/oss/taxonomy/term/2049/all en /oss/article/medical/study-gets-heart-controversial-chelation-therapy <hr /> <p><em>This article was first published in <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/christopher-labos-study-gets-to-the-heart-of-controversial-chelation-therapy">The Montreal Gazette.</a></em></p> <hr /> <p>Chelation therapy is the process of removing heavy metals from the body. It can be used to treat a child with lead poisoning or remove excess iron from the blood of someone with thalassemia. What it can’t do is treat heart disease, and the recent TACT2 trial should hopefully put the final nail in the coffin of this idea. </p> Fri, 30 Aug 2024 21:29:05 +0000 Christopher Labos MD, MSc 10054 at /oss /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/jumping-gun <p>Ready, Set, Go…. for Ozempic. That’s what the incessant television ads suggest. “Ask your doctor about Ozempic,” the ads advise, without mentioning what the drug is for. The marketer’s hope is that the doc, on seeing the few extra pounds on the questioner, will reach for the prescription pad. There is a good chance of that since the weight control effects of GLP-1 agonists, the class of drugs to which semaglutide belongs, have been a hot topic in the medical literature and are enthusiastically pointed out by pharmaceutical reps.</p> Wed, 17 May 2023 14:30:39 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 9512 at /oss /oss/article/health-and-nutrition/just-say-no <p>“A spoonful of sucrose helps the medicine go down,” as Mary Poppins told us. But she neglected to say that it also increases our risk of cardiovascular disease. Actually, Mary didn’t say sucrose, she said a “spoonful of sugar.” Sucrose is the chemical term for table sugar and is actually composed of two smaller molecules, glucose and fructose joined together. All three are referred to as “simple sugars,” in contrast to “complex sugars” such as the starch in food, or the glycogen stored in the liver, that are composed of long chains of glucose molecules. </p><p></p> Wed, 22 Feb 2023 17:34:01 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 9410 at /oss /oss/article/health/what-polypill <p>The idea of a <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42567/WHO_MPN_CVD_2002.01.pdf">polypill</a> was first proposed nearly 20 years ago and the idea was a simple one. Make one pill that contained a baby aspirin, a cholesterol medication, and blood pressure pills. Rather than take four different medications, people could take a single pill once a day. The advantages in terms of convenience are obvious and patients are less likely to forget to take a single pill.</p> Wed, 25 Sep 2019 23:33:19 +0000 Christopher Labos MD, MSc 7939 at /oss /oss/article/health-nutrition/ward-cardiovascular-disease-vitamin-and-mineral-supplements-not-likely <p><span>Numerous studies have addressed the possible effects of such supplements and now Dr. David Jenkins and his team at the University of Toronto have done a spectacular job in scouring the literature for all relevant studies carried out during the last four years. Individual studies don’t mean very much in science, but pooling them offers meaningful results. That is exactly what Jenkins and colleagues did. This is an important effort because some 50% of the population takes some sort of supplement so that a risk-benefit analysis is certainly welcome.</span></p> Tue, 29 May 2018 13:00:00 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 7117 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/beans-really-are-good-your-heart <p>A diet rich in beans, chickpeas, lentils, and split peas will help lower LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. An analysis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2014 combined data from 26 randomized clinical trials that compared diets with and without such legumes. It found that consuming one simple daily serving (about 2/3 cup cooked) of these legumes reduced LDL by 5%, on average. Furthermore, many observational studies have linked higher intakes of legumes with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disase.</p> Tue, 21 Feb 2017 16:25:56 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 1512 at /oss