Dollars for Docs How Industry Dollars Reach Your Doctors This is Pro Publica's search engine with data from over 2 million transactions in the public domain of $$ paid to your health care provider/ institution. Use it to understand the consulting fees, meals, travel paid out. The data is part of the settlement from years ago that the drug companies agreed to furnish this data. Pro Publica has put it in a much better searchable format.

Ask Doctor Vinod: McDonald’s Transfat Settlement Aug 24 2005----  SUCCESS IN USA  -- FINALLY 2013 FDA MOVES FOR TOTAL BAN http://askdoctorvinod.blogspot.com/2006/07/mcdonalds-transfat-settlement-aug-24.html

All Asians want to be gora. White skin! Indians I knew about, but Chinese cherish white skin too.  Since forever. So sun is shunned.  From childhood. Krishna, Shiva and Kali of dark skin have been forgotten. All want to be Sita and Ram. And Asians, newly wealthy are the target for corporates. Money is to be made. Print, Radio and TV media tout western lightening creams and sun block creams. Articles expounding skin modern doctors, sun hating convictions, fill magazines and Cricket TV broadcasts. I ran across one just yesterday on my flight from Goa to Mumbai. "Just take Vit D supplements" it said and "cover yourself with sun screen". SPF - sun protection factors, of - different branded creams was conveniently listed. Just such nonsense is likely what brought a young man to see me the other day. I was surprised he had severe Vit D deficiency despite hours in the sun, golfing. He diligently applied expensive sun block cream every time he golfed. Lately he had b

Rare diseases are often given importance at Grand Rounds everywhere. Dartmouth is no exception. Esoteric is exciting, in medicine too! Today's topic Hepato-Renal Syndrome by Dr Block, is remarkably rare. It is a manifestation of end stage liver disease. We hear about MELD scores and renal/ kidney cortical venoconstriction. International Ascites Club... gets a good laugh. They have criteria to diagnose it. Type 1 die quickly without liver transplantation. Other types..2,3,4 live somewhat longer. New to me, fancy markers of Acute Kidney injury, Cystatin C and NGAL are talked about. More esoterica. Mayo does these tests. Apparently the results of these do not help patients. But keep your eyes out for these anyway. Great on rounds to impress your colleagues! And for high scores on tests! At DHMC they have not done too many trans venous kidney biopsies, Dr Block says. Can help clarify the causes of the kidney problems. In expert hands it is listed as safe. Sympathetic nervous s

Doctor Vinod's Wellness Blog: TURMERIC - A spoonful a day keeps the doctor away.

To sell Tylenol/Crocin/Paracetamol  we were brain washed with TV ads telling all how doctors used it in hospitals for fever most commonly. These ads ran for  decades in the 70's, 80's and some in the 90's. They were very effective, both for the lay public and nurses and doctors. I tried over many years to break the automatic Tylenol for fever habit but it was too ingrained in all health care providers. Nobody gave it any thought. If they had it would have been natural to question how a mechanism present throughout the human and animal kingdoms was anything but not protective. If they had given it thought it would be easy to believe that fever was good. That is how holistic practitioners think. Scientists want proof. Nurses and doctors are supposed to be scientific . Well proof is evident in the whole animal kingdom as shown in multiple elegant experiments. In humans and animals everything that fights infection works better when our temperature goes up. Fever is

Fever fights infection. In all species and humans fever is the First line of defence and lowering fever increases mortality. Frustrating to see how marketing is used to blitz the people of the devloping world from the famous brand names of the corporate world. Be it sugar laden Coke or liver toxic Tylenol/Crocin. We travelled to Sri Lanka for the first time this winter. it was lovely. It was sad to see that almost every small shop in the marketplace had a sign selling Crocin. The technique is also rampant in India. The brand du jour pays for the sign and the small shop gets to also display their own name. Crocin is Tylenol in N America. Acetaminophen and paracetamol are other names. It is sold worldwide. This commonly used drug is toxic especially when combined with other drugs or alcohol. It's toxicity has been underestimated. Unfortunately most people, doctors being no exception, just assume it is safe and that it can be taken with impunity. The truth is acetaminophen w