Night shift workers are among those most affected. From MedPage: Your mother was right: regular bedtimes and a good night’s sleep are good for you — or at least, researchers reported, irregular bedtimes and not enough sleep are bad for you. In a 39-day experiment with healthy volunteers, shortened sleep time and varying bedtimes — [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Poor Sleep Patterns May Increase Diabetes Risk
Posted in Uncategorized on April 12, 2012 |
Doctors Urge Their Colleagues to Quit Doing Worthless Tests
Posted in Uncategorized on April 5, 2012 |
This is a very difficult policy to implement as long as doctors and hospitals continue to be paid more when they perform more procedures. Radiology departments are major profit centers for hospitals and other health care facilities. To see major medical groups such as the American Board of Internal Medicine endorse this policy is heartening. [...]
Study Confirms Weight Loss Surgery Benefit for Diabetics
Posted in Uncategorized on March 27, 2012 |
Cross-posted from my health policy blog, www.redwoodhealthspeak.com. This new research confirms what was strongly suggested by earlier studies — that bariatric surgery leads to major weight loss, and either directly or indirectly leads to major improvements in the diabetic status of these formerly obese individuals. I’ve lectured on this topic in my clinical nutrition class [...]
Diabetes Risk Rises with White Rice as Dietary Staple
Posted in Uncategorized on March 16, 2012 |
Whole, unprocessed foods are best. This is just one example. Because diabetes is intimately linked to heart disease, hypertension, and obesity (as part of the Metabolic Syndrome), this is really about far more than diabetes. Patients who ate the greatest amounts of the grain had a 27% greater risk of developing the disease than those [...]
Pink Slime for School Lunches
Posted in Uncategorized on March 6, 2012 |
I wish I could say that this is fiction, but it’s not. Pink slime — that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade — may have been rejected by fast food joints like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation’s school lunch program. The U.S. [...]
Serving Size Scams That Can Make You Fat
Posted in Uncategorized on March 5, 2012 |
The Food and Drug Administration has helpful policies in place to help consumers understand the nutrient and calorie content of various packaged foods. Sure enough, the companies selling the packaged foods find ways to fool the public. This Men’s Health article has numerous examples, including these two: Serving Size Rip-Off: Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts Listed calories: 200 Servings per [...]
Annual U.S. Death Toll from Sleeping Pills May Top 500,000
Posted in Uncategorized on February 28, 2012 |
All health practitioners have seen patients who develop a dependence on prescription anti-insomnia medications. This apparent increase in mortality risk, however, comes as a surprise. The usual caveats apply, in that this study does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. However, the researchers quoted in this MedPage article seem quite concerned. The use of hypnotic sleep [...]
Walking Back the Decision to Curtail Hormone Replacement Therapy
Posted in Uncategorized on February 28, 2012 |
After waiting several years until the furor died down, it appears that the drug companies and those they fund have decided that the time is ripe to walk back the decision to sharply curtail use of hormone replacement therapy. That decision was based on the landmark 2002 Women’s Health Initiative findings that showed an increased [...]
Family History the Simplest Genetic Test of All
Posted in Uncategorized on February 22, 2012 |
A reminder that low-tech procedures have great value. As the WSJ reports today, British researchers showed that by systematically collecting detailed family history from patients, they boosted the number of patients at high risk for heart disease detected by standard assessment tools from 12% to 18%. Catching more high-risk patients would mean doctors could better [...]
Heart Attack Grill Lives Up to Its Name
Posted in Uncategorized on February 16, 2012 |
I first learned of the Heart Attack Grill from a student whose hometown was Chandler, Arizona, site of the original location of this enterprise. Here’s the Wikipedia entry for this iconic part of Americana. And now, not for the first time, a national news story highlighting one of the ways that this burger joitn livbes [...]
