Fight Aging! Newsletter, June 5th 2023
In conclusion, higher BMR might reduce lifespan. The underlying pathways linking to major causes of death and relevant interventions warrant further investigation.
Betting Against Progress Turns Out Poorly, But Can Work in the Short Term in a Slow Field
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/06/betting-against-progress-turns-out-poorly-but-can-work-in-the-short-term-in-a-slow-field/
Setting oneself up as a spokesperson for "we will not achieve this goal", as the fellow noted here is choosing to do, is a bet against technological progress. A glance at any few decade period in the past two hundred yea...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 4, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Herpes Zoster Vaccination Reduces Alzheimer's Risk
Evidence exists for herpesvirus infection to increase the risk of suffering Alzheimer's disease. The evidence is mixed, however, with some studies showing no effect. There is some suggestion that the interaction of multiple viruses is the real contributing effect, which is why looking at just one virus type may produce problematic data. Researchers here show that vaccination against herpes zoster reduces Alzheimer's risk, though one might as to whether this is because of reduced viral impact, or because vaccinations can produce a trained immunity effect, reducing chronic inflammation in older people.
There is grow...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 2, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Two Cases of a Cool Skin Condition (Erythrocyanosis, Pernio or Chilblains, Anyone?)
BY HANS DUVEFELT
A month ago an oncologist called and asked me to see one of my heart failure patients whose chronically swollen legs seemed unusually blue but not cold.
Before I could get him in to see me, he ended up seeing a colleague, who called me up and said the man’s legs were cool and there was no Doppler in that office to check for pedal pulses. The man was sent for an urgent CT angiogram with runoff.
The test was perfectly normal. He had clean arteries.
When I saw him, the legs were less blue than they must have been and they felt OK but he had what looked like a shingles rash around his right elbow...
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 19, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Chillblains Cool Skin Condition Erythrocyanosis Hans Duvefelt Source Type: blogs
Returning From A Long Hiatus
It has been a long time since I’ve done any writing to speak of. Years, in fact. I think part of the reason is that I simply wasn’t inspired to do any, for quite a while. Not writing, I think, was a mistake; there has been quite a bit of water that has flowed over the proverbial dam over the past few years. For whatever reason, my creative juices have started to flow again, and I’ve decided to pick this back up.
I think one of the things that caused this – and it was actually a little bit strange when this happened, but I don’t question things I have no control over – was that I inadvertently opened ...
Source: Qui Interrogat - March 3, 2023 Category: Nursing Authors: Walt Trachim Tags: Personal musings travel writing Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 13th 2023
This study investigated whether taller Polish adults live longer than their shorter counterparts. Data on declared height were available from 848,860 individuals who died in the years 2004-2008 in Poland. To allow for the cohort effect, the Z-values were generated. Separately for both sexes, Pearson's r coefficients of correlation were calculated. Subsequently, one way ANOVA was performed.
The correlation between adult height and longevity was negative and statistically significant in both men and women. After eliminating the effects of secular trends in height, the correlation was very weak (r = -0.0044 in men and ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 12, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Viral Infection in Middle Age Correlates with Later Dementia Risk
A range of evidence suggests that persistent viral infection contributes to the risk of suffering neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. This may be due to mechanisms relating to amyloid-β accumulation, in its role as an anti-microbial peptide, a part of the innate immune system. It may have more to do with lasting chronic inflammation subsequent to infection. Researchers here note another addition to the epidemiological data on this topic, in this case linking severe infections requiring hospitalization with later dementia risk. The effect sizes here are large and last for a long time following infecti...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 10, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Better Living Through Better Design
BY KIM BELLARD
We’re almost two weeks past Hurricane Ian. Most of us weren’t in its path and so it just becomes another disaster that happened to other people, but to those people most impacted it is an ongoing challenge: over a hundred people dead, hundreds of thousands still without power, tens of thousands facing a housing crisis due to destroyed/damaged homes, and estimated $67b in damages. It will take years of rebuilding to recover.
In the wake of a natural disaster like a hurricane – or a tornado, a flood, even a pandemic – it’s easy to shrug our shoulders and say, well, it’s Mother Nature, wh...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 11, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Public Health Babcock Ranch Hurricane Ian Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 8th 2022
In conclusion, aging research will benefit from a better definition of how specific regulators map onto age-dependent change, considered on a phenotype-by-phenotype basis. Resolving some of these key questions will shed more light on how tractable (or intractable) the biology of aging is.
Does Acarbose Extend Life in Short Lived Species via Gut Microbiome Changes?
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/08/does-acarbose-extend-life-in-short-lived-species-via-gut-microbiome-changes/
Acarbose is one of a few diabetes medications shown to modestly slow aging in short-lived species. Researchers here take a...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 7, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Continuing the Debate Over Viral Contributions to Alzheimer's Disease
Persistent viral infection may be an important contributing cause of Alzheimer's disease, either because the amyloid-β associated with Alzheimer's disease is a part of the innate immune response, and infection thereby increases production, or because persistent infection drives the chronic inflammation that disrupts the biochemistry of brain tissue. If viral infection does drive Alzheimer's disease, it may go some way towards explaining why the disease doesn't correlate with lifestyle factors such as weight, activity, and so forth, anywhere near as well as is the case for other common age-related conditions. It all sounds...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 5, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Health Care Through the Back Door: The Dangers of Nurse Visits
By HANS DUVEFELT
In some practices, patients with seemingly simple problems are scheduled to be seen by a nurse or medical assistant. Sometimes they can even just drop off a urine sample in case of a suspected urinary tract infection.
This is a dangerous trap. What if the patient rarely gets urinary infections, has back pain and assumes it is a UTI instead of a kidney stone or shingles on their back just where one kidney is located; what if they have lower abdominal pain from an ovarian cyst or an ectopic pregnancy?
Another dangerous type of “nurse visit” is when patients focus on one symptom or parameter, thi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 12, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Primary Care Hans Duvefelt Source Type: blogs
Matthew ’s health care tidbits: The Stupidity Vaccine
Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt
For my health care tidbits this week, I think we need a new vaccine. We need one that prevents stupidity.Look I get that some people don’t think the flu vaccine is effective and don’t think the effects are too bad, so they don’t get one every year. Many people don’t get a vaccine for shingles. But as someone who had shingles long before the recommended ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 5, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt vaccines Source Type: blogs
American Primary Care is a Big Waste of Time (When …)
By HANS DUVEFELT
Before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450, books in Europe were copied by hand, mostly by monks and clergy. Ironically, they were often called scribes, the same word we now use for the new class of healthcare workers employed to improve the efficiency of physician documentation.
Think about that for a moment: American doctors are employing almost medieval methods in what is supposed to be the era of computers. Why aren’t we using AI for documentation?
The pathetically cumbersome methods of documentation available (required) for our clinical encounters is only one of several a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 27, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Primary Care Hans Duvefelt Source Type: blogs
How U.S. Trade Policy Helped Construction Materials Costs Go Through the Roof
Scott LincicomeTheWall Street Journalreports that skyrocketing construction material costs are inflating home prices, pressuring homebuyers and threatening the booming U.S. housing and construction industries:Lumber, one of the biggest costs in home-building after land and labor, has never been more expensive and is more than twice the typical price for this time of year. Crude oil, a starting point for paint, drain pipe, roof shingles and flooring, has shot up more than 80% since October. Copper, which carries water and electricity throughout houses, costs about a third more than it did in the autumn.Prices for granite, i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 18, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
How Seniors Got Lost In The Digital Health Revolution
COVID-19 forced seniors to start looking for technology-based solutions more than ever before. According to reports, they are more connected to the Internet than ever before, as loneliness and isolation forced them to use their devices extensively. A survey in the U.S. found that the overall use of telemedicine services among seniors increased 300% during the pandemic.
Acquiring digital skills became a must, but, due to the lockdowns and worrying for their health, most of them have lost their support network in tech – children, grandchildren and other more computer literate family members. Learning how to u...
Source: The Medical Futurist - February 11, 2021 Category: Information Technology Authors: Judit Kuszkó Tags: Covid-19 Digital Health Research E-Patients Future of Medicine Health Sensors & Trackers Portable Medical Diagnostics Robotics Telemedicine & Smartphones ces technology seniors elderly gamification rehabilitation tech giants Source Type: blogs
Shingles of the eye can cause lasting vision impairment
Shingles, or herpes zoster, is a viral infection known for its characteristic painful, burning, or itchy rash. This rash appears along a particular affected nerve, for example in a band on one side of the chest or abdomen that extends around to the back. In fact, the name shingles comes from cingulum, the Latin word for girdle, belt, or sash.
Shingles is caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, the virus that causes chickenpox. After the initial chickenpox infection resolves the virus lives on in nerves all over the body, but is kept in check by the immune system. The risk of shingles therefore increases with ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 27, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Miriam Barshak, MD Tags: Eye Health Healthy Aging Vaccines Source Type: blogs
