by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

Sometimes studies come up with conclusions that just don’t make common sense. Sometimes facts trump emotions. That’s why we do structured, objective studies with scientific statistical analysis. However, sometimes the studies are flawed and come to the wrong conclusions. That’s why we have peer review, critique and repeat studies to see if we can replicate the same results.

The American Journal of Clinical Medicine published a doozy in their most recent issue, concluding no association between sugar-sweetened beverages and childhood obesity. The beverages included sodas, fruit juices and “ades.”

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

The well-known vaccine Gardasil has gotten a no-go from the Food and Drug Administration. Merck reports the FDA turned down their request to increase the recommended vaccination age up to 45. They had questions about its effectiveness in those older than 26.

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

The FDA has joined with other organizations to remind us about the increased risks of medical radiation on children. The Image Gently campaign cautions the public and health-care professionals to be careful when giving kids CT (CAT) scans.

CT scans can be lifesaving diagnostic tools and experts don’t think the radiation dosage significantly increases cancer risk. However, it can accumulate in the body over time. They believe children are more sensitive to this because they usually have a longer lifetime ahead of them for accumulation. Also , their cells divide more rapidly so DNA has more of a change for damage.

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

If you ask most dermatologists how much sun should you get, they’ll probably say “none.” In fact, a dermatology professor at a medical school was fired a few years back after publicly touting sun exposure for vitamin D a little too much.

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by Jill Weisenberger, M.S., R.D., C.D.E.

Suddenly, tomatoes are scary.

To those of you who have sworn off tomatoes and tomato products in light of the recent salmonella outbreak, please go back to eating tomatoes. Not the ones identified by the FDA as possibly problematic (plum, roma and big red tomatoes without the stem and grown in just a few locales), but any or all of the others. Salmonella-leery consumers are shunning this joy of summer. It seems all too common to go to extremes and give up this beautiful, juicy fruit all together.

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

Melanoma (mole cancer) kills–way too often. It doesn’t have to.

Skin cancer is the most common cancer in America. Melanoma is a deadly form of it if not detected early. But your doctor can catch it!

Remember “ABCD” for possible signs of melanoma.

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

You must have seen it by now. It’s been on cable, Yahoo! News and multiple newspaper front pages. … The story, that is.

The study the story’s about, however, is a bit harder to find.

What happened was, Canadian researchers reported a link between weight-loss surgery and decreased cancer risk at the annual meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery. Media outlets seemingly picked up the story and ran with it.

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by Leigh Ann Hubbard, Managing Editor

Do you tweet?

There’s this cool thing. All the kids are doing it. It’s called Twitter. At first glance, it seems to be about the most inane thing you could possibly do with your time. You log on; a box asks, “What are you doing?” and you get 140 characters to answer. Yep. That’s it.

But, after reading about it seemingly everywhere (like here, here and here), I finally dove in a little over a month ago. I’m officially addicted. And guess what … there are lots of doctors who tweet. What’s more, Dr. Hubbard’s latest blog post can be attributed directly to this silly little site.

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

Tort reform in Texas has helped ease the doctor shortage there. Since malpractice legislation four years ago, 11,000 new physicians have moved there, whereas, before, physicians had been leaving the state, according to an article from The New Republic.

Before tort reform, Texas ranked 48th in ratio of doctors to residents. Now it ranks somewhere in the 30s. (Thanks to Colorado-based communication and career coach Laura Benjamin for pointing us to the article.)

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by James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H.

Companies that market fake cures for cancer are unbelievable. They take hope and money from people at their most vulnerable. In addition, they take away valuable time that these people don’t have. Some cures actually do direct harm.

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