Thursday, August 29, 2013

Ticks making people allergic to red meat (video)



Love Red Meat? Watch Out for Ticks. - WSJ.com: "If Lyme disease isn't reason enough to avoid ticks, here's another: the inability to enjoy a burger. Odd as it seems, researchers say that bites from the voracious lone star tick are making some people allergic to red meat—even if they've never had a problem eating it before."

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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Aspirin Cancer Prevention

Aspirin for Cancer Prevention | Devil in the Data | Big Think: "With all this data available, you'd think the makers of aspirin and ibuprofen would be touting anti-cancer benefits of their products (which they can legally do, given the extensive nature of the scientific evidence), and you'd think the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and other agencies charged with promoting public health would be quick to spread the word. Not so, however. There's too much money to be made treating cancer, after it takes root." (read more at link above)

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Sunday, August 25, 2013

Foreign Doctors, Obstacles to Practice in US

Despite a shortage of doctors in some parts of the United States, a trend that may worsen under the new health care law, it takes years for a foreign doctor to be licensed here.

Path to United States Practice Is Long Slog to Foreign Doctors - NYTimes.com: " . . . many foreign physicians and their advocates argue that the process is unnecessarily restrictive and time-consuming, particularly since America’s need for doctors will expand sharply in a few short months under President Obama’s health care law. They point out that medical services cost far more in the United States than elsewhere in the world, in part because of such restrictions. The United States already faces a shortage of physicians in many parts of the country, especially in specialties where foreign-trained physicians are most likely to practice, like primary care. And that shortage is going to get exponentially worse, studies predict, when the health care law insures millions more Americans starting in 2014. . . . "

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Thursday, August 22, 2013

High Blood Sugar Linked to Dementia

HIgh blood glucose levels are tied to an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia in a new study.

High Blood Sugar Linked to Dementia - NYTimes.com: " . . . Now comes a novel observational study of patients at a large health care system in Washington State showing that higher blood glucose levels are associated with a greater risk of dementia — even among people who don’t have diabetes. The results, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, “may have influence on the way we think about blood sugar and the brain,” said Dr. Paul Crane, the lead author and associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington. . . . "

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Obamacare Limit on Consumer Costs Delayed

The Obama administration has put off another provision — on deductibles and co-payments — until 2015 --

A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law - NYTimes.com: " . . . . For people with serious illnesses like cancer and multiple sclerosis, Ms. Weinberg said, out-of-pocket costs can total tens of thousands of dollars a year . . . In promoting his health care plan in 2009, Mr. Obama cited the limit on out-of-pocket costs as one of its chief virtues. “We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick,” Mr. Obama told a joint session of Congress in September 2009.

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Sunday, August 18, 2013

Recovery After Divorce or Job Loss a Long Process

After Divorce or Job Loss Comes the Good Identity Crisis - WSJ.com: "Whether you've lost a job or a girlfriend, it won't take long before someone tells you, Dust yourself off. Time heals all wounds. Yes, but how much time? Experts say most people should give themselves a good two years to recover from an emotional trauma such as a breakup or the loss of a job. And if you were blindsided by the event—your spouse left abruptly, you were fired unexpectedly—it could take longer. That is more time than most people expect, says Prudence Gourguechon, a psychiatrist in Chicago and former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. It's important to know roughly how long the emotional disruption will last. Once you get over the shock that it is going to be a long process, you can relax, Dr. Gourguechon says. "You don't have to feel pressure to be OK, because you're not OK.". . ."

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Thursday, August 15, 2013

Antidote to Emptiness

The behavior of men like Anthony Weiner and Steven A. Cohen suggests they were desperately seeking validation, the author writes. But there are better ways to fill that inner emptiness.

The Antidote to Emptiness - NYTimes.com: " . . . We worship at the altar of “winners,” without recognizing that it sets up a zero-sum game in which the consequence must necessarily be a lot of “losers.” We undervalue qualities like humility, vulnerability, personal responsibility and compassion. There are antidotes. The first is self-awareness, or the willingness to honestly face our deepest insecurities and fears, to keep pushing through our infinite capacity for self-deception. The second is the capacity to accept our own deepest opposites – our best nature and our worst, rather than inflating the former and denying the latter. None of us will ever be completely free of our shortcomings and our compulsions, but by recognizing and accepting them, we can exercise more choice about whether to act them out. Finally, there is no more powerful antidote to the havoc we can wreak out of the desperate hunger to prove we matter than to truly serve others without expectation of reward. Paradoxically, nothing makes us feel better about ourselves."

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Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Nightmares After ICU

Patients who have prolonged stays, getting intubated and sedated, may experience severe hallucinations, putting them at risk of PTSD for years to come, studies show--

Nightmares After the I.C.U. - NYTimes.com: " . . . Annually, about five million patients stay in an intensive care unit in the United States. Studies show that up to 35 percent may have symptoms of PTSD for as long as two years after that experience, particularly if they had a prolonged stay due to a critical illness with severe infection orrespiratory failure. Those persistent symptoms include intrusive thoughts, avoidant behaviors, mood swings, emotional numbness and reckless behavior. Yet I.C.U.-induced PTSD has been largely unidentified and untreated. . . ."

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Living Apart Together, LAT Life

The LAT life is healthy, according to all the studies. O.K., one study, admittedly puny in scope, but it just came out. Published in the current issue of the Journal of Communication, it closely followed 63 couples, about half of whom lived together and half of whom couldn’t, separated by circumstance rather than choice. The couples in commuter relationships said that their conversations were less frequent but deeper. They confessed more, listened harder and experienced a greater sense of intimacy. Absence worked its aphoristic magic on the heart. Fondness bloomed . . . (source infra)

Of Love and Fungus - NYTimes.com: " . . . Even in earlier eras, before the ready meeting place of cyberspace, this sort of arrangement worked. Fannie Hurst, a hugely popular short-story writer in the early 20th century, and her husband had separate studio apartments in the same building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They made appointments to see each other. She explained that most of the other marriages she’d observed were “sordid endurance tests, overgrown with the fungi of familiarity and contempt.”. . . "

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Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Jungle Indoors (video)



The Jungle Indoors: "Researchers are just beginning to understand the sheer number and type of organisms that live inside the home with us."

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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Four Square Blocks: Design Williamsburg (video)



Four Square Blocks: Design Williamsburg: "Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has developed an animated design scene. We look at spots of visual interest in four square blocks."

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Sunday, August 4, 2013

Two LA Interior Design Stores (video)



Made in L.A.: Two Interior Design Stores: "In a new series, the interior designer and writer David Netto explores Los Angeles and finds inspiration in his surroundings. In this episode, Netto visits Blackman Cruz and J. F. Chen. "

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Thursday, August 1, 2013

Seeking Sexual Surrogates (video)



Seeking Sexual Surrogates: "In France, sexual surrogates for disabled people are not permitted, but some are pushing to make the practice legal."

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