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Causes or Cures
For the Nerds and the Nerd Nots
Causes or Cures is an independent health podcast hosted by "Dr. Eeks" (ErinKate Stair, MD, MPH). It is an offbeat, grassroots show driven by curiosity and a genuine love of making complicated health topics easier to understand.
Dr. Eeks is a public health professional specializing in applied epidemiology & health communication. By day, she works on challenging public health issues. By choice, she spends some of her free time asking scientists, physicians, researchers, authors, clinicians, and other fascinating people questions she hopes everyone else is wondering too.
Along the way, the podcast has wandered into everything from memory and longevity to self medicating animals, migraines, gene drive mosquitoes, strange public health history, the spiritual realm, and the occasional existential detour. If it has something to teach us about health or what it means to be human, it is probably fair game.
Recurring segments include Public Health is Weird, which uncovers strange but true stories from public health history, WTF Health News, where Dr. Eeks breaks down bizarre or buzzworthy health headlines, and Eeks Speakeasy, a more personal corner of the podcast where curiosity occasionally spills over into life, philosophy, and whatever else deserves a drink and a discussion.
A few housekeeping notes...
This podcast is for information, curiosity, and conversation. It is not medical advice.
Although Dr. Eeks has an MD, she does not practice medicine. She is a full time public health nerd and will never tell you what to do with your own health. If you have a medical question, your healthcare provider knows you far better than a podcast ever could.
Guests are invited because they have something interesting to contribute, not because Dr. Eeks agrees with every opinion they hold. Likewise, she does not endorse miracle supplements, mysterious oils, magic socks, potions, or anything that promises to solve all of life's problems.
If an episode is sponsored or underwritten by a company she genuinely enjoys working with, she will always tell you.
Causes or Cures is also not a news site. It is a place for thoughtful conversations. Dr. Eeks believes people can disagree respectfully, ask difficult questions, change their minds, and occasionally laugh at themselves along the way. Some of the best conversations she has ever had happened in hole in the walls, on sidewalks, and in places where nobody was trying to win an argument.
Sometimes Barnaby, her dog and unofficial executive producer, contributes his thoughts as well. Fortunately, he is a pretty smart dog.
Above all, Dr. Eeks hopes this podcast encourages people to stay curious, compassionate, honest, open minded, and engaged. Freedom of discussion is a beautiful, delightfully messy thing, and one worth protecting.
The views expressed on this podcast are Dr. Eeks' own and do not reflect the views of any organization she contracts with or consults for.
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Want to sponsor or underwrite an episode?
Causes or Cures works with a limited number of sponsors and episode underwriters in health, science, and public health. Partnerships are kept separate from editorial content and guest selection. If your organization might be a fit, reach out at: erin@bloomingwellness.com
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Causes or Cures
Could this Simple Sugar Reverse Hair Loss? A chat with Dr. Sheila MacNeil & Dr. Muhammad Yar
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Discovering new hope for hair loss!
In this episode of Causes or Cures, Dr. Eeks chats with Dr. Sheila MacNeil and Dr. Muhammad Yar about their accidental discovery that a simple sugar compound may stimulate hair regrowth and help end male-pattern baldness, or androgenic alopecia—a condition affecting many people. They dive into how an unexpected finding in a study on wound healing sparked their current study on hair loss, which they break down in the episode. The researchers walk us through how the study was conducted, results, how their findings compare to current prescription treatments for hair loss, and what’s next in their research.
Dr. MacNeil is an Emeritus Professor of Tissue Engineering at the University of Sheffield, UK, with over 550 peer-reviewed publications in soft tissue engineering. You can learn more about Dr. MacNeil here. Dr. Yar is an Associate Professor at the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Biomedical Materials at COMSATS University in Islamabad, Pakistan. Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor at King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia. You can learn more about his work here.
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