Category: health

Health, healthcare, science of food, and related topics

New Artificial Bone Made of Wood

Seth Anderson0 comment

Pretty damn amazing, really.

Stumped and Charred

A new procedure to turn blocks of wood into artificial bones has been developed by Italian scientists, who plan to implant them into large animals, and eventually humans.

Wood-derived bone substitute should allow live bones to heal faster and more securely after a break than currently available metal and ceramic implants.

The researchers chose wood because it closely resemble the physical structure of natural bone, “which is impossible to reproduce with conventional processing technology.”

“Our purpose is to convert native wood structures into bioactive, inorganic compounds destined to substitute portions of bone,” said Anna Tampieri, a scientist at the Instituto Di Scienza E Techologia Dei Materiali Ceramici in Italy.

To create the bone substitute, the scientists start with a block of wood — red oak, rattan and sipo work best — and heat it until all that remains is pure carbon, which is basically charcoal.

The scientists then spray calcium over the carbon, creating calcium carbide. Additional chemical and physical steps convert the calcium carbide into carbonated hydroxyapatite, which can then be implanted and serves as the artificial bone.

(click to continue reading New Artificial Bone Made of Wood : Discovery News.)

 

Cannabis and Capitalism

Seth Anderson0 comment

The uneasy dalliance between capitalism, government, and cannabis is most advanced in Colorado. There is real money to be made here, for bold entrepreneurs who are willing to trailblaze.

One of the odder experiments in the recent history of American capitalism is unfolding here in the Rockies: the country’s first attempt at fully regulating, licensing and taxing a for-profit marijuana trade. In California, medical marijuana dispensary owners work in nonprofit collectives, but the cannabis pioneers of Colorado are free to pocket as much as they can — as long as they stay within the rules.

A Green Stride Forward

The catch is that there are a ton of rules, and more are coming in the next few months. The authorities here were initially caught off guard when dispensary mania began last year, after President Obama announced that federal law enforcement officials wouldn’t trouble users and suppliers as long as they complied with state law. In Colorado, where a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana was passed in 2000, hundreds of dispensaries popped up and a startling number of residents turned out to be in “severe pain,” the most popular of eight conditions that can be treated legally with the once-demonized weed.

More than 80,000 people here now have medical marijuana certificates, which are essentially prescriptions, and for months new enrollees have signed up at a rate of roughly 1,000 a day.

As supply met demand, politicians decided that a body of regulations was overdue. The state’s Department of Revenue has spent months conceiving rules for this new industry, ending the reefer-madness phase here in favor of buzz-killing specifics about cultivation, distribution, storage and every other part of the business.

Whether and how this works will be carefully watched far beyond Colorado. The rules here could be a blueprint for the 13 states, as well as the District of Columbia, that have medical marijuana laws. That is particularly the case in Rhode Island, New Jersey, the District of Columbia and Maine, which are poised to roll out programs of their own.

Americans spend roughly $25 billion a year on marijuana, according to the Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, which gives some idea of the popularity of this drug. Eventually, we might be talking about a sizable sum of tax revenue from its sales as medicine, not to mention private investment and employment. A spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws says hedge fund investors and an assortment of financial service firms are starting to call around to sniff out opportunities.

(click to continue reading In Colorado, Pot-Selling Pioneers Try to Turn a Profit – NYTimes.com.)

And this is a pretty good model to follow, methinks:

Three Thousand Walgreens

If there is a historical precedent for what’s now happening in Colorado, it could be the 1920s and the era of Prohibition. During America’s dry age, the federal alcohol ban carved out an exemption for medicinal use, and doctors nationwide suddenly discovered they could bolster their incomes by writing liquor prescriptions.

Pharmacies, which filled those prescriptions, and were one of the few places whiskey could be bought legally, raked it in. Through the 1920s, the number of Walgreens stores soared from 20 to nearly 400.

Prohibition also enriched adventurous sorts at every level of booze production and consumption, from grape farmers and distillers to the owners of speakeasies. Many of them went on to earn legitimate fortunes once Prohibition was repealed.

Fascinating to see how far along the reform of our out-dated marijuana laws has come in the last few years. Of course, federal law still classifies cannabis as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance – i.e., with no accepted medical or societal usage. When is that going to change? How many states have to reform their laws before the reactionaries in Congress act?

From Wikipedia:

(1) Schedule I.—

(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.”

EPA to Delay Enforcing Lead-Paint Regulation

Seth Anderson0 comment

Lame. Just lame. The EPA shouldn’t value business lobbyists over the nation’s health. Declining Issues

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to delay enforcing a new lead-paint regulation following pressure from home builders and members of Congress.

The rule would require contractors who work in older homes to become certified by a government-approved trainer and follow a series of safety precautions.

The delay follows an outcry from businesses and trade groups, including the National Association of Home Builders, Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos., as well as lawmakers in both parties. Industry groups charged the regulation would drive up costs and expose contractors to fines and litigation. Some also contended the regulation could derail Washington’s efforts to promote energy efficiency because EPA has not approved enough instructors for the required training programs.

(click to continue reading EPA to Delay Enforcing Lead-Paint Regulation – WSJ.com.)

 

THC Research continues

Seth Anderson0 comment

Hard to imagine another pharmaceutical that receives so much resistance to even being studied. Perhaps the problem is that cannabis is not patented by Pfizer, anyone can grow their own, in pretty much the entire world. Hard for Big Pharma to realize profits on a medically significant weed.

Forest Of Asparagus

while the medical marijuana movement has been generating political news, some researchers have been quietly moving in new directions — testing cannabis and its derivatives against a host of diseases. The scientific literature now brims with potential uses for cannabis that extend beyond its well-known abilities to fend off nausea and block pain in people with cancer and AIDS. Cannabis derivatives may combat multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory conditions, the new research finds. Cannabis may even kill cancerous tumors.

Many in the scientific community are now keen to see if this potential will be fulfilled, but they haven’t always been. Pharmacologist Roger Pertwee of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland recalls attending scientific conferences 30 years ago, eager to present his latest findings on the therapeutic effects of cannabis. It was a hard sell.

“Our talks would be scheduled at the end of the day, and our posters would be stuck in the corner somewhere,” he says. “That’s all changed.”

(click to continue reading Not Just A High – Science News.)

Let there be (vintage) light

and the mechanism of action:

A bigger revelation came in 1992: Mammals make their own compound that binds to, and switches on, the CB1 receptor. Scientists named the compound anandamide. Researchers soon found its counterpart that binds mainly to the CB2 receptor, calling that one 2AG, for 2-arachidonyl glycerol. The body routinely makes these compounds, called endocannabinoids, and sends them into action as needed.

“At that point, this became a very, very respectable field,” says Mechoulam, now at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who along with Pertwee and others reported the anandamide discovery in Science. “THC just mimics the effects of these compounds in our bodies,” Mechoulam says. Although the receptors are abundant, anandamide and 2AG are short-acting compounds, so their effects are fleeting.

In contrast, when a person consumes cannabis, a flood of THC molecules bind to thousands of CB1 and CB2 receptors, with longer-lasting effects. The binding triggers so many internal changes that, decades after the receptors’ discovery, scientists are still sorting out the effects. From a biological standpoint, smoking pot to get high is like starting up a semitruck just to listen to the radio. There’s a lot more going on.

Though the psychoactive effect of THC has slowed approval for cannabis-based drugs, the high might also have brought on a serendipitous discovery, says neurologist Ethan Russo, senior medical adviser for GW Pharmaceuticals, which is based in Porton Down, England. “How much longer would it have taken us to figure out the endocannabinoid system if cannabis didn’t happen to have these unusual effects on human physiology?”

Doctors and Price Transparency

Seth Anderson0 comment

I currently have a high-deductible health insurance plan, but many years of my life I had zero health insurance. If you are paying costs out of pocket1, you are much more cognizant of what every suggestion by a medical practitioner really will cost you.

Hair Dr

A recent interaction with a doctor2 included this dialog3

Doctor – you need this particular procedure, and you should do it every n months.

Patient – how much does this particular procedure cost?

Doctor – I have no idea.

Amazing. No wonder American healthcare is so expensive – there is no mechanism for reducing costs. Doctors and their staff often have no clue how much a particular procedure costs, only the insurance companies do. Wouldn’t it be nice if every hospital and doctor’s office had to publish a public rate card? Without any other change in our crazy medical system, I suspect this would drive down costs a bit.

There are a few startups who are attempting to tackle this problem:

Americans comparison-shop for items as small as groceries and as big as cars. But they rarely compare prices on their health care. When a doctor recommends a test or a procedure, most patients simply go where the doctor tells them to go. Enlarge This Image

Even if a patient does want to comparison-shop, there is no easy way to obtain complete and useful information. It is a hole in the market that some companies see as an opportunity, especially because many Americans will soon have to pay more attention to what they are paying for, rather than count on insurance to cover everything.

But there has been no easy way for consumers to shop for the best deal on a colonoscopy or blood test. A start-up financed by prominent venture capitalists and the Cleveland Clinic, Castlight Health, aims to change that by building a search engine for health care prices. Patients using Castlight could search for doctors that offer a service nearby and find out how much they will charge, depending on their insurance coverage.

A few others are starting to publish health care prices, including Thomson Reuters, a Tennessee start-up called Change:healthcare, the New Hampshire government, which created a comparison shopping tool for residents, and health insurers. Aetna, for instance, has built tools to help patients estimate prices and may build more advanced tools, said Lonny Reisman, Aetna’s chief medical officer.

(click to continue reading Bringing Comparison Shopping to the Doctor’s Office – NYTimes.com.)

Several studies and pilot projects suggest that the more patients know about prices, the more money they save. A study published last month by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, found that people on high-deductible health plans, with more exposure to the prices of doctor visits, spent less. Indiana adopted high-deductible health plans, and the average expense in 2009 for patients on one of these plans was $6,393, compared with $8,570 for patients on a more traditional health maintenance organization plan.

Footnotes:
  1. which is still the case – my insurance only will – theoretically – pay if something catastrophic happens [↩]
  2. not my normal doctor, but a specialist [↩]
  3. paraphrased, but pretty accurate [↩]

Herbal Supplements Often Have Contaminants, FDA Shrugs

Seth Anderson0 comment

Ru-oh. Yet again the FDA is ignoring problems instead of figuring out a plan to fix them, shirking its responsibility, and Washington co-signs.

Healthy or insane shelf 2

Nearly all of the herbal dietary supplements tested in a Congressional investigation contained trace amounts of lead and other contaminants, and some supplement sellers made illegal claims that their products can cure cancer and other diseases, investigators found.

The levels of heavy metals — including mercury, cadmium and arsenic — did not exceed thresholds considered dangerous, the investigators found. However, 16 of the 40 supplements tested contained pesticide residues that appeared to exceed legal limits, the investigators found. In some cases, the government has not set allowable levels of these pesticides because of a paucity of scientific research.

(click to continue reading Herbal Supplements Often Have Contaminants, Study Finds – NYTimes.com.)

Don’t understand why the FDA doesn’t take the time to test supplements for pollutants. What’s the downside? Is the American Chemical Council afraid of the answers? Namely, that pesticides and pollutants are in nearly every single item we consume, including vitamins and herbs?

This troubles me.

Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat who will preside over Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, said that while improvements had been made in recent years in the oversight of supplements, “the F.D.A. needs the authority and tools to ensure that dietary supplements are as safe and effective as is widely perceived by the Americans who take them.”

Among the witnesses at the hearing will be Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, a company that has tested over 2,000 dietary supplements made by more than 300 manufacturers and has found that one in four have quality problems. According to Dr. Cooperman’s written testimony, the most common problems are supplements that lack adequate quantities of the indicated ingredients and those contaminated with heavy metals.

Travis T. Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, wrote a letter to the committee saying that some athletes have been rendered ineligible for international competitions because they took supplements that contained steroids not listed on the products’ labels. There are thousands of supplements available for sale that contain steroids or other harmful ingredients, he wrote.

But this really troubles me:

In recent years, a vast majority of supplement suppliers have located overseas — principally in China. Nearly all of the vitamin C and many other supplements consumed in the United States are made from ingredients made in Chinese plants. Those plants are almost never inspected by the F.D.A. because the agency is not required to do so, has little money to do so and does not view the plants as particularly risky.

Made in China often means profit over quality, and lax oversight. Scary, if you consider the amount of vitamins and supplements that Americans consume.

Throat Exercises Relieve Sleep Apnea

Seth Anderson2 Comments


“48” Aboriginal Dot Painted Didgeridoo V1 (Handmade)”

I don’t think I have sleep apnea; my insomnia is probably more stress related, but occasionally I do wake myself up by snoring. Good reason to get a didgeridoo, perhaps…

One free and fairly simple alternative [to surgery, or a machine called continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP ] may be exercises that strengthen the throat. While they aren’t as established or as well studied as breathing machines, some research suggests they may reduce the severity of sleep apnea by building up muscles around the airway, making them less likely to collapse at night.

In a study published last year in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, scientists recruited a group of people with obstructive sleep apnea and split them into two groups. One was trained to do breathing exercises daily, while the other did 30 minutes of throat exercises, including swallowing and chewing motions, placing the tip of the tongue against the front of the palate and sliding it back, and pronouncing certain vowels quickly and continuously.

After three months, subjects who did the throat exercises snored less, slept better and reduced the severity of their condition by 39 percent. They also showed reductions in neck circumference, a known risk factor for apnea. The control group showed almost no improvement.

Other randomized studies have found similar effects. One even showed that playing instruments that strengthen the airways, like the didgeridoo, can ease sleep apnea.

(click to continue reading Really? – Throat Exercises Can Relieve Sleep Apnea – Question – NYTimes.com.)

Seriously, have to look into what sorts of excercises these entail. Can’t hurt…

Bitter Foods and Liver Health

Seth Anderson4 Comments

At the risk of over-sharing, I’ll just mention that my doctor1 suggested I add bitter foods to my diet to encourage liver health. Glancing at this list, I notice that most of these items are already part of my diet – meaning I like them – so eating more of these things won’t be a burden.

Arugula Salad

  • bitter melon
  • citrus peel
  • unsweetened chocolate
  • dandelion greens
  • escarole
  • quinine (tonic water)
  • mustard greens
  • cabbage
  • broccoli
  • cauliflower
  • turnip
  • Chinese cabbage
  • radish
  • horseradish
  • watercress
  • soy products
  • cheeses (some)
  • miso
  • kale
  • arugula
  • brussel sprouts
  • artichoke
  • grapefruit
  • zucchini
  • radicchio
  • bread
  • asparagus
  • kohlrabi

Unsweetened chocolate is on the list, though that food I’m not planning on eating much of. Also uncured olives are mentioned. You’d have to be pretty damn dedicated to eat one of those: when I was hanging out in Tuscany, the Baccis jokingly gave me a olive fresh off of an olive tree. So astringent that my mouth didn’t recover for hours, took lots and lots of good Chianti before my tongue worked again. They laughed and laughed, and I did too.

Meyer Lemons

Meyer Lemons

Not sure why bitter foods help the liver, I’ll have to look into that, but since I enjoy eating these things anyway, I don’t mind making the effort to eat more.

My blood work will be completed by next week.

Footnotes:
  1. Dr. Andrea Rentea [↩]

Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Not surprising really, the argument against this class of entheogens being made illegal was always fairly weak, and coupled with cultural nonsense, and not scientific reality. In fact, before the rise of Reagan and Nixon and similar finger-waggers, there was a lot of very interesting research being conducted with LSD, with mescaline, with psilocybin. We blogged about this new research in 2006 too.

Shiitake mushrooms from FreshPicks.com

Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.

After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.

“All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating,” he recalled. “Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.”

Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects.

Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in San Jose, Calif., for the largest conference on psychedelic science held in the United States in four decades. They plan to discuss studies of psilocybin and other psychedelics for treating depression in cancer patients, obsessive-compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction to drugs or alcohol.

[Click to continue reading Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again – NYTimes.com]

Johnny Depp and some psychoactive mushrooms

Let’s hope the research continues unabated, and uncoupled from the Drug War ridiculousness. If you want to read Dr. Griffiths study, it is available in PDF form at this website.

Since that study, which was published in 2008, Dr. Griffiths and his colleagues have gone on to give psilocybin to people dealing with cancer and depression, like Dr. Martin, the retired psychologist from Vancouver. Dr. Martin’s experience is fairly typical, Dr. Griffiths said: an improved outlook on life after an experience in which the boundaries between the self and others disappear.

In interviews, Dr. Martin and other subjects described their egos and bodies vanishing as they felt part of some larger state of consciousness in which their personal worries and insecurities vanished. They found themselves reviewing past relationships with lovers and relatives with a new sense of empathy.

“It was a whole personality shift for me,” Dr. Martin said. “I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”

The subjects’ reports mirrored so closely the accounts of religious mystical experiences, Dr. Griffiths said, that it seems likely the human brain is wired to undergo these “unitive” experiences, perhaps because of some evolutionary advantage.

“This feeling that we’re all in it together may have benefited communities by encouraging reciprocal generosity,” Dr. Griffiths said. “On the other hand, universal love isn’t always adaptive, either.”

Stupak and the Executive Order

Seth Anderson0 comment

From my reading of the Executive Order (here’s an advance copy of it), doesn’t seem to restrict a woman’s rights any more than they were restricted yesterday1, with the so-called Hyde Amendment. Congressman Stupak either needed political cover to vote for HCR, or hadn’t bothered to read the bill carefully in the first place.

Family Planning protest w 50 foot Giant Virgin Mary

Pro-choice lawmakers greeted with reluctant acceptance news that President Obama (as part of a deal to secure anti-abortion votes for health care) had agreed to sign an executive order upholding the Hyde Amendment as law. Non-government groups who work on defending abortion rights, however, were “incensed.”

Approached in the halls of the Capitol shortly after the deal was announced by pro-life advocate Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), Rep. Jan Schakowski (D-Ill.) said she understood why the executive order had to be made, even though she was not pleased with its message or content.

“This is not something we are rejoicing over in any way because we were reluctant in the first place,” the Illinois Democrat, an abortion rights advocate, told the Huffington Post. “We had language that made sure there were no federal dollars. But right now if this will make the bill pass and it doesn’t further erode women’s reproductive rights we can live with that.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) another abortion rights advocate said: “I have never been a supporter of the Hyde language and I’m not a supporter of the Nelson amendment. From the outset of this debate there were pro choice and pro life Members who believed that abortion should not be litigated on the health care bill. And the goal when the issue was being raised was, ok, what we do is than to maintain current law. And I believe that is what the executive

[Click to continue reading Health Care: Pro-Choice Reps Reluctantly Accept Abortion Deal]

Amanda Marcotte adds on the same topic:

My annoyance at Obama being forced to make some kind of formal declaration of women’s second class citizenship to mollify Bart Stupak and his woman-hating crew is moderated significantly by two major factors:

1) That this is some impressive political jujitsu. Having the President reaffirm what was already the law of the land in order to secure a vote from Bart Stupak, who has clearly never read the bill he’s so fucking concerned about. Did they come up with this brilliant plan after Stupak has made it clear that his contempt for women’s opinions applies even to nuns? Is it possible that Nancy Pelosi called up Obama and said, “Look, I’ve been telling him and Sebelius has been telling him there’s no federal funding for abortion in this bill. He apparently needs to hear it from a man, so can you give us a hand?”

2) That this worked on Stupak means he’s as stupid as he seems. My sense that he’s a useful idiot being played by his Republican friends in the C Street Family has only strengthened. He clearly feels he doesn’t need to know shit about what he’s talking about to take a grand stand on it. Realizing he’s just a stupid tool may not matter that much in the grand scheme of things, but it gave me clarity, which I appreciate.

[Click to continue reading pandagon.net – we are the public option]

Sounds plausible to me

Footnotes:
  1. or last week, or last month [↩]

Health Care Reform and November 2010

Seth Anderson0 comment

What will happen in the ensuing months now that Health Care Reform has actually become law of the land, and not a socialist bogeyman? Will the Republican shouters control the message? Or will the issue fade due to the short attention span of the American public?

Last minute lobbying blitz for spring

David Corn writes, in part:

In a column written hours before the House passed the bill, neoconservative David Frum referred to health care reform as the GOP’s “Waterloo.” He noted that “it’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November” because “by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.” Frum’s j’accuse! blamed “conservatives and Republican ourselves” for making a poor strategic decision: “We would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing…We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.” Republican legislators who wanted to cut a deal, he notes, were trapped and pinned down by “conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio.”

Frum speaks for no one but himself. Like the Pope, he has no troops of his own. But if his comments reflect a wider sentiment within Republican circles, it’s possible the GOP could be struck by an internal division over the health care reform fight: Do Republicans move on, or do they act like those fabled Japanese soldiers stranded on deserted islands at the end of World War II who never realized the war was over and that they had lost?

And then there is the other end of the Republican political spectrum: Sarah Palin. The day before the vote, the woman who decried the non-existent “death panels” began tweeting that the health care bill would undercut medical plans for military personnel. Representative Ike Skelton, the Democratic chairman of the House armed services committee, says this is not true and would introduce legislation to guarantee this. But it appeared as if Palin was looking for another killer talking point. Other strategists and leaders on the right will be doing the same.

And think of all the anecdotes-as-ammo to come. Both sides in the months—and probably years—ahead will be trolling for stories that will bolster their positions. A government bureaucrat makes a wrong call about anything related to the health care overhaul, and Republicans and their talk show allies will go to town. Democrats, for their part, will embrace any testimonials from Americans whose lives were saved due to changes brought about by this bill.

[Click to continue reading Health Care Reform: All Over… But the Shouting | Mother Jones]

Too early to tell, but worth paying attention to

Agribusiness Spreading Superbugs

Seth Anderson0 comment

Agribusinesses have all sorts of negative effects on our society (pollution, poor health, corruption); add superbugs to the list.

Long Cycle of Redemption

If ESBL E. coli is frightening, there are even more potent superbugs emerging, like Acinetobacter.

“We are seeing infections caused by Acinetobacter and special bacteria called KPC Klebsiella that are literally resistant to every antibiotic that is F.D.A. approved,” Dr. Spellberg said. “These are untreatable infections. This is the first time since 1936, the year that sulfa hit the market in the U.S., that we have had this problem.”

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, an organization of doctors and scientists, has been bellowing alarms. It fears that we could slip back to a world in which we’re defenseless against bacterial diseases.

There’s broad agreement that doctors themselves overprescribe antibiotics — but also that a big part of the problem is factory farms. They feed low doses of antibiotics to hogs, cattle and poultry to make them grow faster.

A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that in the United States, 70 percent of antibiotics are used to feed healthy livestock, with 14 percent more used to treat sick livestock. Only about 16 percent are used to treat humans and their pets, the study found.

More antibiotics are fed to livestock in North Carolina alone than are given to humans in the entire United States, according to the peer-reviewed Medical Clinics of North America. It concluded that antibiotics in livestock feed were “a major component” in the rise of antibiotic resistance.

Legislation introduced by Louise Slaughter, a New Yorker who is the only microbiologist in the House of Representatives, would curb the routine use of antibiotics in farming. The bill has 104 co-sponsors, but agribusiness interests have blocked it in committee — and the Obama administration and the Senate have dodged the issue.

[Click to continue reading Op-Ed Columnist – The Spread of Superbugs – NYTimes.com]

FDA and Washington diddle why people die, sounds like business as usual.

Health Benefits of Exercise

Seth Anderson0 comment

Not telling you anything you don’t already know, but perhaps the Nth+1 article about the correlation between exercise and good mental and physical health will spark a response.

Cirque Shanghai Goldfinger

Regular exercise is the only well-established fountain of youth, and it’s free. What, I’d like to know, will persuade the majority of Americans who remain sedentary to get off their duffs and give their bodies the workout they deserve? My hope is that every new testimonial to the value of exercise will win a few more converts until everyone is doing it.

In a commentary on the new studies, published Jan. 25 in The Archives of Internal Medicine, two geriatricians, Dr. Marco Pahor of the University of Florida and Dr. Jeff Williamson of Winston-Salem, N.C., pointed to “the power of higher levels of physical activity to aid in the prevention of late-life disability owing to either cognitive impairment or physical impairment, separately or together.”

“Physical inactivity,” they wrote, “is one of the strongest predictors of unsuccessful aging for older adults and is perhaps the root cause of many unnecessary and premature admissions to long-term care.”

They noted that it had long been “well established that higher quantities of physical activity have beneficial effects on numerous age-related conditions such as osteoarthritis, falls and hip fracture, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, cancer, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, low fitness and obesity, and decreased functional capacity.”

One of the new studies adds mental deterioration, with exercise producing “a significantly reduced risk of cognitive impairment after two years for participants with moderate or high physical activity” who were older than 55 when the study began.

[Click to continue reading Personal Health – Studies Show Further Health Benefits of Exercise – NYTimes.com]

Going to Work

Do I exercise enough? Probably not, especially in the bleak mid-winter. Photo-strolling for an hour or so is the most I do, and I should walk more often. I take the stairs in my building a few times a day, but again, could do better at avoiding the elevator if I pushed myself. My other favorite form of exercise is biking, and I’m too much of a wimp to bike in the cold. Snow is one thing1, but what really is brutal is the bitter wind.

Footnotes:
  1. affects braking, for instance [↩]

Food Safety and Tainted Tomatoes

Seth Anderson2 Comments

If the Drown-The-Baby-in-the Bathtub Republicans ever get their way1, the federal regulatory infrastructure would get stripped, and there would be a lot more deaths from tainted food. The current system of food inspection is pretty corrupt, but least there is some restraint, and occasionally a corporation will commit such a heinous act that they will get sanctioned. Like SK Foods, and their buddies, Kraft, Safeway, and others:

tomatoes

Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants.

The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes.

Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices near Chicago and confronted Mr. Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a startling vein of corruption in the food industry. And because the scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, the case has raised serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.

Over the last 14 months, Mr. Watson and three other purchasing managers, at Frito-Lay, Safeway and B&G Foods, have pleaded guilty to taking bribes. Five people connected to one of the nation’s largest tomato processors, SK Foods, have also admitted taking part in the scheme

[Click to continue reading SK Foods at Center of Bribe Scheme to Sell Tainted Tomatoes – NYTimes.com]

The Big Tomato

Food corporations claim innocence, but I assume there was a lot of winkin’ and noddin’ going on, just no hard evidence.

Footnotes:
  1. Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and the rest of that group of thugs [↩]

Afternoon Naps Increases Ability to Learn

Seth Anderson0 comment

I’ll go on record as being a huge fan of napping. Even fifteen minutes is enough for me to recharge enough to have a productive afternoon.

Don't disappear in your own life

It turns out that toddlers are not the only ones who do better after an afternoon nap. New research has found that young adults who slept for 90 minutes after lunch raised their learning power, their memory apparently primed to absorb new facts.

Other studies have indicated that sleep helps consolidate memories after cramming, but the new study suggests that sleep can actually restore the ability to learn.

The findings, which have not yet been published, were presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

[Click to continue reading Vital Signs – Afternoon Naps Can Increase Ability to Learn, Study Suggests – NYTimes.com]

Side note, I’ll also wager this is one of those stories you’ll read/hear about in many outlets. Catnip for the media, in other words.