We're beginning to hear that a COVID-19 vaccine is getting close to approval.  Maybe more than one.  But, given the shortcuts in the process (compared to the usual vaccine development timeline), can we be sure it will be safe to take?  In this election year, of course this issue has become highly politicized and particularly confusing.  Listen in to sort some of it out and understand what to expect.

We all have a weak link - no matter how healthy we are.  This reality recently slapped me (The Dad) in the face.  Like many people, I ignored my weak link and assumed, since I was in generally excellent health, I had nothing to worry about.  Well, I learned my lesson and you can too by listening to this episode.

Back in Episode 20 (August 2019) we talked about Lou's participation in a study called Predict 2. A home-based study that opened in June 2019 that eventually involved about 1,000 volunteers across the US, measuring nutritional responses to food over a period of 11 days.  After almost a year of waiting we have the results and they offer interesting insights on how we respond to the foods we eat.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit” Aristotle

It seems like “bad” habits, particularly ones related to our health, are much easier to develop than “good” ones. Why is that the case? Particularly considering all the information we have on what we should do to maintain our health. Clearly, there’s more than reason and logic at work here. Just as health science has made tremendous progress in defining healthy behaviors, scientific studies are uncovering why we fall into bad habits and how we can take back control.

It’s no secret many of us struggle to maintain a proper weight. As we’ve discussed in past episodes, the ready availability of calorie dense food and modern mass marketing in combination with our evolutionary proclivity to store energy in times of plenty conspire to cause rampant obesity in developed countries today. There's also no arguing that being overweight increases the risk of metabolic disorders including diabetes as well as a host of other diseases such as cancer.  Of course, the debate rages around how to counteract our environmental and evolutionary challenges to maintain a healthy weight. Two relatively recent studies shed some light on the controversies surrounding eating breakfast and limiting carbs.

Of all the miraculous processes that work to sustain our lives, our immune system may be the most amazing. Multiple organs, cells and proteins interact to protect us from a constant onslaught of threats - including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.  What is our immune system, how does it work and can we bolster it's effectiveness? 

Q&A on opening up businesses and getting back to normal, the state of testing, treatments and much more.

After about a month of enduring the varying degrees of social isolation and resultant economic crisis, the question on most of our minds is – When can we return to normal? This is taking on somewhat greater urgency as the economic impacts continue to pile up. Most notably, over 16 million Americans have applied for unemployment in the past 3 weeks. And despite over $2 Trillion in economic stimulus and additional amounts on the way, American businesses are in turmoil. So, when (or how) do we return to normal?

It's a gross understatement to say there's a lot of information out there on COVID-19 and how we're responding to this crisis. Unfortunately, much of that fails to address the reality of our front-line health professionals.  In this broadcast we discuss the reality of Nicole's day to day experience in the clinic treating patients.  It's not great...

A French medical researcher Didier Raoult recently published  results of a small/short clinical trial involving the use of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in the treatment of COVID-19. When Fox News and then President Trump publicized the apparently effective cocktail, people around the world responded: People stormed pharmacies and pet shops for chloroquine, some killed themselves with aquarium cleaner, India banned chloroquine export, while national authorities including French government decided to deploy chloroquine as the medicine to treat COVID19.  But, is this hype justified?