On Tuesday, when Stefano and I returned to Florence (after spending a couple of weeks with my parents in Massachusetts), I found almost 2,000 unread e-mails in my mailbox. An impossible number, yes, but it includes some old stuff, too, such as unopened newsletters and Google Alerts and also messages I just haven’t had the time to read. However, it also includes a whole bunch of new blog reader queries, some of which I feel I simply cannot or indeed should not answer…

So this morning I began thinking about what to do. And I was faced with my eternal dilemma: time. Simply put, should I take the time to answer each and every e-mail, or should I spend that time doing something else, such as reading a study I should have read and posted about months ago? I think the choice is clear…

It hasn’t been easy to reach a decision, since I am a very nice and polite person in real life and like to be nice and polite to everyone, but here is what I have decided to do…now and in the future:

1. If you have asked any sort of medical-related question, you will (probably) not receive a reply from me. It would simply not be right for me to give out medical advice, especially concerning conditions I know very little about, such as Crohn’s Disease.
2. If you have asked a question that has already been answered here on my blog, or that would be easily answered by (your) doing a brief search online, you will (probably) not receive a reply from me.
3. Unless I manage to catch up with those 2,000 unopened e-mails, that is. 😉

HINT: a very useful tool is my blog’s “Search” box. Just type your query inside the box (upper right-hand side of the blog) and press Enter. You may not find what you are looking for, but it’s worth a try. I confess that I use this tool, too, at times. I did so just this morning, in fact, to find the “study” on curcumin by Vermorken et al, a study that enraged me a couple of years ago.

Another useful tool is PubMed:, which you can find at this link http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed Again, you can type your query inside the Search box at the top of the page…for instance, type the words “curcumin Crohn’s Disease,” and you will find 28 studies. I use PubMed a lot.

If you are thinking of taking curcumin for the first time, please check out my blog Page on curcumin’s side effects, including warnings (who shouldn’t take it, etc.)…And also my protocol Page. As you scroll down my homepage, look on the right, where all my Pages are…

Sorry if this sounds harsh…but I really hope you all understand! Thank you! 🙂