Saving the Lives of Moms

THIS is a Mother’s Day tribute to a mighty woman and to the doctor who gave her back her life — and also a celebration of a grand new women’s hospital that you as readers helped to build.

The woman is Mahabouba Mohammed, an Ethiopian who was raped at about age 13. She gave birth alone: after many days of labor, the baby was stillborn and she suffered an obstetric fistula.

A fistula is just about the worst fate that can happen to a woman or girl. It’s a childbirth injury that causes her to leak urine or feces continuously through her vagina. In Mahabouba’s case, she also suffered nerve damage in both legs so that she couldn’t walk.

More than two million women and girls have fistulas worldwide. They are the lepers of the 21st century, among the most voiceless and shunned people on earth. Fistulas were once also common in America (a fistula hospital was once located in Manhattan where the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is now), but today they normally afflict only people in poor countries of Africa and Asia.

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“People in America can’t believe I left urology to do this, but this is about changing lives,” which is better than “listening to men tell me about the quality of their erections,” he said. “I’ve had my family held at gunpoint, I’ve had malaria, I’ve had a serious exposure toH.I.V., I’ve been separated from family, and I’ve spent about a million hours crammed into coach class on airlines, but it’s worth it. I’d much rather live a meaningful life than a comfortable one.”

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For years, Dr. Arrowsmith has been dreaming — along with Dr. Lewis Wall, a fistula expert at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — of establishing a fistula hospital in West Africa. After I wrote about their organization, the Worldwide Fistula Fund, a couple of years ago, Times readers responded with an outpouring of support — some $500,000.

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A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity

Carson C. Chow deploys mathematics to solve the everyday problems of real life. As an investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, he tries to figure out why 1 in 3 Americans are overweight.
We spoke at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where Dr. Chow, 49, gave a presentation on “Illuminating the Obesity Epidemic With Mathematics,” and then later by telephone; a condensed and edited version of the interviews follows.
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The Unknown Inventor Whose Work Is Saving The Developing World

Ashok Gadgil is a professor at UC Berkeley. But in his spare time, he’s come up with solutions for water, cooking, and energy quandaries, improving lives from the Sudan to India. How does he do it? He just likes a good puzzle.

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Africa Beats: Cape Verdean singer Carmen Souza performs her song Ind'feso

Perucussive Jazz from Cape Verde--

 Definitely tinges of Cesaria Evora, but with a funky bass accompaniment

There is a good video at the link

 Uvealblues

Carmen was born in Cape Verde, the tiny Atlantic ocean archipelago that punches above its weight musically, and was also home to the late international superstar Cesaria Evora.
As she grew up in Portugal she made a point of exploring other musical influences and now her music is infused with her love of jazz and the rhythms of Cape Verde.
She has released a new album - Duo - with long-time collaborator, bass player Theo Pas'cal.
Carmen's desire to improve society is reflected in the issues she tackles in her songs and the fact that 50% of the profits of Duo are going to charity.
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Put Away The Bell Curve: Most Of Us Aren't 'Average'

Human performance, by this account, does not often fit the bell curve or what scientists call a normal distribution. Rather, it is more likely to fit what scientists call a power distribution.

The study examined the performance of 633,263 people involved in four broad areas of human performance: academics writing papers, athletes at the professional and collegiate levels, politicians and entertainers.

"We looked at researchers, we looked at entertainers, we looked at politicians, and we looked at collegiate as well as professional athletes," Aguinis said in an interview. "In each of these kinds of industries, we found that a small minority of superstar performers contribute a disproportionate amount of the output."

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Aguinis said his findings were descriptive, not prescriptive. He said the findings should not be interpreted to mean that managers and teachers should only focus on the superstars and ignore everyone else.

At the same time, he said, successful companies and nations would do well to identify superstars, because such performers were disproportionately likely to register new discoveries and achievements.

How the Blind Are Reinventing the iPhone

At first many blind people thought that the iPhone would never be accessible to them, with its flat glass screen. But the opposite has proved true.

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How to Turn a Salad Spinner Into a Medical Centrifuge for $30

The necessary parts: one salad spinner, some hair combs, a yogurt container, plastic lids, and a glue gun. The finished product: a manual, push-pump centrifuge that could be a lifesaver in developing world medical clinics. Its name: the Sally Centrifuge.

A team of college students invented this low-cost centrifuge, which can be built for about $30, as a project for a global health class at Rice University. The teacher challenged them to build an inexpensive, portable tool that could diagnose anemia without access to electricity, and the tinkerers got to work.

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Crowdsourced Pathology, Thanks to Video Gamers

Specifically, using non-professional gamers we report diagnosis of malaria infected red-blood-cells with an accuracy that is within 1.25% of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained professional.
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Genes May Link Disparate Diseases

Diseases that strike different parts of the body—and that don't seem to resemble each other at all—may actually have a lot in common.

Scientists have identified the genetic basis for many separate diseases. Now, some researchers are looking at how the genes interact with each other. They are finding that a genetic abnormality behind one illness may also cause other, seemingly unrelated disorders. Sometimes diseases are tangentially linked, having just one gene in common. But the greater the number of shared genetic underpinnings a group of diseases has, the greater the likelihood a patient with one of the illnesses will contract another.

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Researchers have found evidence, for example, that there is a close genetic relationship between Crohn's disease, a gastrointestinal condition, and Type 2 diabetes, despite the fact the two conditions affect the body in very distinct ways. Other illnesses with apparently close genetic links are rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes, the form of the disease that usually starts in childhood..

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Since all the DNA in the human body was first sequenced in 2000, some 4,000 diseases with a known genetic basis have been identified, according to the National Institutes of Health. But only about 250 of those diseases have treatments, leaving many genetic puzzles left to untangle.

Scientists have long known that proteins and other molecules in the body don't act alone. In order for the body to operate efficiently, biological substances must bind to or pass chemical messages to each other to start and stop working. The system is complex: Each gene is thought to produce, on average, five separate substances, mostly proteins, and these products interact with each other. When a protein, or group of proteins, malfunctions, it appears to give rise to a variety of distinct illnesses.

Don’t Just Sit There

We all know by now that being inactive is unhealthy. But far too many of us think that being inactive is something that happens to other people.

Studies of daily movement patterns, though, show that your typical modern exerciser, even someone who runs, subsequently sits for hours afterward, often moving less over all than on days when he or she does not work out.

The health consequences are swift, pervasive and punishing.

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Exercise only slightly lessened the health risks of sitting. People in the study who exercised for seven hours or more a week but spent at least seven hours a day in front of the television were more likely to die prematurely than the small group who worked out seven hours a week and watched less than an hour of TV a day.

If those numbers seem abstract, consider a blunt new Australian study. In it, researchers determined that watching an hour of television can snip 22 minutes from someone’s life. If an average man watched no TV in his adult life, the authors concluded, his life span might be 1.8 years longer, and a TV-less woman might live for a year and half longer than otherwise.

3 common misconceptions about doctors

Dr. Evans makes some excellent points here...
Uvealblues
In the current climate of health care reform, it is important to understand doctors and the work they do. I have found 3 common misconceptions, held even by doctors themselves, concerning the job of being a doctor
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Brian Greene: Why is our universe fine-tuned for life?

Starving in India: A Scribe Tries to Save a Life

Last fall, I conducted field research on starvation in India along with my colleague Ankita Aggarwal from the New Delhi-based Centre for Equity Studies, a think tank. As we traveled across several states, hearing tale after tale of families battling chronic hunger to stay alive, it became clear to us that the media play a critical role in holding public officials accountable. A powerful news report can generate a wave of public outrage over starvation – and can result in government action.
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Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen argued long ago that independent India had successfully managed to prevent famine because of its democratic political structures. He was referring not just to electoral processes, but also the independent media that shines a light on government wrongdoing and galvanizes the public’s attention when starvation deaths happen.
“The government cannot afford to fail to take prompt action when large-scale starvation threatens. Newspapers play an important part in this, in making the facts known and forcing the challenge to be faced,” Mr. Sen wrote in a 1984 article in the journal Food and Nutrition.
Indeed, the catalyst for the “right to food” public interest litigation the Supreme Court has been hearing since 2001 was evidence of starvation deaths reported by several media outlets.

Saving Lives in a Time of Cholera

Cholera is on the rise around the world. Last year, according to Unicef, West and Central Africa had “one of the worst ever” cholera outbreaks. An outbreak in Haiti sickened 1 in 20 Haitians and killed more than 7,000 people. The World Health Organization estimates that there are between three million and five million cases of cholera each year, and between 100,000 and 120,000 deaths. New and more virulent strains are emerging in Asia and Africa, and the W.H.O. says that global warming creates even more hospitable conditions for the disease.
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With cholera, speed matters. It can kill very quickly — in a few hours if victims are already malnourished. And since the incubation period for the cholera bacteria can be as short as two hours, it spreads fast.
Until now, early action has been nearly impossible. Governments, fearing stigma and a loss of tourism, often cover up cholera, and international organizations sometimes go along with the fiction. Even when governments  do call cholera by its name and start inviting international help and expertise, the W.H.O. and Unicef are bureaucracies — and such invitations can come weeks after a widespread epidemic is under way.
A new partnership between two organizations that battle cholera will make it possible to get supplies and knowledge to cholera-stricken areas much faster.
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Their most important message is the importance of early and massive hydration — if a patient is too weak to drink, then IV solution is necessary. “The biggest mistake is that patients do not get enough hydration fast enough,” Mr. Pietroni said. “You have to give huge amounts of IV fluid in the first three hours — seven or eight liters. In Dhaka at the end of April you see people with IVs in each arm and leg. But as soon as the patient can drink, you switch them to oral rehydration.”
Flooding patients produces Lazarus-like effects.

How Exercise Can Prime the Brain for Addiction

Statistically, people who exercise are much less likely than inactive people to abuse drugs or alcohol. But can exercise help curb addictions? Some research shows that exercise may stimulate reward centers in the brain, helping to ease cravings for drugs or other substances. But according to an eye-opening new study of cocaine-addicted mice, dedicated exercise may in some cases make it even harder to break an addiction.
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New View of Depression: An Ailment of the Entire Body

Scientists are increasingly finding that depression and other psychological disorders can be as much diseases of the body as of the mind.
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Scientists are finding that the same changes to chromosomes that happen as people age can also be found in people experiencing major stress and depression.

The phenomenon, known as "accelerated aging," is beginning to reshape the field's understanding of stress and depression not merely as psychological conditions but as body-wide illnesses in which mood may be just the most obvious symptom.

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Scientists say more work needs to be done to figure out exactly how severe a psychological experience must be to affect telomere length. Some research suggests that as few as two episodes of major depression may be sufficient to affect cell structure. Other studies indicate that the more bouts of depression a person experiences, the more impact there is on telomere length.

The "holy grail" of this area of work is to try to find the molecular mechanisms by which depression or stress take their toll on the body, says P. Murali Doraiswamy, head of the division of biological psychiatry at Duke University, who isn't involved in telomere work. Such information could help provide clues about how much of age-related disease is due to genetics versus life experience, and whether it can be reversed, he says.

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Resistance spread 'compromising' fight against malaria

Scientists have found new evidence that resistance to the front-line treatments for malaria is increasing.

They have confirmed that resistant strains of the malaria parasite on the border between Thailand and Burma, 500 miles (800km) away from previous sites.
Researchers say that the rise of resistance means the effort to eliminate malaria is "seriously compromised".
The details have been published in The Lancet medical journal.

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Rise of the Medical Expertocracy

Excellent article...

Uvealblues

Both Democrats and Republicans want to introduce the paternalism of 'best practices' into health care

Should everyone take vitamin D, and if so, how much? At what age and how often should a woman have a mammogram? Should a healthy man be screened for prostate cancer, and if cancer is diagnosed, how should he be treated?
As the health-care debate heats up again in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans will try to convince us that they have the experts to answer all our health questions. President Barack Obama and the Democrats propose panels of government experts to evaluate treatments and, in the president's words, "Figure out what works and what doesn't." Republicans claim that the free market (that is, insurance companies with their own experts) will pay for value and empower consumers. Both sides insist that no one will come between us and our doctors.

Democrats and Republicans share a fundamental misconception about medical care. Both assume that, as in mathematics, there is a single right answer for every health problem.

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Social media campaign aims at fighting food crisis in Africa's Sahel

Vast portions of west and central Africa have become so dry that they can't support crops, livestock and the millions of people who live there.

The Sahel - a belt of arid land that stretches across Africa below the Sahara Desert - is a zone prone to cycles of drought, and eight countries are seeing the worst of it this time.
The United Nations estimates that more than 10 million people are in danger of starving to death. Aid workers on the ground say it's getting worse quickly.
In response, UNICEF is launching a 24-hour social media campaign on Tuesday to raise awareness about the food crisis in Africa.
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'Island of the Blind' Riles a Greek Public Facing Cutbacks

The island of Zakynthos, long known for its Venetian ruins and turquoise waters, lately has new fame in Greece—as "the island of the blind."
The Greek health ministry is investigating on Zakynthos after local officials flagged records showing what they said is an implausibly high number of disability claims for blindness.
About 1.8% of the island's population of 39,000 claimed the benefit last year, according to the health ministry. That is around nine times the prevalence of blindness estimated for many European countries in a 2004 study published in a World Health Organization journal.
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Millions of germs fly when you enter the room

.YALE (US) — A person’s mere presence in a room can add 37 million bacteria to the air every hour, a new study finds

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From South Sudan to Yale

Paul Lorem epitomizes a blunt truth about the world: talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

Lorem, 21, is an orphan from a South Sudanese village with no electricity. His parents never went to school, and he grew up without adult supervision in a refugee camp. Now he’s a freshman at Yale University. 

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 As Lorem was growing up, the region was engulfed in civil war, and, at age 5, he nearly died of tuberculosis. In hope of saving his life, his parents dropped him off at the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. They returned to their village and later died, and Lorem was raised in the camp by other refugee boys who were only a bit older. 

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His class sometimes consisted of 300 pupils meeting under a tree, and Lorem didn’t have his own notebooks or pencils or schoolbooks, but he practiced letters by writing in the dust. His friends died of war, disease and banditry, but he devoured the contents of a tiny refugee camp library set up by a Lutheran aid group.

Teachers took increasing pride in their brilliant student and arranged for Lorem to leave the refugee camp and transfer to a Kenyan school for seventh and eighth grades. That way he could compete in nationwide exams and perhaps get into high school.

Just one problem: those exams were partly in Swahili, a language that Lorem did not speak. But he poured himself into his schoolwork, and classmates helped him. Lorem ended up earning the second highest mark in that entire region of Kenya. 

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Surgery for Diabetes May Be Better Than Standard Treatment

For some people with diabetes, surgery may be the best medicine.

Two studies have found that weight-loss operations worked much better than the standard therapies for Type 2 diabetes in obese and overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control. Those who had surgery, which stapled the stomach and rerouted the small intestine, were much more likely to have a complete remission of diabetes, or to need less medicine, than people who were given the typical regimen of drugs, diet and exercise.

The surgery also helped many to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol. 

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Better Than A Van Gogh: NASA Visualizes All The World’s Ocean Currents

Our planet is so beautiful in so many ways...

Uvealblues

NASA Scientific Visualization Studio assembled this remarkable animation of the surface currents of our oceans. It’s called Perpetual Ocean, and the full work is 20 minutes of HD video, assembled from a huge amount of satellite, on location and computational data generated by ECCOII (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II). ECCOII itself exists to better understand our oceans and their role in the changing global climate.

Link to a great video of the surface currents of the ocean with nice ambient music...

When Risk Is a Red-Meat Issue

The conflaguration of relative risk and absolute risk is a major issue when looking at any study. The "Numbers Guy" at the Wall Street Journal discusses this with regard to recent studies looking at the risk of death as a function of eating red meat...

Uvealblues

When it comes to evaluating risk, there's a big risk of choosing the wrong number.
Researchers typically measure the effects of, say, a risky health behavior or a controversial new law by comparing how two groups fare. There are two common ways to make the comparison, and the numbers produced can look very different—and be interpreted quite differently by the public. Each can be appropriate, depending on the situation and audience, but listing one without the other is a recipe for confusion, many statisticians say.
Two recent news stories demonstrate how two sets of numbers can describe the same situation. A study by public-health researchers, including several from Harvard University, found that eating one additional serving of processed red meat each day is associated with an increase in the risk of death each year by 20%. But that translated into only two more deaths per 1,000 people per year among those eating the extra meat, or a rise of 0.2 percentage points.
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"Relative risk is the ideal measure for statistical analysis, for addressing scientific questions," says Don Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "But it is irrelevant for individual decision-making.

Chocolate 'may help keep people slim'

People who eat chocolate regularly tend to be thinner, new research suggests.

The findings come from a study of nearly 1,000 US people that looked at diet, calorie intake and body mass index (BMI) - a measure of obesity.
It found those who ate chocolate a few times a week were, on average, slimmer than those who ate it occasionally.
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Studies Link Daily Doses of Aspirin to Reduced Risk of Cancer

Taking aspirin every day may significantly reduce the risk of many cancers and prevent tumors from spreading, according to two new studies published on Tuesday.


The findings add to a body of evidence suggesting that cheap and widely available aspirin may be a powerful if overlooked weapon in the battle against cancer. But the research also poses difficult questions for doctors and public health officials, as regular doses of aspirin can causegastrointestinal bleeding and other side effects. Past studies have suggested that the drawbacks of daily use may outweigh the benefits, particularly in healthy patients.



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“What really jumps out at you in terms of prevention is the striking 75 percent reduction in esophageal cancer and a 40 to 50 percent reduction in colorectal cancer, which is the most common cancer right now,” Dr. Rothwell said. “In terms of prevention, anyone with a family history would be sensible to take aspirin,” he added.

Vaccines by skin may work better, study shows

Applying vaccines to the upper layers of the skin could stimulate a different and more powerful immune system response than the traditional approach of injecting a vaccine into muscle, according to a growing body of research by Boston scientists.
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Giant squid eyes are sperm whale defence

The world's biggest squid species have developed huge eyes to give early warning of approaching sperm whales.
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The models showed that in general, there is no benefit to be gained from developing eyes bigger than the swordfish's.
The exception is a really large moving object.
Here, large eyes enable better detection of a pattern of point sources of bioluminescence - light given off by tiny organisms - in low-contrast conditions.

This would give the squid warning of a sperm whale approaching at a distance of about 120m, the researchers calculate - potentially allowing it to take evasive action and avoid being eaten.

Invisible Children Responds To The Kony 2012 Viral Video Controversy

After a huge success comes the inevitable backlash. You probably watched the Joseph Kony movie yesterday. Now some critics are saying it’s not as good as it appears to be, but Invisible Children is fighting back.

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How Exercise Can Change Your DNA

Scientists discover that physical activity leads to beneficial changes in gene activity, even after a single workout.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/07/how-exercise-can-change-your-dna/#ixzz1oXNhET4N

If You Feel O.K., Maybe You Are O.K.

EARLY diagnosis has become one of the most fundamental precepts of modern medicine. It goes something like this: The best way to keep people healthy is to find out if they have (pick one) heart disease, autism, glaucoma, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or, of course, cancer — early. And the way to find these conditions early is through screening.

It is a precept that resonates with the intuition of the general public: obviously it’s better to catch and deal with problems as soon as possible. A study published with much fanfare in The New England Journal of Medicine last week contained what researchers called the best evidence yet that colonoscopies reduce deaths from colon cancer.

Recently, however, there have been rumblings within the medical profession that suggest that the enthusiasm for early diagnosis may be waning. 

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How to Make Eyeball Stew

Because the eye is one of the first organs to form during embryonic development, it may be easier to culture using basic ingredients, says Conklin. Therefore, Sasai’s brew may not be easily tweakable for studying the development of other organs. But what this research does show is that it is possible to stimulate early organ growth from the right mix of molecules and stem cells alone.

“The main lesson in all of this is to first see what nature can do by itself when given essentially minimum instructions and the proper environment,” says Conklin. “And, given the right environment, the cells will jump into action.”

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Why It’s So Important to Keep Moving

But in the current study, which was published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the scientists created a more realistic version of inactivity by having their volunteers cut the number of steps they took each day by at least half.

They wanted to determine whether this physical languor would affect the body’s ability to control blood sugar levels. “It’s increasingly clear that blood sugar spikes, especially after a meal, are bad for you,” says John P. Thyfault, an associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at the University of Missouri, who conducted the study with his graduate student Catherine R. Mikus and others. “Spikes and swings in blood sugar after meals have been linked to the development of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.”

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And there were changes. During the three days of inactivity, volunteers’ blood sugar levels spiked significantly after meals, with the peaks increasing by about 26 percent compared with when the volunteers were exercising and moving more. What’s more, the peaks grew slightly with each successive day.

This change in blood sugar control after meals “occurred well before we could see any changes in fitness or adiposity,” or fat buildup, due to the reduced activity, Dr. Thyfault says. So the blood sugar swings would seem to be a result, directly, of the volunteers not moving much.

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Smartphones and Other Gadgets Help Low Vision

The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) is working to educate medical practitioners — including ophthalmologists — that more than many realize can be done to help patients with low vision, said Lylas G. Mogk, MD, an AAO clinical correspondent.
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Among the hottest new gadgets are applications available for smartphones and other portable devices, said John Kitchens, MD, a partner at Retina Associates of Kentucky in Lexington.

Perhaps the most useful program uses the camera in the device to magnify whatever is on its screen, in combination with the device's external light to improve contrast, said Dr. Kitchens. One such program is iRead, which is available for iPhones and Android phones for free from the iTunes store. It was developed by Richard G. Davis, MD, an ophthalmologist in Long Island, New York.

Patients with macular degeneration can learn to use such magnification devices to make use of their peripheral vision. Although peripheral vision is not damaged by the condition, it is naturally less clear than central vision.

These products are helpful especially for quick tasks, such as reading the price tag on an item on a store shelf or reading a restaurant menu.

And e-book readers and tablets such as the Kindle and iPad can also magnify text, making it possible for people with mild low vision to read books.

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Orbis 30 year Anniversary

As many of you I am a fervent supporter of Orbis. This video nicely shows the impact Orbis has had on the world over  the past 30 years!
Uvealblues

Vitamin D on Trial

From my incredibly bright friend, Amy Maxmen

Uvealblues

Prevention trials for vitamins and supplements are notoriously difficult, but some researchers aren’t giving up on finding proof that vitamin D helps ward off disease.

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4 Health Rules You Can Break Today

Research is revealing that whoever wrote the old guidelines didn't have the whole picture, and that there are more paths to optimal health than we previously thought," Domar says. Happily, the new rules are more user-friendly than the old ones. Here, four tips to live by.
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How Animals See the World

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via alltop.holykaw.com

For bringing medical care to the masses

Narayana Hrudayalaya is Walmart meets Mother Teresa.

The organization, a complex of health centers based in southern India (narayana hrudayalaya means "God’s compassionate home" in Sanskrit), offers low-cost, high-quality specialty care in a largely impoverished country of 1.2 billion people. By thinking differently about everything from the unusually high number of patients it treats to the millions for whom it provides insurance--and by thinking a lot like the world’s largest retailer--the hospital group is able to continually wring out costs. Narayana Hrudayalaya’s operations, for instance, include the world’s largest and most prolific cardiac hospital, where the average open-heart surgery runs less than $2,000, a third or less what it costs elsewhere in India and a fraction of what it costs in the U.S.
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 "This hospital is for poor people, but we also treat some rich people. So we’re mentally geared for people who are shabbily dressed and have trouble paying. We don’t look at them as outsiders. We look at them as customers." Narayana Hrudayalaya’s flagship hospital has 3,000 beds, more than 20 times as many as the average American hospital. The company (mostly family owned, with JPMorgan among a handful of investors) negotiates for better prices and buys directly from manufacturers, cutting out distributors.
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The company targets even routine inefficiencies. A beefed-up support staff handles the onerous paperwork for surgeons, freeing Shetty and his colleagues to perform more operations than a typical cardiac surgeon would, about a dozen a week.
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 Patients who pay discounted rates are in effect compensated by those who pay full price or opt for extra perks. Typically, the latter group includes foreigners for whom a $7,000 heart operation, access to an experienced specialist, and a deluxe private room is a relative bargain. The balance of patients is, in fact, crucial. Every day, Narayana Hrudayalaya’s surgeons receive a P&L statement of the previous day that describes their operations and the various levels of reimbursement.
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 Before becoming one of India’s best-known health-care entrepreneurs, Shetty was its best-known heart surgeon. He was interrupted in surgery one day during the 1990s by a request to make a house call. "I said, 'I don’t make home visits,' " Shetty says, "and the caller said, 'If you see this patient, the experience may transform your life.' " Which is exactly what happened. The request was from Mother Teresa. 
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Why Doctors Die Differently

It's not something that we like to talk about, but doctors die, too. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care that they could want. But they tend to go serenely and gently.
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Why such a large gap between the decisions of doctors and patients? The case of CPR is instructive. A study by Susan Diem and others of how CPR is portrayed on TV found that it was successful in 75% of the cases and that 67% of the TV patients went home. In reality, a 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of CPR found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life.
Unlike previous eras, when doctors simply did what they thought was best, our system is now based on what patients choose. Physicians really try to honor their patients' wishes, but when patients ask "What would you do?," we often avoid answering. We don't want to impose our views on the vulnerable.
The result is that more people receive futile "lifesaving" care, and fewer people die at home than did, say, 60 years ago.

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A Diet Rich in Fish May Help the Aging Brain

Eating fish and other foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids could help people maintain healthy brains as they age, as well as protect their hearts, new research suggests.
In a study to be released Tuesday, participants with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had slightly smaller brains and scored lower on memory and cognitive tests than people with higher blood levels of omega-3s.
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At-Risk Patients Gain Attention of Health Insurers

One percent of patients account for more than 25 percent of health care spending among the privately insured, according to a new study. Their medical bills average nearly $100,000 a year for multiple hospital stays, doctors’ visits, trips to emergency rooms and prescription drugs.

And they are not always the end-of-lifers. They are people who suffer from chronic and increasingly common diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure.

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Health insurers are likely to have little choice other than to monitor these cases more closely, said Daniel Malloy, an executive at IMS Health. Under the federal health care law, which is expected to go into effect in 2014 if it is not struck down by the Supreme Court, insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to anyone with a potentially expensive medical condition or put limits on how much they will pay in medical bills.

And avoiding these patients altogether will no longer be an option. Insurance companies will be required to enroll millions of new customers without the ability to turn them away or charge them higher premiums if they are sick. They will prosper only if they are able to coordinate care and prevent patients from reaching that top 1 percent, Mr. Malloy said. “The insurance model is fundamentally changing,” he said.

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No Extra Benefits Are Seen in Stents for Coronary Artery Disease

This review, published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, included only prospective randomized trials that compared P.C.I. and medical therapy with medical therapy alone. There were 7,229 patients in all, half randomized to P.C.I. and half to medicine alone. More than 70 percent of the surgical patients received stents, and the studies followed patients for an average of more than four years.

Death rates were 8.9 percent with P.C.I. and 9.1 percent with medical treatment. Rates for nonfatal heart attacks were 8.9 percent for those who got stents and 8.1 percent for those on medicine alone.

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Can You Comparison-Shop for Surgery?

I have an early-onset type of cataract, and my vision has gotten so bad I’m ready for surgery. As a patient, I’m not too happy about being in this situation, but as a health-care-policy wonk, this seems like the perfect opportunity to test one of the central tenets of conservative health-care-reform plans: comparison shopping.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/27/can-you-comparison-shop-for-surgery/#ixzz1naXQWpy4

Elizabeth Taylor’s Killer Beauty

Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t one for understatement: she had eight marriages, won two Oscars and was a bold pioneer in AIDS activism. And let’s not forget those captivating violet eyes. Now, according to Slate’s Brow Beat blog, Taylor’s large, liquid eyes had the unusual benefit of a genetic mutation, one that left her with a double row of eyelashes.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/26/elizabeth-taylors-killer-beauty/#ixzz1naWmFb00

Single molecule's electric charges seen in first image

Researchers have shown off the first images of the "charge distribution" in a single molecule, showing an intricate dance of electrons at tiny scales.

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Dessert…for Breakfast?

A new diet study claims that changing the time of day you eat dessert can help you lose weight.

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...By the end of the initial 16-week period, both groups had lost a whopping 33 pounds per person on average, but at a 16-week follow-up, the researchers discovered something very surprising: The low-carb group had regained most of the weight they had lost (around 22 pounds, on average), while the dessert-at-breakfast eaters had continued to slim down to the tune of another 15 pounds. 

via Hercampus.com

Ben & Jerry's launches 'Lin-Sanity' flavor, takes out fortune cookie ingredient

Vermont-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has begun selling a limited-release new flavor at its Harvard Square shop in honor of basketball’s sudden sensation, Jeremy Lin, a Harvard University graduate who was an Ivy League star during his time with the Crimson, but left the Cambridge campus undrafted and largely unknown.
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The Evolution of a Point Guard

ORLANDO, Fla. — The most captivating strand of the Jeremy Linmystique is that he came from nowhere, emerging overnight to become a star, after being underestimated and overlooked, disregarded by college coaches, ignored in the N.B.A. draft and waived twice in two weeks.

The narrative is well-established, factual in its broadest strokes and altogether flawed, or at least woefully incomplete.

Jeremy Lin’s rise did not begin, as the world perceived it, with a 25-point explosion at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 4. It began with lonely 9 a.m. workouts in downtown Oakland in the fall of 2010; with shooting drills last summer on a backyard court in Burlingame, Calif.; and with muscle-building sessions at a Menlo Park fitness center.

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Happiness and The Experiencing Self vs The Remembering Self

(via instapundit)

How 1-Minute Intervals Can Improve Your Health

While many of us wonder just how much exercise we really need in order to gain health and fitness, a group of scientists in Canada are turning that issue on its head and asking, how little exercise do we need?

The emerging and engaging answer appears to be, a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to work a bit.

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Aging of Eyes Is Blamed for Range of Health Woes

The aging eye filters out blue light, affecting circadian rhythm and health in older adults.

For decades, scientists have looked for explanations as to why certain conditions occur with age, among themmemory loss, slower reaction time, insomnia and even depression. They have scrupulously investigated such suspects as high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and an inactive lifestyle.

Now a fascinating body of research supports a largely unrecognized culprit: the aging of the eye.

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Slow carb chemical may help heart

SEATTLE, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- Slow carbohydrates such as eggs, meat, legumes, lentils, broccoli and peas may affect a blood chemical linked to heart disease, U.S researchers said.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/02/23/Slow-carb-chemical-may-help-heart/UPI-16721330050858/#ixzz1nJpvgNv3

Diabetes May Begin in the Gut

Scientists studying mice have made a surprising discovery about the origin of diabetes. The disease may start in the intestines.
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The Best Foods for Thought, Literally

We've long known that the Mediterranean diet is good for the heart. Now, it may be good for the brain as well.

A study published in this month's issue of the Archives of Neurology found that the diet might protect against blood-vessel damage in the brain, reducing the risks of stroke and memory loss.

It's the first study to specifically examine the effects of the diet centered around vegetables, fruits, fish, whole grains, nuts, olive oil and a moderate amount of alcohol, with limited consumption of red meat, sweets and refined grains like white bread or white rice—on the brain's small blood vessels.

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In a Squeaky-Clean World, a Worm Might Help Fight Disease

Some bugs are good for our health, and a pig parasite called the whipworm appears to be one of them.

Whipworm eggs have been found in human studies to reduce symptoms in a host of diseases that affect the immune system. Researchers at several universities have shown promising results in small numbers of patients with multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Biotechnology companies are conducting large clinical trials of the treatment. Other studies targeting rheumatoid arthritis, autism and some allergies are expected to begin this year.

(..)

The introduction of the whipworm appears to spur the body to produce more of a different type of helpful immune cell—T2 helper cytokines—as a defense against the worms. This separate immune response appears to help counter the inflammatory response from diseases, say researchers
(..)

Dr. Summers and his colleagues demonstrated encouraging findings in two studies published in 2005. One examined 29 patients with Crohn's disease and found that after six months, 21 were considered remitted. (There wasn't a control group for comparison.) The other was study of 54 patients with ulcerative colitis. Patients who received TSO treatment improved significantly more than those who got placebo.

Another area of interest for TSO researchers is in multiple sclerosis, with two small studies published last year. One of these, published in the Multiple Sclerosis Journal, showed brain lesions decreased in four of five patients three months into treatment, and rebounded two months after it ended.

Some researchers say the therapy could hold promise for autism as well.

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Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker

Why does Adele's 'Someone Like You' make everyone cry? Science has found the formula

What I found fascinating is that even at the Grammy's last night, when she sang this ang, it stood on its own as very powerful, without the need for visual hype, dancers etc...It was just Adele's voice with her excellent backing band that again creates moments of transcendence...

uvealblues

 What explains the magic of Adele's song? Though personal experience and culture play into individual reactions, researchers have found that certain features of music are consistently associated with producing strong emotions in listeners. Combined with heartfelt lyrics and a powerhouse voice, these structures can send reward signals to our brains that rival any other pleasure.

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