I am a psychiatrist, and I work at a VA hospital in the state of Oregon. I see veterans on a daily basis in our outpatient mental health clinic and acute psychiatric inpatient unit. All of the veterans I see have had extensive training in the handling of firearms. Also,...

Recently there has been a great deal of coverage of 12 unfortunate teenage girls from the small community of Le Roy, N.Y. These teenagers had all around the same time inexplicably begun to exhibit many of the signs of Tourette's Syndrome. They stuttered, jerked and flailed with signs...

Historically, doctors have viewed fat cells as the three-toed sloths of human cell biology. They have been characterized as dumb, inert warehouses of fat. However, over the last 15 years there has been an explosion of data showing that fat cells, or what physiologists call adipocytes, are as active, complicated...

The common bacteria, Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), has recently come into focus as a contributing factor in a variety of human health problems. For example, the physician and scientist Dr. Barry Marshall shared the Nobel Prize for medicine with his colleague Dr. Robin Warren in 2005 for establishing...

There is a growing epidemic of Alzheimer's dementia in our country. There are two major types of Alzheimer's dementia. One is an early onset variety. It usually begins well before the age of 65, runs in families and is strongly related to the genes inherited from parents. The other major...

Medical science is working miracles lately. At times it seems like science fiction. We are transplanting faces onto injured individuals. Patients swallow cameras that videotape their travels through the gastrointestinal tract to find growths that would otherwise remain undiscovered. Computer interfaces with the nervous system are restoring movement to those...

Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), or, as it is referred to in most recent version of the manual DSM-IV, Dissociative Identity Disorder, is a genuine psychiatric disorder. However, the numbers of cases of MPD are far higher in North America than in any other part of the world. Many suspect that...

The history of mankind is marked by episodes of mass hysteria. Spurred on by fear of the Black Death, the Flagellants marched across Medieval Europe, whipping themselves in penitential frenzy with the hope that an angry God might spare them. Throughout the Middle Ages, innocent women were burned at the...

Another sad story in the press. There have been four more suicides at Fort Hood, Texas. Military suicide numbers keep climbing. The rates of depression, PTSD and suicide are reaching startling proportions among soldiers and veterans. New programs begun by the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration are said...

The National Institute of Health arranged for a panel to determine whether or not there is anything a person can do to reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's Dementia. This study was recently published with the title: "Preventing Alzheimer's Disease and Cognitive Decline." The conclusion of the this large, 727...

In 1879, General Wililliam Tecumsah Sherman told the eager young graduates of the Michigan Military Academy, " I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I...

This morning I read that Dr. Jack Cassell, a urologist practicing in Florida, placed a sign in his office window telling people who had voted for Obama to seek care "elsewhere". He was shrewd enough to tell the Orlando Sentinel that he's not turning anyone away. "That would be unethical,"...

In our society there continues to be a controversy about the right of an individual to end their own life when living becomes emotionally and physically unbearable for them. This may be the case when a medical problem leads a person to lose everything they feel necessary to continue a...

The United States is currently experiencing the early stages of what is expected to be an epidemic of Alzheimer's Dementia. It is predicted that the current number of cases of Alzheimer's Dementia will double by 2020, and double again by 2040. Some unfortunate individuals are born with genes that strongly...

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced today that its investigational Alzheimer's medication, Dimebon, has failed an important test of its effectiveness in the treatment of Alzheimer's Dementia. A great deal of hope and expectation had been placed in this medication. Its apparent failure has been a disappointment not only for Pfizer,...

High blood pressure, or what doctors refer to as hypertension, has long been known to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia. To some degree, this is due to the fact that high blood pressure increases the risk of developing heart disease, which is a...

In November of 2009, I posted an article in the Huffington Post titled, "Psychiatry's Dirty Little Secret." If you read that article you will clearly see that I do not see antidepressant medications as an easy cure all for Major Depression. I noted that antidepressants give good results in only...

On January 26th, the Danish pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk, announced that their drug, liraglutide, which will carry the trade name Victoza, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the United States for the treatment of Diabetes Type II. Diabetes Type II is the...

The herb, Ginkgo biloba, has been used by many Americans in the hope of improving memory and forestalling Alzheimer's Disease. A new report disparages this use, but doubts about the efficacy of Ginkgo are not new. In my book, Beyond Alzheimer's: How to Avoid the Modern Epidemic of Dementia, I...

While the scientific community has been deliberating about the degree to which cell phone radiation may be harmful to the human brain, a paper has been published in a well respected journal that suggests that cell phone radiation might actually be good for your brain! I am here to tell...