Melatonin: Medicine, Myth or Mischief

Melatonin: Medicine, Myth or Mischief

The sale of melatonin is a two billion dollar a year business which must mean that a lot of people have trouble sleeping.  Sleep is an intricately choreographed neurologic process.  Critical to good sleep is the circadian variation of the reticular activating system.  Melatonin produced in our brains has a mild modulating effect on our sleep cycle.  However, people who have had their pineal gland (a major source of melatonin) removed are able to sleep just fine.  Because melatonin sales…

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 Dear Dr. K; Is it just me or is there a

 Dear Dr. K; Is it just me or is there a

he- –  of a lot of cold and flu this winter? It’s not just you.  Covid-19 is adding to its historical legacy by this resurgence of other respiratory infections.  According to epidemiologists (scientists who study the incidence and distribution of diseases) this is unprecedented.   For instance, hospitalization rates for both adults and children for influenza are the highest in over twenty-five years.  The simple explanation is that the cumulative load of infections that would have occurred over the past three…

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EBV and MS

EBV and MS

The cause of MS (multiple sclerosis) has long been sought.  Although many factors are felt to predispose to it, genetics and environment top the lists.  For instance, the illness is much more common in Europe and North America than in the rest of the world.  Viral infections have long been suspects.  Now there is mounting evidence that the Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) may be the culprit.  Two recently published research studies lend credence to this possibility.  The first study was…

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Gut-Brain Axis

Gut-Brain Axis

Up until recently, scientists had minimal understanding of how our GI tract and brain are connected.  Until this new research I naively figured the only connection was my tummy telling my brain when I was hungry.  As it turns out there is a very strong bidirectional interplay between the brain and the GI tract and a major fulcrum is the gut microbiome.  The ENS (enteric (GI) nervous system) interacts with the intestinal membrane and its immune cells.  Changes in the…

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Hypnotherapy for IBS

Hypnotherapy for IBS

Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia have developed a hypnotherapy-based computer app to help people with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).  The program called Nerva guides users through a ten-minute hypnotherapy session every day for six weeks.  The neural therapy is designed to correct the disordered signaling from brain to gut.  Patients who complete the six-week program report a reduction in symptom severity from 67 (on a scale of 100) to 39.  Adding a low FODMAP (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides…

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Alpha Fold

Alpha Fold

An AI called Alpha Fold developed by London based company Deep Mind is a computer-based program trained to predict protein shapes by recognizing patterns in structures already solved by years of tedious experimental work using electron microscopes and other methods.  So far, it has predicted 400,000 protein structures including most of known human proteins.  Now you might ask: “OK, what is the big deal and why is this in your newsletter?”  Well as it turns out many biologic processes work…

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House Plant Police

House Plant Police

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a “souped-up” house plant to “police” indoor pollutants.  Indoor air pollution is a reality.  A myriad of chemicals from cooking to cleaning materials to increasing outdoor pollutants can adversely affect human health.  Benzene and Formaldehyde are known carcinogens and certain states have strict rules limiting their use (notably California and Minnesota).  It has been known that indoor plants can remove these pollutants but their impact is very minor.  The scientists in Seattle…

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Dear Dr. K- 

Dear Dr. K- 

I recently read that monkey pox vaccine can be given ID.  Is that true? Yes, it is true.  In fact, early research indicates that it is the preferred route of administration in terms of getting the best immunologic protection.  At this point the only other vaccines approved for ID (intradermal) dosing are the flu vaccines and the polio vaccine.  The advantages of ID vaccination are several.  It can generate an immune response as good or better than an intramuscular vaccine…

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A Shift in Asthma Strategy

A Shift in Asthma Strategy

They say “nothing stays the same” and as I keep aging, I couldn’t agree more! Change is always occurring in medical guidelines as well.  What I’d like to address here is how this applies to asthma therapy.  For quite some time now, the standard of care for asthmatics has been to have both a rescue inhaler and a maintenance inhaler.  The majority of rescue inhalers use albuterol, a bronchodilator, which relaxes airway smooth muscles that are constricted.  The benefit is…

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Tardigrade Research

Tardigrade Research

Tardigrades are microscopic organisms about the size of a dust mite but are really cute as they look like a baby manatee.  For being so tiny they have some really special properties that scientists hope to adapt to human health.  Tardigrades are incredibly tough.  They can survive being frozen down to minus 272° Celsius, being exposed to a vacuum in outer space, being completely dried out and being exposed to 500 times the dose of x-rays that would kill a…

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