Notes
Notes
Short pieces on things that are repeated more often than they are checked — a figure being used to support an argument it does not support, a criteria set being cited by a version that does not exist, a quality measure that changed underneath everyone.
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Can a low-carb diet get you off medication? Only if the list moves first
A low-carb diet can get many people off some of their medication, mainly insulin, diabetes pills and blood pressure drugs. The 2026 guideline from the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners says some of those doses must come down on the first day, before any weight…
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A taper is arithmetic. Treating the reason is not.
Opioid tapering carries measurable risk: in a cohort of 113,618 adults on long-term opioids, tapering was associated with more overdose, withdrawal and mental health crisis events, and faster reductions raised both. The lever that is not the dose is treating the pain generator, so the…
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The nursing home antipsychotic measure changed on January 1, 2026
The exclusions now require corroborating claims data, and the numerator draws on pharmacy claims. Figures from before and after are not comparable.
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Read the medication list in date order
Sorting a medication list by start date rather than alphabetically reveals the two patterns that matter most, and both of them are patterns in time.
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What the CDC said about the misapplication of its own guideline
The 2022 opioid guideline describes, in its own text, how the 2016 version was misapplied — and what rapid tapers without collaboration cost patients.
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There is no 2026 Beers Criteria
The current edition is the 2023 update. The 2025 publication is an Alternatives List companion, not a new edition — and pages circulating as “The 2026 AGS Beers Criteria” are not AGS publications.
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The 100,000 hospitalizations figure is real. The argument built on it usually is not.
Adverse drug events cause about 100,000 emergency hospitalizations a year among older Americans. The same study found high-risk or inappropriate medications implicated in 1.2% of them.