The Medical Advisor

A little over a year ago, Joseph Coates was told there was only one thing left to decide. Did he want to die at home, or in the hospital? Coates, then 37 and living in Renton, Wash., was barely conscious. For months, he had been battling a rare blood disorder called POEMS syndrome, which had left him with numb hands and feet, an enlarged heart and failing kidneys. Every few days, doctors needed to drain liters of fluid from his abdomen. He became too sick to receive a stem cell transplant — one of the only treatments that could have put him into remission. “I gave up,” he said. “I just thought the end was inevitable.” But Coates’s girlfriend, Tara Theobald, wasn’t ready to quit. So she sent an email begging for help to a doctor in Philadelphia named David Fajgenbaum, whom the couple met a year earlier at a rare disease summit. By the next morning, Dr. Fajgenbaum had replied, suggesting an unconventional combination of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and steroids previously untested as a tr...

If you're looking for the ultimate health boost, you've probably heard about the wonders of antioxidants. But before you start stockpiling on antioxidant supplements, it's important to separate fact from fiction. While antioxidants have become a popular marketing buzzword, the science behind them is complex, and their benefits are not as straightforward as they may seem.  “An antioxidant is a naturally occurring compound found in vitamins and minerals that combat free radicals in the body,” says Meryl Pritchard, a nutritionist and wellness chef. “Free radicals are a natural byproduct when we convert food into energy, and also come from outside sources like environmental toxins found in our air, water, food, and cleaning/beauty supplies. Free radicals can be harmful because they may have the ability to damage our DNA structure, and in large amounts can cause oxidative stress which can lead to disease. "Antioxidant basically means anti-oxidation. You can thi...

Your choice of cooking oil can make a profound difference in your health. I’ve often warned against the use of soybean oil. Not only is partially hydrogenated soybean oil loaded with trans fat, which has been linked to heart disease,1 it’s also a source of an omega-6 fat called linoleic acid (LA), which is highly susceptible to oxidation and is typically from GMO seeds. An estimated 94% of the soybeans grown in the U.S. are genetically engineered (GE) to tolerate herbicides, primarily glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto/Bayer's Roundup), which cannot be washed off. As a result, most soybean-based products are contaminated with glyphosate, which compounds their toxicity. The problem results once you start to digest this fat, as you break it down into harmful sub-components called advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALEs) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMs) that can cause significant damage at the cellular level. For example, an ALE called 4HNE is a mutagen known to ca...