Worth reading in its entirety, here. Consider this: Right now, some 75 percent of health care costs are accounted for by heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and obesity. What these five diseases and conditions have in common is that they are largely preventable and even reversible by changes in nutrition, physical activity, and [...]
Archive for June, 2009
Excellent Op-Ed on Prevention by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Posted in Uncategorized on June 25, 2009 |
Obesity-Cancer Link Supported by New Studies
Posted in Uncategorized on June 24, 2009 |
A good summary from the health blog at The Wall Street Journal. Studies have tied obesity to increased risk of pancreatic cancer, but new findings suggest that weight control early in life is especially important. Obesity in early adulthood is associated with both increased risk and earlier onset of pancreatic cancer, a study in the [...]
Will Healthcare Reform Improve Health?
Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2009 |
Ezra Klein, whose blog on domestic issues now resides at the Washington Post, has a very well thought out article on health reform in The American Prospect. Titled “Wealth-Care Reform,” it reminds us that the primary thrust of Congressional and presidential healthcare reform efforts is to change the nation’s economy to prevent it from falling off [...]
Fast Food Nearby Ups Obesity Risk
Posted in Uncategorized on June 19, 2009 |
Not that big a surprise, but this has now been confirmed by Canadian researchers. Patients were 25% less likely to be obese if they lived in an area with a smaller ratio of fast-food chains to supermarkets, John C. Spence, PhD, and colleagues reported online in BMC Public Health. ”The proximity of the obesogenic environment [...]
What the Antiobesity Movement Can Learn from the Defeat of Big Tobacco
Posted in Uncategorized on June 12, 2009 |
Marc Ambinder describes how one persistent legislator (Cong. Henry Waxman of California) spent three decades working on the tobacco issue, culminating with yesterday’s passage of a law giving the FDA power to regulate tobacco products. But three more decades of the burgeoning obesity catastrophe may be three decades too long. Apply that lesson to the [...]
On the Need for Doctors (and Others) to Get Enough Sleep
Posted in Uncategorized on June 12, 2009 |
Blogger Megan McArdle at The Atlantic recounts some personal experiences to underscore a policy point: if interns and other doctors go too long without sleep, the health of their patients may be imperiled. That’s probably the most pernicious problem: on the margin, you start making decisions based on how quickly they get you back to [...]
Mainstream Physicians Give Alternatives a Try
Posted in Uncategorized on June 9, 2009 |
Today’s Washington Post has a thoughtful feature on Marie Steinmetz, MD, and other medical physicians in the Washington area who are branching out into herbs, acupuncture and other integrative approaches. A patient who comes to Marie Steinmetz with clogged sinuses might be in for a surprise. Instead of walking out of the Alexandria family physician’s [...]
Less Sleep May Mean Higher Blood Pressure
Posted in Uncategorized on June 9, 2009 |
One more reason not to burn the candle at both ends. The study shows a clear correlation between shorter sleep duration and hypertension but does not evaluate the effects of improving sleep patterns.
“Eco-Atkins” Diet Substitutes Plants for Meat, Helps Heart and Weight Loss
Posted in Uncategorized on June 9, 2009 |
This looks like a positive step. A variant of the low-calorie, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet that substituted plant protein for meat helped overweight people lose pounds — and significantly improved their lipid profiles and other cardiovascular risk factors, a short-term study showed. A control group who ate a low-cal, high-carb vegetarian diet that included dairy and [...]
Medical Bills Involved in 62% of Bankruptcies
Posted in Uncategorized on June 5, 2009 |
If you want to see one statistic that explains better than any other why there is widespread pressure for national health reform, this is probably it. The comparable statistic from 2001 was 55%, so the trend line is heading in the wrong direction. The study found that medical bills, plus related problems such as lost [...]
