Apparently my double cousin Erena has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
Interestingly, double cousins (which happen when you are a cousin to someone on both your mother's and your father's side -- in my case my father's brother had children with my mother's sister) are exactly as closely related genetically as half-siblings are.
Also interestingly, I read the symptoms of POTS and I experience a very mild form of one of its symptoms. Whenever I get up, my blood pressure takes a while to stabilize, and unless I do it carefully I'll feel faint. The same goes for standing up in the shower, standing in place for too long in general. This may be the reason I dislike chairs.
Nonetheless, compared to how bad she has it, it's not worth mentioning. I feel bad for her.
Trivia: her wedding was the first (and so far, the only) wedding I've ever been to, I think it was around 15-20 years ago or so. I don't remember it that well, only fragments, seeing as I was pretty young when it happened.
Interestingly, double cousins (which happen when you are a cousin to someone on both your mother's and your father's side -- in my case my father's brother had children with my mother's sister) are exactly as closely related genetically as half-siblings are.
Also interestingly, I read the symptoms of POTS and I experience a very mild form of one of its symptoms. Whenever I get up, my blood pressure takes a while to stabilize, and unless I do it carefully I'll feel faint. The same goes for standing up in the shower, standing in place for too long in general. This may be the reason I dislike chairs.
Nonetheless, compared to how bad she has it, it's not worth mentioning. I feel bad for her.
Trivia: her wedding was the first (and so far, the only) wedding I've ever been to, I think it was around 15-20 years ago or so. I don't remember it that well, only fragments, seeing as I was pretty young when it happened.
7 treatments for cancer you've probably never heard of.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic
- Gaston Naessens – Dr. Naessens treatment is based on the theory that cancer is caused by a friendly microorganism called somatids ("little bodies") -- which are present in all cells -- that becomes unfriendly. His formula, 714X, provides nitrogen to the cancer cells, thus causing this microorganism to cease excreting their toxic compounds, and mobilize your immune system to kill the cancer cells. He was subsequently put on trial for his cancer discoveries.
- Raymond Rife – Rife used resonance to kill viruses and cancer cells. By increasing the intensity of a frequency that resonates naturally with each microbe, the Rife machine increases their natural oscillations until they distort and disintegrate from structural stress. Rife called this frequency 'the mortal oscillatory rate,' or 'MOR', and it was found to do no harm to surrounding healthy tissues.
- Stanislaw Burzynski -- Dr. Burzynski, founder of the Houston-based Burzynski Institute, treats cancer patients with substances called antineoplastons. He was indicted by a grand jury in 1995 for his use of antineoplastons– his second trial that year. He was acquitted.
- Hulda Clark – Dr. Clark has invented several devices, such as the Syncrometer and the Zapper, that scans and eliminates parasites, bacteria, viruses and toxins through positive offset frequencies.
- Antonella Carpenter -- Dr. Carpenter at LaseMed Inc. has an FDA approved cancer treatment called LIESH therapy (Light Induced Enhanced Selective Hyperthermia), using a proprietary photo-dynamic form of laser. Her technology is not embraced by the AMA, however.
- John Holt – Operating out of The Radiowave Clinic in Australia for the past 30 years, Dr. Holt’s treatment consists of an intravenious dose of "glycolytic metabolic inhibitors" (GMI) -- agents that disrupt the metabolism of cancer cells -- immediately prior to exposure to radiowaves of 434 MHz in the ultra-high frequence (UHF) band.
- Ryke Geerd Hamer – Dr. Hamer’s “German New Medicine” (GNM), operates under the premise that every disease, including cancer, originates from an unexpected shock experience, and that all disease can be cured by resolving these underlying emotional traumas. Despite a 95 percent success rate, Dr. Hamer has spent time in prison for refusing to disavow his medical findings and stop treating his patients with his unorthodox techniques, and is currently living in exile, seeking asylum from persecution.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic
Trader Joe's and its like rely on an illusion that I want to point out here.
Most people who shop there are under the illusion that simply replacing one or two unhealthy ingredients with healthier alternatives means they're eating healthy.
Soda is bad for you? Fine, just replace high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar!
Potato chips are bad for you? Fine, just replace the salt in it with sea salt!
Bread is bad for you? Fine, just replace bleached flour with whole wheat flour!
Hamburgers are bad for you? Fine, replace them with veggie burgers made of soy protein!
Peanut butter with additives is bad for you? Fine, replace it with peanut butter made of only peanuts!
Pasta is bad for you? Fine, replace it with organic pasta! This rule also works for milk, and a thousand other things!
Coffee is bad for you? Fine, try grinding it yourself from the bean!
Most of the food there is like that. They take a staple, unhealthy part of the standard diet and replace an ingredient or two and call it healthy.
But, the reason those foods are unhealthy isn't their ingredients, it's what kind of food they are.
So I really worry that stores like Trader Joe's (despite being nice places to find a few things that you can't find elsewhere) are doing more harm than good to people's health by tricking them into thinking they're eating healthier, when they aren't.
It's not entirely the store's fault of course, it's more likely the fault of people who want to feel that they're eating healthier without actually changing their diet in any significant way.
Most people who shop there are under the illusion that simply replacing one or two unhealthy ingredients with healthier alternatives means they're eating healthy.
Soda is bad for you? Fine, just replace high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar!
Potato chips are bad for you? Fine, just replace the salt in it with sea salt!
Bread is bad for you? Fine, just replace bleached flour with whole wheat flour!
Hamburgers are bad for you? Fine, replace them with veggie burgers made of soy protein!
Peanut butter with additives is bad for you? Fine, replace it with peanut butter made of only peanuts!
Pasta is bad for you? Fine, replace it with organic pasta! This rule also works for milk, and a thousand other things!
Coffee is bad for you? Fine, try grinding it yourself from the bean!
Most of the food there is like that. They take a staple, unhealthy part of the standard diet and replace an ingredient or two and call it healthy.
But, the reason those foods are unhealthy isn't their ingredients, it's what kind of food they are.
So I really worry that stores like Trader Joe's (despite being nice places to find a few things that you can't find elsewhere) are doing more harm than good to people's health by tricking them into thinking they're eating healthier, when they aren't.
It's not entirely the store's fault of course, it's more likely the fault of people who want to feel that they're eating healthier without actually changing their diet in any significant way.
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000.
Yes, that is 80 million.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.000188.
Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. (taken from here)
They seemed to intend that as a defense of gun ownership but I think it's really more of a condemnation of doctors. It's pretty scary that almost one in five doctors will kill someone accidentally.
Note that this doesn't include things like trying to save someone and failing, it means just accidental deaths, like mistakenly performing a surgury on person A instead of person B, or stuff like mixing up medical prescriptions; easily avoidable things. Remember the woman who went to a hospital to give birth, and woke up without arms or legs, and the hospital refused to tell her why?
Mercola, you're supposed to be an expert at this stuff!!
"When you destroy its brain – the membrane – the cell dies, just as you would die if your brain was removed. Therefore, killing viruses through the use of resonant frequencies that stresses the cell to the point of breaking its shell is certainly within the realm of reality." (from here)
As I said, sometimes I like some of his articles, and overall I think he's doing more good than harm, but sometimes I wonder what he did in medical school.
"When you destroy its brain – the membrane – the cell dies, just as you would die if your brain was removed. Therefore, killing viruses through the use of resonant frequencies that stresses the cell to the point of breaking its shell is certainly within the realm of reality." (from here)
As I said, sometimes I like some of his articles, and overall I think he's doing more good than harm, but sometimes I wonder what he did in medical school.
Lately I've been losing whatever inclination I had to express thoughts in words. The very idea of writing something has become detestable. EDIT: Let alone writing something as long as this entry.
This might be due to an increasing distrust of the abstract (and all words are abstract, some more than others, but all of them.) I think a good response is to instead only write in a storytelling, pointing way. Truths that exist which cannot be conveyed in that way aren't usually worth conveying.
China will replace the US as a superpower solely on the basis that they eat more omega-3 fats than we do, and because the lack of them is associated with most forms of mental illness and all kinds of neurological troubles. They also don't have HFCS and so on (which is not to say that their diet doesn't have some problems, but it's far better than here). Also, although both the US and China are fascisms (in the sense of an unholy alliance between business and government), but at least theirs is more corrupt, and corruption is usually good for the people of a country because it keeps fascisms weak and ineffectual. Their economy also grows at around 10% a year and ours actually shrinks at around 1.5% a year if you account for standard of living and inflation. I suggest a good time to immigrate there is around 2035, 27 years from now; the relevant stars align around then. By 2050, definitely. To bad I have to wait so long to see how this turns out, but there are interesting things to do in the mean time.
There are all kinds of things happening in the world and it's hard to decide which is the most interesting to follow and work within. Just through proximity and other accidents the ones I follow the most are independent game development, nutrition / scientific alternative medicine, and the ridiculously ineffectual minarchist movement. But they could just as easily have been any of a thousand other things that people are interested in and work within, and although it seems to me that these three may be more important than most of those, anyone with a familiar knowledge of any of those thousand other movements would likely believe likewise. I do think that some may be more important than others, but just that with the bias of knowing some in more intimate detail than others, it's easy to be mistaken. For all I know, the so-called Mexican illegal immigrant invasion or the so-called Jewish banking conspiracies or the people who talk about drunk driving or the war on terrorism or the problems caused by not banning (or banning too many) guns or global warming or abortion or class warfare could be more important than the things I'm interested in are.
There are thousands of things that seem important to a lot of people which are irrelevant, stupid, or only mild curiousities to many other people. I wouldn't even dismiss the possible importance of celebrity culture and the people who intensely follow the activities of movie stars (even those who do so while admitting it's not important), even that kind of stuff could be more important in its possible effects on the world than I or even they realize: it sounds ridiculous, but maybe Clay Aiken really is more important than the torture camps in North Korea, or something (and I don't mean that just humorously, it's possible).
Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but here is how it's possible: people are largely controlled either through pleasure or pain. The more cruder nations tend to use pain to control, the more sophisticated countries tend to use pleasure to control; that goes not only for nations but also for just individual control of one person over another, parents over their children, cult leaders over their cult: the greater and more subtle control is obtained by pleasure rather than pain. Threating to cause someone pain is actually less effective than threatening to cut off their pleasure; psychology has shown this in studies as well. The Victorians as an example prevented people from having too much sexual pleasure, whereas other societies did the opposite and tried to overwhelm with too much of it. So while North Korea uses torture camps and force to keep its people chained, other governments have celebrities -- and many other things, such as pornography or various customs and holidays and economic products like drugs (illegal, prescription, or legal) -- to keep its people not chained but in a way enraptured.
And I'm not saying it's preferable to live under the former than the latter, or that NK does not use pleasure (think of those perfect birthday dances they have) or that we do not use pain (look at all the brutality in our prisons), just that one should recognize the essential similarity between the two methods to reduce the extent to which one is controlled, either by pain or pleasure, at least when you don't think it's a good idea to be controlled in a certain way (and it's usually not). Left to their own devices people in nature do not naturally seek out to maximize their pleasure to the extent that people do in many industrial democracies, and when they occasionally do they don't feel as guilty about it as the civilized do, but above all they don't drastically change their principles or their lifestyle or what or who is important to them just to maximize pleasure the way that's routinely done here. Pleasure is a mechanism and when it's working correctly most every-day things are pleasurable, just staring at the snow fall or doing a good day's work or just waking up or going to sleep. Requiring specific objects or activities or substances, at cost, in order to have pleasure is strange and inhuman when you think about it, it's kind of the inverse of torture, where there's pain for the sake of pain rather than pain for the sake of avoiding every-day things that are harmful.
So! What I think is good: ever-constant pleasure from every day life rather than its rise and fall, avoiding exterior behavior controls most of the time which limit you, being interested in a few domains while recognizing that they probably are no more important than the domains others are interested in, and moving to China around 2035.
This might be due to an increasing distrust of the abstract (and all words are abstract, some more than others, but all of them.) I think a good response is to instead only write in a storytelling, pointing way. Truths that exist which cannot be conveyed in that way aren't usually worth conveying.
China will replace the US as a superpower solely on the basis that they eat more omega-3 fats than we do, and because the lack of them is associated with most forms of mental illness and all kinds of neurological troubles. They also don't have HFCS and so on (which is not to say that their diet doesn't have some problems, but it's far better than here). Also, although both the US and China are fascisms (in the sense of an unholy alliance between business and government), but at least theirs is more corrupt, and corruption is usually good for the people of a country because it keeps fascisms weak and ineffectual. Their economy also grows at around 10% a year and ours actually shrinks at around 1.5% a year if you account for standard of living and inflation. I suggest a good time to immigrate there is around 2035, 27 years from now; the relevant stars align around then. By 2050, definitely. To bad I have to wait so long to see how this turns out, but there are interesting things to do in the mean time.
There are all kinds of things happening in the world and it's hard to decide which is the most interesting to follow and work within. Just through proximity and other accidents the ones I follow the most are independent game development, nutrition / scientific alternative medicine, and the ridiculously ineffectual minarchist movement. But they could just as easily have been any of a thousand other things that people are interested in and work within, and although it seems to me that these three may be more important than most of those, anyone with a familiar knowledge of any of those thousand other movements would likely believe likewise. I do think that some may be more important than others, but just that with the bias of knowing some in more intimate detail than others, it's easy to be mistaken. For all I know, the so-called Mexican illegal immigrant invasion or the so-called Jewish banking conspiracies or the people who talk about drunk driving or the war on terrorism or the problems caused by not banning (or banning too many) guns or global warming or abortion or class warfare could be more important than the things I'm interested in are.
There are thousands of things that seem important to a lot of people which are irrelevant, stupid, or only mild curiousities to many other people. I wouldn't even dismiss the possible importance of celebrity culture and the people who intensely follow the activities of movie stars (even those who do so while admitting it's not important), even that kind of stuff could be more important in its possible effects on the world than I or even they realize: it sounds ridiculous, but maybe Clay Aiken really is more important than the torture camps in North Korea, or something (and I don't mean that just humorously, it's possible).
Okay, that sounds ridiculous, but here is how it's possible: people are largely controlled either through pleasure or pain. The more cruder nations tend to use pain to control, the more sophisticated countries tend to use pleasure to control; that goes not only for nations but also for just individual control of one person over another, parents over their children, cult leaders over their cult: the greater and more subtle control is obtained by pleasure rather than pain. Threating to cause someone pain is actually less effective than threatening to cut off their pleasure; psychology has shown this in studies as well. The Victorians as an example prevented people from having too much sexual pleasure, whereas other societies did the opposite and tried to overwhelm with too much of it. So while North Korea uses torture camps and force to keep its people chained, other governments have celebrities -- and many other things, such as pornography or various customs and holidays and economic products like drugs (illegal, prescription, or legal) -- to keep its people not chained but in a way enraptured.
And I'm not saying it's preferable to live under the former than the latter, or that NK does not use pleasure (think of those perfect birthday dances they have) or that we do not use pain (look at all the brutality in our prisons), just that one should recognize the essential similarity between the two methods to reduce the extent to which one is controlled, either by pain or pleasure, at least when you don't think it's a good idea to be controlled in a certain way (and it's usually not). Left to their own devices people in nature do not naturally seek out to maximize their pleasure to the extent that people do in many industrial democracies, and when they occasionally do they don't feel as guilty about it as the civilized do, but above all they don't drastically change their principles or their lifestyle or what or who is important to them just to maximize pleasure the way that's routinely done here. Pleasure is a mechanism and when it's working correctly most every-day things are pleasurable, just staring at the snow fall or doing a good day's work or just waking up or going to sleep. Requiring specific objects or activities or substances, at cost, in order to have pleasure is strange and inhuman when you think about it, it's kind of the inverse of torture, where there's pain for the sake of pain rather than pain for the sake of avoiding every-day things that are harmful.
So! What I think is good: ever-constant pleasure from every day life rather than its rise and fall, avoiding exterior behavior controls most of the time which limit you, being interested in a few domains while recognizing that they probably are no more important than the domains others are interested in, and moving to China around 2035.
"Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest lasting lifestyle in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited us from outer space where trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a twenty-four hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. It the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day,from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p.m., we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture's glittering facade and that have so far eluded us?" - Jared Diamond (pdf file)
Yesterday I ate too many honey-coated cashews and had that hypoglycemic reaction which causes fuzzy-mindedness for the day; hopefully this'll be the last time I have so much sugar at once (I probably should have just bought plain cashews instead).
I mother just bought a bunch of breakfast food and told me I could choose what I like -- but it was all eggs, cheese, bacon, bagels, etc. -- when will she learn that I don't like to eat that stuff? I hate disappointing her by not eating though, so it always makes me seem ruder than I want to be when I refuse foods I know to be harmful.
And I know this is subject to selection bias, but lately I've been noticing that all the most (for lack of a better word, I don't mean to imply a supernatural) spiritually developed people I know are also those that have the best diets. Whereas all the ones caught up in abstractions and religions and ideologies and empty concepts have terrible diets. There's likely causation both ways rather than one causing the other though.
I mother just bought a bunch of breakfast food and told me I could choose what I like -- but it was all eggs, cheese, bacon, bagels, etc. -- when will she learn that I don't like to eat that stuff? I hate disappointing her by not eating though, so it always makes me seem ruder than I want to be when I refuse foods I know to be harmful.
And I know this is subject to selection bias, but lately I've been noticing that all the most (for lack of a better word, I don't mean to imply a supernatural) spiritually developed people I know are also those that have the best diets. Whereas all the ones caught up in abstractions and religions and ideologies and empty concepts have terrible diets. There's likely causation both ways rather than one causing the other though.
Documentary on the ties between the FDA and pharmaceutical companies.
Mercola's not my favorite alternative health writer (he tends to make simple mistakes, his anti-Microwave article is a good example) but this is a nice video.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-inten
Since I started exercising semi-regularly again in 2008 one problem I faced was that the studies and proponents of aerobic exercise tend to say that it's best to achieve near-maximum heart rate for 15-20 minutes for maximum benefit, and I couldn't seem to reach that: I'd get tired after 3 or 5 minutes and couldn't reach 15-20 (I use a trampoline, so I don't know if I'd do better using more typical aerobic exercise).
Then I came across HIIT (link above), which says that taking short breaks of 1-2 minutes every few minutes works better than maintaining the exercise for a longer 15-20 min. In particular, interval training produced:
* 40% increase in glycogen
* 100% increase resting ATP levels
* 65% increase in resting phosphocreatine levels
* 35% increase in resting creatine levels
* 35% increase in maximum lactate levels
* 50% increase in max stroke volume
* 75% increase in max cardiac output
* 45% decrease in resting heart rate
* 107% increase in VO2max
* 25% increase in heart volume
* 30% increase in blood volume
* 30% decrease in body fat
Whereas normal intensity / traditional aerobics (without the higher intensity + rest breaks) has more moderate benefits than those. So I think I'm going to try HIIT with the trampoline: 3-5 minutes, then 1-2 min break, with 3-4 repetitions.
I'm also doing http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/shenan
Since I started exercising semi-regularly again in 2008 one problem I faced was that the studies and proponents of aerobic exercise tend to say that it's best to achieve near-maximum heart rate for 15-20 minutes for maximum benefit, and I couldn't seem to reach that: I'd get tired after 3 or 5 minutes and couldn't reach 15-20 (I use a trampoline, so I don't know if I'd do better using more typical aerobic exercise).
Then I came across HIIT (link above), which says that taking short breaks of 1-2 minutes every few minutes works better than maintaining the exercise for a longer 15-20 min. In particular, interval training produced:
* 40% increase in glycogen
* 100% increase resting ATP levels
* 65% increase in resting phosphocreatine levels
* 35% increase in resting creatine levels
* 35% increase in maximum lactate levels
* 50% increase in max stroke volume
* 75% increase in max cardiac output
* 45% decrease in resting heart rate
* 107% increase in VO2max
* 25% increase in heart volume
* 30% increase in blood volume
* 30% decrease in body fat
Whereas normal intensity / traditional aerobics (without the higher intensity + rest breaks) has more moderate benefits than those. So I think I'm going to try HIIT with the trampoline: 3-5 minutes, then 1-2 min break, with 3-4 repetitions.
I'm also doing http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/shenan
I'm not a woman, but those of you who are might be interested in this -- apparently there was a study that showed that wearing bras leads to breast cancer.
* Women who wore their bras 24 hours per day had a 3 out of 4 chance of developing breast cancer (in their study, n=2056 for the cancer group and n=2674 for the standard group).
* Women who wore bras more than 12 hour per day but not to bed had a 1 out of 7 risk.
* Women who wore their bras less than 12 hours per day had a 1 out of 152 risk.
* Women who wore bras rarely or never had a 1 out of 168 chance of getting breast cancer. The overall difference between 24 hour wearing and not at all was a 125-fold difference.
I think this is kinda a ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
newedition style entry in retrospect.
The top 10 health stories of 2007, from the editors of the Harvard Health Letter
1. Drug safety failures. This year, rosiglitazone (Avandia), a diabetes drug, became the latest medication found to have serious side effects that weren’t apparent when it was approved by the FDA. The FDA needs more money and resources to conduct studies of drugs after they’ve been approved for sale — and then the clout to take prompt action if safety problems are identified.
Harvard, did you ever consider that that is the point? The FDA doesn't approve drugs that are actually safe, it only approves and promotes the harmful ones. Giving more power to a tool of the drug companies is a bad idea. Each year the FDA gets more power and each year more people die from the side effects of drugs; it's now reached the point where, each year, more people die from the side effects of FDA-approved drugs than heart disease or cancer. Yet the FDA makes it illegal to claim that various natural foods and vitamins cure or prevent disease, even when such claims have studies behind them. I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA occasionally intentionally allows deadly drugs through just to get this reaction and grab even more power.
2. Genome-wide association studies. These studies take advantage of unique “flags” flying in each “neighborhood” of the vast genome. Researchers find the flags associated with disease and then conduct an intensive search for genetic miscues just in that neighborhood. This process is a lot more efficient than a dragnet through the entire genome. This year, genome-wide association studies have identified genes associated with type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and resistance to HIV infection, to name a few examples.
I think this is a good advancement but I don't think we need (eventual, expensive) genetic engineering to cure AIDS and diabetes and MS, they are preventable already far more cheaply.
3. Genome sequencing in a jiffy — and cheap. Sequencing a genome — identifying all the chemical base pairs of someone’s genes — is getting a lot faster and cheaper. Scientists can now shatter the DNA of the genome into millions of pieces and simultaneously sequence the letters. Then, computers knit the data into a single sequence. Within a decade, the price of sequencing a genome may drop to $1,000, say some experts. Cheap genome sequencing may soon usher in a new era of personalized medicine, with health advice and medical treatments tailored to each individual’s genes.
$1k is still too expensive, although it'll be an improvement from the current $150k or so. What will really improve things is a hand-held reader which can be bought in stores for $20.
4. Waking up to a new health habit: Sleep. The evidence has reached critical mass—getting between seven and nine hours of sleep a night is one of the pillars of good health, along with physical activity and eating a healthful diet. Poor sleep has been linked to health problems ranging from diabetes to heart disease to obesity.
I'm wary of studies like this, especially because humans in their natural state do not sleep long periods of 7-9 hours a day, most of them sleep twice a day for around 4 hours each; this is still common in a lot of countries and was common in Europe only a few centuries ago, and it is how babies sleep until we train them out of it. The 7-9 hours a day thing was only promoted with the onset of the industrial revolution, to facilitate the work-day, and I have trouble believing that it's more healthy than 2 periods of 4 hours a day (and no major studies have been done on to compare the two).
5. Health is going global. The trend toward globalization that has affected so many aspects of the American economy is now changing American medicine. Hospitals are creating global health residency programs. Philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are pouring billions into efforts to combat disease on a global scale. This worldwide outlook comes from more than just altruism — AIDS, avian flu, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have shown that many health problems have little respect for borders.
This process is real but too slow to be considered "news" since it's been gradually moving toward this at about the same rate for decades. The WHO (World Health Organization) has existed for decades; it did the same things against Ebola and so on back before SARS and avian flu weren't even issues; if you want to go back even further, the world eradicated smallpox through a global medical effort.
6. Cooling off inflammation. TNF-alpha blockers, drugs that interfere with a protein that contributes to inflammation, have given doctors and patients an important new treatment choice for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. Daunting price tags and serious side effects make the TNF-alpha blockers less than ideal, but by tackling inflammation at its roots, they may light the way for a new approach to treating many diseases with an inflammatory component — even Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
I think undetectable low-level inflammation is a lot more serious than people have been taking it so it's good to see it being taken more seriously now. Though I think diet is more important as an anti-inflammatory and should be the first resort.
7. Covering the uninsured. With health care costs continuing to increase and employers cutting back on coverage, lawmakers are filling in the gaps. Illinois has created the All Kids program to cover children. Massachusetts law mandates that everyone in the state must purchase health insurance, and other states may follow suit. The Medicare Part D program, despite its flaws, has succeeded in extending prescription drug coverage to seniors. Time will tell whether these incremental steps will replace or merely delay more sweeping reform of a system that leaves 47 million Americans without insurance.
I've never had health insurance and I don't really see a difference between those that do and those that don't except that those that do are wasting their money. People without health insurance don't die any earlier and aren't any sicker than those with health insurance, yet it's treated as some type of disaster that 47 million survive fine without it. Health insurance is a way for the medical industry to take control of people by saying they're the only way to treat disease, it's a monopoly cartel and universal health insurance would be even more of a monopoly cartel. That Massachusetts law that Romney enacted was horrible because it forced people who didn't have it and didn't want it to buy it for themselves or be fined. The more of a monopoly the pharmaceutical-industrial complex gets over medicine, the more unhealthy people will be. About 95% of what medical insurance is used for is to pay for prescription drugs that do more harm than good.
8. Tying reimbursement to quality health care. Momentum is building for an array of incentives for doctors and hospitals to provide higher-quality medical care. Medicare this year started paying doctors a bonus for reporting certain quality measures, and its experiment to pay hospitals performance bonuses is a success, according to most experts. Some health plans are using quality-of-care disincentives by refusing to pay for care related to complications from certain types of medical errors. And some providers are instituting rigorous quality-of-care programs on their own — and agreeing not to charge for care related to certain surgical complications. Many details have yet to be worked out, but this approach could both improve health outcomes and reduce costs.
It's good to see a few minor incentives for higher-quality medical care appearing, but what about the real incentive: competition over customers? If there's only one type of medical care, and if every hospital treats disease in the same way and is taught the same way and goes by the same AMA-written book, it'll never improve because the monopoly won't be competing with anything.
9. A better mammogram? Two studies this year found that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are better than other techniques at identifying breast cancers in high-risk women. The American Cancer Society revised its screening recommendations to say that women at high risk for breast cancer should get a breast MRI every year, in addition to a regular mammogram.
This one is good, although promoting folic acid use would be a good idea too.
10. Peeking into the brain for disease clues. New imaging technologies are letting researchers “see” inside the brain and watch its inner workings. The hope is these tests will mean more certain diagnoses for many conditions and, eventually, better treatments. One example: University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed a method of positron emission tomography (PET) scanning that identifies beta amyloid, the protein fragment many researchers believe is the main cause of Alzheimer’s disease. This may provide a way to detect Alzheimer’s before symptoms appear, paving the way for preventive treatments.
Better ways to see everything going on in the body are always good.
newedition style entry in retrospect.The top 10 health stories of 2007, from the editors of the Harvard Health Letter
1. Drug safety failures. This year, rosiglitazone (Avandia), a diabetes drug, became the latest medication found to have serious side effects that weren’t apparent when it was approved by the FDA. The FDA needs more money and resources to conduct studies of drugs after they’ve been approved for sale — and then the clout to take prompt action if safety problems are identified.
Harvard, did you ever consider that that is the point? The FDA doesn't approve drugs that are actually safe, it only approves and promotes the harmful ones. Giving more power to a tool of the drug companies is a bad idea. Each year the FDA gets more power and each year more people die from the side effects of drugs; it's now reached the point where, each year, more people die from the side effects of FDA-approved drugs than heart disease or cancer. Yet the FDA makes it illegal to claim that various natural foods and vitamins cure or prevent disease, even when such claims have studies behind them. I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA occasionally intentionally allows deadly drugs through just to get this reaction and grab even more power.
2. Genome-wide association studies. These studies take advantage of unique “flags” flying in each “neighborhood” of the vast genome. Researchers find the flags associated with disease and then conduct an intensive search for genetic miscues just in that neighborhood. This process is a lot more efficient than a dragnet through the entire genome. This year, genome-wide association studies have identified genes associated with type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and resistance to HIV infection, to name a few examples.
I think this is a good advancement but I don't think we need (eventual, expensive) genetic engineering to cure AIDS and diabetes and MS, they are preventable already far more cheaply.
3. Genome sequencing in a jiffy — and cheap. Sequencing a genome — identifying all the chemical base pairs of someone’s genes — is getting a lot faster and cheaper. Scientists can now shatter the DNA of the genome into millions of pieces and simultaneously sequence the letters. Then, computers knit the data into a single sequence. Within a decade, the price of sequencing a genome may drop to $1,000, say some experts. Cheap genome sequencing may soon usher in a new era of personalized medicine, with health advice and medical treatments tailored to each individual’s genes.
$1k is still too expensive, although it'll be an improvement from the current $150k or so. What will really improve things is a hand-held reader which can be bought in stores for $20.
4. Waking up to a new health habit: Sleep. The evidence has reached critical mass—getting between seven and nine hours of sleep a night is one of the pillars of good health, along with physical activity and eating a healthful diet. Poor sleep has been linked to health problems ranging from diabetes to heart disease to obesity.
I'm wary of studies like this, especially because humans in their natural state do not sleep long periods of 7-9 hours a day, most of them sleep twice a day for around 4 hours each; this is still common in a lot of countries and was common in Europe only a few centuries ago, and it is how babies sleep until we train them out of it. The 7-9 hours a day thing was only promoted with the onset of the industrial revolution, to facilitate the work-day, and I have trouble believing that it's more healthy than 2 periods of 4 hours a day (and no major studies have been done on to compare the two).
5. Health is going global. The trend toward globalization that has affected so many aspects of the American economy is now changing American medicine. Hospitals are creating global health residency programs. Philanthropic organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are pouring billions into efforts to combat disease on a global scale. This worldwide outlook comes from more than just altruism — AIDS, avian flu, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have shown that many health problems have little respect for borders.
This process is real but too slow to be considered "news" since it's been gradually moving toward this at about the same rate for decades. The WHO (World Health Organization) has existed for decades; it did the same things against Ebola and so on back before SARS and avian flu weren't even issues; if you want to go back even further, the world eradicated smallpox through a global medical effort.
6. Cooling off inflammation. TNF-alpha blockers, drugs that interfere with a protein that contributes to inflammation, have given doctors and patients an important new treatment choice for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. Daunting price tags and serious side effects make the TNF-alpha blockers less than ideal, but by tackling inflammation at its roots, they may light the way for a new approach to treating many diseases with an inflammatory component — even Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
I think undetectable low-level inflammation is a lot more serious than people have been taking it so it's good to see it being taken more seriously now. Though I think diet is more important as an anti-inflammatory and should be the first resort.
7. Covering the uninsured. With health care costs continuing to increase and employers cutting back on coverage, lawmakers are filling in the gaps. Illinois has created the All Kids program to cover children. Massachusetts law mandates that everyone in the state must purchase health insurance, and other states may follow suit. The Medicare Part D program, despite its flaws, has succeeded in extending prescription drug coverage to seniors. Time will tell whether these incremental steps will replace or merely delay more sweeping reform of a system that leaves 47 million Americans without insurance.
I've never had health insurance and I don't really see a difference between those that do and those that don't except that those that do are wasting their money. People without health insurance don't die any earlier and aren't any sicker than those with health insurance, yet it's treated as some type of disaster that 47 million survive fine without it. Health insurance is a way for the medical industry to take control of people by saying they're the only way to treat disease, it's a monopoly cartel and universal health insurance would be even more of a monopoly cartel. That Massachusetts law that Romney enacted was horrible because it forced people who didn't have it and didn't want it to buy it for themselves or be fined. The more of a monopoly the pharmaceutical-industrial complex gets over medicine, the more unhealthy people will be. About 95% of what medical insurance is used for is to pay for prescription drugs that do more harm than good.
8. Tying reimbursement to quality health care. Momentum is building for an array of incentives for doctors and hospitals to provide higher-quality medical care. Medicare this year started paying doctors a bonus for reporting certain quality measures, and its experiment to pay hospitals performance bonuses is a success, according to most experts. Some health plans are using quality-of-care disincentives by refusing to pay for care related to complications from certain types of medical errors. And some providers are instituting rigorous quality-of-care programs on their own — and agreeing not to charge for care related to certain surgical complications. Many details have yet to be worked out, but this approach could both improve health outcomes and reduce costs.
It's good to see a few minor incentives for higher-quality medical care appearing, but what about the real incentive: competition over customers? If there's only one type of medical care, and if every hospital treats disease in the same way and is taught the same way and goes by the same AMA-written book, it'll never improve because the monopoly won't be competing with anything.
9. A better mammogram? Two studies this year found that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are better than other techniques at identifying breast cancers in high-risk women. The American Cancer Society revised its screening recommendations to say that women at high risk for breast cancer should get a breast MRI every year, in addition to a regular mammogram.
This one is good, although promoting folic acid use would be a good idea too.
10. Peeking into the brain for disease clues. New imaging technologies are letting researchers “see” inside the brain and watch its inner workings. The hope is these tests will mean more certain diagnoses for many conditions and, eventually, better treatments. One example: University of Pittsburgh researchers have developed a method of positron emission tomography (PET) scanning that identifies beta amyloid, the protein fragment many researchers believe is the main cause of Alzheimer’s disease. This may provide a way to detect Alzheimer’s before symptoms appear, paving the way for preventive treatments.
Better ways to see everything going on in the body are always good.
My cousin Carrie and I went to a Wynand's writer's club thing just now and did a real-life bkfiction (although we only had 15 minutes as opposed to the usual 30), I might transcribe mine eventually, though it wasn't that good. 15 minutes is not enough to create a plot and characters and setting and all that, but that's the point I think. We walked a long way, something like 40 blocks, instead of taking the subway (which we couldn't find an entrance to). I met kevincarter and billy (does he have a LJ?), Wynand's friends, they're all great writers. Wynand told a hilarious story about... I can't even describe it without ruining it, he should post it in LJ.
What was most memorable about that day (so far), besides Wynand's story, was Wynand talking about Miracle Jones's (who was there for a bit but had to go) various medical conditions, including infected tonsils and kidney stones. I worry that such great people will all be and are being constantly day by day destroyed simply through ridiculous diseases, all of them. That we allow disease and old age to kill people every year without a worldwide Manhattan Project (we could use some of the nearly 1 trillion a year spent on our foreign entanglements perhaps) to cure all disease (and it's within reach of such a project, if it only had the funding) is a shame, especially when you consider all the people involved in such trivial-by-comparison enterprises like dental aesthetics or game development or whatever. I know not everyone wants to live forever and even people who are diseased or dying often don't take healthful measures which could minimize it but people should have the option, nobody should have to be killed or in suffering just because of their genetics or because some virus found them.
What was most memorable about that day (so far), besides Wynand's story, was Wynand talking about Miracle Jones's (who was there for a bit but had to go) various medical conditions, including infected tonsils and kidney stones. I worry that such great people will all be and are being constantly day by day destroyed simply through ridiculous diseases, all of them. That we allow disease and old age to kill people every year without a worldwide Manhattan Project (we could use some of the nearly 1 trillion a year spent on our foreign entanglements perhaps) to cure all disease (and it's within reach of such a project, if it only had the funding) is a shame, especially when you consider all the people involved in such trivial-by-comparison enterprises like dental aesthetics or game development or whatever. I know not everyone wants to live forever and even people who are diseased or dying often don't take healthful measures which could minimize it but people should have the option, nobody should have to be killed or in suffering just because of their genetics or because some virus found them.
Still feeling sick! Fever etc. I hate this, no energy.
I hope I'm better in time for the Ron Paul rally in NYC on Saturday...
Apparently there's a new Japanese study out that shows that CoQ10 (a co-enzyme related to mitochondrial energy release) extends lifetime in nematodes, and now there's currently one underway for mice by my favorite health organization lef.org which so far has been pretty promising but is still in progress. If the study is positive and it's true that it extends maximum lifespan rather than only average lifespan it'd become the only thing besides caloric restriction which has been shown to do that in mammals.
Unfortunately even if it's true there is no real reason for young people to take CoQ10 because when we're young we have the ability to make it easily, it's just as we get older that we lose that ability, so it wouldn't make sense to take it while you're still in your 20s or something.
One problem I've noticed with paying attention to healthy things is that although it's often clear what's healthy and what isn't it's not always clear which is more healthy. For example, there are various studies showing healthful effects of green tea, red wine, even coffee. But which of those is better than the others? There are no studies (that I know of) that pit different foods against each other in competition.
Okay, that's not totally right, I did hear of one that did pit a bunch of different fruits against each other in terms of antioxidant strength (and blueberries were the victor, they have the strongest antioxidants per mass of all the commonly eaten fruits). But there should be more studies like that, it'd help in food choice.
And I know that what's true statistically in studies isn't always true on the individual level; for instance oatmeal may be generally good but it's not good for people who are allergic to oats or people whose bodies may not be as good as other people at digesting it, but it'd be a starting point.
They could easily be done even with general surveys; for instance you could survey what type of beans people eat and what amounts and compare that to reports on their health and come away with, say, lentils or chick peas being the most healthy type of bean and soy bean being the worst (that's not an actual finding, to be clear, just an example of what they *might* find if they bothered to look). The same could be done for different food categories; fish, nuts, cooking oils, etc.
I hope I'm better in time for the Ron Paul rally in NYC on Saturday...
Apparently there's a new Japanese study out that shows that CoQ10 (a co-enzyme related to mitochondrial energy release) extends lifetime in nematodes, and now there's currently one underway for mice by my favorite health organization lef.org which so far has been pretty promising but is still in progress. If the study is positive and it's true that it extends maximum lifespan rather than only average lifespan it'd become the only thing besides caloric restriction which has been shown to do that in mammals.
Unfortunately even if it's true there is no real reason for young people to take CoQ10 because when we're young we have the ability to make it easily, it's just as we get older that we lose that ability, so it wouldn't make sense to take it while you're still in your 20s or something.
One problem I've noticed with paying attention to healthy things is that although it's often clear what's healthy and what isn't it's not always clear which is more healthy. For example, there are various studies showing healthful effects of green tea, red wine, even coffee. But which of those is better than the others? There are no studies (that I know of) that pit different foods against each other in competition.
Okay, that's not totally right, I did hear of one that did pit a bunch of different fruits against each other in terms of antioxidant strength (and blueberries were the victor, they have the strongest antioxidants per mass of all the commonly eaten fruits). But there should be more studies like that, it'd help in food choice.
And I know that what's true statistically in studies isn't always true on the individual level; for instance oatmeal may be generally good but it's not good for people who are allergic to oats or people whose bodies may not be as good as other people at digesting it, but it'd be a starting point.
They could easily be done even with general surveys; for instance you could survey what type of beans people eat and what amounts and compare that to reports on their health and come away with, say, lentils or chick peas being the most healthy type of bean and soy bean being the worst (that's not an actual finding, to be clear, just an example of what they *might* find if they bothered to look). The same could be done for different food categories; fish, nuts, cooking oils, etc.
Syndicate
