A new disease spread by deer ticks has already infected 100,000 New Yorkers since the state first started keeping track.

As CBS 2's Dr. Max Gomez reported, the new deer tick-borne illness resembles Lyme disease, but is a different malady altogether - and it could be even worse.

The common deer tick is capable of spreading dangerous germs into the human bloodstream with its bite. However, Lyme disease is one of many diseases that ticks carry.

The latest disease is related to Lyme, and an infected person will suffer similar symptoms.

"Patients with this illness will develop, perhaps, fever, headache, flu-like symptoms, muscle pains - so they'll have typical Lyme-like flu symptoms in the spring, summer, early fall," said Dr. Brian Fallon of Columbia University. "But most of them will not develop the typical rash that you see with Lyme disease."

Sometimes it's difficult to discern trend diets from the truth about nutrition. It seems that everyone has an agenda, a special diet, a "limited time offer." However, we're here to tell you about one incredibly common food that is absolutely wrecking most people's skin, joints, and blood sugar.The best part? There's no agenda here. The worst part? This food is probably in just about every one of your meals. Curious to know what we're talking about? Wheat.

Why Wheat Isn't All That Great

Let's start at the beginning. The "wheat" we're referring to is hardly wheat at all. In fact, if you could give someone from the 18^th century a baked loaf of bread (even whole wheat), they would hardly even recognize it.

Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist, is one of many scientists and doctors that tries to educate others on the truth about modern wheat. If you want to learn more about the distinctions between modern wheat and the "true" wheat of centuries past, check out this interview he did with CBS News.

New research suggests that reading books, writing and participating in brain-stimulating activities at any age may preserve memory. The study is published in the July 3, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Our study suggests that exercising your brain by taking part in activities such as these across a person's lifetime, from childhood through old age, is important for brain health in old age," said study author Robert S. Wilson, PhD, with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

For the study, 294 people were given tests that measured memory and thinking every year for about six years before their deaths at an average age of 89. They also answered a questionnaire about whether they read books, wrote and participated in other mentally stimulating activities during childhood, adolescence, middle age and at their current age.

In some parts of the world, good food is food prepared with care, attention, and a plenty of time. This sort of food philosophy, where meals are made with fresh ingredients and patience, doesn't lend itself well to fast food where cheap ingredients are premade so they can be warmed and slapped together in record-time.

This sort of food dichotomy is exactly why McDonald's couldn't thrive in Bolivia - the first Latin America country to essentially kick the fast-food-giant out by keeping them in the red.

McDonald's restaurants operated in Bolivia for 14 years, according to Hispanically Speaking. In 2002, they had to shutter their final remaining 8 stores because they simply couldn't turn a profit - and if you know fast food companies, you know it's not because they didn't try.

The Golden Arches sunk plenty of money into marketing and campaigning - trying to get the food-loving Bolivians to warm to their French fries and burgers, but it simply wasn't happening.

Some 60 percent of Bolivians are indigenous. "Fast" and processed foods are simply a foreign concept to them. Why would you pay someone to provide you with a less-than-delicious and unhealthy alternative to real food? This attitude is one that the U.S. fast food nation could learn a thing or two from.

There is no debating it: the modern world has become a cesspool of environmental toxins. Repeated scientific studies have identified the health-deteriorating effects of toxins of all kinds: mercury, lead, BPA, petrochemicals, pthalates, parabens, benzenes, and many types of chemicals whose names are difficult to pronounce.

The modern household has become a harbor for so many types of chemicals, it is remarkable, sad and very frightening. To illustrate the remarkable nature of household chemical exposure, take a 2003 study conducted by the Environmental Science & Technology Journal.

In this study, the authors evaluated 120 households for chemicals detected in dust and in the ambient air. The number of airborne chemicals ranged between 13 and 28 and 6 to 42 in the dust per household. Among the chemicals detected, a number of EPA-banned chemicals were identified, ranging from DDT, intermediate flame retardant chemicals, chlordane, heptachlor and methoxychlor.

Furthermore, of the chemicals discovered, 15 compounds exceeded government safety guidelines, while government safety guidelines did not exist for 28 of the chemical compounds.

A few months ago, I read a book called The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living. The authors are two of the world's leading researchers on low-carb diets.

Dr. Jeff S. Volek is a Registered Dietitian and Dr. Stephen D. Phinney is a medical doctor. These guys have performed many studies and have treated thousands of patients with a low-carb diet.

According to them, there are many stumbling blocks that people tend to run into, which can lead to adverse effects and suboptimal results.

To get into full-blown ketosis and reap all the metabolic benefits of low-carb, merely cutting back on the carbs isn't enough. If you haven't gotten the results you expected on a low-carb diet, then perhaps you were doing one of these 5 common mistakes.

1. Eating too many carbs

There is no clear definition of exactly what constitutes a "low carb diet."

Some would call anything under 100-150 grams per day low-carb, which is definitely a lot less than the standard Western diet.

A lot of people could get awesome results within this carbohydrate range, as long as they ate real, unprocessed foods.

But if you want to get into ketosis, with plenty of ketoness flooding your bloodstream to supply your brain with an efficient source of energy, then this level of intake may be excessive.

It could take some self experimentation to figure out your optimal range as this depends on a lot of things, but most people will need to go under 50 grams per day to get into full-blown ketosis.

During the May 2013 annual conference of the American Psychiatric Association ( APA), a study was presented, alleging that Electroconvulsive Therapy, ECT, (formerly known as Electroshock) for adolescents "is a safe, reasonably well-tolerated, and effective treatment." Unfortunately, like all psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, these claims are dependent upon the psychiatrist's interpretation - not scientific fact.

Keeping in mind that the APA cannot provide any science to support that even one of its alleged psychiatric disorders is a real medical condition, it is difficult to accept this new study with any level of credibility.

After all, if the psychiatric community cannot prove that a psychiatric disorder exists, how can it possibly prove that any "treatment," specifically frying a child's still developing brain with "therapeutic" electricity, is safe and effective?

In a nutshell, psychiatry's theory of ECT is to induce, through electric current directly to the frontal lobes of the brain, a grand mal seizure, which will presumably "jump start" the alleged disordered brain. There are two glaring problems with the theory - no one knows how the brain works and, despite 70 years of research, nobody knows how ECT works.

The author of the ECT study, Dr. Chad Puffer, a general psychiatry resident at the Mayo Clinic, said "the idea that this is a barbaric treatment is typically perpetuated by those who have not seen the treatments as they are currently administered."

Dr. Puffer is alluding to the horrific ECT "treatments" that were conducted in the past, when patients were subjected to high doses of "therapeutic" electricity with no anesthesia or medications, causing violent seizures, broken bones and even death.

Psychiatry's diagnostic bible has broadened the definition of mental illness to absurdity.

The American Psychiatric Association released a revision of its diagnostic bible in May, the first major rewrite in two decades. The Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, is the official guidebook for diagnosing every conceivable psychiatric ailment. This new edition loosens the rules in a disturbing way.

In previous editions, you the patient had to meet certain specified criteria in order to be diagnosed for any particular condition. For example, if I were going to diagnose you as having schizophrenia, then you had to have specific symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations. If you didn't have those symptoms, then I couldn't make the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Not anymore. Last month, DSM-5 introduced a new diagnosis, "Unspecified Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder." The only required criterion is that you have some distress from unspecified symptoms, but you "do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders diagnostic class." You don't have to have delusions. You don't have to have hallucinations. In fact if you do have delusions and hallucinations, then you probably don't qualify for unspecified schizophrenia. (You will find the new diagnosis in one short paragraph at the bottom of page 122 of DSM-5.)

Likewise for every other diagnostic category, including, for example, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Let's suppose that you occasionally don't pay attention to your wife. You don't meet the old-fashioned criteria for ADHD, which included impairment in multiple settings, like on the job or while driving. You are inattentive only when your wife is talking. You pay attention to everybody else. Hey, no problem. You now qualify for "Unspecified Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder."

Part 1

Many of you have probably heard of the 'alkaline diet'. There are a few different versions of the acid-alkaline theory circulating the internet, but the basic claim is that the foods we eat leave behind an 'ash' after they are metabolized, and this ash can be acid or alkaline (alkaline meaning more basic on the pH scale).

According to the theory, it is in our best interest to make sure we eat more alkaline foods than acid foods, so that we end up with an overall alkaline load on our body. This will supposedly protect us from the diseases of modern civilization, whereas eating a diet with a net acid load will make us vulnerable to everything from cancer to osteoporosis. To make sure we stay alkaline, they recommend keeping track of urine or saliva pH using handy pH test strips.

In this two-part series, I will address the main claims made by proponents of the alkaline diet, and will hopefully clear up some confusion about what it all means for your health. Will eating an alkaline diet make you and your bones healthier?

Foods can influence our urine pH

Before I start dismantling this theory, I want to acknowledge a couple things they get right. First, foods do leave behind acid or alkaline ash. The type of 'ash' is determined by the relative content of acid-forming components such as phosphate and sulfur, and alkalis such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium. (1, 2) In general, animal products and grains are acid forming, while fruits and vegetables are alkali forming. Pure fats, sugars, and starches are neutral, because they don't contain protein, sulfur, or minerals.

It's also true that the foods we eat change the pH of our urine. (3, 4) If you have a green smoothie for breakfast, for example, your pee a few hours later will likely be more alkaline than that of someone who had bacon and eggs. As a side note, it's also very easy to measure your urine pH, and I think this is one of the big draws of the alkaline diet. Everyone can probably agree that it's satisfying to see concrete improvements in health markers depending on your diet, and pH testing gives people that instant gratification they desire. However, as you'll see below, urine pH is not a good indicator of the overall pH of the body, nor is it a good indicator of general health.

It's common to hear that "doctors aren't taught about nutrition in medical school". Does that mean that everything a doctor knows was learned at medical school? Did the professors teach how to fish, repair cars, write novels, play a guitar? Of course not.

The idea that a doctor is somehow deficient because he/she didn't learn about nutrition in medical school is just an excuse. Essentially, "The poor dolt wasn't taught about nutrition, exercise, clean water or even probiotics, so we can't expect her to know anything - or do anything - other than what they were taught in medical school." At times I've been guilty of this myself, but I want to stop using that kind of statement to either justify ignorance or explain why this or that doctor always falls back on what they were taught - how to read lab tests and prescribe drugs, surgery, or radiation treatments. Starting from the premise that doctors are intelligent, I must accept that they are capable of rational thought and using reason to arrive at answers - ones that agree with their medical school professors, and ones that don't. A mature rational person reacts in certain ways when confronted with information that conflicts with their education and experiences. They can ignore the new information. They can use their reasoning skills to refute it. They can even evaluate the new material and begin a process for changing their old belief based on the new findings and rationale. In all three of those possibilities, the intelligent person can still decide not to change their actions. In the case of a doctor, she can decide to not move away from what she's been doing, regardless of the contrary evidence. Why would she do that? One reason might be comfort. She could say, "I've been doing it that old way for decades and I don't see any reason to change my practice." That's the response we would expect from a lazy person. Some people are lazy. Doctors are people. Therefore...