I really do feel for the family, for death of the younger generation before the older one by any means including suicide by his own hand, is a horrible thing that is anti-nature and has a profound wrongness, a too-deep effect on all involved.

I was way back in residency when I attempted to gather some statistics on the association between religion and psychiatry in Kansas, sending a basic questionnaire on feelings about mental illness (and referral patterns to mental health professionals) to a big list of Wichita area “religious professionals.”
First, I had already made the assumption from the French part of my education that not too many people actually went to church, but none of them seemed to much care about mental health professionals.

In Kansas, with the world’s worst statistics (no major support on this from my

department) and patients some of whom did not think a Jewish lady could do them any good (despite my repeated insistence that prescription pads were non-denominational) I found that the only people who were going to be referred to mental health professionals were going to be the grossly psychotic (hearing voices and walking into walls) and maybe some suicidal or homicidal folks for safety purposes.  Most religious folks did not seem to imagine or believe that we were good at much else.

It sounds to me as if this young man was battling with depression.

Yes, my sympathy really does go out to the family, although I wonder why he was not hospitalized or given more intense treatment, which could certainly have included a religious component if desired.

I have never had any trouble with religious components of psychiatric treatment.

I do have trouble with substitutions of religion FOR psychiatric treatment.  Like a therapist in Oklahoma who spent an hour on a kneeling pillow next to a patient on same for therapy. Yes –she billed for this “therapy.”  No — it was not covered by insurannce.

Of course, I also knew one highly competent therapist who told patients “yeah, I’m Christian; we can pray at the end of the hour.”

Research on this is hard to come by.

This is the kind of study psychologists are very good at.  It has lots of questions and lots of statistics and as far as I can figure, women turn to religion more than men, but the ones doing so may be the ones who have problems already.  As for results, it is hard to lean on this study. (NOTE: This link opens in a PDF file,so you need Adobe Acrobat to read it)

I am not leaning on politics for this one, what with this particular placement of a pro-war religious human on an anti-suicide religious board — But politics often motivates strange (if not poor) judgment.

The father of the suicide victim was a widely read evangelical pastor,.

The cynical, anti-religious side of me wonders if family demons will be exposed to an aggressive press in the next few weeks.

After all, it is easier to make a 180 degree turn than a more subtle one, and a lot of people with, well, their own demons, may try to control them with religious morality.

I have actually heard this referred to in mental health circles as the “Jimmy Swaggart Phenomenon.”

I cant resolve this one definitively, except to say that human life is so precious I cannot support any ideological system that lets it slip by, devalued.

Retailers have been urged to remove products from their shelves that might contain harmful (toxic) ingredients.

Why is everyone surprised?  Does anybody actually expect cheap products to be safe?  things you buy at Target or K-Mart to have been made with your safety or well being in mind?  why?

Not that I am demonizing these particular companies.  It is impossible to expect them to spontaneously think of these things.

They want to make profits to send their own kids to college, and improve their own lifestyle.  This is the sort of thing businesses in America DO — the greed

we value, and and glorify, and that entrepreneurs aspire to.

Our consumer watchdogs certainly sound like good, decent folks.  The real question is how and if increased laws and regulations can be helpful here, limiting the toxic things that actually get to people.

If so, this would certainly be in line with something I would support.

The real problem is that we are stuck in a cycle of increasing regulations, which would bring up prices.  You understand, of course, that if a company has to make things safer, they will have to spend more money and they pass that along to us — the consumers.  I do not see a lot of folks I would expect are independently wealthy shopping the kind of discount stores.

One thing I do not claim to be is an expert on household cleanliness, but there is one line I absolutely love in the initial article cited above.

It is the last one.

The author talks about baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, and vinegar.

She says, “Use what our grandparents used; simple products.”

Take an example from something I do know about.  It is a sort of basic home pharmacology.

I have a bottle of apple cider vinegar sitting on the kitchen table.

I have read about it in many places, long ago; I mostly think of it being part of traditional Vermont and New England folk medicine.  It is supposed to help with weight loss.  I had generally taken that with a grain of salt, and I use it so rarely that I doubt it has much to do with mine.

I use a little bit of vinegar straight in my mouth, a couple of teaspoons, where other people would use antacids.  This is one of those folk remedies I have learned of in many places, sweetening the vinegar to taste.  After all, your stomach is supposed to be acidic in order to do its job of breking down proteins insto smaller molecules.  Lots of people, including moi, have terrible rebounds after antacids, which makes lots of sense; when you are trying to cancel the acid problem, which has a reason for being it will probably re-appear quickly and with a vengeance.

If you add acid, with a palatable taste, it gets the body set up to digest efficiently.  No rebound.  Pleasant and easy.

Not only is vinegar a digestive aid — it has been tested in reducing obesity in Japan.  The study isn’t a scientific heavyweight, looks like one of the anorectics that populate this field, but I can’t find real scientific publications on this one.  NOTE: This link opens a PDF file, so you need Adobe Acrobat to read it.

Only one study, but impressive.  This old New England folk remedy could be — well, real.  Fifteen or 30 mg. daily of vinegar, diluted to palatability may indeed assist with weight loss and triglyceride lowering.  Good science, as far as I can tell.

All kinds of other possible health benefits have been explored for plain old vinegar. Nice, but the “researcher” is a dietician. Her ideas of facts and mine might be a little different.

Still, not without a certain appeal.

As a disinfectant vinegar seems to be pretty non-toxic and I have no problem with that kind of use.

It has gotten to the point that I laugh or smile when I read Web MD.

Everyone finds (and they index here ) an article where a woman got an apple cider vinegar capsule caught in her throat.

I would not use the capsules, which I do not thik anyoe has tested for anything.  I might use something else if I had head lice.

I would maybe use it to disinfect furniture if I ever disinfected furniture.  Nobody seems to have done any head to head studies with this and the stuff in Walmart and Kmart, and it is really hard for me to imagine that happening.

I believe the bottle of apple cider vinegar to be the cheapest thing in my kitchen, and on my kitchen table.

I have written on weight loss and recommend the simple, old foods of our forebears.  I love the idea of simple old remedies being somehow “better.”

They are also cheaper.

Of course I had experience with the really big shows.  When I was a kid my folks took me once to the Greatest Show On Earth — Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey — where I think now the plethora of amusements in three rings is probably best suited for those who really enjoy their attention deficit disorder.
But it was in a tiny field in France by a beach on the English Channel that I saw a lovely one ring circus. I was most impressed with the lion tamer — a person of African descent, large and muscled and handsome — but I was close enough to see each time he put his head in the lion’s mouth, and he did it multiple times.

The old, indifferent lion had no teeth, but the effect was still thrilling.

The image was vivid, and I have not thought of it for many years.

I think of it when I hear talk about the Food and Drug administration (FDA).

The FDA has no teeth, and as you can tell from the interview below, is simply

not empowered to do much about — for example — people dying from a dietary supplement.

Yes, there is a supplement — a “dietary supplement” — that is supposed to help people do the last part of their workout — run a little more, lift a little more.

It has killed at least two members of the US armed forces that I know about, and it has been removed from sales at the post exchanges (The PX is like a Wal-Mart for the military base and has lots of special discounts for our service people).

You read me right — something that has been pulled from the post exchange shelves might have killed two soldiers; this was done as a precautionary measure.

Unfortunately, there has been no scientific investigation — guess that would have been expensive.  Danger removed, and that satisfies the authorities, I suppose.

As a veteran and a patriotic American, it saddens me that all of the killing of our troops does not have to be left for the enemy.

No, I was not this cynical until I became a psychopharmacologist in the world of prescription drugs.  After two decades of that, I was so disillusioned that I left that to become a natural alternative medicine doctor.

The irony of it all is that the safest drug I can legally prescribe now is marijuana, which the very authorities who issue a free-pass to dangerous and deadly medicines and over-the-counter remedies are trying with all of their power to suppress and convince a gullible public of non-existent dangers.

For the record — in case anybody actually cares — Eli Lilly promoted the substance in question.  In my academic days, I was part of the investigative team conducting clinical trials for Eli Lilly and similar multinational pharmaceutical companies.  One of the drugs I worked on was approved by the FDA and marketed as an antipsychotic drug under the trade name Zyprexa (generic name Olanzapine).  It was later found – after being on the market for ten years — to have dangerous and potentially lethal side-effects.  One of them was promoting obesity and making a higher risk of diabetes and other complications.

The FDA response to these reports was to require Lilly to print a warning on the medicine box surrounded by a thick black border.  This is called a “black box” warning and is about as effective as those warnings on cigarette packages.

The drug is still on the market and heavily prescribed for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

The drug that allegedly has killed a couple of our nation’s heroes in uniform is 1,3-dimethylamylamine — a nasal decongestant and vasoconstrictor (blood vessel constrictor) developed in the World War II era.

So it has been around and been used for around 75 years.  This is hardly a pedigree of safety, as cocaine has been so used, and still was, when I did my rotation in ear-nose-and throat, my first postgraduate training in the U.S.A. back in the early 1980s.

The Ministry of Health in New Zealand banned this stuff.

I know they are a little bitty country compared to us, but their ministry can ban things and our FDA folks can’t.

Yes, although you may believe I am wrong, the FDA cannot ban drugs or over-the-counter remedies. They can suggest that a company withdraw the products or quit manufacturing the products, but the FDA is a toothless old lion – and usually under a lot of pressure from politicians and swayed by drug-company lobbyists to do what is best for drug companies – and not for the citizens of the USA.

Some people claim that 1,3 dimethylamylamine is a natural product, made from lovely and fragrant geraniums.  I am not a real expert in plant stuff, but if there is any of this in geraniums, I cannot turn up any real proof.   Awww – how could a pretty little flower be bad for you?

Even if this is true, it is not an argument for safety.

I mean, opium poppies are also beautiful flowers.  That does not make them “good stuff.”

When I was little, we had a garden full of geraniums.  My grandmother of blessed memory did tell me they were poisonous and I should not eat them.  I remember the remark only because I never thought of eating flowers before that moment, and I remembered the remark the moment I was confronted with a narcissus in a salad at some prissy drug company banquet.

As far as I can figure, the nasal spray stuff suspected in the soldiers’ deaths is basically an amphetamine.

There are multiple levels of issues here.  The “idolatry of the body,” as the old chaplain in Fargo, North Dakota would have called this, has caused many young males to choose some pretty dangerous supplements.  I have struggled with young male patients to avoid dangerous drugs that may help them have a better physique (i.e. “Look Hot!”).  Yet they seem to follow the advice of Billy Crystal’s character “Fernando” who was famous for saying “It doesn’t matter how good you feel as long as you look Mah-vel-ous!”

Ummmm … that was satire – on Saturday Night Live …. Not medical advice.  Mr. Crystal was going for laughs.

There are all kinds of supplements out there; many are good, some even very good and can work plenty better than prescription drugs.

There are also things out there that can kill you.

I use this blog to tell you about them when I know about them.  I’m also very open with my patients about what makes sense and what might be harmful.
The typical American solution is that we need more laws to protect us. They labor under the misconception that the government is there to protect us.

History shows us that the government will do nothing until after catastrophe strikes, and even then they cover-up and make excuses until enough people make enough trouble to threaten re-election or impeachment.

My response is that we need more people who want to do the right thing, and who value life.

Maybe we can do something on the political level. I really was never a political activist until recently, and so my husband and I started the American Natural Health Initiative (ANHI).

We should not be producing stuff that can kill folks and making it easily available to the general public.

Our government is supposed to be representative and a republic and it simply is not doing the job.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from that great old cynic, Benjamin Franklin.

After he walked out of the 1787 Constitutional Congress, the good Dr. Franklin was asked what kind of a government we had.

I love his answer.

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

The truth of the matter is that even though the United States has promised religious freedom from the very start, they have not done a very good job, historically, of delivering on this promise.

I am happy there are folks still fighting for religious freedom, even though their website is a year old and I think that most of what I peeked at is more oriented at public religious freedom. There is a clear designation between public and private religion.  I have little use for public religion.  Public religion consists of the well-orchestrated photographic opportunities of presidents and their families sitting in their pew at church.  It consists of all of those who worship to be seen, whether they are showing off designer clothes or trying to grow professional practices by networking.  I actually remember my Mother-of-Blessed-Memory telling me I had to partake in such things.  These are practices that, if they are not hypocrisy themselves, surely invite hypocrisy. The private religion that stays inside your head is immune, or virtually immune, to hypocrisy.  What you believe when you look yourself in the mirror is real, and more likely to remain so. For this reason I have little faith in institutional beliefs.  I always have a little trouble accepting “all Catholics believe” or “all Jews believe,” because I know people who claim to be Catholic but believe in abortion.  And me, I am more Jewish than most but think dietary laws were developed for hygiene and my religious beliefs are not located in my digestive system. Now, let’s take things just one step further.

A person would have to pay for his or her religious beliefs in a tangible, material manner — by paying for someone else’s beliefs for or against contraception. America can waste its legal minds and concentration, while perfectly viable adults die at war, deciding not just about whether contraception is right or wrong, but about who pays for who else’s contraception on some higher level.

These decisions should be individual.  Contraception does not seem to be that hard to get.  I mean, I have completely indigent patients who seem to be able to obtain it from those lovable folks, blessed may they be, at Planned Parenthood. As with any public religion that pays for stuff — most particularly, that “hyper-public” religion — the problem is not the reality, but the apparition of the reality.  Hobby Lobby sounds like they don’t want it to “look” like they are paying for contraception.  The pills themselves, and most other methods, have so many damned generics the actual cost is pretty negligible.

Why not give people some kind of discretionary control so they can pay for what they believe in.  This would protect the religious freedom of those who believe in an amulet from Calvin the tree God to prevent pregnancy. This would be possible if America really protected religious freedom.  But I am pretty sure America is not doing much of this.

Marijuana has suffered a legal setback.  This has not been covered by a lot of the media.  I had a heck of a time finding it.

Lots of folks, even major networks, covered the review of the Schedule 1 status of marijuana.  Schedule 1 means no known medical use.  Things like cocaine and crystal meth are in this category, and I have no problem leaving them there.  Lots of folks have been trying to find ways to get marijuana out of this classification. I am a “book nerd” who also reads articles.  Most of them are professional medical literature.  I love foreign languages, too. I would say that about 200 papers are published every year about marijuana’s therapeutic uses.  Some are from the U.S., with lots of good ones from California.  At this moment, I cannot think of a single one that fails to show marijuana can be a helpful treatment. I see people who are doing better, whether it’s by remaining functional or by remaining alive, who bless marijuana and thank it for saving their life and function. On Tuesday, January 22, the U.S Court of Appeals said no change to the marijuana status. It’s still Schedule 1.  It’s still deemed to have no medical use; therefore, still illegal as far as the federal government is concerned.  Because it is illegal, it cannot be prescribed. The court of appeals decided that the DEA was not “arbitrary and capricious” in making its decision for Schedule 1.  I guess this is one hunk of government saying another hunk of government was within its rights.  It sounds like a technicality.  It sounds like what happens when people who have the means put together teams of lawyers – kind of like O.J. I do not believe I have ever heard such blatant lies in the face of massive, international scientific evidence.  I know there will be more petitions coming. I also understand the President could, at least in theory, overturn this any time he wanted. To say this is ridiculous is an understatement. I am watching, as is the world, as are lots of really good scientists.  We are watching along with lots of good people who owe their lives, their abilities to walk, and talk, and work to marijuana; whose benefits are not going to go away.

I learned a lot about this when studying and teaching psychotherapy.  It seems you can’t get men into psychotherapy unless they are adolescents, post-andropause, or gay.

Men have issues with their fathers.  The Oedipal complex, named after the famous king of Greek mythology who killed his dad and married his mom, is something that is supposed to get resolved in the human.  Freud seemed to think a young man is in good shape if Momma loves him.  He has to feel somehow, symbolically, he has somehow progressed beyond dad.

They got mythology and symbols; yes, even the heterosexual ones.  Robert Bly, in his book “Iron John,” treats this subject lavishly.  He’s got a current website and more recent work, as well.

Men are not what they used to be, physiologically. The people who wrote this study make it sound like this is an isolated study and you cannot infer anything from it.  I have learned that this is not an unusual state of affairs for people whose research is picked up by a major news service. I am not denying that modern lifestyle changes may be contributing, in part at least, to the fact that men have less sperm and less viable sperm than ever. I am saying that these are far from the first people who have wondered about this.

It only takes a little bit of searching to find the true state of the art of assessment of men’s sperm counts.  Leave it to those frisky Brits to write a really good review! Men just don’t have that much good, viable sperm.  Seems like the percentage of viable sperm is somewhere between 15% and 40% most of the time.  This is very different from 90% or so in bulls and other farmyard type animals.  Of course, farmyard animals are not generally equipped with televisions so they are forced to roam their green spaces to keep from getting bored. I am not saying that women are without infertility problems.  They may be harder to measure.  Sperm counts are things you can, well, count.

I rarely hear women complain to me about infertility lowering their sense of self-esteem. I have many male patients who have “crowed” to me — that reminds me, roosters seem to do pretty well — about their number of “baby mamas” and dependent children.  Enough to somehow secure them a reliable income. Actually, it seems that male infertility problems are more affected by what a mommy is exposed to while dear son is in the womb.  I think many men will take pleasure in being able to blame their mothers for their infertility.

And yet, this is not as definitive as a vasectomy.  I mean, I once had a patient who had a few little copies of his post vasectomy confirmation of a sperm count of zero or so, and used them to pick up women.  Fifteen to forty percent viability is simply not low enough to do this. Sorry, guys. There are a couple of things that I am a little sure men do on their own that will likely lower their sperm counts.  Although this is not necessarily a definite 100% true finding from the scientific literature, anything that is estrogen or estrogen-like that gets into a male body might do this.  I mean, most of male to female transgendered patients report a diminished interest in male role sexual activity.  I remember vividly at least one who fathered a child while on estrogens, but that was admittedly the exception rather than the rule.

There are an awful lot of “estrogen-like” compounds out there.  A lot of them are in plant materials, thus known as “phytoestrogens“ – “phyte” means “plant” in Greek. As luck would have it, perhaps the two substances which I believe are most sought after by adolescent males are rich in phytoestrogens.  Marijuana and beer. This could be the start of the extinction of the species.

I am not surprised that the lovely stirrer up of right wing thought, Fox News, is already getting folks stirred up for March. My job, at least in part, is to put things in context.  By this I mean human — maybe clinical medical and psychiatric, but mostly human — context.  The world is a pretty awful and foreboding place.  It is also a lonely place, where a lot of people have trouble making dyadic, or one to one, relationships.

The first problems come somewhere around 18 months, where young humans typically have a relationship with an object, known as a “transitional object.”  This is the age when typically a child runs about with a thumb in the mouth and the other hand dragging a soft-but-soiled blanket.  This is a treasured possession which the child does not desire to relinquish under any circumstances. My husband can testify to the fact that I have really healthy relationships with my personally owned blankets, which I will leave on the sofa or on the bed as indicated, and which I will relinquish while I come to the office. I actually know many adult women who collect dolls and stuffed toys and seem to “need” them around and you know what?  I have no trouble with this, as long as nobody gets hurt and everybody is happy.

Nevertheless, it remains a lonely and difficult world, and there are a lot of lonely people.  As a matter of fact, one of many brilliant things the Beatles came up with, one of the pieces of brilliance seemingly obscured and not enhanced by cheers or swooning, is the wonderful song titled “Eleanor Rigby:”  “All the lonely people; where do they all come from?” I have mused many times over the excessive loneliness of my own life, prior to location of my own true love.  I have come to the considered conclusion that the best really good way to face life for me, and for other people who so desire, is with another human who serves as a “partner.” Over the years, I have treated people with every possible sexual orientation or presentation that I could imagine; as well as some that I could not have imagined. I have treated people with and without medically identified reasons to present as any kind of intersexual states; gays, hermaphrodites, transgenders, transvestites, chromosomal disorders, people whose moms got hormones during pregnancy, and post traumatic sexual organ reconstruction. I have asked every one of them pretty much the same kind of questions. What kind of sexual fantasies do you have?  When you imagine yourself as half of a couple, what is the other person like?  When have you been happiest in the presence of another person?  What were you doing? If I ask other questions, I cannot think of them now.  I am sure that others come up as we talk, and equally sure that I am constantly working to make such as non-prejudicial as possible. In this world, where lots of people have lots of sexualities, I would like people to have the joy of a relationship with another human.  No problems with inanimate objects as long as there is no health risk.  Any questions; well that is a reason to visit a doctor, or your local Planned Parenthood if relevant.  But humans and humans together, procreative or not, is a gateway to survival and maybe even joy in a world that is becoming increasingly complex, and seemingly, increasingly hostile. Ideologically mixed marriages used to be an issue; that sure has faded.  As always, the sect I know best is Judaism, where marriages between Jews and non can result in offspring buried in some magically designated corner of the cemetery. It always bothered my parents at least a little that my husband was from Kansas and had a perceived familiarity with pigs, limited in actuality to his proclivity for eating their flesh, which I applaud since he enjoys it so.  My Father-of-Blessed-Memory thought my husband raised pigs — as did everyone who inhabited the Sunflower State — nothing this erudite human I married would ever have considered. You might ask, as many have actually asked me, where a highly reflective human such as I would draw the line.  In other words, what would be an inappropriate human marriage or sexual congress; for that matter, what is verboten. The answer is to me, obvious.  I have trouble with humans having sexual relations and/or marriage with animals. I will not trouble you with the details of stories of how a young man may relate to barnyard animals — one of six in Kansas, according to the literature — or what happens to women.  I do know that someone in Oklahoma actually has published articles on the human and cow experience. I only know that there may be all sorts of issues of health and cleanliness, and this alone is my worry.  Although, I may muse about how such folks relate to other humans. Like everyone, I have heard stories.  In Paris, there was a famous story about a woman who charged people to stand behind a one way mirror while a man was asked to have a relationship with a scared and confused chicken.  The woman made money and the chicken survived for whatever chickens were meant to do. In this hemisphere, women have been invited to have relationships with horses or donkeys. Back in France, I have a memory so repressed I think I forgot to tell my husband.  I was sitting down to dinner at one of the wonderful meals provided by on call cooks of wonderful hospitals of northern France, when a male staff surgeon asked me if I would enjoy the company of an “experienced” and well endowed horse.  He assured me that I would be quite amused and it would be great fun, and I would also be well compensated for my time — much more than my hourly pay as a physician. I told him I was flattered he thought of me in such context; as I truly was, as nobody had ever thought of me as anything but a book nerd.  But I respectfully declined, as that simply was not and is not my sort of thing.  He was visibly disappointed, and the whole thing was ludicrously polite.  But I draw the line at, well, humans and animals being together, only for health reasons.

The clip of a man marrying a horse is famous, and strangely enough, it is the first thing that came to mind when I thought of what would be a non-human marriage. I have actually seen this one reproduced in a book, as one of the great Jerry Springer shows of all time.  Frankly, I have no trouble with playing “dress-up” like a wedding with a horse.  I do have trouble if people and animals are having, shall we say, “intimate relations.” I will admit that I also have some problems with any sexual practices that are physically dangerous.  Like when people die from auto-asphyxiation or the like. I want people to stay alive and not get sick or die.  I want people to enjoy love. So I have taken this already ridiculous prejudice against gay marriage and reduced it to absurdity.  I can think of absolutely no reason why any relationship between two humans of any sexual identity or inclination should not be together. I applaud such folks when the depth of their relationship is such that they want forever and that they want to take public civil recognition — all of those wonderful things that people choose when they choose marriage.

Lots, I mean lots, of people approaching marriage get cold feet.  This is why we have so many traditions, like garters and throwing bouquets.  Many of these are from the Elizabethan Era.  Some date from the Roman era, or before.  The shoes tied to the back of the car really mean that the bride has been deprived of shoes so that she cannot run away. Nobody wants to run away here.  Two humans want to be married.  The state has put itself in the impossible place of wanting to limit this, or pronounce this wrong. Gay marriage should not be a debate.  It should be a celebration and joy; two humans finding each other in an increasingly complex and hostile world.

The technology seems identical to the TENS (Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulator), which was based on the Melzack and Wall “gate control theory” of pain — long discredited as an oversimplification.  I mean, the idea is that a nerve is supposed to be “confused” when it is hit with a “tingly” stimulation and this is supposed to block the painful message being carried along that same nerve. The gate control theory was introduced in 1965 and was already considered obsolete by many when I started studying this sort of thing.  Mainly, this was because there seem to be different kind of fibers that carry these messages.  But what the heck; it is harmless and it works, so people often still try to use TENS.  I am very happy it works for some folks.

Also, there are lots of descriptors about the bifurcation of the trigeminal nerve.  Trigeminal neuralgia remains generally considered to be a separate affliction. I remember with joy when we ordered one from Australia for my Mother-in-Law-Carolyn-of-Blessed-Memory.  Her sciatica had been bothering her, and I put one on her when she was really hurting.  Then I taught her some steps of an Irish jig, which she demonstrated when her husband and mine came back from a brief outing. Carolyn loved that apparatus; even loved the tingly feeling when it was turned up a bit high. When I tried to use one for a neuropathy of the lower limbs, it did not do much.

As usual, the insurers seem to be limiting the use of this technology, with a high denial rate of over 42 percent.

What causes migraine?  People are still arguing, but the most solid arguments seem to be about the tiny nerves around blood vessels at various places, or depths, in the brain.

Cefaly is already approved in Canada, without a single article I can find in the National Library of Medicine that mentions it specifically. The author here is correct that ISO is an organization of standardization.  CE seems to have something to do with marketing standardization; there is even a special quick and easy guide to get one. I am convinced of the safety of Cefaly.  The efficacy is possible, but not proven, and I cannot get numbers. Cost is about three hundred dollars according to a couple of Canadian sources, including the Skeptic North article linked above. The migraine patient who decides it is worth a try needs to know these things.

They have a technique called “Seeding Trials” that masquerade as drug testing (clinical trials) but are really nothing more than marketing surveys they can use to get around government regulations about promoting their drugs for alternative uses (also know as “off-label” uses).

But I’m printing this news in my private newsletter — not in my public blog.

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Take care and be happy!

Dr. G

You’ve seen those people who have signs on their cars that say “I support the troops.”  I dare you to ask any of them how they do this.  Morally?  In a day when material support is lacking.  How can we possibly talk about putting women into combat if our government cannot come up with tampons and panty-liners?  We are a government and a country of hot air, not of real support. Try this one; no matter what the ideology, we should not be in a war where we can’t seem to be able to afford to supply our own troops with the most basic humanitarian needs.  People who volunteer for the military are all too often unemployed, with very little idea of what they are getting into.  I was a trained physician, and still had very little idea of what I was getting into.  I mean, anyone with financial encouragements to meet a quota is highly unlikely to describe the loss of civil rights that goes with joining the military.  The “catch phrases” in the article on this topic, put out by PBS, are amazing.  “Few alternatives.”  “Sense of duty.”  “Providing for a family.”  In my work, I see lots of people for whom a family is something that “just happens.”  Despite sex education efforts, lots of young folks start a family without even thinking about it.  To provide for them, with the overwhelming lack of jobs, a military career suddenly looks wildly seductive. How rapidly naiveté fades.  Whatever remains will surely fade even faster when the young folks discover that their nation cannot provide them with sufficient body armor.