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MARCH 2026 TABLEHOPPING

WHATS NEW?

Just as it’s an interesting time to be an American it’s an interesting time in medicine with new ideas being proposed and old ideas being challenged. As it’s still the beginning of the year I thought I would bring up a few items to intrigue or challenge you.

There is a new pain pill. Journavx is the first non opioid drug to be approved for pain in 20 years. It’s approved for acute post surgical pain but it will undoubtedly be used for all types of pain soon enough. The benefit of this new class of medication is that it is supposedly non addictive but you never know about a drug until its been on the market a few years. I try not to prescribe new drugs until they have been on the market for a while if I can find alternatives.

There was a study published that said getting the shingles vaccine cuts down the risk of dementia. The study was published in Nature and comes from Wales. I am waiting for a detailed statistical analysis to really evaluate this trial. I have also come across multiple large studies that says naturally getting chickenpox as a child decreases your risk of glioma type brain cancer so I don’t know what to think. PMID: 26972449 Based on the comments of the former Chief Editors of the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet I usually don’t change my practice until multiple independent studies are done.

There is a promising pill that may treat Obstructive Sleep Apnea. I didn’t think a medication could have an effect on a mechanical problem but AD-109 decreased the severity of OSA by a significant amount in phase III trials so lets see what happens when it gets to the next stage. Often what looks like a real game changer turns out to be a dud when it gets to more general use but by then the cats are out of the bag.

Artificial intelligence is now in the doctors office. Most of us are using it to make the documentation easier. These are still baby steps. I use it to analyze studies and review complex labs. It will eventually do even more to provide differential diagnosis and suggest treatment plans. There are plenty of rough edges but this will help decrease the physician burnout that is not prominent in medicine. It’s said that the average physician spends HALF his or her productive time doing almost mindless paperwork and the AI should come to the rescue here. What we really need is a way for all these different software platforms to interact in real time so that a patient presenting to the clinic, the emergency room, etc has a device that is updated every visit with the patient’s important records. This is, as we say, a no brainer, but still remains far from sight …who will bear the costs of this?

mRNA vaccines to fight cancer. Although I am no fan at all of mRNA vaccines for infectious diseases, this is not the time to debate that. I think mRNA vaccines to fight cancer are the real deal. Recall that Dr Patrick Soon Shiong, the physician in California who has become a billionaire from fighting cancer, has stated that medicine 2.0 is chemotherapy and radiation which can affect healthy tissues. Medicine 3.0 is stimulating the immune system to fight the cancer itself. This is what mRNA vaccines do. This is a new thing in the U.S. but has been in Europe for years. Check out myRGCC.com I use this company all the time for looking for cancer cells in the body and testing which supplements will work for which cancer (they also will check chemo agents as well). This company has been making the mRNA vaccine for years and I have used it but have found the results underwhelming so far. They also offer a treatment where they grow your own immune cells, train them to recognize your cancer cells and then reinfuse them into your body. I have not tried this one yet but am waiting for a willing patient.

 
Regarding Alzheimer’s disease there are new tests and treatments although you wouldn’t know it by the local news. There are new blood tests including checking plasmalogen levels and checking p Tau 217 levels which reflect plaque buildup in the brain. Now you can do an MRI that measures the relative size of the different areas of the brain which also helps diagnosis and treatment. You can grow your brain again. Look at the work of Drs Goodenowe and DR Breseden and you will see that there are indeed ways to improve your brain function and the earlier you start treatment the better your results. Is your health care provider doing any testing of your memory on a regular basis?

Lots of different versions of the weight loss drugs GLP-1 will hit the market. Oral tablets will become increasingly available. These drugs have been wildly marketed and have resulted in real weight loss but I am waiting for the studies that show people live longer or better at the lower weight. If your cancer, stroke, heart disease and dementia risk are the same at 150 pounds as they are at 220 pounds have you really done yourself any favors? Unless you actually change your diet to lower carbs and decrease the hyperprocessed food intake I don’t think you change your health destiny but we’ll see.

Finally, we will see a slew of new cholesterol lowering drugs hit the market. If I am not mistaken NONE of them have had to show they save lives to be approved. They only had to show they lowered LDL cholesterol. My reading of the literature indicates that inflammation is the cause of heart disease not cholesterol. I have not found a cardiologist yet who will watch the video MADE BY A CARDIOLOGIST IN AMERICA. Go to youtube and put in DR NADIR ALI DO STATINS PREVENT OR CAUSE HEART DISEASE. Your eyes will be opened. There are a lot more videos and books like this. The cholesterol hypothesis has been disproven years ago but the guidelines still focus on the cholesterol and not on the inflammation.

It should be an exciting year in medicine. Vaccines are being looked at more rigorously. Food additives being restricted. A.I. will continue to make advances. None of this precludes you taking your health into your own hands. Work on your diet. Work on your stress, your sleep and your exercise. Keep track of your medical records and your medications. The onus remains on you…Until next month …get well and stay well.

JT Barry, MD