In a few hours, we enter a new year and a new decade (depending on whether one counts from zero to nine or from one to ten) with hope for the world and for ourselves. The new year is also the start of people being able to buy marijuana in Illinois for recreational use. According to yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, two business chains that...
The October 1st issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine included a research article that caught my attention because of the unusual topic: microplastic substances in human stool. With the news in recent years about microscopic particles of plastic being found inside plastic water bottles, I was curious about whether the patients who...
In March, I wrote that the view of the role of intestinal bacteria in allergic diseases has evolved from disdain and scorn in the 1990s to current ‘rational exuberance’ (to paraphrase a term from Alan Greenspan—former chairperson of the Federal Reserve). Health care professionals and scientists refer to the intestinal bacteria as the...
As I attended the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Annual Meeting this month in ‘warmer’ Orlando, I realized that it has been 25 years of my going to their national meetings. The first one I went to was in March 1993 during my fellowship training. The meeting that year was in Chicago---the last time their meeting...
In the musical world, everyone could see which Beatles song was the world’s most popular one when their catalog became available on iTunes in November 2010. During the first month of availability, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ was the most requested song. In the medical world, some--but not excessive-- sun exposure is needed for the...