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Sharing food, or “the breaking of bread” with others is critically important to our relationships. Food is so important that diet is often the last thing to change when a person enters a new culture. By the simple act of eating, we learn (both implicitly and explicitly) from our social circle about how our food choices may transmit values and attitudes, not just about food, but many other topics as well.

Lipitor, a statin, is the best-selling drug of all time, generating $1.9 billion in 2019 for its maker Pfizer (down from

Published in 1910 (and notably paid for by the Carnegie Foundation,1 though in the video below he incorrectly identifies the funding source as John D. Rockefeller), this will mean nothing to non-physicians but it affects all of us to this very day. In medical school we are taught about how this investigation-turned-report saved American medicine from the unstandardized Wild West that it was in the early 1900s, and turned it into the evidence-based Shangri-la that it is today (Wait, don’t we spend more yet have the worst outcomes of any western nation?2 But I digress…).

We vastly underrate this important aspect of our lives. I was previously one of those folks who thought it was impressive that I could get by on just 4 hours of sleep each night. Little did I know how much damage I was doing to my body, and the adverse impact that this was having on my brain specifically.

The term “hormone replacement therapy” (hereafter HRT) had always left a bad taste in my mouth, as I started medical school shortly after the landmark Women’s Health Study had come out in 2002, which showed that while we might be replacing hormones to alleviate symptoms of perimenopause/menopause, we were actually increasing the risk of breast cancer (26% increase), heart disease (29%), stroke (41%) and doubling the risk of blood clots.¹

An easy way to avoid interpreting food labels is to do all of your grocery shopping in the produce section of the grocery store. But I live in the real world, and don’t even do that myself! Much like casinos, grocery stores are based on human psychology, and the assault to our senses is real.

To me, the smell of pine-scented candles is wonderful all year round – not just at Christmastime. Apparently, I am far from alone in my scent preferences; they are universal and their health benefits are backed by numerous studies! Known in the medical literature as “forest bathing,” what is really just time out in nature is well-studied and has a multitude of benefits.

I had heard about methylene blue (hereafter “MB”) for some time, but had never dug into it much, until after reading Mark Sloan’s book on the cancer industry. I noted that he had another book on MB so, impressed by how well-referenced his cancer book was, I ordered it. What an amazing substance both to learn about and to add to my healthcare arsenal!

Every day we hear more and more about alternative approaches and systems of medicine. Names like Functional, Integrative

When one is diagnosed with cancer, all sorts of well-intentioned but incorrect advice comes one’s way. I can