new ways to think about cancer not taught in medical school?

Dear All,

So I’m almost done with my medicine core rotation and I should be studying for my shelf exam right now, but I just had to write this down.  I saw this trailer www.crazysexycancer.com about a woman with a rare stage 4 cancer who decided to try a lot of complementary and alternative medicine techniques.  Currently she seems to be doing well and I guess she was on oprah to share her documentary.

I don’t know if I will have time to write more on the subject, but if you or your family member has cancer, you may want to read these two pieces featured in the New Yorker to get a broader sense of what complementary and alternative medicine has to offer — it may make a dramatic difference:

1) Dr. Fair’s Tumor: http://www.jeromegroopman.com/articles/doctor-fairs-tumor.html

2) The Outlaw Doctor: http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2001/2001_02_05_gonzalez.html

Follow up to Omega-3’s

Hi All!

This is a quick note, so, poorly written, but I’ve been looking up the safety of fish,and I think the take home message seems to be that lots of fish are unsafe — unfortunately.Marion Nestle’s book, What To Eat, talks about this in detail.  She reports that a studycame out in Science (2004) which looked at the PCB levels of 700 samples of salmon from all over the world.  

Salmon is typically known as one of the safest fish out there, and one of the mostnutritious.  Unfortunately, this report found that these salmon all were contaminatedwith unsafe levels of PCBs.  Only salmon from Chile and Washington State were deemedacceptable.  Fish from everywhere else?  The study found those other salmon simply had unacceptable levels of PCBs.   

Moral of the story?  It seems like this would be an argument whyone would want to use fish oil supplements — from a good brand which has taken outall the dioxins, PCBs and methylmercury.   Only five brands — omegabrite,nordic naturals, olay, vitamin shoppe and coromega have allowed themselves to be independentlytested for dioxins, PCBs and methylmercury (source: www.consumerlabs.com).These are just drafts of thoughts, so more on this later — but I wanted to just let you all about this sooner, as opposed to later.

Best,

Jeff 

Hey I’m Back!

Dear All,

 I’ve decided to try to blog “like crazy”.  So some of my posts will be more serious, and others just notes.  Perhaps many will be unfinished thoughts — others, actual pieces (well, attempts at pieces).  Anyhow, I’m going to start a section called, Youtube Summary, which will have a little more written description of what I’m talking about on Youtube.  The other sections will be “medical school” and “health news.”  I hope you enjoy!  We’ll see how this goes after four years

Jeff