Pain, Pain, Go Away!

USA Today reports that study subjects lost dramatic amounts of weight with diabetes drug tirzepatide. Participants in the randomized, controlled trial lost an average of 15% of their weight at week 72 according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine .  Photo by  Sara Bakhshi  on  Unsplash How does it work? USA Today's interview with a participant offers a clue: The drug prevented her from overeating, [participant Mary] Bruehl said.  If she overindulged, the food would come back up. "I've learned to stop before I get that feeling," she said...The one negative side effect was nausea, which Bruehl felt the day after each of her weekly shots of tirzepatide. She's not alone. From the study , The most common adverse events with tirzepatide were gastrointestinal, and most were mild to moderate in severity, occurring primarily during dose escalation. Adverse events caused treatment discontinuation in 4.3%, 7.1%, 6.2%, and 2.6% of participants receiving ...

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...

Years ago, a classmate who was taking antibiotics told me she could make $100 by participating in a study on yeast infections. She always got a yeast infection, she said, when taking antibiotics. I told her she might avoid a yeast infection by taking Lactinex (lactobacillus), a probiotic that replenishes the good bacteria that antibiotics kill. She reported later that the Lactinex worked--and that it wasn't worth $100 to get a yeast infecton. A few weeks ago, I had stomach aches and motion sickness while I was taking cleocin (another antibiotic). Normally, I can spin and spin without getting dizzy, let alone seasick. But I was suddenly unable to even read on the bus. Taking probiotics (Udo's Choice Super 5 Lozenge Probiotic) made me feel better. Super 5 contains lactobacillis acidophilus, bifidobacterium bificum, streptococcus thermophillus, l. bulgaricus and l. salivarius. Some of these are in various brands of yogurt, but you'd have to eat a lot of yogurt to get as much f...