use Authorization for two vaccines, one from Pfizer/BioNTech and one from Moderna. How will they alter the course of the pandemic? We offer listeners a coronavirus update for the close of this pandemic year of 2020. A Coronavirus Update from the Coronavirus H...

Scientists have long suspected that vitamin D is crucial for the immune system to function properly. Presumably, that is why cod liver oil was utilized as a tonic to ward off colds and flu in northern climes. After all, as you get farther from the equator, you get less sunshine during the winter. Consequently, you make less vitamin D. How does this simple fact connect vitamin D and COVID-19? Vitam...

It seems obvious that to provide the proper treatment, a doctor first needs to know what is wrong. However, although medical experts have been focusing on improving diagnosis in medicine for more than a decade, people still suffer from delayed or incorrect diagnoses. In some cases, these result in diagnostic disasters. We hear from a retired specialist about his own experience as a patient. If the...

These are stressful times. Many people are grieving the death of a loved one, while others are struggling with working or studying from home. Being separated from loved ones can be emotionally draining. How are you dealing with the mental health challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic? Trauma and Kids’ Mental Health: Trauma, like that experienced on 9/11, can have a profound impact on children’s menta...

Working from home during the pandemic has wrought havoc with a lot of healthy eating habits. It’s harder to shop safely, and minimizing time in the grocery store may mean people have stocked up on shelf-stable highly processed foods. What’s more, lots of us have been responding to stress by eating sweet or salty treats that are appealing in the short run but may not benefit our health over the lon...

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, has infected many millions of people both in the United States and around the world. The death toll is horrifying, with more than a quarter of a million people in the US alone. With infections soaring as we head into winter, the news that a couple of vaccines against COVID-19 appear to be effective is especially welcome. What Do We Know About V...

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus behind COVID-19 is changing. This should not be a surprise, since microbes evolve by nature. What implications might this have for the infection in future months? We speak with an evolutionary biologist to see how his perspective can illuminate the pandemic. How Do Microbes Evolve? SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus that evolved initially in bats. How can microbes that have ada...

One of the striking things about the COVID-19 pandemic is how differently people respond. Some people contract the virus but never really have symptoms, while others land in the hospital struggling for breath. More than a million people around the world have died from the infection, with about a quarter of those in the US. We can understand this immense variability better if we consider how does t...

The conventional view of the digestive system was that it took care of digestion and wasn’t involved very much with the rest of the body’s systems. Now, though, science has shown that the gut and the millions of microbes that live in it have a profound impact on other aspects of our body, from immune response to brain health and psychological well-being. How can we put that knowledge into action?...

Far too many Americans have died of COVID-19 during 2020, but heart disease is still the number one killer .  Moreover, people with heart disease are more vulnerable to complications from the coronavirus. What should they do to protect their hearts? How People Can Protect Their Hearts: There are a few things that everyone can and should do to protect their hearts: eat right , exercise regular...

Two out three people with Alzheimer disease are women. Why are they at higher risk for this devastating condition than men? Even more important, how can they reduce their risk for dementia? Many of the usual explanations for this imbalance don’t stand up well to scrutiny. Too many of them have been accepted without much evidence, such as the idea that women’s preponderance among people with dement...

Experts estimate that 30 million people worldwide have had COVID-19. More than a million have died, and approximately 20 million have recovered. However, while health professionals usually think of this as an acute illness, recovery may be far slower than anticipated. The CDC has found that 35% of adults who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 still had symptoms more than two weeks later ( JAMA , Oct....

Very likely you have heard of children who are allergic to peanuts. Sometimes the tiniest whiff of peanut dust can trigger a frightening reaction. Food allergies have been increasing dramatically among American children. In fact, one in 13 is vulnerable to a serious or life-threatening consequence if they accidentally consume the wrong food. The rate of such serious allergies doubles approximately...

Until December of 2019, doctors had no experience with pandemic that has now killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. As the infection raced from country to country, they tried a lot of different treatments that seemed promising. But in many places, the onslaught of serious cases was so extreme that scientists couldn’t find the time and resources to test those therapies in clinical...

Kidney stones afflict an estimated three million Americans each year, resulting in at least half a million trips to the emergency department. But what are they and what can you do about them? How do they form and how might you prevent them? We hear from a listener who has first-hand experience of the pain of kidney stones. Then we get a primer in this condition from urologist Glenn Preminger of Du...

Back in May, 2020, we spoke with a scientist known internationally as the coronavirus hunter . Dr. Ralph Baric has been studying coronaviruses for more than three decades. He was involved in the early research on some possible drugs to treat people with COVID-19. Five months is a short time under normal circumstances, but the pandemic means that nothing is quite normal. In this episode, the corona...

This show first aired in June, 2019, before anyone had heard of SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19. Today, understanding how your immune system works to overcome an infection is more important than ever. Just how does your immune system manage to ward off unwanted bacteria or viruses? This “elegant defense” is sometimes described as though it were an army fending off all invaders, but that metapho...

We have had eight months of COVID-19 pandemic, and there is nobody anywhere who isn’t ready for it to be over. That is why there is quite a bit of excitement about the potential for vaccines. Several have started phase 3 trials already. What does that mean and what can we expect? Where Will We Get the Evidence on Vaccines? During phase 3 trials, developers of a vaccine give it to lots of people. T...

The microbiome –the genome of our collective microbiota–has become a trendy topic in medicine lately. With more microbial than human cells in our bodies, it’s becoming clear we should think of ourselves as collectives. Citizen scientists have been contributing to the understanding of microbiota biodiversity through the American Gut Project . Yet most of us don’t really consider that when we eat, w...