Sep 30, 2026 3-5pm ET
Wednesday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:
Hour 1
Can Faith Help Patients Heal? Veteran Doctor Reveals What He’s Witnessed Firsthand Physician and Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel argues that spirituality, hope and human connection can play meaningful roles alongside conventional medical treatment, drawing on experiences from his medical career and cases collected for his forthcoming book, The Angels Among Us. Siegel does not argue that prayer or faith should replace medical care or that spiritual intervention guarantees recovery. Instead, he believes physicians should remain open to the psychological and spiritual dimensions of illness, particularly when patients face life-threatening conditions or unexpected recoveries that medicine cannot easily predict. Siegel cites survey findings indicating that 70% of physicians believe in God and 55% report having witnessed what they consider medical miracles during clinical practice. Among the cases in his book is U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Spencer Milo, who was initially given a terminal brain-tumor diagnosis following severe trauma in Iraq. While obtaining another medical opinion at the University of California, San Francisco, Milo encountered a Benedictine monk, and subsequent imaging determined that the tumor was benign. Siegel also recounts an experience from his own residency involving a patient who remained comatose for three months after severe brain trauma. Despite a poor prognosis, the patient eventually regained consciousness and returned to work, an experience Siegel says taught him not to assume that physicians can always accurately predict an individual patient’s outcome. His book also describes his father’s survival after severe COVID-19, emergency surgery at age 98 and approximately four additional years of life while receiving dialysis through a catheter. Other examples include a critically ill ICU patient who reported seeing comforting spiritual figures shortly before her condition unexpectedly stabilized. Siegel broadens his concept of “angels” beyond supernatural beings, describing doctors, nurses, family members and even strangers whose actions arrive at crucial moments as potentially performing an angel-like role in another person’s life. He also examines historical examples, including the emergency treatment of President Ronald Reagan following the 1981 assassination attempt and Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson’s reported spiritual awakening before development of AA’s peer-support model. Siegel’s central point is not that these anecdotes scientifically demonstrate supernatural healing. Rather, he argues that medicine should recognize that hope, faith, empathy and a patient’s determination can influence how people cope with severe illness. He views excellent medical treatment and spirituality as potentially complementary rather than competing approaches, with physicians responsible for treating disease and relieving suffering while respecting sources of hope and meaning that may help patients endure difficult medical circumstances.
Special Guest: Merrill Osmond
Merrill Osmond is the lead singer for the world famous Osmond family. He is also an established solo artist. He has toured throughout the world performing in many major venues.
With his brothers, Merrill has sung lead on 27 gold records. He has produced and written the music and lyrics for five number one hit records with brothers Alan and Wayne.
The Osmonds have produced 47 platinum and gold records and no other recording artists have earned as many gold records in one year as the Osmond family. It’s Merrill’s incredible voice you can hear on such hits as One Bad Apple, Let Me In, Love Me For A Reason and Crazy Horses. The Osmonds still hold the record today for achieving eleven Gold Award Certificates in one year.
Merrill was the Executive Producer of the Donny & Marie Show that aired on ABC-TV. He has also worked closely with the production of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, then again in 1989 he was invited to produce the Inaugural Ball for President George H Bush.
Merrill is the Patron of The Hearing Fund UK, founded by his son, Justin. The Hearing Fund helps children living with hearing loss and helps raise deaf awareness globally. Merrill produces the annual Gala every year.
Scientists Find a “Pain Switch” That Could Shut Down Arthritis Pain Researchers at the University of Warwick have identified a heat-sensing protein called TRPM2 that appears to function as a central “switch” converting inflammatory and immune signals into chronic pain, potentially opening a new approach to treating arthritis pain without suppressing the inflammation or immune response itself. In experiments involving mice, researchers found that a single injection of a drug blocking TRPM2 completely reversed established arthritis pain for approximately two days even though inflammation in the affected joints remained. This distinction is important because many current arthritis treatments, including methotrexate and other immune-modulating drugs, attempt to control the underlying inflammatory process, while NSAIDs interfere with inflammatory pathways and can produce significant side effects. TRPM2 is an ion channel found in sensory neurons and is already known for helping the nervous system detect mild, nonpainful warmth. Researchers discovered that it has another function: directly translating chemical signals associated with disease into electrical nerve impulses interpreted by the brain as pain. Experiments using genetically modified mice whose sensory neurons lacked TRPM2 produced substantial reductions in both chronic arthritis pain and neuropathic pain while leaving most immune and inflammatory responses intact. The researchers then examined two very different pain-producing signals: prostaglandin E2, an inflammatory chemical involved in pain and fever, and autoantibodies, immune proteins that mistakenly target the body’s own tissues. Both were found to activate TRPM2 directly. Removing TRPM2 completely prevented pain normally produced by these two triggers, leading researchers to describe the protein as a “convergent pain switch” through which different disease processes can ultimately generate pain. The mechanism was also unexpected because the signals activated TRPM2 through pathways that bypassed conventional cellular signaling mechanisms. Researchers do not yet understand how the same protein can participate in sensing harmless warmth while also generating persistent disease-related pain, and they suspect different populations of TRPM2-containing sensory neurons may perform those functions. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, remain preclinical. The dramatic pain relief was demonstrated in mice, not people, and the research does not establish that blocking TRPM2 will be safe or effective in human arthritis patients. Nevertheless, the work identifies a potentially important therapeutic target because a successful TRPM2-blocking treatment could theoretically interrupt chronic pain at the sensory nerve level without broadly suppressing inflammation or immune function.
Hour 2
The Why of Food Emancipation Jeffrey A. Tucker presents the foreword to farmer Joel Salatin’s new book, Food Emancipation, arguing that Americans have become increasingly separated from the production of their food and that government policy has helped accelerate the consolidation of agriculture. Tucker contrasts an earlier America, in which farming and knowledge of food production were common parts of everyday life, with today’s system of supermarkets, restaurants, delivery services and heavily processed foods designed for convenience and long shelf life. He endorses Salatin’s argument that the decline of small-scale and local agriculture was not simply the inevitable result of technological progress or consumer preference. Instead, Tucker attributes much of it to a combination of regulations, taxes, subsidies, mandates and other government policies that he says disproportionately benefit large agricultural and food-processing companies. As an example, he highlights Salatin’s interpretation of federal meat-inspection reforms following Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, arguing that regulations promoted as consumer protections also imposed costs that helped push small farm-based meat processors out of the market. Tucker describes visits to Salatin’s Polyface Farm and conversations with other farmers as experiences that changed his own thinking about agriculture and food policy. Salatin’s proposed “food emancipation” is essentially a decentralization agenda: reducing regulatory barriers to small farming, allowing more direct transactions between farmers and consumers, strengthening private property and trading rights, and encouraging local food production rather than creating another government-directed agricultural program. Tucker further connects this argument to health, contending that America’s dependence on industrially produced and highly processed food has contributed to declining health, although the article does not present research establishing that government-supported agricultural consolidation itself caused those health outcomes. The piece is explicitly an approving foreword rather than an independent examination of Salatin’s claims. Tucker ultimately frames local agriculture as more than a food-production issue, presenting it as a means of restoring individual independence, community knowledge and economic freedom while reducing the influence of both large agribusiness corporations and government regulators.
Americans Are Taking Supplements for Gut Health but Missing Something More Crucial Americans have dramatically increased their use of probiotic supplements without making a comparable improvement in dietary fiber intake, according to an analysis using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data. Among people younger than 20, reported probiotic use rose from less than 1% in 2009 to approximately 6% in 2023, while adult use increased from less than 2% to about 7%. Researchers examining dietary information from nearly 55,000 participants found that fiber consumption remained substantially below recommended levels. Among younger participants, fiber intake increased only slightly, from 7.37 to 7.97 grams per 1,000 calories, while adult intake actually declined from 8.52 to 8.26 grams. The dietary benchmark used in the study was 14 grams per 1,000 calories. Even people taking probiotics consumed considerably less fiber than recommended. UC Davis microbiologist Maria Marco explains that probiotics and fiber serve different functions. Probiotic products introduce particular microorganisms, whereas dietary fiber supplies material that existing intestinal microbes metabolize and helps support the broader gut environment. Registered dietitian Vandana Sheth suggests supplements may appeal partly because taking a capsule is substantially easier than changing long-established eating habits involving cost, preparation, culture and personal preferences. The article also emphasizes that probiotics are highly strain-specific, meaning evidence supporting one microorganism for a particular condition should not automatically be generalized to every product marketed as a probiotic. Certain strains of Bifidobacterium, for example, have clinical evidence supporting particular gastrointestinal applications, including constipation and symptoms associated with irritable bowel syndrome. The broader supplement trend extends well beyond probiotics: probiotic users in the analysis took a median of four supplements overall compared with one among nonusers, while separate survey data indicate widespread American use of vitamins, minerals, protein products, omega oils and herbal supplements. The article does not conclude that probiotics are ineffective. Instead, its central argument is that supplements should complement rather than substitute for nutrition. Beans, lentils, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds and some fermented foods provide combinations of fiber, nutrients and plant compounds that cannot be duplicated simply by swallowing selected bacterial strains.
Inflammation May Be Changing The Shape Of Your Heart Before You Feel A Thing Chronic low-grade inflammation may be associated with measurable changes in the heart years before cardiovascular disease becomes clinically apparent, according to a large UK Biobank analysis led by researchers at Imperial College London. Investigators examined more than 488,000 participants using GlycA, a blood marker reflecting several components of systemic inflammation. Participants were initially 40 to 69 years old and were followed for a median exceeding 15 years. Approximately 70,800 underwent detailed cardiac imaging. People with higher GlycA levels tended to have smaller heart chambers relative to body size, thicker heart walls, impaired filling between beats and somewhat higher heart rates. Those with the highest inflammation levels also had a 43% greater risk of major cardiovascular events, including heart attack, stroke, heart failure and cardiac arrest, compared with people having the lowest levels. Researchers additionally examined 80 inflammation-related proteins to explore biological pathways that might connect systemic inflammation with cardiovascular changes. Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist statistically accounted for about 27% of the association involving one measure of heart chamber size, while hepatocyte growth factor contributed substantially to another cardiac measurement. Interleukin-6 emerged as particularly important in the statistical relationship between inflammation and subsequent heart attacks and strokes. Researchers also screened 177 environmental and lifestyle factors and found abdominal fat, current smoking, psychological distress and indicators of financial hardship among the strongest predictors of higher inflammation. Genetic analysis suggested inherited cardiovascular risk can modify how strongly these exposures translate into inflammation and cardiovascular events, potentially helping explain why people with apparently similar lifestyles experience different outcomes. The findings do not establish that GlycA itself causes cardiac remodeling or that lowering the marker will prevent heart disease. The study is observational, much of the UK Biobank population is White and comparatively healthy, and several biological measurements were collected at only one point in time. Nevertheless, the results strengthen evidence connecting persistent systemic inflammation with cardiovascular disease and suggest that combining inflammatory biomarkers, environmental exposures and genetic information could eventually help identify people developing cardiovascular abnormalities before symptoms appear.
McDonald’s Rethinks Its Menu for New Era of Eating Habits McDonald’s is considering significant additions and adjustments to its menu as changing American eating habits, increased interest in protein and rapidly growing use of GLP-1 weight-loss medications alter what customers want from fast food. During the company’s Investor Day, McDonald’s USA President Skye Anderson said consumers increasingly want meals that leave them satisfied without feeling as though they have eaten too much. The company is therefore exploring options including bowls, grilled chicken and egg bites, along with greater flexibility in portion sizes and additional protein-forward offerings. GLP-1 medications are one factor behind the shift. Gallup data cited in the report indicate that approximately 11% of U.S. adults now say they are using a GLP-1 medication, compared with about 3% in 2024. These medications can substantially reduce appetite and alter food preferences, creating a growing population of consumers who may want smaller meals while still prioritizing protein and nutritional density. McDonald’s says the change is broader than the GLP-1 market, however, reflecting a general consumer movement toward higher-protein foods. Anderson said customers currently taking GLP-1 medications appear to gravitate toward products including Chicken McNuggets, Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and Happy Meals, the latter offering a naturally smaller portion. The company has not announced a dedicated “GLP-1 menu,” and the bowls, grilled chicken and egg bites discussed are possibilities under consideration rather than confirmed nationwide products. McDonald’s is simultaneously planning substantial investment in its U.S. restaurant network as it adapts to changing customer expectations. The company says it expects to invest approximately $8.5 billion through 2036 in restaurant improvements, technology and operational efficiency, including about $5 billion by 2030. The emerging strategy illustrates how the expanding weight-loss-drug market may influence the broader food industry even without restaurants explicitly marketing meals to medication users. For McDonald’s, that could mean supplementing its traditional burgers, fries and larger combination meals with smaller, protein-focused choices intended to serve customers whose definition of a satisfying fast-food meal is changing.
Question of The Day!
Dear Robert and SuperD,
My husband now has stents in the first and second arteries to his heart. The third artery appears to be clear. The cardiologist/surgeon has prescribed injectable Repatha to lower the “bad” cholesterol. That is in addition to Tamsulosin, Lisinopril, Ticagrelor, and St Joseph Aspirin. Although there are a few good reports on the internet about Repatha, the bad reports outnumber the good. How can a person lower their “bad” cholesterol levels without taking statins or drugs?
Doreen
Welcome back to another “Homeopathic Hits” episode on The Robert Scott Bell Show!
Today’s Homeopathic Hit is Nitromuriaticum acidum, also known as Aqua Regia or Nitro-muriatic acid.
Boericke highlights this remedy in oxaluria, bilious conditions, torpid liver, hepatitis, early cirrhosis, gastric catarrh, gravel, constricted anus, and skin symptoms resembling psoriasis.
Download the Information Sheet
Remember Friends, The Power to Heal is Yours!
