What happens an hour after you drink organic locally grown kale juice?
And yes, it’s satire.
Category Archives: Health
Cholesterol
Finally. The feds are on the verge of withdrawing decades of unscientific warnings about eating it. But they’ve still got it wrong:
The finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that, for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease.
The greater danger in this regard, these experts believe, lies not in products such as eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods heavy with saturated fats, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter.
There is zero scientific evidence that eating saturated fat is a problem. Zero. And yet they persist.
Blood Vessels
Some evidence that they can actually improve with age. Interesting.
High Blood Pressure
This looks interesting, but I’d like to see some numbers. Like, how much does it cost, and what kind of reductions are they seeing? I often see studies that amuse me, as though a barely-statisrically-significant 10% risk reduction for some expensive drug with unpleasant side effects is actually worth it.
And is it a permanent solution, or does it require periodic retreatment? Also, are there side effects (like insufficient blood flow to the brain on suddenly standing up)?
A New Anti-Body
Could attack several different strains of flu, and make the annual shot obsolete.
I hope so.
Dietary Fat
Why the federal government has been afraid of it.
History will view this as one of the biggest public-health disasters of all time, and (as with climate) based on junk science.
Sleep
Why we’re having problems getting enough.
We’re not really adapted to the industrial age. Our bodies still expect to go to sleep when it gets dark, perhaps wake during the night for a couple hours, then sleep more until dawn.
Every motel room we’ve stayed in on this trip has extraneous electronic lights. Twice, the VIZIO television has “VIZIO” lit in yellow beneath the screen, even when turned off. Only way to darken it is to unplug it.
Telomere Extension
…turns back aging clock in cultured cells:
“This new approach paves the way toward preventing or treating diseases of aging,” said Blau. “There are also highly debilitating genetic diseases associated with telomere shortening that could benefit from such a potential treatment.”
Blau and her colleagues became interested in telomeres when previous work in her lab showed that the muscle stem cells of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy had telomeres that were much shorter than those of boys without the disease. This finding not only has implications for understanding how the cells function — or don’t function — in making new muscle, but it also helps explain the limited ability to grow affected cells in the laboratory for study.
The researchers are now testing their new technique in other types of cells.
“This study is a first step toward the development of telomere extension to improve cell therapies and to possibly treat disorders of accelerated aging in humans,” said John Cooke, MD, PhD. Cooke, a co-author of the study, formerly was a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford. He is now chair of cardiovascular sciences at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
“We’re working to understand more about the differences among cell types, and how we can overcome those differences to allow this approach to be more universally useful,” said Blau, who also is a member of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.
“One day it may be possible to target muscle stem cells in a patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, for example, to extend their telomeres. There are also implications for treating conditions of aging, such as diabetes and heart disease. This has really opened the doors to consider all types of potential uses of this therapy.”
I wonder if there’s some political reason they won’t use the R word? Anyway, faster, please.
PoliticianCare
“A bunch of politicos got in on the ground floor of Obamacare’s $2 billion co-ops in 2011. Today, they are filthy rich cauz nobody’s been watching. Except Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation. Tomorrow’s second part will make you even madder. I know, I’m his editor!”
It’s crony socialism all the way down.
SCOTUS Saves ObamaCare Again
So, once again, it’s up to the voters to get rid of this legislative atrocity.
[Late-morning update]
Wow. By amazing coincidence, they released this ruling that words mean whatever they want them to mean on George Orwell’s birthday.
[Afternoon update]
No matter how King v. Burwell was decided, this was always going to come down to 2016:
Supporters of the law have already telegraphed that their next move is to end the political debate by urging a Pax Obamacare to which all Americans must acquiesce. Last week the president said, after “five years in, what we are talking about it is no longer just a law. It’s no longer just a theory. This isn’t even just about the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare . . . This is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another.”
While the ACA is certainly the “law of the land,” as it has been since its enactment, nothing in the Court’s decision today imparts any additional legitimacy on this law as a public policy meriting political acquiescence. To borrow from the president’s words, it is still “just a law.” So nothing in this decision should deter Republican presidential and congressional candidates in the 2016 election from continuing to press their campaign to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.
Politically, it’s actually probably better for Republicans and those others of us who want to repeal it, but it’s a terrible terrible precedent, legally.
[Update a few minutes later]
Roberts rewrites the PPACA to save it (again).
[Mid-afternoon update]
Sorry, Obama, but it’s still not a done deal:
Obamacare has only enrolled about 40% of the subsidy eligible market in two years worth of open enrollments. That level of consumer support does not make Obamacare either financially sustainable or politically sustainable. The surveys say the 40% who have enrolled like their plans. Of course they do, they are the poorest with the biggest subsidies and the lowest deductibles. The working and middle-class have most often not signed up for Obamacare because it costs too much and delivers too little.
That Obamacare is not financially sustainable is evidenced by the first wave of big 2016 rate increases by so many large market share insurers. The next wave of rate increases a year from now will also be large and will be in the middle of the 2016 election.
These rate increases will further undermine the political sustainability of the law that has been reflected in five years of polling.
On to the election.
[Later-afternoon update]
“Let us recall why the Affordable Care Act is so messed up.”