Medicine & Your Body

10 topics, A–Z

• Antibiotics 3 articles Antibiotics are life-saving for bacterial infections but massively overprescribed, with serious consequences for gut health and antibiotic resistance
• Birth Control 5 articles How hormonal birth control works, what it suppresses, and why the 'period' on the pill isn't a real period
• Essential Oils 3 articles Essential oils contain real pharmacological compounds — terpenes, phenols, and aldehydes — with demonstrated antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anxiolytic properties. Here's what the research supports.
• Herb-Drug Interactions 1 article Which herbs and foods change how common medicines work, from St John's wort and grapefruit to licorice, kava and ginkgo, and how strong the evidence is.
• Hormone Replacement Therapy 1 article How well hormone therapy works for hot flashes, who it suits, what the Women's Health Initiative and later studies show about risk, and what to try first.
• Immune System 3 articles How your immune system works and why it's more capable than most people realize
• Medication Nutrient Depletion 1 article Which common medicines lower vitamin B12, magnesium, iron or potassium, which links are weak, and what to ask your prescriber instead of guessing.
• Natural Anti-Inflammatories 2 articles NSAIDs block COX enzymes but come with gut, kidney, and heart risks. Nature offers its own COX and LOX inhibitors — curcumin, ginger, omega-3s, boswellia, and more — that fight inflammation through overlapping pathways without the same side-effect profile.
• Pharmaceutical Side Effects 4 articles Modern medicine excels at acute care, but the default approach to chronic disease — prescribing medication without addressing root causes — comes with costs that patients deserve to understand.
• When to See a Doctor 1 article Symptoms that need an ambulance, symptoms that need a doctor soon, and what the evidence says about delay, with sources from health services and guidelines.