Blooming Wellness
Dr. Eek's Health & Wellness Blog
Would you want to know if you had a 50% chance of developing an inherited form of dementia? I’m not sure that’s a question anyone can answer comfortably from the cheap seats. It’s one thing to talk about genetic testing when the result gives you something obvious to do. Change a medication. Schedule additional screening. …
Millions of people are now taking GLP-1 medications such as semaglutide and tirzepatide. And they’re talking about them. A lot. On Reddit, people taking medications commonly known by brand names such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound are sharing everything from how much weight they’ve lost to what happened after dinner. For researchers, all that …
In 1902, U.S. government chemist Harvey Wiley began recruiting healthy young men for an unusual experiment. View this post on Instagram A post shared by EeKs (@doctoreeks) Their assignment? Eat food containing measured amounts of chemical preservatives and see what happened. The substances tested included borax, benzoates and formaldehyde, among others. The men ate carefully …
Yes, scientists have invented smart underwear. And yes, we’re going to have to talk about farts. But this isn’t really a story about underwear—or even intestinal gas. It’s about developing a new way to monitor what’s happening inside the gut microbiome in real time. In a new episode of Causes or Cures, I talk with …
You share a home. You share meals. You may share a bathroom, a bed, a dog, and occasionally a toothbrush if your relationship has reached a level of intimacy I personally do not understand. But are you also sharing your microbiome? New research suggests that the communities of microbes living in and on our bodies …
Once upon a time, you could order heroin from Sears. Not a book about heroin. Not heroin-related paraphernalia. Actual heroin. View this post on Instagram A post shared by EeKs (@doctoreeks) Around the turn of the 20th century, Sears, Roebuck & Co. offered a kit containing two vials of Bayer Heroin, a syringe, two needles …
You buy a vape. You inhale. And the drug you’re inhaling is normally used to put people under anesthesia. A recent case report out of Singapore describes two young men who had been using vapes containing etomidate, a short acting anesthetic drug normally given intravenously for things like general anesthesia, rapid sequence intubation, and procedural …
Once upon a time, people thought tuberculosis was caused by vampires. Listen to the podcast here: In 1892, the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island, had been devastated by a mysterious wasting illness. Several family members had died, and another, Edwin Brown, was getting sicker. Neighbors began to suspect something supernatural. They believed one of …
If you’re somewhere in your 40s or 50s and feel like life has become unusually difficult, there may be more going on than the proverbial midlife crisis. Research suggests that today’s middle-aged Americans may actually be faring worse than previous generations, and worse than many middle-aged adults living in Europe. We’re talking about more than …
Anyone ever participate in a Swat the Fly campaign? ;) @dr..eeks In this episode of Public Health is Weird… Public health has tried a lot of things over the years. At one point, some communities literally paid kids to kill flies. I’m less interested in the campaign… and more interested in the person whose job …
Imagine walking into a train station. You’re thirsty. You spot a drinking fountain. Except…it’s not really a drinking fountain. It’s a single metal cup hanging from a chain. You take a drink. Hang it back up. The next stranger does the same thing. One cup. For everyone. It sounds like the setup for a horror …
What if health isn’t just about the body? That’s a question I’ve become increasingly interested in exploring—not because science has all the answers, but because it doesn’t. Throughout history, people across cultures have described experiences involving angels, intuition, healing, and spiritual encounters that exist outside the boundaries of conventional medicine and scientific explanation. Whether those …
