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Addiction to illegal opioid narcotics (such as heroin) and prescription opioids (such as morphine, hydrocodone, and methadone) are major public health problems in the United States. In 2015, approximately 2 [...]

Iron Deficiency Is Very Common Among Young US Females Serum ferritin levels were measured in 3,490 nonpregnant females (aged 1221 years) participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys [...]

Olive Oil and Mortality: Virgin Versus Refined Oil The association between olive oil consumption and all-cause and cause-specific mortality was examined in a prospective cohort study of 12,161 Spanish adults [...]

Cow's milk contains a number of different proteins, one of which is beta-casein. There are several different genetic variants of this protein, the most common being A1 and A2. Different [...]

Niacinamide and Pyruvate for Glaucoma Forty-two patients (mean age, 65 years) being treated with intraocular pressure-lowering medication for open-angle glaucoma, who had moderate visual field loss in at least one [...]

Can Eating Avocados Prevent Heart Disease? The association between avocado consumption and risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) was examined in a prospective cohort study of 68,786 women from the [...]

Zinc Lozenges for the Common Cold One hundred employees of the Cleveland Clinic who developed cold symptoms were randomly assigned to receive, in double-blind fashion, zinc gluconate lozenges (containing 13.3 [...]

In the July 2019 issue of the Townsend Letter, I expressed concern that a large and growing number of nutrition studies, coming mostly from Iran, have left me wondering whether [...]

I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that what I have written below reminded me of an old nursery rhyme, which went: All around the mulberry bush The monkey chased [...]

Does Skipping Breakfast Promote Heart Disease? The association between skipping breakfast and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality was examined in a prospective cohort study of a nationally representative sample of 6,550 [...]

A number of years ago, I came across an article about vitamin B12 in the journal Blood, which is a specialty journal for hematologists. The following notation appeared in small [...]

Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a common condition characterized by dysesthesia (such as a painful burning, prickling, or aching feeling) in the legs and an irresistible urge to move the [...]

'I'll know my song well before I start singing.' Those words were written by Bob Dylan, at the end of one of his most famous songs, 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna [...]

Does Eating Nuts Improve Male Fertility? One hundred six healthy Spanish men (aged 18-35 years; mean age, 25 years) consuming a Western-style diet were randomly assigned to consume 60 g [...]

As the United States and the world endured the trauma of a pandemic in the spring of 2020, a major controversy developed over whether hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is useful for the [...]

At the time this article is being written (April 1, 2020), the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19 are increasing exponentially. We do not yet have enough data to [...]

On June 21-22, 2022, headlines were all over the news claiming that taking vitamins and other supplements is a waste of money. From WebMD: 'Vitamins, Supplements a Waste of Money [...]

In 2017, Paul Marik, MD, and coworkers at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital (which is affiliated with Eastern Virginia Medical School) published a landmark paper on the treatment of septic shock [...]

Probiotic Prevents Urinary Tract Infections Two hundred fifty-two postmenopausal women (mean age, 64 years) with at least three self-reported symptomatic urinary tract infections (UTIs) in the previous year were randomly [...]

For many decades, the prevailing opinion in mainstream medicine has been that levothyroxine (T4) is the only appropriate treatment for nearly all patients with hypothyroidism. During that time, some practitioners [...]

Elderly people are particularly susceptible to the adverse effects of medications. A meta-analysis of observational studies found that, of 7,533 hospitalizations among people aged 65 years or older, 1,251 (16.6%) [...]

During the past 46 years, I have reviewed and analyzed more than 50,000 papers from the biomedical literature, most of which were related to the field of nutritional medicine. Doing [...]

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a weakly androgenic steroid hormone secreted by the adrenal glands and testes and to a lesser extent by the ovaries. DHEA is metabolized in part to estrogen [...]

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is characterized by fatty infiltration of hepatocytes (hepatic steatosis) in a person who habitually consumes less than 20 g of ethanol per day for females [...]

Magnesium Prevents Cisplatin-Induced Nephrotoxicity Fifty-eight patients with head and neck cancer who received cisplatin-based chemotherapy were studied retrospectively. Twenty-nine of these patients, treated after January 2012, were given 10 mmol [...]

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are a class of drugs that reduce gastric acid secretion by inhibiting the H+/K+ ATPase enzyme in gastric parietal cells. PPIs are used to treat peptic [...]

One of the main goals of medical education should be to teach practitioners how to provide the safest, most effective, and least expensive treatments for their patients. In contrast, one [...]

On March 4, 2021, I received a large packet of information from the company that publishes the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR). On the front of the envelope a large thick [...]

Fibromyalgia and migraine are two common chronic conditions that cause a great deal of pain and suffering. They affect both sexes, but they occur much more frequently in women than [...]

I recently consulted with a man in his sixties who had a 35-year history of chronic fatigue and a 20-year history of depression and anxiety. He had been diagnosed with [...]

Mainstream medicine and medical academia have historically been biased against natural therapies such as nutritional supplements and herbal remedies. This bias manifests in various ways, such as ignoring evidence of [...]

Nickel is a metallic element that is present in small but varying amounts in most foods. Although nickel is an essential nutrient for chicks, rats, and swine, (1) it has [...]

In previous editorials I have expressed doubts about the safety and efficacy of using high-dose vitamin D for the prevention and treatment of various skeletal and non-skeletal diseases. Results from [...]

In an editorial in the January 2020 issue of the Townsend Letter, I reviewed research showing that as many as 50% of patients with heart failure have iron deficiency; and [...]

In a recently published case report, (1) a previously healthy 46-year-old man developed memory loss, mental changes, and episodes of depression over a period of six years. These symptoms began [...]

A recent study found that total spending on healthcare in the United States in the year 2016 was $3.1 trillion.' Healthcare spending increased from 13.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) [...]

Probiotics are bacteria or yeast organisms that may have beneficial effects on human physiology and health. Probiotic organisms are believed to work in part by enhancing digestion and immune function, [...]

Four hundred Egyptian men (mean age, 64.3 years) with moderate-to-severe symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), who had not received any prior treatment for BPH, and who had a PSA [...]

When I speak at medical conferences, the course director usually provides me a summary of the evaluation forms that attendees filled out to rate the quality of the various presentations. [...]

Sixty-nine patients (mean age, 64 years) with heart failure and a low left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) were randomly assigned to receive, in double-blind fashion, 200 mg per day of [...]

Two hundred ten Chinese patients (aged 65 years or older; mean age, 67.8 years) with Alzheimer's disease were randomly assigned to receive, in double-blind fashion, 800 IU per day of [...]

A meta-analysis was conducted on 21 randomized clinical trials (including a total of 83,291 patients; mean age, 66 years) that examined the effect of long-term vitamin D supplementation (at least [...]

This review article discussed research related to magnesium nutritional status in the United States. Dietary magnesium intake among adults has decreased during the past 100 years by about 200 mg [...]

The association between flavonoid intake (assessed at baseline) and risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) was examined in a prospective cohort study of 2,856 Australian individuals aged 49 years or [...]

Autism is a developmental disorder that begins before the age of three years. Manifestations may include abnormalities of communication and social interaction; repetitive, restricted, and self-injurious behaviors; intellectual disability; and [...]