Pancreatic cancer is in the news. First Ralph Steinman, now Steve Jobbs. It’s a bad actor. Hard to diagnose as it tends to present with rather non-specific symptoms. And very inaccessible and surrounded by a lot of vital organs that get in the way when you want to blast it with radiation or cut it out.

But what I can’t help wondering is why did they get it?

Our local Unitarian church vegetarian group (it all sort of goes together that vegetarian/vegan, tree hugger, hippie, Unitarian thing) showed the movie Forks Over Knives the other day. This makes the case that, not just vascular/heart disease is caused by our crappy, meat based, fast food, diabetogenic, ghastly industrialized diet. But that our diet is causing us to have cancer as well.

Well I don’t know what kind of diet Steinmann and Jobbs had. But I wonder about the stress thing. Is this the price of being a successful CEO or Nobel prize laureate.

That you literally work yourself to death? 

 A patient recently told me he noticed himself to be particularly randy when he had an outbreak of Herpes.

And that got me thinking. Read the rest of this post here »

 It’s always gratifying when you read some expert saying the same as what you’ve been telling your patients for years.

Dr. Stanley Schwartz, chief of Allergy and Rheumatology for Kaleida Health and the University of Buffalo says it always seems like this is the worst year ever for allergies.

It’s always seemed that way to me. Every year is “the very worst” - or at least that’s what those sniffley, snotty, sneezing patients who come demanding relief always say.

There is some justification this year after the wet spring, that is making everything bloom like crazy and produce an excess of what are really plant sperms - howdyoulike that up your nose?

And providing soggy damp conditions that those molds love so much - who then produce spores, that also cause allergies.

Painful to admit though, on one thing I am wrong. I have always told my patients “this is the most allergic place in the world”. Wrong.

The Asthma and allergy Foundation lists Knoxville, Tenn.; Louisville, Ky.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Chattanooga, Tenn.; as it’s “2011 spring allergy capitals”.

One criteria used in deciding this auspicious title is the number of allergy specialists per capita - which seems a little quirky. Maybe Chattanooga is particularly attractive to allergist. What if they are train buffs?

They’re all just there to catch the “Chattanooga Atchoo”?

Sorry, that’s a bit painful.