Some healthcare can safely wait (and some can ’t)
Among the many remarkable things that have happened since the COVID-19 pandemic began is that a lot of our usual medical care has simply stopped.
According to a recent study, routine testing for cervical cancer, cholesterol, and blood sugar is down nearly 70% across the country. Elective surgeries, routine physical examinations, and other screening tests have been canceled or rescheduled so that people can stay at home, avoid being around others who might be sick, and avoid unknowingly spreading the virus. Many clinics, hospitals, and doctors’ offices have been closed for weeks except for emergencies. Even if these facil...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 20, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Health Health care Healthy Aging Men's Health Women's Health Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 18th 2020
This study provides direct evidence for the contribution of gut microbiota to the cognitive decline during normal aging and suggests that restoring microbiota homeostasis in the elderly may improve cognitive function.
On Nutraceutical Senolytics
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/05/on-nutraceutical-senolytics/
Nutraceuticals are compounds derived from foods, usually plants. In principle one can find useful therapies in the natural world, taking the approach of identifying interesting molecules and refining them to a greater potency than naturally occurs in order to produce a usefully large therap...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 17, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Will This Novel Virus Revive Older Ones?
Jeffrey A. SingerAs I recently wrotehere, and spoke abouthere, bans on elective surgery invoked by governors across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many people to suffer and even possibly face fatal consequences due to delays in necessary medical care. But there are other reasons why the public health emergency has the potential to generate secondary public health crises.In some cases people are avoiding doctors ’ offices and emergency rooms because they worry about handling theexpense at a time they have seen their income, and perhaps their savings, vanish during the current econom...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 9, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
The Problem With “Herd Immunity” as a COVID-19 Strategy
This article originally appeared on his blog here.
The post The Problem With “Herd Immunity” as a COVID-19 Strategy appeared first on The Health Care Blog. (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 5, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy Dave deBronkart e-Patient Dave e-Patient Dave DeBronkart Pandemic Source Type: blogs
Predicting the Future by Listening to the Experts
Stephanie Kuku
Hugh Harvey
By STEPHANIE KUKU, MD and HUGH HARVEY, MBBS
The ability to predict in healthcare is the utopia promised by every artificial intelligence for healthcare built, funded and tested in the last decade. Yet very few doctors, technologists, or investors would have imagined they would live to witness a pandemic of the scale we are currently experiencing. We are still getting our heads round the lives lost, the lives of the frontline workers at risk, the disruption and self-isolation, the less fortunate who will suffer the most, the companies in survival mode, and a battered global economy. ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 4, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Health Tech Health Technology Hardian Health Hugh Harvey Stephanie Kuku Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 4th 2020
The objective is to start treating chronic diseases from the root and not the symptoms of the disease. As we are starting to enroll patients in "senolytics-clinical trials," it will be imperative to assess if senolysis efficiently targets the primary cause of disease or if it works best in combination with other drugs. Additional basic science research is required to address the fundamental role of senescent cells, especially in the established contexts of disease.
Notes on Self-Experimentation with Sex Steroid Ablation for Regrowth of the Thymus
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/04/notes-on-self-experi...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 3, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
The False Choice Between Science And Economics
This article originally appeared on The Bulwark here.
The post The False Choice Between Science And Economics appeared first on The Health Care Blog. (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 1, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy David Shaywitz Source Type: blogs
Weight loss can help head off lasting damage caused by fatty liver
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common cause of liver disease in the United States, and is estimated to affect up to a quarter of adults in the world. It is defined by excess fat accumulating in the liver and usually occurs in people with obesity, high blood sugars (diabetes), abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels, or high blood pressure. These disorders often run together and as a group are called metabolic syndrome. The “non-alcoholic” part of “non-alcoholic fatty liver disease” is important to distinguish it from alcohol-related liver disease, which can also cause excess liver fat.
How fat ca...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - April 30, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Irun Bhan, MD Tags: Diet and Weight Loss Digestive Disorders Source Type: blogs
COVID-19 in the Context of Aging
It is widely appreciated that old people have a poor time of it when it comes to infectious disease. Seasonal influenza kills tens of thousands of older people every year in the US alone. The aged immune system functions poorly, and vaccinations for many conditions have low success rates in older people. Thus the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths are old people exhibiting immunosenescence. Given that the world at large seems to be entirely accepting of the yearly toll of influenza, while COVID-19 is classed as an apocalypse of some sort, one has to wonder how much of the hysteria surrounding COVID-19 stems from the rare - b...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 28, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Microneedle Array for Universal Vaccine Delivery Developed
Microneedle arrays (MNAs) are a promising way of delivering vaccines into the body. They are nearly pain-free and can penetrate a substantial portion of the skin, which is considered an excellent place to inject vaccines because of the skin’s sensitive and very reactive immune network. Injecting small amounts of a vaccine strategically into the skin can, therefore, produce a significantly more intense immune response than that created using conventional hypodermic needles.
A team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have now developed a microneedle array patch that can carry live or attenuated viral...
Source: Medgadget - April 22, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs
Nursing Students and Educators Must Be Part of a National Public Health Surveillance Strategy
By KAREN JOHNSON PhD, RN
Shortly before our
world was turned upside down by COVID-19, I visited Space Center Houston with
my family. We marveled at the collective ambition and investment it took to
move from space travel being an aspirational dream to setting foot on the moon.
I thought about my favorite scene from the movie Apollo 13, when Gene Kranz
overhears the NASA Director saying “This could be the worst disaster NASA has
ever experienced,” and candidly replies, “With all due respect, sir, I believe
this is going to be our finest hour.”
Just months later, our entire planet is on a mission to turn trag...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 20, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Medical Practice Karen Johnson Nursing Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 13th 2020
This study is par for the course, looking at Japanese Olympic participants. Interestingly, it hints at the upper end of the dose-response curve for physical activity, in that a longer career as a professional athlete may be detrimental in comparison to lesser degrees of exercise and training.
From this large, retrospective cohort study targeting 3546 Japanese Olympic athletes, we observed significant lower mortality among Olympians compared with the Japanese general population. The overall standardised mortality ratio (SMR) was 0.29. The results were consistent with previous studies conducted in other non-Asian co...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 12, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Rejuvenation of Immune Function is One of the More Important Outcomes to Engineer through the Treatment of Aging
One would hope that it does not require an ongoing pandemic and related hysteria to point out that old people have poorly functioning immune systems, and thus suffer disproportionately the burden of infectious disease. But perhaps it does. The 2017-2018 seasonal influenza, a modestly more severe occurrence of something that happens every year, killed something like 60,000 people in the US alone, with little notice or comment. There is nothing so terrible that it won't be accepted - ignored, even - if it is normal.
Floodgates of funding for infectious disease research and development have been opened in response to C...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 6, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Thought experiment
Please don ' t get me wrong. I ' ve seen other people try to put our present crisis in context, or discuss the costs vs. the benefits of certain actions, and be widely condemned for insensitivity or even sociopathy. I remember after the 9/11 attack, when people who tried to explain the motivations or sociological origins of Al Qaeda and similar movements faced the same sort of criticism. You weren ' t allowed to think about the problem, people weren ' t ready for any sort of moral confusion. In what I am about to say, I am not arguing against saving lives, on the contrary. I ' m just trying to explain something about where...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 1, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Is it safe to see the pediatrician for vaccines and medical visits?
We’re tackling a few urgent questions from parents in this time of coronavirus and COVID-19. Are you wondering if babies and children should continue to have vaccines on schedule? Thinking about how to manage regular medical appointments, and which situations require in-person visits to a pediatric practice? Read on.
Should parents take babies for initial vaccines right now? What about toddlers and older children who are due for vaccines?
The answer to this question is going to depend on many factors, including what your doctor’s office is offering. As with all health care decisions, it comes down to weighing risks and...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - March 31, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Adolescent health Children's Health Health care Parenting Vaccines Source Type: blogs
