A Phenoptosis Perspective on the Evolution of Exceptional Human Longevity
The conclusion to today's open access paper opens with the following declaration: "There is still no agreement among gerontologists as to the main aging-related issue: whether it is an accidental accumulation of damage in the organism or a result of the operation of a specially evolved program." This is true in the sense that a minority of scientists (one in ten, perhaps - it is hard to count heads on this topic) consider aging to be programmed, a phenomenon that is under evolutionary selection, rather than an unselected side-effect of other selected traits.
The consensus views on the evolution of aging is that it i...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 16, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
When and How Will COVID-19 End?
If you’re staying shut in your home, anxious about when you will finally be able to take a stroll outside or whether you or someone close to you will be infected by the novel coronavirus, you are not the only one. In the U.S. alone, half of the adults report high levels of anxiety due to the COVID-19, according to the American Psychiatric Association. The ongoing pandemic is exerting the whole world both physically and mentally. One thing is sure to be asked by everyone: when will all this be over?
Some think that things will never get back to normal. Acclaimed sci-fi writer Ted Chiang says that “we don’t wa...
Source: The Medical Futurist - April 7, 2020 Category: Information Technology Authors: Prans Tags: Future of Medicine digital technology digital health tech digital health technologies coronavirus covid covid19 Source Type: blogs
American Telemedicine Has Gone Viral
By HANS DUVEFELT, MD
It took a 125 nanometer virus only a few weeks to move American healthcare from the twentieth to the twenty-first century.
This had nothing to do with science or technology and only to a small degree was it due to public interest or demand, which had both been present for decades. It happened this month for one simple reason: Medicare and Medicaid started paying for managing patient care without a face to face encounter.
Surprise! In the regular service industries, businesses either charge for their services or give certain services away for free to build customer loyalty. In healthcare, up un...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 20, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Technology Medical Practice Physicians Hans Duvefelt Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Digital Twins and the Promise of Personalized Medicine
Can you guess the percentage of patients with Alzheimer’s on whom medication is ineffective? What about those with arthritis? Or cardiac arrhythmia? In fact, you don’t have to guess as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already has the answers: 70%, 50% and 40% respectively. The percentage of patients for whom medications are ineffective range from 38-75% for varying conditions from depression to osteoporosis.
The main cause is because of the very genetic makeup of every individual. The latter is so different and their interaction so unique that therapies for the “average patient” might very well no...
Source: The Medical Futurist - March 19, 2020 Category: Information Technology Authors: Prans Tags: Future of Medicine Personalized Medicine digital health technology healthcare data digital twin technology design Source Type: blogs
New Non-Toxic, Printable Biomedical Material Developed
Synthetic dry elastomers are polymeric materials that feature cross-linked networks that form into random and unordered shapes and textures. These materials have a host of properties that are applicable in biomedicine, but the randomness of their internal structures at different scales makes it difficult to actually use these elastomers.
Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a porous elastomer whose properties, including its structure down to the nanoscale, can be fine tuned to produce capabilities such as controlled drug release, replacements for lost tissues, and guiding the g...
Source: Medgadget - March 16, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Materials Plastic Surgery Urology Source Type: blogs
Death By Corona: What Are the Numbers?
This morning, we learned that actor Tom Hanks and his wife have contracted COVID-19 infection. Indeed, 43 famous persons have already been affected by the disease, including six Iranian leaders and four European soccer players. We might speculate that this reflects a single exposure event in Iran…or the fact that European athletes travel frequently in a high-incidence environment. Perhaps similar reasoning can be used to explain the striking variation in coronavirus death rates between countries.
As of March 12, 126,258 cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide; and 4,368 died of the disease – a case-fatal...
Source: GIDEON blog - March 12, 2020 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Kristina Symes Tags: Epidemiology Events General Source Type: blogs
Podcast: Is Creativity Enhanced By Mental Illness?
Are people with mental illness more creative? Jackie believes there may be a link between the two, while Gabe thinks it’s just a bunch of hoopla. Get ready — they’ve both done their research and are ready to back their claims. Tune in to hear a lively (and friendly) debate on whether the science is valid, the difference between inspiration and creativity, as well as their own opinions and experiences on mental illness and creativity.
What’s your take? Join us on this Not Crazy podcast to see whose side you’re on, or if you’re somewhere in the middle.
(Transcript Available Below)
SUBSCRIBE & R...
Source: World of Psychology - March 9, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Not Crazy Podcast Tags: Bipolar Creativity Disorders General Mental Health and Wellness Not Crazy Podcast Schizophrenia Source Type: blogs
As Physicians Today, We Must Both Represent the “System” and Disregard it
By HANS DUVEFELT, MD
Healthcare today, in the broadest sense, is not a benevolent giant that wraps its powerful arms around the sick and vulnerable. It is a world of opposing forces such as Government public health ambitions and more or less unfettered market ambitions by hospitals and downright profiteering by some of the middlemen who stand between doctors and patients, such as insurers, Pharmacy Benefits Managers, EMR vendors and other technology companies.
Within healthcare there is also a growing, more or less money-focused sector of paramedicine, promoting “alternative” belief systems, some of which may be ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 5, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Primary Care Hans Duvefelt Healthcare system Source Type: blogs
American Primary Care and My Soviet Era Class Trip: Sensing the Inevitable Collapse of a Top Down Bureaucracy
By HANS DUVEFELT, MD
Swedish Healthcare seemed competent but a bit uninspired and rigid to me but my medical school class trip to the Soviet Union showed me a healthcare system and a culture I could never have fully imagined in a country that had the brain power and resources to have already landed space probes on Mars and Venus by the time my classmates and I arrived in Moscow in the cold winter of 1977.
The first time we sat down for breakfast at two big tables in the restaurant of the big Россия hotel near the Red Square, our two male waiters asked if we wanted coffee or tea and people started stat...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 26, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Medical Practice Primary Care American healthcare Hans Duvefelt Source Type: blogs
PECASE Honoree Sohini Ramachandran Studies the Genetic Foundations of Traits in Diverse Populations
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University.Credit: Danish Saroee/Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.
Recent advances in computing enable researchers to explore the life sciences in ways that would have been impossible a few decades ago. One new tool is the ability to sequence genomes, revealing people’s full DNA blueprints. The collection of more and more genetic data allows researchers to compare the DNA of many people and observe variations, including those shared by people with a common ancestry.
Sohini Ramachandran , Ph.D., is director of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology and associate professor of...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - February 26, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Genes Computational Biology Diseases Evolutionary Biology Genomics Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 24th 2020
In conclusion, taller body height at the entry to adulthood, supposed to be a marker of early-life environment, is associated with lower risk of dementia diagnosis later in life. The association persisted when adjusted for educational level and intelligence test scores in young adulthood, suggesting that height is not just acting as an indicator of cognitive reserve.
A Comparison of Biological Age Measurement Approaches
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/02/a-comparison-of-biological-age-measurement-approaches/
Researchers here assess the performance of a range of approaches to measuring biologica...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 23, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Comparison of Biological Age Measurement Approaches
Researchers here assess the performance of a range of approaches to measuring biological age, including a number of epigenetic clocks based on DNA methylation changes characteristic of aging. The ideal measurement of biological age is one that is quick and cheap to undertake, and that accurately reflects the underlying burden of damage and consequence that drives aging. Such a measure could be used to determine the effectiveness of potential rejuvenation therapies far more rapidly than is presently possible, and would thus accelerate development efforts. Unfortunately none of the existing approaches are quite ready for thi...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 18, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Taiwan Election: Dealing with Disinformation while Protecting Speech
ConclusionThis development is testimony to a simple though important fact: cultures are not stable, unchanging entities, and no nation, be the US, China or Taiwan is by nature endowed with a genetic disposition toward dictatorship or democracy. Culture is something people acquire, not something they are born with. Both in Taiwan and in Chin a more than 90 percent of the population are ethnic Han Chinese, but the countries have developed very different political cultures, and the difference seems to be growing. (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 7, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Flemming Rose Source Type: blogs
Medical Records in Primary Care: Keeping the Story of Phone Calls and Medication Changes with Less than Perfect Tools
By HANS DUVEFELT, MD
I need the right information at the right time (and in a place that makes sense to me) to make safe medical decisions.
Here’s another Metamedicine story:
In learning my third EMR, I am again a little disappointed. I am again, still, finding it hard to document and retrieve the thread of my patient’s life and disease story. I think many EMRs were created for episodic, rather than continued medical care.
One thing that can make working with an EMR difficult is finding the chronology in office visits (seen for sore throat and started on an antibiotic), phone c...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 3, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Hospitals Medical Practice Patients Physicians Primary Care EHR EMR Hans Duvefelt Medical Records medication list medication reconciliation Source Type: blogs
Psychology Around the Net: February 1, 2020
This article shares her story of recovery. (Source: World of Psychology)
Source: World of Psychology - February 1, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Traci Pedersen Tags: Anorexia Anxiety and Panic Disorders Eating Disorders General Medications Mental Health and Wellness Psychology Psychology Around the Net Research Depression gut bacteria Magic Mushrooms postpartum depression psychedelic therap Source Type: blogs
