Knowing when to screen … and when to quit
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Let us sing the praises of good medical screening tests.
These are the tests that can detect medical problems before they become untreatable and before they cause complications or even death. Even better are those screening tests that detect “predisease” — abnormalities that aren’t dangerous on their own but can lead to problems later.
According to the US Preventive Services Task Force, relatively few screening tests are considered good enough to routinely recommend for adults, including
mammography for breast cancer (women)
Pap smear for cervical cancer (women)
bone density test...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - March 1, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Cancer Health Prevention Screening Source Type: blogs
Fermented foods to beat back SIBO and dysbiosis
If you’ve been following the Wheat Belly discussions, you already know that efforts to cultivate healthy bowel flora in the wake of wheat/grain elimination is a key factor in regaining health. While I’ve emphasized the importance of a high-potency (e.g., 50 billion or more CFUs per day), multi-species probiotic supplement and prebiotic fibers, I’ve not focused on the importance of fermented foods. This issue comes to light in particular with our experience in battling small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO.
Dysbiosis, or disrupted composition of bowel flora in the colon, is exceptionally common, e...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - February 19, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Undoctored Wheat Belly Lifestyle bowel flora fermented foods grain-free Inflammation kefir kimchi kombucha probiotic sibo small intestinal bacterial overgrowth yogurt Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 19th 2018
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more.
This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 18, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Weaponizing the Biochemistry of Huntington's Disease as a General Cancer Therapy
An interesting observation that has arisen over the years of epidemiological study of human age-related disease is that there are a number of distinct inverse relationships between incidence of cancer and incidence of some forms of neurodegeneration. This was in the news a few years ago in the case of Alzheimer's disease for example. Why would people with a higher risk of cancer suffer lower rates of Alzheimer's disease, however? We can only speculate at this point, but the more recent discovery I'll point out here adds fuel for that speculation. The Alzheimer's-cancer relationship is modest in size and somewhat complex in...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 14, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Radiologist with Stage 4 Cancer Meets His Idol
Matthew Chan, MD, a radiologist who was recently diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer had his wish come true last month when he got to meet Franz Holzhausen, Tesla ’s lead designer. The meeting didn ’t happen by chance. Chan’s old friend Allen Miller, MD, was planning to visit him after his recent diagnosis, and asked him what he wanted to do while he was there. “WatchBlade Runner 2049 and relax on the couch,” he told Miller. In a viralFacebook post, Miller said that those activities were “unacceptable” and asked him to dream big. So, he said “Well, if I could meet JB Straubel or Franz Von Holzhausen, I...
Source: radRounds - February 3, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Be ketotic . . . but only sometime
Achieving ketosis by engaging in a very low-carbohydrate, high-fat lifestyle is an effective means of losing weight, breaking insulin and leptin resistance, reversing type 2 diabetes and fatty liver, reducing blood pressure, reversing the inflammation of visceral fat, and may even cause partial or total remission of selected cancers.
So what’s the problem?
The problem comes when people remain ketotic for extended periods. We know with confidence that long-term ketosis poses substantial risk for health complications because thousands of children have followed ketogenic diets over the years as a means of suppressing in...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - February 2, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Undoctored Wheat Belly Lifestyle Source Type: blogs
An Impressive Performance in Clearing Cancer from Mice via Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is a cut above chemotherapy and radiotherapy: at its best, it is significantly more effective and significantly less harmful to the patient. It has still required years, a great deal of funding, and many failures for those best approaches to arise. Nonetheless, the report here is a cheering example for the sizable fraction of us expected to suffer cancer at some point in the years ahead if the condition is not soon brought under medical control. This immunotherapy appears highly effective, and just importantly, adaptable to many types of cancer. This potential for broad application is the most important aspec...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 2, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
How to tell seniors they ’re too old for cancer screening
Cancer screening can save lives. Mammographies reduce the chance women will die of breast cancer; and colonoscopies reduce the chance people will die of colon cancer.
But should my 93-year-old father receive a screening colonoscopy? The test is uncomfortable, carries risks, and costs money. Even more importantly, my dad probably won’t live long enough to benefit from the test. That’s why most medical experts think people like my dad—people unlikely to live another decade—should not receive cancer screening tests like colonoscopies. But how in the heck is my dad’s doctor supposed to deliver this news to him?
My fa...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 27, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/peter-ubel" rel="tag" > Peter Ubel, MD < /a > Tags: Conditions Geriatrics Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Early Detection
We do regularly try to detect some cancers early through mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests. I think most of us (meaning the general public) are comfortable with these tests as we age. But what if there was a genetic test available which you could have done regularly, every few years or whatever time frame, to test you for several different cancers before they had a chance to spread.A new test,CancerSEEK, has been tested on more than 1000 patients and seems very hopeful." The CancerSEEK test looks for mutations in 16 genes that regularly arise in cancer and eight proteins that are often released.It was trialled on 1,...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - January 20, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: cancer detection cancer diagnosis medical tests Source Type: blogs
X-Ray Pill for Colon Cancer Screening: C-Scan System Cleared in Europe
Traditional colonoscopies that are used to screen patients for presence of colon cancer can be physically unpleasant, much too invasive, and require diets and laxatives that leave patients feeling empty and exhausted. A new option, in the form of a pill that emits X-rays to image the colon, has just been cleared by European regulators via a CE Mark.
The C-Scan System from Check-Cap, an Israeli firm, features a swallowable pill that has an X-ray source, a positioning system, computing components, and a battery. The patient first swallows a contrast agent and then wears special sensors attached to the skin over where the co...
Source: Medgadget - January 18, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: GI Radiology Surgery Source Type: blogs
What ’s the point of a perfect patient chart?
Last week I made a patient’s chart perfect.
Not bragging, but ultimately it ended up being pretty easy, and I’ll explain how and why in a little bit.
This was a patient I had not seen in several years, with a number of chronic medical problems, for which he had been taking less than optimal care of himself since I had seen him last.
Here for a “checkup,” we talked about his health conditions and how he had been over the past few years. I got a little update on his family and all the things he had been up to, and then he and I — along with his wife, who was here with him for the appointment ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 18, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/fred-n-pelzman" rel="tag" > Fred N. Pelzman, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Health IT Primary Care Source Type: blogs
New Electronic Pill Monitors Gas Contents of Guts
The goings on deep inside our guts are still very much shrouded in mystery. The mystery arises partially from the fact that it’s hard to sample the gasses that exist inside our bowels. Much of our knowledge about the gaseous content of the GI system really comes from stool samples and when the guts are surgically accessed. A new electronic pill is now allowing scientists to study the contents of the gut like never before, providing detailed data about the gasses inside the guts previously impossible to gather.
Developed at RMIT University and trialed by a team at Monash University, both in Australia, the pill is able...
Source: Medgadget - January 16, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: GI News Source Type: blogs
How to Tell Grandpa He Is Too Old for Another Colonoscopy
Shutterstock Cancer screening can save lives: Mammographies reduce the chance women will die of breast cancer; and colonoscopies reduce the chance people will die of colon cancer. But should my 93-year-old father receive a screening colonoscopy? The test is uncomfortable, … Continue reading →
The post How to Tell Grandpa He Is Too Old for Another Colonoscopy appeared first on PeterUbel.com. (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - January 16, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Peter Ubel Tags: Health Care cancer screening Doctor patient communication Peter Ubel syndicated Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Why Living in a Rich Country Can Give You Cancer
Shutterstock As a primary care physician, I have counseled thousands of patients to get cancer screening—blood tests to look for prostate cancer, mammograms to detect impalpable breast cancers, and colonoscopies to find precancerous colon lesions. I’ve even tried to find … Continue reading →
The post Why Living in a Rich Country Can Give You Cancer appeared first on PeterUbel.com. (Source: blog.bioethics.net)
Source: blog.bioethics.net - December 22, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Peter Ubel Tags: Health Care breast cancer cancer screening Peter Ubel syndicated Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Exponential Medicine 2017 Day 1 & 2 Conference Overview: Virtual Reality, Transcriptomics, and an Exciting Announcement by the ACS
Welcome to Medgadget’s overview of this year’s Exponential Medicine (ExMed) conference by Singularity University (SU), which took place, for its fifth year in a row, in San Diego, CA at the Hotel Del Coronado last month. This year ExMed brought together innovators from nearly 40 countries to discuss the technologies and trends reinventing the future of health and medicine. For those of your who were not able to tune into the live stream, this conference report, broken up into two segments, will provide an overview of the conference talks and topics, including additional details from a few select sessions we we...
Source: Medgadget - December 21, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Michael Batista Tags: Exclusive Medicine Source Type: blogs
