A New York Times Article explains some of the pitfalls of putting all of our trust in MRI’s.

Dr. James Andrews, a sports medicine orthopedist, being skeptical of MRI’s performed MRI scans on 31 healthy professional baseball pitchers. The pitchers did not have any injuries or feel any pain, but the MRI’s revealed a different story.  According to the MRI scans, 90% of the pitchers had abnormal shoulder cartilage while 87% had abnormal rotator cuff tendons.  “If you want an excuse to operate on a pitcher’s throwing shoulder, just get an M.R.I.” commented Dr. Andrews.

According to Dr. Andrews, the problem is that there is an over reliance on MRI’s.  MRI’s are only a part of proper diagnosis with more emphasis needed on a proper interview and physical.

If you have ever felt that “that’s the way we do things around here” was a poor excuse.  If you tend to question why our society has all these rules that don’t make any immediate sense, have a look at the following science experiment that involves some monkeys, some bananas and a ladder.

There has been a recent fad in treating athletic injuries with Platelet Rich Plasma  Injections.  The popularity of the procedure was greatly helped by celebrity athletes achieving great results from the procedure. Hines Ward of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Troy Polamalu also of the NFL and Tiger Woods were all treated with Platelet Rich Plasma Injections.

With such endorsements demand for the procedure grew fetching $500 to $1000 per treatment.  However, new research is showing that the use of platelet rich plasma is no more effective than a placebo saline injection in controlled studies.

Full details are in this article.

Does Aspartame or Nutrasweet cause brain tumours?

Here is an excerpt from a 60 Minutes episode on Aspartame and Nutrasweet. There are some pretty scary allegations against the quality of the research that was done for the FDA approval.

According to the investigation, the studies hid data of lab rats dying or getting brain tumors. Some of the political gymnastics that went into approving aspartame are a bit mysterious.

There were 164 studies examining the safety of aspartame. 74 of them were funded by the makers of aspartame and all of these showed that aspartame was safe. However, out of 90 studies funded by independant sources, 83 showed dangers in consumption of aspartame.

Personally, I never eat or drink anything with artificial sweetener simply because I don’t like the taste.

Enjoy the video.