Robin Marsh talked with Oklahoma country music legend Toby Keith late in 2023 about his career, his cancer battle, his faith, and even a jingle he recorded for the station some 30 years ago. Toby passed away on Feb. 5, 2024, and our thoughts are with his family, friends and his millions of fans across the world.
After chemotherapy, a 3-year-old cancer patient’s blood cells showed the genetic wear of an 80-year-old, highlighting new evidence that life-saving drugs leave lasting damage in healthy cells – a change that can persist for a lifetime.
Chemotherapy can permanently damage the DNA of healthy blood cells, causing them to age prematurely and potentially increasing patients’ risk of developing secondary cancers decades later, recent research shows.
“The damage to DNA lasts a lifetime,” said Dr. Daniel Landau, an oncologist and hematologist with The Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com/mesothelioma, who was not involved in the study. “Probably the biggest concern is the increased risk of other cancers developing as a result of exposure to prior chemotherapy.”
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Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men, and the risk rises steadily with age.
Prostate cancer is a disease where abnormal cells grow in the prostate gland, sometimes spreading to other parts of the body. Illustration by The Epoch Times
Around 1 in 8 men will develop prostate cancer during their lifetime. This common disease develops in the prostate gland and affects millions of men worldwide, especially those over age 50.
Fortunately, it is among the most curable cancers when caught early. Because early prostate cancer often causes no noticeable symptoms, early detection are critical.
Various treatment options, including lifestyle changes, may help manage the disease and improve outcomes. Continue reading
The 22 million Americans with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder could be more likely to develop early-onset dementia, a preliminary study suggests.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh analyzed health records from people diagnosed with ADHD as children in the 1980s and 90s.
These patients were then followed into adulthood and are now in their 40s.
They found adults living with ADHD scored worse on cognitive tests looking at executive function, complex tasks, word recall and working memory. Continue reading
About 24,000 additional nursing-home residents will be sedated just to keep them under control as a result of the defeat of the Biden administration’s staffing mandate, new research says.
The chances of your parent or grandparent being subject to so-called “chemical restraint” by nursing-home staff is about 10% higher than it would have been if the staffing mandate had survived, according to the analysis just published by the Pension Research Council at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Continue reading
The next time you go number two, you should take a peek in the toilet. (You should actually be doing this after every bowel movement, doctors say.)
While certain things such as blood in your poop and frequent diarrhea are known red flags, it turns out that whether your poop floats or sinks in the toilet bowl matters for your health.
Generally, stools that sink mean one thing while stools that float can mean a whole host of other things (and most of these things aren’t good). Continue reading
New research reveals the Inflation Reduction Act’s $2,000 cap may not help most Medicare beneficiaries as insurers raise drug costs and deductibles. Image (c) ConsumerAffairs
President Donald Trump sent letters to the leaders of 17 major pharmaceutical companies outlining how they should slash U.S. prescription drug prices to match those paid overseas, the White House said on Thursday.
Trump signed a sweeping executive order in May demanding drugmakers cut U.S. medicine prices to match those abroad, saying that if companies did not comply, the government could use rulemaking to bring prices down or pursue other measures, such as importing cheaper medicines from overseas.
Trump sent the letters to the chief executives of Eli Lilly (LLY.N), opens new tab, Sanofi (SASY.PA), opens new tab, Regeneron (REGN.O), opens new tab, Merck & Co (MRK.N), opens new tab, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), opens new tab, and AstraZeneca (AZN.L), opens new tab, among others, after industry proposals on implementing his order fell short, the president said. Copies of the letters were posted on his Truth Social account.
Shares of Pfizer (PFE.N), opens new tab and Eli Lilly dropped about 2% each, while the NYSE Arca Pharmaceutical Index (.DRG), opens new tab was down 2.4%.
Trump called on drugmakers to provide so-called most-favored-nation prices to every patient enrolled in the government Medicaid health program for low-income people, and to guarantee such pricing for new drugs…. (Continue to full article)
A Big Change Is Coming To Medicare In 2026
To combat fraud and cut costs, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will launch a new pilot program In 2026 that will delay some treatments for retirees and other Medicare recipients. Currently, most treatments are performed for patients on Medicare prior to any approvals from CMS. However, starting in 2026, medical providers that choose to participate in CMS’ new program, the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model or WISeR, will instead hold off on providing services until after they receive approval from CMS — who has stated the program will consult with AI, medical professionals, and machine learning programs — to see if the treatment in question is deemed necessary.
The purpose of this program, and pre-screening process, is to slash wasteful and fraudulent spending, which represents up to 25% of health care spending in the United States, per CMS, which amounted to up to $5.8 billion in 2022.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation listed 17 specific treatments that will be targeted under the WISeR program. This includes five stimulator services such as deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s Disease and Urinary Incontinence, two skin and tissue substitutes related to wounds in the lower extremities, as well as lavage (visually guided saline injections) and debridement procedures related to treating osteoarthrosis of the knee. Steroid injections for pain management, cervical fusions, incontinence control devices, and treatment of impotence will also be scrutinized… (Continue to full article)
8 “Safe” Prescription Drugs That Are Quietly Wrecking Your Health
Prescription drugs are supposed to heal the body and ease suffering, but what happens when the cure quietly chips away at well-being? Every year, millions of people trust medications that promise relief from pain, anxiety, insomnia, or chronic conditions. Yet hidden beneath the fine print and doctor’s notes are side effects that can linger for years or even cause new, unexpected health issues.
What often starts as a short-term fix can end up becoming a long-term battle against fatigue, dependence, or organ damage. Here are eight “safe” prescription drugs that deserve a closer look before the next refill is picked up from the pharmacy… (Continue to full article)
The Cause of Alzheimer’s Might Be Coming From Within Your Mouth
In recent years, an increasing number of scientific investigations have backed an alarming hypothesis: Alzheimer’s disease may not be merely a condition of an aging brain, but the product of infection.
While the exact mechanisms of this infection are something researchers are still trying to isolate, numerous studies suggest the deadly emergence of Alzheimer’s goes way beyond what we used to think.
One such study, published in 2019, suggested what could be one of the most definitive leads yet for a bacterial culprit behind Alzheimer’s, and it comes from a somewhat unexpected quarter: gum disease.
Watch the video below for a summary of their study:
Exterior view of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine building with Ugo Rondinone’s ‘The Melancholic’ in the foreground at the right Timothy Hursley – Courtesy of Alice L. Walton School of Medicine
On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Some came from neighboring cities, others from urban centers in Michigan and New York. Almost all had a choice in where they could become doctors but took a chance on the new school because of its unique approach to RETHINKING medical education. Continue reading
The extremism around the question of how to treat gender dysphoria has begun to erode under the pressure of science and common sense. Is it possible that the same will happen regarding ADHD?
A long New York Times Magazine piece skeptical of the ADHD consensus, by Paul Tough, published about a week ago, could be an inflection point in the debate and, one hopes, lead to a fundamental reconsideration of how we think about this overdiagnosed, overprescribed, highly ambiguous disorder.
For a couple of decades now, we’ve made fidgeting in the classroom and other typical childhood behavior, especially among boys, a medical condition that should be treated with amphetamines. Continue reading
If you think you might be having a stroke, you should act “FAST,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.
FAST is an acronym to help identify a stroke before being able to make it to a doctor or hospital. It stands for face, arms, speech and time, alluding to common stroke symptoms.
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death for Americans and a leading cause of long-term disability. Each year, approximately 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke, 610,000 of which are first-time strokes. Continue reading
When Mei Lin’s mother collapsed from a stroke, she rushed to the hospital and stayed by her side for days. Doctors acted quickly, performed scans, prescribed medications, and stabilized her condition. It was an incredible feat of modern medicine – swift, technical, and life-saving.
However, once her mother returned home, Mei Lin had a different challenge – keeping her mother from ending up in the hospital again.
The shift from crisis management to prevention highlights an important distinction: What happened in the hospital was medical care, and what needed to happen at home was health care.
They are not the same thing…
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Whether you call it poop, No. 2 or a bowel movement, it’s about time we got more comfortable talking about it. As the kids’ book taught us: Everyone Poops.
Our stool can share secrets about everything from our fiber and water intake to the potential presence of an infection or disease. How much, how often and the appearance of our poop can offer a robust window into our internal health.
While we know that the “normal” frequency for pooping ranges from twice per day to three times per week, we also wanted to find out if there was a best time of day to poop. So, we tapped two gastroenterologists to help us get to the bottom of this question. Continue reading
Editor’s NOTE: The following was introduced to me from our writer, Charles R. Dickens as a part of his recent column, The Business of Medicine, which follows directly below this column. It is all well worth your efforts and time to follow through. You will begin to understand the control and manipulation of the complete Medical Ssytem in this nation today. ~ Jeffrey Bennett
Patients are more likely to fall, get new infections, or experience other forms of harm during their stay in a hospital after it is acquired by a private equity firm, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School.
The research, published Dec. 26 in JAMA, is among a handful of recent nationwide analyses of how private equity takeovers affect the quality of patient care in hospitals. The increases are seen in conditions or outcomes deemed preventable and are key measures of hospital safety and quality.
Hippocrates, for whom the Hippocratic Oath is affectionately named, covers the breadth and depth of his knowledge and teachings from his life as a healer. Scholars believe it to be a compilation of his writings and teachings, estimating that it was written in the 4th or 5th century BC. The most memorable phrase attributed to Hippocrates, “First do no harm”, as an admonition to the physicians who would follow him, is a paraphrase of ‘either help or do not harm the patient,’ and probably ‘I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm.’
It offers a comprehensive list of cautions for covering topics such as Abortion, Religious Themes, and Euthanasia. Hippocrates’ central premise is to ‘Treat the patient, not the disease’, which is a real departure from where we find ourselves today in Merka and the Business of Medicine – or as I like to think of it, “Making Pain Pay”!