Michael Carlston, MD

04/23/2024

Great organization

06/05/2023

The answer to the headline rhetorical question is ABSOLUTELY YES!

Please read this as it highlights very important, but often ignored risky side to diets that people incorrectly assume are good for them.

To expand a bit more - recent studies have finally looked at the impact of vegan and vegetarian diets on cancer and other health conditions, finally scientifically proving what many of us have seen for decades. Vegetable based diets dramatically reduce risks of all kinds of health troubles AND are powerful treatments as well. HOWEVER ultraprocessed vegan and veggie diets are WORSE than meat packed unprocessed diets.

Panorama investigates the links between UK's food safety advisors and the ultra-processed food industry.

11/18/2022

Funny Keep watching

08/21/2022

This study is far from definitive. For decades I've successfully ENDED ongoing recurrent infections by simply NOT prescribing the routine antibiotics previously given to the patient for those specific infections. The antibiotics were suppressing immunity it seems and CAUSING recurrences. Although it correctly identifies harms of antibiotic overuse, this important new study did not investigate those serious consequences.

The Costs and Dangers of Inappropriate Prescribing

Along with our co-researchers, we examined anonymized healthcare claims for 2.8 million children and found that inappropriate prescribing ranged widely -- from 4% to 70% -- depending on the infection. Sometimes antibiotics were improperly used to treat viral infections, which don't respond to these drugs. At other times, powerful, broad-spectrum antibiotics (e.g., azithromycin and cefdinir) were prescribed to treat bacterial infections for which medical guidelines recommend more targeted treatments (e.g., amoxicillin).

This second category is where we found the highest costs and most serious adverse events: Children who received broad-spectrum antibiotics for bacterial ear, throat, or sinus infections were three to eight times more likely to develop potentially life-threatening Clostridioides difficile (formerly known as Clostridium difficile) infections than children who were prescribed a more targeted medication. In 2017, this pathogen caused about 223,900 hospitalizations and 12,800 deaths in the U.S.; the harmful microbe can proliferate when strong antibiotics wipe out the good bacteria in the gut.

This cohort study evaluates the comparative safety and health care expenditures of inappropriate vs appropriate oral antibiotic prescriptions for common outpatient pediatric infections.

08/02/2022

This is not exactly surprising, is it? Bad food is bad for you in every way you can imagine.

Eating ultraprocessed foods could set you on the road to cognitive decline, a new study revealed.

07/26/2022

A Himalayan Griffon Vulture, the second largest of the Old World Vultures, showing off its fake eyes.

© Husein Latif Photography.

07/25/2022

07/25/2022

Happy birthday to the late María Sabina (1894-1985), Mazatec curandera who lived in Huautla de Jiménez, the Sierra Mazateca of southern Mexico, where she held sacred healing ceremonies, also known as Veladas, with psilocybin mushrooms.

Sabina and her local community in Huautla, Oaxaca, experienced devastating consequences after hosting a Velada in 1955 with R. Gordon Wasson, a wealthy American, who proceeded to popularize psilocybin mushrooms through mainstream publications in the U.S. Her Velada ceremonies are known for introducing the western world to sacred entheogenic mushrooms.

In Netflix's "How to Change Your Mind" series, Chapter 2: Psilocybin explores María’s significant contributions to present-day understanding and the ways her work is still being kept alive to this day, long after her passing.

netflix.com/howtochangeyourmind

05/14/2022

There IS a rebranding going on. Some people, including environmentalists, are advocating nuclear power because it is "clean" meaning it does not produce climate changing greenhouse gasses. Somehow they are forgetting the high level radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. That waste stays lethally dangerous for TENS OF THOUSANDS of years. No one has come anywhere near a plan to keep nuclear waste safely contained without humans watching over it. That ain't gonna happen for millennia. Until someone comes up with a way to utilize shorter half life radioisotopes or some, presently magical, way of isolating the high level waste, "clean" nuclear power is just dangerously wishful thinking.

From the US Nuclear Regulatory Agency:
Radioactive isotopes eventually decay, or disintegrate, to harmless materials. Some isotopes decay in hours or even minutes, but others decay very slowly. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in 30 years). Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.

High-level wastes are hazardous because they produce fatal radiation doses during short periods of direct exposure. For example, 10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour – far greater than the fatal whole-body dose for humans of about 500 rem received all at once. If isotopes from these high-level wastes get into groundwater or rivers, they may enter food chains. The dose produced through this indirect exposure would be much smaller than a direct-exposure dose, but a much larger population could be exposed.

Fear of nuclear energy has made it harder to stand up to dictators and slow down global warming. Is it time for a rebrand?

05/14/2022

Aware that Medicare patients are often harmed during hospitalizations, HHS investigated to see how bad a problem this is. The answer is, It's BAD.

"Among the roughly 1 million Medicare patients who were discharged from hospitals in October 2018, a total of 258,323 experienced an adverse or temporary harm event during their stay.
And 12% experienced events that led to longer stays, lifesaving interventions, permanent harm, or death. "This projects to 121,089 Medicare patients having experienced at least one adverse event during the 1-month study period," the report stated.
Of these adverse events, 45% were said to have been preventable. According to the report, such events were linked to substandard or inadequate care -- for example, using more aggressive pain management regimens after surgery than necessary, or unnecessary delays in scheduling surgeries."

04/26/2022

While I agree that semi-annual time changes are stressfully annoying, it would be much healthier to go to permanent Standard Time than DST. For health reasons this is the consensus of medical groups

The following parties endorse permanent Standard Time.

04/25/2022

https://time.com/6167638/psilocybin-addiction-therapeutic-breakthrough/

A new study adds to growing evidence that psilocybin is worth investigating as a treatment for substance use disorder.

01/04/2022

Last night on CBS Late Night the CDC Director said something bizarre, jaw-dropping and certain to kill enthusiasm for testing.

Dr Rochelle Walensky said that if you have been home with COVID on day five, feeling fine but have access to a test and want to test, go ahead and test. Then she said IF YOU TEST AND TEST POSITIVE, STAY HOME FOR ANOTHER FIVE DAYS! WTF

So her/the CDC advice is either don’t test so you can go to work, or test potentially doubling the isolation period?? That is doubly medically wrong. YES testing to clear isolation IS the right idea. NO a positive test does not mean staying home another five days.

ALSO if you catch COVID you really need to wear a mask whenever around others for a total of ten days.

11/30/2021

Being a patient sucks, whatever the health problem.

This article talks about how upsetting it is for long COVID health care workers are treated badly (like everyone!). If you are a doc and know how your colleagues should be treating you better, it is distressing. It is WORSE for patients. They are far more vulnerable.

We know how to navigate the system (if ANYONE really can?). We probably know how dangerous our problem is, or not. Besides, illness like life itself is a powerful teacher.

The Greek god of healing Aesculapius WALKED with a limp. His staff was not just a cool wardrobe embellishment. His staff was his support and his power.He gained his medical wisdom by learning from his own suffering.

Medical professionals are used to being believed, but as patients, they found that their expertise didn’t matter.

11/29/2021

The Omicron travel ban is understandable ONLY as a BRIEF pause. I think we should be past it already. Why?

First, from what we know from International surveillance it is already worldwide, including probably here in the USA.

Second, Omicron shows up on tests. After two trips outside the US in recent months, I can confirm that a negative COVID test is a requirement to get back home to the US. I was not allowed on the plane back from either trip without a negative test in the 72 hours before the flight. If I was not vaccinated, that test would have had to have been within 24 hours.

The proviso I should add is that PCR tests pick it up for sure, but the rapid tests only PROBABLY do. We don’t know for sure yet.

Then of course there are the BIG questions - how contagious it really is (probably very), how much the immunity from prior vaccination and infection helps, and most importantly (by far) how deadly is this variant.

The most effective ways to combat this are familiar, including the very important, a very largely ignored step - home testing. Mask, move the air, distance, get your vaccination and PLEAD for community control by giving everyone a stock of FREE home tests. With those measures in place, life can IMMEDIATELY be very close to the pre-COVID normal.

11/26/2021

The new COVID variant has now been designated the fifth variant of concern by the WHO. Named Omicron, we should know much more about the immune reactivity of current viruses against it in a few days. Recognized just days ago, it is spreading rapidly, now to nearly 10 countries. Travel bans are going up in Europe, Africa and Asia.

It might still not be a big problem, but early indications are worrisome.