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What are the pros and cons of relative risk, absolute risk, number needed to treat, and average postponement of death when taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs? In response to the charge that describing the benefits of statin drugs only in terms of relative risk reduction is a “statistical deception” created to give the appearance that statins […]

A Mayo Clinic visualization tool can help you decide if cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are right for you. “Physicians have a duty to inform their patients about the risks and benefits of the interventions available to them. However, physicians rarely communicate with methods that convey absolute information, such as numbers needed to treat, numbers needed to

What is the dirty little secret of drugs for lifestyle diseases? Drug companies go out of their way—in direct-to-consumer ads, for example—to “present pharmaceutical drugs as a preferred solution to cholesterol management while downplaying lifestyle change.” You see this echoed in the medical literature, as in this editorial in the Journal of the American Medical

How can you calculate your own personal heart disease risk to help you determine if you should start on a cholesterol-lowering statin drug? The muscle-related side effects from cholesterol-lowering statins “are often severe enough for patients to stop taking the drug. Of course, these side effects could be coincidental or psychosomatic and have nothing to

Do you know more about basic nutrition than most doctors? “A poor diet now outranks smoking as the leading cause of death globally and in the United States, according to the latest data.” The top killer of Americans is the American diet, as you can see below and at 0:23 in my video How Much

It may not be the number of bacteria growing in our small intestine, but the type of bacteria, which can be corrected with diet. When researchers tested more than a thousand patients suffering for longer than six months from symptoms typical with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), such as excess gas, bloating, diarrhea, and abdominal pain,

Even if we could accurately diagnose small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), if there is no difference in symptoms between those testing positive and those testing negative, what’s the point? Gastrointestinal symptoms like abdominal pain and bloating account for millions of doctor visits every year. One of the conditions that may be considered for such a

In every grade school class photo, I seem to have a mess of tousled hair on my head. No matter how much my mom tried to tame my hair, it was a little unruly. (I sported the windblown look without even trying.) Later came my metalhead phase, with headbangable hair down to the middle of

A randomized controlled trial investigates diet and psychological well-being. “Psychological health can be broadly conceptualized as comprising 2 key components: mental health (i.e., the presence of absence of mental health disorders such as depression) and psychological well-being (i.e., a positive psychological state, which is more than the absence of a mental health disorder,” and that

How can we use sensory-specific satiety to our advantage? When we eat the same foods over and over, we become habituated to them and end up liking them less. That’s why the “10th bite of chocolate, for example, is desired less than the first bite.” We have a built-in biological drive to keep changing up