The People's Pharmacy

Examining the Basis of Neuroscience Dogma: This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, our guests discuss the evidence supporting widely accepted ideas about Alzheimer disease and depression. Neuroscience dogma holds that Alzheimer disease results from the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaque in the brain. Moreover, nearly any psychiatrist, when asked, will tell you that SSRI antidepressants...

This week, an exciting interview from our archive airs on Oct. 8, 2022. A healthy young medical student, David Fajgenbaum, had been a student athlete in college and maintained his extraordinary level of fitness through much of medical school. Because of his enthusiasm and athleticism, his friends called him The Beast. When he suddenly found himself deathly ill with an undiagnosed condition, it was...

This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we speak with scientists studying the potential of psychedelic compounds to help heal mental illness. Recreational use of drugs like LSD during the 1960s gave these compounds a bad reputation. As a result, funding disappeared, and research withered. Over the last decade or so, however, investigators have been examining possible uses of these compo...

This week on our nationally syndicated public radio show, we invite gastroenterologist Nicholas Shaheen into our studio to answer your questions about protecting your digestive tract. He is a nationally recognized expert in esophageal diseases and has helped write numerous treatment guidelines for gastrointestinal illnesses. Detecting Digestive Tract Tumors: Two of the most common cancers that aff...

This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Matt Richtel . His latest series for The New York Times takes a long look at the mental health crisis affecting American teenagers. This is not a tale of COVID disruption, although COVID has made it worse. This is a story of a generation, starting around age 10 and continuing through college graduatio...

This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we talk with one of the world’s leading experts on indoor air quality. If we had been paying more attention to air when the COVID-19 pandemic began, we might have saved millions of lives. Improving air quality is still critical to our health. Not only is SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, still an airborne disease, but so are influenza an...

Cassandra Quave is an explorer and an ethnobotanist uncovering potential ways that plants can benefit human health. She has a particular interest in multi-antibiotic resistant infections. Not only do these pose a grave risk for people around the world; her professional interest is also personal. When she was three years old, she suffered a post-surgical infection that very nearly took her life. As...

This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we learn where the most germs are lurking in our homes and workplaces. Public toilets often make people nervous, but in fact, says Dr. Chuck Gerba, cafeterias and break rooms are much more likely to harbor dangerous pathogens. What will help us in avoiding germs? Hint–keep on washing your hands! 80 percent of infections are transmitted hand-to-mou...

Modern medicine looks back on many old treatments with a great deal of disdain. A classic example is the lobotomy. In the mid-twentieth century, lobotomy was employed to treat serious mental illness. One of the earliest developers of this procedure, Dr. Egas Moniz, received the Nobel Prize in 1949 for this approach to treating depression, agitation and schizophrenia. Some psychiatrists used an ice...

This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we explore the impacts of negative attitudes toward aging and how to fight back against ageism. In the US, many people hold negative stereotypes about growing older. These beliefs can affect our health as we age. Why Are Negative Stereotypes About Aging So Destructive? Psychiatrist Robert Butler coined the term “ageism” in 1969. Officials had prop...

This week on our nationally syndicated public radio show, Dr. John Abramson describes the impact of Big Pharma on American health care. In the US, we spend more on healthcare than any other country (both overall and per capita). However, our health metrics are mostly mediocre. Compared to other wealthy countries, they are abysmal! Big Pharma Controls Medical Research: Starting several decades ago,...

On our nationally syndicated radio show we take questions from listeners about how to save money on prescription medications. As with nearly everything else, drug prices have been rising. First, we speak with health and medicine investigative reporter for Consumer Reports Lisa Gill about five ways to save on prescription drugs. How many of her tips have you tried? Five Tips for Saving Money on Pre...

This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, learn how to cope with tear problems. This is an extremely common eye disease, but that doesn’t mean it is trivial. An estimated 16 million adults in the US suffer with dry eyes, and suffer is the right verb for many of them. What Is Dry Eye Syndrome? The usual symptoms of dry eyes include irritation or a gritty feeling, redness and fluctuations i...

Dr. Robert Lustig has been warning us all about the hazards of sugar since 2009, when his YouTube lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” went viral. As a pediatric neuroendocrinologist, he spent much of his career treating the causes of obesity in children. Now, he turns his impressive expertise to helping adults as well as children. Metabolic syndrome contributes to the chronic diseases like diabetes...

For many months now, people have been dealing with the pandemic, which has brought both grief for the lives lost and anxiety about the threat of infection. At the same time, fires and floods have made it clear that climate change is not a fuzzy future concern, but an urgent issue. The economic impact of all these problems has also been challenging. It is little wonder then, that rates of anxiety a...

In our nationally syndicated radio show this week you’ll learn about a cardiac risk factor you may never have heard mentioned. Although scientists identified lipoprotein a as an important problem in the 1970s, your doctor may never have measured your level. We ask one of the country’s leading experts why Lp(a) has been overlooked for so long. It seems to be the best-kept secret in heart disease. T...

In our nationally syndicated radio show this week, we talk with Dr. Aaron Carrol l, who is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and the Chief Health Officer of Indiana University. Despite rising infection rates, many of the precautions common last summer are melting away. There are no mask mandates on airplanes, and most restaurants do not require proof...

In our nationally syndicated radio show this week, we have a guest live in the studio. Podiatrist Jane Andersen will be ready to answer your questions about foot problems and what you can do about them. Fixing Your Foot Problems: Has the pandemic been hard on your feet? Some foot doctors report seeing 20 to 30 percent more foot pain post-pandemic. Perhaps people gained weight during lockdown, whic...

After more than two and a half years have we learned anything about how an airborne virus like SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted? Judging from the way people have been acting lately and the way public health authorities have been responding to the latest COVID-19 surges, the answer is not much! An article in JAMA (June 7, 2022) suggests that we should be improving both public and private indoor air qualit...

In our nationally syndicated radio show this week, we with an international expert about managing the microbiome. How does the microbiome interact with our immune system? Each of us has trillions of microbes living in our digestive tract. The exact number and type of species varies from one person to the next, so in essence our microbiome is as unique as our fingerprint. Unlike fingerprints, howev...

We are heartbroken that Dr. Paul Farmer, with whom we spoke in this episode, died suddenly on Feb. 21, 2022. He was a true hero. Our condolences to his family and colleagues. We are airing this interview in memoriam. In 2014, an Ebola epidemic broke out in three countries of West Africa–Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Perhaps the first case was a toddler who became ill late in 2013, but it didn’...

In our nationally syndicated radio show this week, our guests discuss “ forever chemicals ” (PFAS) used in a wide range of products. How do they affect our health? What Are PFAS, or Forever Chemicals? Scientists refer to a large class of synthetic chemicals, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, as “forever chemicals.” A Dupont chemist created the first one in 1938. It later became famous...

In our nationally syndicated radio show this week, we consider the benefits of two dietary supplements against autoimmune diseases. Although health care providers are sometimes skeptical about the value of supplements, the VITAL trial represents gold-standard research. In fact, this large, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial demonstrated that vitamin D and marine omega-3 fatty acids each reduce...

For many years, possibly even centuries, some people who unexpectedly survived a life-threatening event have recounted amazing experiences. Between the time they appeared to die and when they revived, they often encountered places and beings unlike those of everyday life. What should we make of such near death experiences? Reports from the Operating Room: Occasionally, the reports of near death ex...

In the midst of a pandemic, many people feel isolated. When you are not even supposed to shake hands, much less hug or kiss, how can those who live alone meet their needs for sexual intimacy? Is it possible to date without running a high risk for COVID-19–or a sexually transmitted infection? How can people have safer sex, even in these risky times? A new CDC report shows that despite pandemic soci...