ClevelandClinic — May 12, 2010 — "Innovation has made Cleveland Clinic a world leader in medicine, and is the only true long term solution to high quality affordable healthcare. The founders of Cleveland Clinic launched a revolutionary model of medicine, collaborative, patient centered, dedicated to innovation."
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NatureVideoChannel — January 27, 2010 — Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman has ditched his trainers and started running barefoot. His research shows that barefoot runners, who tend to land on their fore-foot, generate less impact shock than runners in sports shoes who land heel first. This makes barefoot running comfortable and could minimize running-related injuries. Find the original research here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature08723
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From the NYTimes:
Virtually unknown outside of the Amazon two decades ago, and not exported from Brazil — the major producer — until 2000, açaí berries have become famous around the world, riding the wave of the antioxidant craze and rain-forest chic.
Just a few years ago, farmers had trouble getting rid of the açaí that grows.
Diego Lopes, a 21-year-old açaí processor in Brazil, says he has açaí with lunch and dinner every day. “Fifteen years ago, it was like beans for us,” he said. “Now, it’s more expensive than beans."
“Think of it as a cheeseburger,” Mr. Lopes said, explaining to an American reporter. “You can’t have a meal there without a cheeseburger, right?”
The velvety texture of the thicker varieties is wonderful, but the taste is more — how to put this? — earthy. O.K., it tastes like dirt. Making matters worse, the manioc flour that’s often mixed in to thicken it has the consistency of sand.
References:
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"The harder the experts try to save Americans, the fatter we get. Officials responded by advising Americans to shun fat, which became the official villain of the national dietary guidelines during the 1980s and 1990s. The anti-fat campaign definitely made an impact on the marketing of food, but as we gobbled up all the new low-fat products, we kept getting fatter. Eventually, in 2000, the experts revised the dietary guidelines and conceded that their anti-fat advice may have contributed to diabetes and obesity by unintentionally encouraging Americans to eat more calories.
“When you reduce salt, you reduce blood pressure, but there can also be other adverse and unintended consequences. As more data have accumulated, it’s less and less supportive of the case for salt reduction, but the advocates seem more determined than ever to change policy.”
References:
Findings - When It Comes to Salt, No Rights or Wrongs. Yet. - NYTimes.com.
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Thomas Moyer, Ph.D., from Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, describes the four basic categories of patients as identified through this test, and how the doses of the blood-thinner warfarin would typically be adjusted to reflect differences in patients' metabolism of warfarin and also their sensitivity, to prevent stroke or hospitalization due to excessive bleeding.
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Childhood onset diabetes is associated with increasing birth weight, equivalent to a 7% increase in risk for every 1000 g in weight.
Caesarean section increases the risk by around 20%.
The risk of childhood onset diabetes increases with maternal age: 5% for each five years of age.
References:
Maternal age and diabetes in childhood. BMJ 2010;340:c623.
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From the NYTimes:
Wrong: Sitting at your cubicle. Better: Walking while clicking and talking.
Your chair is your enemy.
It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death.
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According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), farm-raised salmon has 16 times the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as wild-caught salmon. That’s because farm-raised salmon are often fed contaminated fish meal, which builds up in salmon’s fatty tissue.
Chilean-farmed fish had lower levels of toxins than fish raised in the U.S., Scotland, Canada and Norway. Those tested from Scotland had such high levels that the EWG recommended it be eaten no more than once per month.
References:
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A UK study analysing samples from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome has found no evidence of a link with a retrovirus (XMRV). The virus was first described in 2006.
Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, often report that their condition—a mix of symptoms including extreme fatigue—began after an otherwise normal viral infection.
The Gift of Time is a short film about the doctors who discovered the XMRV virus and the breakthru potential for prostate cancer.
References:
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Walters announced that she will undergo surgery to replace a "faulty" heart valve later this week.
"You know how I always say to you how healthy I am. ... I've never missed a day's work," she began. "Later this week, I'm going to have surgery to replace one faulty heart valve."
From her description, the valve defect sounds like aortic stenosis. For a variety of reasons, mitral stenosis is a less likely possibility in the differential diagnosis.
Best wishes for successful surgery and speedy recovery!
References:
Barbara Walters to Undergo Heart Surgery. ABC.
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From Consumer Reports health blog:
Small toys and foods that are choking hazards should carry warning labels - and some hot dog brands already do.
About 17% of food-related asphyxiations were caused by hot dogs. In total, 41% were caused by food items including:
Food manufacturers should design new foods and redesign existing foods to avoid shapes, sizes, textures and other characteristics that increase choking risk to children, to the extent possible.
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From the British tabloid Daily Mail:
"Sometimes we forget just how short and precious our time on this planet really is. It's for this reason that John Lewis's new television ad seems to have struck an uncharacteristic chord.
You won't find many people admitting to crying over the usual flood of formulaic adverts on our screens - yet this 'moving' ad has got Britain talking - and sobbing into their breakfast bowls.
At 91 seconds long, and costing £6 million, the ad shows the the life cycle of a woman from birth to old-age - infancy, a girl's birthday party, a clumsy kiss in a university corridor, marriage, pregnancy, parenthood and the path into old age."
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Cocoa beans fresh from the tree are exceptionally rich in flavanols. Unfortunately, during conventional chocolate making, this high antioxidant capacity is greatly reduced due to manufacturing processes.
The researchers evaluated the photoprotective potential of chocolate consumption, comparing:
- conventional dark chocolate
- specially produced chocolate with preserved high flavanol (HF) levels.
A double-blind in vivo study in 30 healthy subjects was conducted, 15 subjects were randomly assigned to either a high flavanol (HF) or low flavanol (LF) chocolate group and consumed a 20 g portion of their allocated chocolate daily.
The minimal erythema dose (MED) was assessed at baseline and after 12 weeks.
In the high flavanol (HF) chocolate group the mean MED more than doubled after 12 weeks of chocolate consumption, while in the LF chocolate group, the MED remained without significant change.
The authors concluded that regular consumption of a chocolate rich in flavanols confers significant photoprotection and can thus be effective at protecting human skin from harmful UV effects. However, conventional chocolate has no such effect.
Video: Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday.
References:
Eating chocolate can significantly protect the skin from UV light. Williams S, Tamburic S, Lally C. J Cosmet Dermatol. 2009 Sep;8(3):169-73.
Link via @DrShock.
Image source: Wikipedia.
Related:
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According to a new study, if you devote your lunch hour to a nap, you may perform and learn better in the afternoon.
Napping at midday, when the brain's ability to learn may have deteriorated, may clear the brain's memory "storage area" and make room for new information.
In the study, the nap group was given the chance for a 90-minute siesta at 2 p.m.; the no-nap group was asked to stay awake.
People in the group which didn't nap had a 10% reduction in their learning capacity. The people who had a nap improved their ability to learn by 10% (not much).
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35% of UpToDate topics are updated every four months. The editors select a small number of the most important updates and share them via "What's new" page. These selections are changed with each major release of UpToDate, in March, July and November. See these updates by clicking on the specialty you are interested in.
The page does not provide RSS feed for the different specialties. One solution is to copy/paste the URL address of each subspecialty page you are interested in the Google Reader "Add a subscription" field (top left corner). Google Reader will automatically create a RSS feed from this "feedless" page.
References:
UTD Contents: What's New
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More than a quarter of primary care doctors reported being "burnt out," in part due to worsening time pressures and a chaotic work pace, which were "strongly associated with low physician satisfaction."
300-400 doctors in the United States kill themselves every year, or roughly 1 per day. Male doctors have suicide rates 1.4 times that of the general population, while female doctors have twice the rate of depression and 2.3 times the suicide rate when compared with women who are not physicians.
References:
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HDL levels lower than 40 mg/dL are considered a risk factor for heart disease, while levels of 60 mg/dL or higher are thought to be optimal.
Omega-3 fats, for instance, have been linked to lower risks of age-related vision loss and dementia among older adults.
References:
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"Dr. Choi has more than 3000 Facebook friends, many of whom are patients and colleagues.
But he draws the line at talking about cases with colleagues or sending diagnoses or test results to patients on networking sites. "I can't do any patient care using their messaging or using the site because it's not HIPAA-compliant," Dr. Choi says. "I'll pick up the phone to discuss a case."
Because doctors can be hesitant to share their e-mail addresses -- and regular e-mail is not secure to HIPAA standards -- it's not unheard of for people to find their doctors on Facebook. But the doctors interviewed generally say they avoid making diagnoses or communicating test results over the Internet."
References:
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280 YouTube Channels
382 Facebook pages
470 Twitter Accounts
82 Blogs
Twitter is the easiest and blogs are the most difficult and time-consuming social media channel, respectively. This explains the difference in numbers to some extent - 470 Twitter Accounts vs. only 82 Blogs.
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Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser talk to NPR about the fun and the challenge of capturing real-life stories in six little words.
Some examples related to medicine:
Alzheimer's: meeting new people every day.
Phil Skversky
After cancer, I became a semicolon.
Anthony R. Cardno
Normal person becomes psychotic on Twitter.
Robin Slick
Yale at 16, downhill from there.
Anita Kawatra
References:
Can You Tell Your Life Story In Exactly Six Words? NPR, 2010.
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