The People's Pharmacy

Everyone gets excited about the idea of medical breakthroughs. Fewer of us, if we are honest, are anxious to be the first one to benefit. After all, if you are the first, you know nothing about the potential harms, and neither does the person offering you the experience. Medical innovation is necessarily fraught with uncertainty. […]

Over the last year and a half, while the nation endured a terrible pandemic, patients with COVID-19 were treated even if they couldn’t foot the bills themselves. Will the high cost of COVID break the bank? Now that people will end up paying for treatment out of their own pockets, will more Americans than ever […]

How do you decide what you should do in a health crisis? Over the past year and a half, many people have faced this problem. Do you go to the hospital for treatment in the midst of a pandemic? What medications or supplements might be helpful and which are more likely to be harmful? We […]

When the COVID pandemic began, doctors thought that patients either recovered fairly quickly or they died. Before long, though, some patients identified themselves as “long haulers” because they were suffering debilitating symptoms for months after their diagnoses, neither dying nor recovering. There are people who become short of breath just walking up a few steps, […]

You may have heard that the eyes are the window to the soul. That could be difficult to prove, but scientists have now shown that the eyes offer significant clues to your overall health. Most exciting is the possibility of assessing brain health based on special imaging of the retina. We speak with a leading […]

At a time when opinions about nearly everything are highly polarized, how can you have a civil discussion? What do we do when we encounter a person who is extremely angry? For that matter, how do we handle our own emotions? What works to defuse anger and what sorts of responses just make it worse? […]

In the middle of a pandemic, you probably want to know how well your immune system is functioning. Even more important, what if anything can you do to support it? Scientists have found that the microbes in the digestive tract communicate closely with the brain. What’s more, they now have evidence that the gut microbiome […]

For more than a century, people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease have been condemned to a relentless slide into dementia. Experts stress that there is no cure for this devastating condition. Even the drugs that FDA has approved for treatment help only a little, slowing the progression of cognitive decline. Although the agency approved a new […]

Are we in the midst of a Great Sleep Recession? Sleep deprivation is common and serious but not always appreciated. One of the tipoffs that people may not be getting adequate shut-eye is that they wake up tired, have difficulties paying attention and may frequently be in a bad mood. But can people really learn […]

Medical bills are notorious for being difficult to understand as well as expensive. Most people are intimidated by medical professionals and the bureaucracy. But we can and should fight back, according to our guest Marshall Allen. Errors in medical bills are common, and fraud is not unheard of. Why does Allen urge us never to […]