"Necessary to pay for the services we provide."

This sounds odd to me. Blogger is free. I manage to provide a very high level of service to my bloodsugar101.com visitor base which is huge and growing monthly without charging a penny.

I earn enough from Google ads to pay overhead. The amount of time it takes to keep the site updated is no more than most people spend watching a favorite TV show or playing golf each week.

I respond to emails for perhaps half an hour a day, occasionally more, where I help people clarify the issues they need to discuss with their doctors and occasionally direct them to resources relevant to a rare condition my site mentions.

I can see charging for individual medical consultation, but not for providing a web forum where people discuss topics and where you explain concepts that do not involve personal medical counsel.

The for-fee nature of your site buys you income at the cost of greatly limiting the number of people who can benefit from the non-specific information you have to share.

Too many of your posts seem to tantalize with hints of information but conclude with statements making it clear people have to pay to find out the facts.

That is NOT how the web works and it greatly limits the helpfulness of what you offer.

Dr. Davis,

In a short time, your blog, all by itself, has become the best source of information for dealing with cardiovascular disease on the internet.

Thank you for having the vision and commitment for sharing your depth and breadth of knowledge of this disease.

Dear Dr. Davis
I plead guilty to immoderation in my response to your "Hammers and Nails" piece.

Here's my bottom line:
I simply believe that your 'bottom up' approach (to identifying both problems and their solutions) could potentially grow to influence the entire profession for the better. I hope it spreads.
Thanks for listening.
MikeV

Hi Dr. Davis

I read your blog all the time and am surprised to see that you answer blog comments at all.

I would always think . . . . how does he have time to do that ?

I for one, understand your situation exactly and I am just thankful that you write your blog at all. I'm sure the course of my health will be forever changed by reading your words, and following them.

On behalf of all the people who are deeply thankful for what you do, I apologize for the few "who always want more".

You have my heartfelt appreciation (pun intended).

Brian - Syracuse, NY

Dr. Davis,

Just a note of thanks for all you do on this blog and on the members forum.  My doctor was amazed when I told him that you responded personally to my query on the forum.  I've learned a tremendous amount thanks to you.

Rick

Dr. Davis
I agree with the previous writer - surprised you have time but also thankful.
In case you wonder if it's worth your time - You have changed my life!
After reading your column and recognizing myself in many issues, I went out and had my vitamin D tested and it was 23 ng. So now, I also  have my husband and 4 friends on Vitamin D supplements who are also grateful.
p.s.
Nice of you to let "Jenny" plug her google ad site

This comment is to Jenny.  Wow, just wow!  You have an overgrown sense of entitlement.  Dr. Davis is providing a lot of great information on his blog as well as in his TYP community.  He also has a full-time cardiology practice.  If you don't like what he is writing and that he would prefer to spend his energy on TYP, which I am fairly certain does not net him a profit, don't read this blog.  Not everyone has to follow your model for blogging and you ought to be respectful of that.

-Russ

It's a fair deal as your posts alone help guide a lot of people.

As a suggestion, since comments are still flying about about vitamin D, erroneously, being bad for you, and that L-form bacteria being touted as the core cause of heart disease by the same camp, it's worth doing an article about that. Approaching it with undemeaning neutrality, but it would be useful as some people have taken to heart the words of the dubious Marshall Protocol.

I can understand your need for more time but while your postings are excellent I have learned far more from your comments on other peoples comments then from the original postings. What a loss.

Well Dr D, as we say....Dr heal thyself. I have read all the blog and joined TYP. Best fee( and small amt I might add) I ever spent and yes to do all you provide on your forom does cost, I doubt J knows what she is talking about as I don't think she is a member of TYP. You have saved me from an early death and all I can say  since day one of coming here is I wondered how you did it all. You answer all the posts on TYP at least twice a day, you always write new articles, you volunteered your time for our web show, and your attitude is always so supportive and so wise. You know our sacred and healing VIT O
I have honoured you since the day I met you and I honor you even more now or making good choices to look after yourself thus in the end enable us to look after ourselves.

I FEEL SOMEWHAT EMBARRASSED BY j's INSENSITIVE COMMENTS.........if only she knew all the work you have done for us in the past 6 months since I have been here. Thank you sooo much and I;ll read you daily on TYP website.

Goodonya!!!!

chick

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Thanks for drawing attention to this very real problem.

As you may have read in my blog, I went to my local hospital last December because I'd inhaled a small piece of peanut and the ER doctor and hospitalist did all they could to turn that visit into a cardiac emergency despite a completely normal EKG.

Had I not been an ornery bitch I'd have ended up paying for the nuclear stress test they ordered for me on top of the several thousand bucks I was charged for staying over night with a monitor on me.

My heart was 100% fine--all this cardiac nonsense was because I have the word "diabetes" on my chart and because my lung--which is in my chest, hurt--after 24 hours of coughing--which the ER doctor interpreted as "chest pain--Heart attack???.

If I'd had that stress test with the false positives I might well have ended up with unnecessary surgery.

From a different Jenny  (Jennytoo):  You are getting to the essence of the problem, and it's not just cardiology that is rife with what is at bottom malpractice.  There is little incentive for the profession as a whole to know anything about or promote prevention, and many incentives from hospitals, drug and insurance companies to stick with the status quo or to change it in their corporate favor.  The formulaic, conventional statements purporting to be guidelines for prevention that are put out by various interest groups and in such publications as hospital-sponsored newsletters ("eat a 'balanced diet', avoid stress, etc.")  are useless sops to the concept of prevention.  It is, and I fear is going to remain, up to motivated individuals, both physicians and patients, to reshape the system, and it's going to be a long frustrating struggle.  It's my personal conviction that if just 4 things were promoted to the public, and people actually practiced them, we could change the health profiles of the majority of people in this country for the better within two years or less.  They are (1) education on and promotion of a true low-carbohydrate, whole foods, diet, (2) measurement and supplementation of Vitamin D3 (3)supplementation with DHA/EPA (found in Fish Oils) and (4)measurement and supplementation of  intracellular Magnesium.   I am not a health professional, and others may want to add to this list, but I don't think any strong case can be made against any of the items.  The wonderful and hopeful thing is that each of us can implement them ON OUR OWN, and thereby take charge of our own well-being.  (The Life Extension Foundation is one organization which provides access to lab tests you can request on your own.)  If you have a physician who is willing and capable of being your partner, you are richly blessed, and that is the ideal we all should hope for.   But in the more likely event that you do not have such a physician, and if your physician demonstrates little potential for becoming one, think about firing the one you have and finding another.  Sometimes we are forced by circumstances, particularly urgent ones, to deal with physicians who are not ideal, but the main impetus for change will come from us, the patients, and the expectations we communicate to our individual doctors.  In the meantime, we can be self-reliant in our own prevention practices.  Learn from Dr. Davis and Jenny Ruhl and the Dr.'s Eades and the Vitamin D Council (and many others), and put what you learn into practice for your own benefit, and when in health-care settings, be friendly and accommodating when you can and ornery when accommodating doesn't work.  Your health is your own, and shouldn't be at the mercy of any other whose interests are competing.

Eloquently said!

I haven't visited the medical community in over 5 years. I think that I am healthier for that.

In the past, I had lots of expensive tests done that resulted in nothing of significance being done, but lots of money spent. Doctors can easily scare people into having lots of tests done. Who wants to drop dead? If I break a bone, I will, most likely, go to a physician. I see no need to get the recommended no-symptom tests done as they are just looking for the needle in the haystack but finding lots of pitchforks.