The Fifty Year Anniversary of the First Cryopreservation
Fifty years ago, the first human was cryopreserved in the hopes of future revival. To this day, cryopreservation remains the only chance at a longer life in the future for all those who will age to death prior to the advent of effective rejuvenation therapies. James Bedford's preservation was a straight freezing with all the attendant tissue damage, unlike the vitrification techniques used today. It is certainly the case that future restoration would require exceptionally comprehensive control and manipulation of molecular biology, of the sort enabled by a mature molecular nanotechnology industry. The degree to which the d...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 12, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at 2016 in Longevity Science
Well, another year passes and here we are again, one step closer to the defeat of aging and age-related disease. Ours is an era of revolutionary progress in biotechnology, and it is starting to show. The past year was characterized by both significant fundraising and significant progress towards the clinical translation of the first complete SENS rejuvenation therapy: clearance of senescent cells from aged tissue. This is hopefully the first of numerous other SENS therapies based on repair of molecular damage to arrive over the next few years. I recently updated my predictions for the near future, looking over the parts of...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 31, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs
Why life insurers need to invest in patient education
I was very excited when I saw the full page advertisement Aviva Life Insurance ran on 18 Dec 2016 in the Times of India , on providing heart care to couples.The IRDA now allows life insurers to also cover medical illnesses , and I think this is a very healthy trend. In the past, health insurance products were primarily provided by health insurance companies. Most of these had a very shortsighted approach because of legacy issues. They were illness insurance product, which reimbursed for the medical care needed in case the customer fell ill. This is why they did not invest in preventive health care.There was no business cas...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - December 19, 2016 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs
No matter what Trump does to health care, we must accept an imperfect reality
Tom is a forty-three-year-old self-employed painter and father of two.
He’s currently in remission from lung cancer, having been first diagnosed five years ago. At the time of his diagnosis, he did not have health insurance. Thankfully, for him, American law had finally made it illegal for health insurance companies to discriminate against individuals with preexisting conditions.
Tom had to be offered insurance at community rates. And, this was a good thing for him. His medical expenses exceeded $100,000 annually for his first two years of treatment. No one deserves to go without care for a serious medical condition.
***...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - December 12, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/rocky-bilhartz" rel="tag" > Rocky Bilhartz, MD < /a > Tags: Policy Health reform Source Type: blogs
Symptoms of Cancer May Include Fatigue, Unexplained Weight Loss, Fever and Foreclosure
by Bridget BlitzAs a palliative care social worker, I provide home visits to patients and families to explore how they are coping with complex medical issues, which resources they need, how we might add services that could reduce caregiver strain, and talk to them about their goals of care and about their wishes for the life they have left. Startling to me, within these discussions, is the depth of fear and anxiety about finances that leave these individuals struck with more than a horrible illness. They now have to absorb the real possibility of being without a permanent home in addition to adapting to new treatments, sym...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - November 14, 2016 Category: Palliative Care Tags: bankruptcy financial social work social worker Source Type: blogs
HHS Vigorously Defends Against Insurer Claims For Risk Corridor Payments
The Affordable Care Act risk corridor program requires the Department of Health and Human Services to collect funds from excessively profitable insurers that offer qualified health plans (QHPs) through the marketplaces while paying out funds to QHP insurers that have excessive losses. Although the statute does not explicitly state that the amount paid to insurers cannot exceed the amount collected, Congress passed appropriations riders imposing such a requirement for 2014 and again for 2015.
Collections from profitable insurers under the program of $362 million in 2014 fell far short of payment of $2.87 billion owed to ins...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - October 4, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: Timothy Jost Tags: Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage ACA litigation fixed indemnity insurance risk corridor program Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 26th 2016
This study included 647 patients 80 to 106 years of age who had audiometric evaluations at an academic medical center (141 had multiple audiograms). The degree of hearing loss was compared across the following age brackets: 80 to 84 years, 85 to 89 years, 90 to 94 years, and 95 years and older. From an individual perspective, the rate of hearing decrease between 2 audiograms was compared with age. The researchers found that changes in hearing among age brackets were higher during the 10th decade of life than the 9th decade at all frequencies for all the patients (average age, 90 years). Correspondingly, the annual rate of ...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 25, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Selection of Views on Cryonics from the Cryonics Community
Here I'll point out a good article on cryonics and its nuances in the online press; it includes thoughts from people working at cryonics providers, people signed up for cryopreservation, and advocates with various viewpoints. Like any community there are a range of opinions on what constitutes progress and the best strategy for moving ahead, and just as many motivations as there are individuals involved. What is cryonics? It is the low-temperature preservation of at least the brain as closely following death as possible. Early preservations in the 1960s and 1970s were a matter of straight freezing, and thus the preserved i...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 24, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Back to School Shots: How Your Child is Being Programmed
Conclusion
Where are the government-based incentives offering prizes to parents who read to their children? Or rewards for parents who provide their children with adequate levels of vitamin D to boost their immune systems, instead of rewarding them with meager incentives for injecting their children with toxins?
This article outlines a mere fraction of the publicly and privately sponsored incentive programs in existence designed to pressure parents to vaccinate their children. If vaccines are so safe and effective, why do organizations need to provide toys, gift cards, money, and other prizes to boost vaccination rates in ...
Source: vactruth.com - August 11, 2016 Category: Allergy & Immunology Authors: Missy Fluegge Tags: Logical Missy Fluegge Recent Articles Top Picks truth about vaccines vaccine incentives Source Type: blogs
A doctor turns to social media for organ donation
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
A couple of months ago I received a Facebook invitation to “like” a page. That was not unusual, and usually the pages are on silly or obscure topics, but this page was different. The name of the page was New Kidney for Stu.
Stuart Himmelstein, MD, FACP, is one of my Facebook friends. Stu is a solo internist in private practice in Delray Beach, Florida. He is also a past Governor of the Florida Chapter of the American College of Physicians (ACP), which is how I met and got to know him. His ACP service is just one of his many contributions to...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 29, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/yul-ejnes" rel="tag" > Yul Ejnes, MD < /a > Tags: Physician Nephrology Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 18th 2016
In this study, a PET camera was used to examine individual differences in the D2 system in a group consisting of 181 healthy individuals between the age of 64 and 68. All participants also had to take part in an all-inclusive performance test of the long-term episodic memory, working memory and processing speed along with an MRI assessment (which was used to measure the size of various parts of the brain). Researchers could see that the D2 system was positively linked to episodic memory, but not to working memory or to processing speed by relating PET registrations to the cognitive data. Researchers could also see that the...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 17, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Finally Signed Up for Cryopreservation: the Existence of a Fallback Plan is Great, but Only if You Actually Take Advantage of It
As regular readers will know, I've long considered the cryonics industry to be a sensible, necessary undertaking in an uncertain world. For those of us interested in longevity, the primary plan is to accelerate development of rejuvenation therapies to the point at which we can achieve actuarial escape velocity: that we'll benefit enough from the first generation of therapies, and thus survive long enough to benefit from the second, much better generation of therapies, and so on, until aging is comprehensively defeated and our remaining healthy, youthful, vigorous lifespans become indefinite in length. It is almost certainl...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 16, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs
The Illness of Work Incapacity
By NORTIN HADLER, MD
Etiology, pathogenesis and translational science beat drums to which modern medicine marches – with escalating cadence. Yes, there is cacophony on occasion and missteps, but we all wait for the next insight to trigger a wave of enthusiasm at the bench and beyond. “Disease” is no longer an elusive monster in the swamp of ignorance; “disease” is prey. It can be defined, parsed, deduced, and sometimes defeated.
Little of this pertains to “health.” Health does not objectify itself. Nor is it simply the absence of disease. Health has temporal and geographic dimensions. Health is inseparabl...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Medicalization Population Health Presenteeism Workman's Compensation Workplace Wellness Source Type: blogs
Risk-Factor Based-Medicine and Its Discontents
By MICHEL ACCAD, MD
If concepts could get awards, then “risk factor” would surely be a Nobel prize winner. Barely over 50 years of age, it enjoys such an important place in medicine that I suspect most of us doctors could hardly imagine practicing without it. Yet, clearly, the concept is not native to our profession nor is its success entirely justified.
A few years ago, on the occasion of the risk factor’s fiftieth anniversary, my colleague Herb Fred and I published an editorial highlighting some of the problem with the use of this concept. I will summarize here some of those points.
The risk factor concept ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 12, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 30th 2016
This study expands on the idea that loss of Y, already a known risk factor for cancer, could be a predictive biomarker for a wider range of poor health outcomes, specifically Alzheimer's. Why loss of Y can be linked to an increased risk for disease remains unclear, but the authors speculate it has to do with reduced immune system performance.
The researchers looked at over 3,000 men to ascertain whether there was any predictive association between loss of Y in blood cells and Alzheimer's disease. The participants came from three long-term studies that could provide regular blood samples: the European Alzheimer's Dis...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 29, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
