Comments for Your Doctor's Orders

Comment on Paula Deen’s Diabetes – a Physicians Perspective by The Doc

The Doc — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:03:05 +0000

Type 1 is made worse with weight gain, and managed easier with maintaining a normal weight. Type 1 is an auto-immune disease, as we understand it today

Comment on Science is Not Religion: Let’s Stay Out of the Dark Ages by The Doc

The Doc — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:02:21 +0000

Tetanus is in most soils, so people need to be re-vaccinated every ten years. Most get the DPT shot, and yes – diphtheria has mostly been eliminated because of vaccination, but can come roaring back

Comment on Paula Deen’s Diabetes – a Physicians Perspective by Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:33:28 +0000

I thought that type one was a pediatric disorder that has nothing to do with diet. Doesn’t a child with type one lose weight? I know a couple of kids with that disorder and I thought it was auto-immune like hypothyroidism.

Comment on Science is Not Religion: Let’s Stay Out of the Dark Ages by Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:43:36 +0000

I believe in vaccines but I wonder if diphtheria is still a threat in the United States. I do realize that Americans occasionally visit or serve their country in places where this disease is still a threat.
One of my sons was mugged on a Brooklyn street corner a few years ago, and the emergency room staff couldn’t find anything else to do with him so they gave him a tetanus shot. He was bleeding from his inner ear and had been knocked out but that vaccine was the treatment of choice. It did no harm but is the soil of the Crown Heights neighborhood contaminated with tetanus? OTOH, that same son was once scratched by a dog while visiting an Amish farm and the doctor really did not know what shot to give him. City doctors are not affluent in rural medicine.
I would say that one set of my grandchildren attend a school that won’t accept non-vaccinated children due to a child there who has had a liver transplant and who can’t handle contagious diseases. Several of my grandchildren live in a crowded Brooklyn neighborhood where pertussis regularly makes the rounds and kills a few kids every time it hits. They really need to discover an infant vaccine for RSV.
If kids attend college in New Jersey, they are required to be vaccinated against meningitis.

Comment on Complementary Medicine- it Doesn’t Compelement and Its Not Medicine by The Doc

The Doc — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:53:55 +0000

We are scratching the surface and yet, flower power – who wouldn’t want that to work. We all have stress – and eventually we will all die from something.

Comment on Sodas, Food Stamps, and Obesity by Lynn

Lynn — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:34:02 +0000

Obesity kills but we do see some elderly individuals who have been obese for much of their adult lives. Maybe they would have greater longevity, or better health if they are thinner but many obese people still live to their 70′s and 80′s. In some cases though, it cuts people’s life expectancy dramatically.
I do wish, however, that Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal would have been accepted. I don’t think that government entitlements should be for luxuries and non-essentials. If the WIC program can specify just exactly what it will pay for, why can’t food stamps?

Comment on Complementary Medicine- it Doesn’t Compelement and Its Not Medicine by Lynn

Lynn — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:51:03 +0000

I recently decided to try a drugstore brand of homeopathic eye drops for what I thought was viral conjunctivitis. 24 hours later, I was in such pain that luckily an eye doctor saw me right away. I was given prescription antibiotic eye drops with a bit of steroid and improved within hours.
A friend of mine spent a few months studying Bach flower remedies before opening up a practice in her home. People flock to her for everything from cancer to psychiatric problems and pay for the office visit as well as the remedies. If her children fight, she sprays the air with Bach flower remedies to calm them down. Doctors spend years studying cancer treatments but she claims to have the answer after just a few short months. Of course most of her cancer patients get some other form of treatment as well such as South American chicken blood. She does claim that even if a person gets conventional treatment, her flower remedies will prevent recurrences by eliminating the mental stress that she claims gave them cancer to begin with. To give the devil it’s due, there was some Harvard study correlating cancer to stress.

Comment on Forks Over Knives - by The Doc

The Doc — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:38:07 +0000

Think about heart disease this way: once the plaque has built up it takes a lot for it to regress- and the best agents we have are the statin drug therapies. The evidence that a vegan diet reverses heart plaque is poor quality evidence, and not reproduced by anybody else. If you need heart surgery, then get heart surgery – because the vegan diet won’t help you that quickly. I wish it did. A friend of mine, fellow surgeon, had two previous heart bypass operations and was told he couldn’t get another. He went on a strict Ornish diet. Thankfully he got his third bypass operation, because the Ornish diet didn’t reverse his disease.
Nothing wrong with a plant based diet- however, there is something wrong if people think you can eat your way out of disease – especially if they have no real proof.

Comment on What We Know About Fat by The Doc

The Doc — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:33:02 +0000

DNA testing doesn’t tell us if you lived long, short, or died from pneumonia, heart disease, or TB. Bones won’t tell us that either. So, as a physician, with some training in forensic medicine, – well, cavemen just are not something we know.You love low- carb, but again- we don’t know as much about this as we should