If you want to improve the health of Americans, why not look around the world for places where people live the longest, healthiest lives and try to copy whatever it is they’re doing? That’s exactly what Dan Buettner has done. He is the author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.
Examples of areas he calls “blue zones” are Sardinia, Okinawa, Costa Rica (the Nicoya Peninsula), Ikaria (a Greek island), and Loma Linda, California. Things residents have in common include exercising regularly, eating more vegetables and less meat, engaging in social networking, and having a sense of purpose. Read more »
February is National Heart Disease Awareness Month, and so I invited Dr. Bill Kussmaul to make me aware of some of the hottest controversies in cardiology. His tips and insights are invaluable to busy primary care physicians looking for the bottom line on thorny issues. Dr. Kussmaul is the Associate Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Hahneman Hospital in Philadelphia and an Associate Editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. You can listen to our conversation or read my transcript below:
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Controversy #1: Cholesterol and Statin Therapy
Dr. Val: Who should receive high-dose statin therapy? Read more »
Why aren’t Americans in the streets, demanding reform of a health care system that is providing inadequate care for millions, wildly inefficient, and gradually bankrupting our country? A major reason: proponents of reform have lost control over the message because people think it’s too complicated to understand. Confused about important details of the proposals, the public is susceptible to misrepresentations by opponents. Read more »
Do you advertise on your social networks? You might not think that you do, but every time you tweet or update your status on Facebook or post a picture to Flickr, you’re advertising – perhaps not with commercial or self-promotional intent, but you are advertising something: an item of news, a humorous post or a moment from your vacation. I don’t believe that Advertising is bad; but there is bad advertising, the kind that pointlessly interrupts and annoys and leads to no action.
As the Web expands and evolves from a tangle of static web pages towards social and real time streams, Advertising will need to evolve into a suppler and friendlier animal. Google may have perfected Advertising on the traditional web platform, but the door is open to new players who can socialize advertising. It’s not an easy task: the bull’s eye of targeting customers is getting tinier everyday. Enter MyLikes, a start up which has taken on the task of helping advertisers reach their base. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
Since mainstream media is feeding parents a constant stream of health information that is often inaccurate and poorly vetted (just ask Gary Schwitzer), I thought it would be helpful to create a new series at Better Health: Mythbusters for Moms. Now, I know that moms aren’t the only ones who will benefit from “straight talk” from healthcare professionals, but the alliteration was simply irresistible.
Our first guest of the series is Dr. Rahul Parikh. Rahul is a board-certified pediatrician who works at Kaiser Permanente’s Walnut Creek Medical Center in California. Prior to becoming a pediatrician, Rahul completed a degree in molecular biology at UC Berkeley, and his medical degree at Tufts in Boston.
Online, Rahul is perhaps best known for his columns, featured at Salon.com. There he takes a critical look at media misinformation about health and science, and has spoken out against misleading content promoted by Oprah Winfrey and the Huffington Post.
You may listen to an audiocast of our conversation here (or read a short transcript below):
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Dr. Paul Auerbach is the author of the definitive textbook on Wilderness Medicine. Though he’s spent his entire emergency medicine career teaching others how to survive in the wild, even that didn’t fully prepare him for the extraordinary devastation in Haiti. He’d never seen anything like it. He hopes he never does again.
In an exclusive Skype interview with Better Health, Paul describes what it was like “on the ground” during the first week of the disaster. He goes on to explain (in part 2 below) what the current critical needs are, and which organizations and websites volunteers should go to in order to contribute in a coordinated fashion.
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Dr. Val: Do you need supplies?
Dr. Auerbach: We have lots of medications, vaccines, and small supplies. What we need most is a large autoclave to sterilize used OR equipment. Read more »
In this extraordinary first-hand account, Dr. Paul Auerbach (he is now the head administrator for NGOs at Port Au Prince’s largest hospital) describes what he has seen on the ground since his arrival one week ago.
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“The floor was covered with bodies. Some were dead, some were alive, some were screaming… There were rows of children with missing limbs… The smell of dead bodies was coming out of the old nursing quarters where the peers of the women helping us lay dead… The Haitian people are the strongest people I’ve ever seen.”
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti, media attention is beginning to wane. What will happen next, when the cameras are off? Read more »
Thanks to my friends at #HCSM (a Twitter group created to spark discussion about healthcare and social media) for inviting me as a guest speaker on their 1 year anniversary. We had a special Blog Talk Radio event, moderated by Lee Aase (Mayo Clinic’s social media guru) and Dana Lewis. Tom Stitt and Meredith Gould were also critical in coordinating programming and technical arrangements.
The goal of the show was to discuss how social media and healthcare intersect - with a diverse group of 8 speakers (from patients, to physicians, to industry and insurance stakeholders). I’ve edited my clip for your listening pleasure (please excuse the technical glitch near the end - you’ll know it when you hear it). The full 2 hour show may be downloaded from Blog Talk Radio.
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It’s said that everything comes with a price. The average American now lives almost thirty years longer than a hundred years ago. But for millions of people, the price of longevity has been Alzheimer’s disease. The greatest fear my patients express to me is, “I think I’m losing my mind.” Read more »
Heart Disease Awareness And The Four Hottest Controversies In Cardiology
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If you want to improve the health of Americans why not look around the world for places where people live the longest healthiest lives and try to copy whatever it is they’re doing That’s exactly what Dan Buettner has done. He is the author of The Blue Zones Lessons for…
This past weekend s international science communication conference ScienceOnline also saw the first final hardback copies of Rebecca Skloot s long-awaited book make it into the hands of the science and journalism consuming public. Moreover an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has just appeared in the new…
Earlier today I wrote a short article which resulted in correspondence with one of the authors of the new book FDR s Deadly Secret by Steven Lomazow and Eric Fettmann. Dr. Steven Lomazow sent me a copy of his Archives of Dermatology article with Dr. Bernard Ackerman this photo and…
War can paradoxically bring out the best in people. Despite the violence tragedy and pain there are moments of kindness compassion and brave camaraderie. Soldiers band together as brothers and sisters under terrible circumstances to offer their lives in support of a nation they deem just and vulnerable. Often they…
