Causes or Cures

"For the Nerds and the Nerd Nots" Causes or Cures is a public health podcast hosted by Dr. Eeks (ErinKate Stair, MD, MPH). It's an independent, offbeat, grassroots show driven by curiosity and a passion for breaking down complex health topics into bite sized, easy to understand insights. There are no institutional affiliations. Dr. Eeks is a public health professional specializing in applied epidemiology and health communication. She works on complex and timely national public health issues and is all about making the science relatable...often using a blue collar (probably irreverant) sense of humor to drive the message home. She interviews experts from around the world—including physicians, researchers, public health professionals, authors, clinicians, and other fascinating guests—to make complex science understandable for the nerds and the nerd-nots. The show also features recurring segments like Public Health is W

Causes or Cures is a health podcast hosted by Dr. Eeks, with 270 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Dr. Eeks hosts Causes or Cures, a health show with 270 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #288

  Would You Want to Know? A Family’s 50% Chance of Inheriting Dementia, with Robert Kolker

  Sep 29, 202643 min

  Send us Fan Mail Would you want to know if you had a 50% chance of developing an inherited form of dementia? In this episode of Causes or Cures , Dr. Eeks talks with #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Kolker about his new book, The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia . The book follows a Pennsylvania family across generations as they confront a rare inherited form of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) associated with a mutation involving tau. For family members, genetic testing can answer an extraordinary question: Did I inherit the mutation or not? But knowing the answer can affect virtually everything that follows—relationships, having children, plans for the future and how someone interprets changes in their own behavior. Eeks and Robert discuss the very different ways family members approached genetic testing; whether getting older without symptoms means you're in the clear; having children when there's a chance of passing on the mutation; and the unsettling way FTD can first appear as changes in personality, judgment and behavior rather than something obviously recognizable as neurological disease. They also get into some of the bigger questions raised by the book: How much of who we are is our brain? Would you want the option to end your life before a degenerative disease changed who you were? Can lifestyle meaningfully alter the course of a strongly inherited dementia? And what can medicine actually offer someone who learns today that they carry one of these mutations? Finally, they discuss why researchers are so interested in this family's rare form of FTD. The mutation affects tau, a protein also implicated in Alzheimer's disease, making families like this scientifically valuable for understanding how dementia develops and potentially how it might someday be prevented or treated. Robert Kolker is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road , which was an Oprah's Book Club selection and a New York Times Book Review Top 10 book of the year. He is also the author of Lost Girls . The Vanishing Family is published by Doubleday on September 29, 2026. The Vanishing Family — official publisher page * Robert Kolker photo credit: Jeff Zorabedian Work with Eeks? Perhaps you are a good match. Keep Causes or Cures Ad-Free with Listener Support You can contact Dr. Eeks at bloomingwellness.com. Follow Eeks on Instagram here. Follow on X. Or Facebook here. On Youtube . Or TikTok . SUBSCRIBE to the Eeks Weekly here! (the bits not posted on socia media) Support the show

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  Episode #287

  Can Reddit Reveal GLP-1 Side Effects that Clinical Trials Miss? With Neil Sehgal

  Sep 24, 202633 min

  Send us Fan Mail What can hundreds of thousands of Reddit posts tell us about the side effects of GLP-1 medications? In this episode of Causes or Cures , I talk with researcher Neil K. R. Sehgal about his recent study examining self-reported side effects of semaglutide and tirzepatide, commonly known by brand names including Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. Neil and his colleagues used AI to analyze more than 410,000 Reddit posts mentioning the medications. Among users who reported taking them, researchers found plenty of familiar side effects, particularly gastrointestinal symptoms, but they also identified potential signals involving fatigue, menstrual changes, and temperature-related symptoms such as chills and hot flashes. We talk about why clinical trials can't capture every possible side effect before a drug reaches the broader population, how AI can sift through enormous amounts of online conversation, and why finding a signal on Reddit is not the same thing as proving that a medication caused it. We also get into a bigger question: Could social media eventually become a useful early-warning system for drug safety? In this episode, we discuss: why Neil turned to Reddit to study GLP-1 experiences; how AI analyzed more than 400,000 posts; which potential side-effect signals emerged; the difference between correlation, a safety signal, and causation; how researchers distinguish genuine signals from social-media influence; and how AI and online communities could complement traditional pharmacovigilance. About Neil: Neil K. R. Sehgal is a researcher affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Computer and Information Science and Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. His research includes using large-scale digital data to better understand patient experiences and healthcare. He led the analysis and was first author of the study discussed in this episode. Read the study: Self-reported side effects of semaglutide and tirzepatide in online communities — Nature Health Work with Eeks? Perhaps you are a good match. Keep Causes or Cures Ad-Free with Listener Support You can contact Dr. Eeks at bloomingwellness.com. Follow Eeks on Instagram here. Follow on X. Or Facebook here. On Youtube . Or TikTok . SUBSCRIBE to the Eeks Weekly here! (the bits not posted on socia media) Support the show

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  Episode #286

  WTF Health News: Wait... How Did This Drug Cost $25 in India and $1,000 in the U.S.?

  Sep 13, 202614 min

  Send us Fan Mail A woman named Victoria went viral after sharing that a prescription medication that would have cost her $1,000 out of pocket in the U.S. cost just $25 when obtained through a Canadian pharmacy from an Indian manufacturer. But perhaps the most interesting part wasn't the price difference. It was the reaction. The comments filled with people sharing their own stories about prescription prices, insurance, and the sometimes absurd cost of healthcare in America. In this episode of WTF Health News, Eeks looks at why Victoria's story struck such a nerve, touches on some of the mysteries of U.S. prescription drug pricing, and asks what our collective reaction says about the American healthcare experience. Because maybe the biggest WTF isn't that one medication cost $25 instead of $1,000. It's how many Americans heard the story and thought: Yep. Sounds about right. Here's the original IG video: https://www.instagram.com/lemonsnlyme/reel/DZYgShBBKIP/ Work with Eeks? Perhaps you are a good match. Keep Causes or Cures Ad-Free with Listener Support You can contact Dr. Eeks at bloomingwellness.com. Follow Eeks on Instagram here. Follow on X. Or Facebook here. On Youtube . Or TikTok . SUBSCRIBE to the Eeks Weekly here! (the bits not posted on socia media) Support the show

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  Episode #285

  Smart Underwear: Because Regular Underwear Wasn't Doing Enough. With Dr. Brantley Hall

  Sep 9, 202633 min

  Send us Fan Mail Yes, scientists have invented smart underwear. And yes, we're going to have to talk about farts. But this isn't really a story about underwear or even intestinal gas. It's about finding a new way to study the gut microbiome in real time. In this episode, researcher Dr. Brantley Hall joins me to talk about the development of wearable “smart underwear” that continuously measures hydrogen produced by gut microbes. We discuss why hydrogen can provide clues about what's happening inside the gut, how the device compares with traditional breath and stool testing, and what happened when participants wore it for more than 11 hours a day. We also get into the engineering challenges of making smart underwear both comfortable and safe, including the rather important matter of not putting a lithium-ion battery in your underwear. Brantley also explains how the device detected changes after participants consumed inulin, what this technology could teach us about individual responses to food, and whether continuous monitoring could someday have applications for personalized nutrition, IBS, food intolerances, and other digestive conditions. And, naturally, we address the important question: When you've helped invent smart underwear, how exactly do you explain what you do for a living? Work with Eeks? Perhaps you are a good match. Keep Causes or Cures Ad-Free with Listener Support You can contact Dr. Eeks at bloomingwellness.com. Follow Eeks on Instagram here. Follow on X. Or Facebook here. On Youtube . Or TikTok . SUBSCRIBE to the Eeks Weekly here! (the bits not posted on socia media) Support the show

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  Episode #284

  Are You Sharing Your Microbiome with Your Partner...or Your Roommate? With Dr. Nicola Segata

  Aug 26, 202649 min

  Send us Fan Mail Are you sharing your microbiome with your roommate? What about your romantic partner? In this episode of Causes or Cures , Dr. Eeks talks with microbiome researcher Dr. Nicola Segata about new research showing that we may share parts of our microbiome with the people we live with—including family members, roommates, and romantic partners. They discuss how our microbiomes are shared between people, why romantic partners show particularly high levels of oral microbiome sharing, and whether kissing may be partly responsible. They also explore the surprising connection between the oral and gut microbiomes and what the findings could mean for our health. Dr. Segata and Dr. Eeks also discuss whether some microbes are better at spreading than others, what the research does—and doesn't—tell us about cardiometabolic health, whether probiotics can meaningfully change our microbiome, and how much control we really have over the microbial communities living within us. And if we're sharing our microbiomes with the humans we live with...what about our dogs? About Dr. Nicola Segata: Dr. Nicola Segata is a professor and microbiome researcher at the University of Trento in Italy and a principal investigator at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan. He founded his research laboratory in 2013, bringing together computational scientists, experimental biologists, statisticians, and clinicians to study the human microbiome, its diversity, and how it may influence human health and disease. Work with Eeks? Perhaps you are a good match. Keep Causes or Cures Ad-Free with Listener Support You can contact Dr. Eeks at bloomingwellness.com. Follow Eeks on Instagram here. Follow on X. Or Facebook here. On Youtube . Or TikTok . SUBSCRIBE to the Eeks Weekly here! (the bits not posted on socia media) Support the show

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