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Latest Posts

The State Of U.S. Health

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues an annual report on the state of health in the United States. The 33rd edition is out and has some surprising findings, especially about the use of procedures, tests and medical technology.

The life expectancy in the United States is now 77.9 years. Are you over that age? If so, congratulations — you beat the odds. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Can High Blood Pressure Be Controlled With Diet?

Do a search on the Internet for “high blood pressure” or “hypertension” and you’ll find that nearly every health website recommends the DASH diet to control blood pressure. It makes some sense: If sodium and saturated fat cause high blood pressure, then removing them from your diet should make it come back down.

But changing your eating habits is easier said than done. It’s easy to say you want to cut down on fat and sodium, but it’s hard to resist a hot slice of Chicago-style pizza piled high with sausage and cheese. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at The Daily Monthly*

Where Quackademic Medicine Is Taught

One advantage of having a blog is that I can sometimes tap into the knowledge of my readers to help me out.

As many readers know, a few of the SBM bloggers (myself included) will be appearing at the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) today (Saturday, April 17). Since the topic of our panel discussion is going to be the infiltration of quackademic medicine into medical academia, I thought that now would be a very good time for me to update my list of medical schools and academic medical centers in the U.S. and Canada that have embraced (or at least decided to tolerate) quackademic medicine in their midst. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

How To Reach Your Fitness Goals Wirelessly

I recently come across BodyTrace, a nice way to combine a bathroom scale that wirelessly uploads and displays your weight and BMI and a website where you can track all the changes with visualized solutions. An excerpt from the description:

We are using the GSM network to transmit your weight to our website. We use these measurements to create weight and BMI charts and by combining this information with additional data that we collect (from food tracker, for example) we can better evaluate your progress and give you feedback on how to reach your goals.

They also have a collaboration with DailyBurn. You can read the whole story from the first idea on the blog.

See more examples of how Web 2.0 or social media can be used in fitness here.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Kids Who Eat School Lunch Are Less Healthy In General

Research from the University of Michigan suggests that say one in three middle school youth who regularly eat school lunches are obese or overweight. They are also more likely to have higher cholesterol levels than kids who bring lunches from home.

The study included 1,076 middle school students who completed questionnaires about what they ate and how much physical activity they got as well as how many screen hours they logged each day.

Compared with kids who ate school lunches, kids who brought lunches from home were:

– Less likely to be overweight or obese (25% vs 38%)

– Less likely to eat two or more servings of fatty meats like fried chicken or hot dogs daily (2% vs. 6%)

– Less likely to drink two or more sugary drinks a day (7% vs. 19%)

– More likely to eat at least two servings a day of fruit (49% vs. 33%)

– More likely to eat at least two servings a day of vegetables (50% vs. 40%)

– Had lower levels of LDL (the bad cholesterol) Read more »

This post, Kids Who Eat School Lunch Are Less Healthy In General, was originally published on Healthine.com by Nancy Brown, Ph.D..

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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