December 3rd, 2009 by Shadowfax in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Research
Tags: GE, Graph, Healthcare Costs, Hypertension, Interactive, Wheel
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I love graphs, especially interactive graphs.
GE made a graph of the average annual cost of patients with eleven common chronic diseases. Go check it out, marvel at the coolness as you grab the sliders and spin the wheel o’ misfortune. Take home point: hypertension is the single biggest driver of medical cost in all patients age 33 and up. Go figure.
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
November 30th, 2009 by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: Cessation, Gum, Lozenge, Nicotine Replacement Therapy, NRT, Patch, Quitting, smoking
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Nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs: patch, gum, lozenge, nasal spray and inhaler) are intended to be used to help smokers to quit smoking completely. But an international report was recently published, finding that of the 17% of smokers who had used NRT in the previous year, approximately a third had used it for reasons other than quitting smoking.
The study was based on a survey of 6532 smokers in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States, and found similar patterns in each country. The patch was by far the most commonly used NRT (70%), followed by the gum. Overall, about 8% of NRT users had used NRT just to reduce their smoking, and around 8% had used it to help them cope in situations where they couldn’t smoke. The report stated that, Read more »
This post, What Are People Really Using NRT (Nicotine Replacement Therapies) For?, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..
November 26th, 2009 by admin in Better Health Network, Quackery Exposed, Research
Tags: Birth, Dangers, Doula, Infectious Disease, Midwife, Midwifery, Obstetrics And Gynecology, Pregnancy, Water, Waterbirth
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By Dr. Amy Tuteur
Waterbirth has been touted as an alternative form of pain relief in childbirth. Indeed, it is often recommended as the method of choice for pain relief in “natural” childbirth. It’s hardly natural, though. In fact, it is completely unnatural. No primates give birth in water, because primates initiate breathing almost immediately after birth and the entire notion of waterbirth was made up only 200 years ago. Not surprisingly, waterbirth appears to increase the risk of neonatal death. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
November 24th, 2009 by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Research
Tags: Addiction Medicine, nicotine, Quitting, Receptors, smoking, Tobacco
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Nicotine withdrawal symptoms typically peak in the first week of abstinence and return to normal at around 3-4 weeks. It has long been known that certain nicotinic receptors (particularly the beta-2 subtype) are closely involved in nicotine addiction, and that smokers have a larger number of nicotine receptors in their brains than non-smokers. When the smoker quits, this large number of vacant, unstimulated receptors is believed to be involved in the resulting craving and distressing withdrawal (irritability, restlessness, depression, anxiety, poor concentration etc).
Earlier this year, a study published by Drs Kelly Cosgrove, Julie Staley and colleagues at Yale University, provided evidence on the time course of normalization of these receptors after quitting smoking. Read more »
This post, Quitting Smoking? Your Nicotine receptors Take Over A Month To Normalize, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..
November 24th, 2009 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: Contact Lenses, Eyes, Lenses, Light, Ophthalmology, Technology, Transitions
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Researchers have been trying to coat contact lenses with light sensitive dyes to have them turn dark during bright lighting conditions. Glasses with this property have existed for decades, but the same coating methods are not applicable to contacts.
Technology Review reports on work by the Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) in Singapore to use the entire volume of the lens to contain the dye: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*