Published January 28, 2010

Is mangosteen juice a scam?

You may have heard a lot of marketing pitches lately for mangosteen juice. This juice comes from the ancient Oriental mangosteen fruit. They call it the “Queen of Fruits.” I regularly visit the Orient to give lectures, and I see mangosteens at virtually every fruit vendor.

Here in the U.S., however, mangosteen is more than just the Queen of Fruits. Here it’s the queen of multilevel marketing.

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Published January 27, 2010

How osteoporosis can lead to cancer

I’ve told you in the past about serious problems with bisphosphonates, a specific class of osteoporosis drugs. They can actually cause you to lose bone! But these drugs are even worse than we thought.

It’s bad enough that these drugs can induce a catastrophic death to your jawbone called osteonecrosis. It’s bad enough that these drugs make bone denser at the cost of brittleness. Now there’s evidence that they cause cancer — of the esophagus.

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, there have been 23 cases (of which 8 were fatal) reported in the United States. All of these cases were directly associated with Fosamax, Merck’s best-selling osteoporosis drug.

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Published January 22, 2010

What the Massachusetts election means to your health

I tend to stay out of non-medical politics in my writings. After all, you subscribed to get and stay healthy. But the recent win in Massachusetts of the long shot Republican is a most telling story, especially for Obamacare.

Senator Ted Kennedy was a stalwart champion of socialized medicine, and Big Brother sitting in between you and your doctor. He and Richard Nixon almost passed a medical bill that included the “public option” back in the 1970s. With due respect for him as a public servant, my thoughts on his health policies, I admit, were a bit jaded. He’s from a very wealthy family. And as a Senator, he was given some of the best health insurance in the country (by you and me, I might add)! So no matter what he foisted upon you, he would always have access to the best medical care available. Or at least the best conventional care available.  

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