We are in the middle of the summer travel season, and many people are travelling to southern and tropical countries. Many of those areas have mosquitoes that can transmit malaria, a nasty parasite that can make people very sick. Malaria still kills about 1 million people a year worldwide — 85% of whom are children under 5.… Read the rest
We are in the thick of mosquito season, and I’m sure we all have our favorite bug-killer products, from zappers to plug-ins. But what really works? I found a nice new resource from the good folks at the doctor-oriented Prescriber’s Letter; they have a free detail-document discussing what really works against skeeters.… Read the rest
This summer’s major heat waves may be running out of steam, but we still have a couple weeks of potential health issues with heat waves.
Heat waves should be considered as a medical emergency; during some recent heat waves in France and other countries, thousands of people have died.… Read the rest
Ah, summer breaks — laze away the summer days, gorge on watermelon, lose your reading ability…
Huh? Lose reading ability? Unfortunately, yes — there’s even more evidence than before that schoolkids who don’t read at all during the long summer break do worse in tests, and the effect is cumulative over the summers — which of course adds up slowly to worse grades, less competitive colleges, less career income.… Read the rest
During our horribly long winter, I posted many articles on vitamin D and its growing evidence of multiple health effects. Here’s another well designed study (Vitamin D3 Supplements in Winter May Help Protect Against Influenza A) which had two groups of schoolkids and gave one group vitamin D3 and the other group nothing extra.
There are so many complementary treatments out there, it’s simply impossible to keep up. As an allopathic, Western-trained doctor, I have enough trouble keeping on top of my family medicine literature, so I have even less time to learn about other types of medicine.