August 29th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, Health Tips, News, Opinion, True Stories
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Here is a recent piece in the New York Times by reporter Brian Stelter who decided to lose weight by 1) getting support from fellow Twitterers, and 2) by tweeting everything he eats throughout the day. An excerpt:
I knew that I could not diet alone; I needed the help of a cheering section. But rather than write a blog, keep a diary or join Weight Watchers, I decided to use Twitter. I thought it would make me more accountable, because I could record everything I ate instantly. And because Twitter posts are automatically pushed to each person who subscribes to them, an audience — of friends or strangers — can follow along.
What’s surprising is that he didn’t start using some kind of data-collecting application. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
August 27th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, Medblogger Shout Outs, News, Research
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My friend and fellow blogger Lucien Engelen asked the health community to help define what Health 2.0 exactly means through an online survey:
After our systematic review about the definition of Health 2.0, one of our next steps will be sorting out what “the crowd” thinks that has to be part of a definition of Health 2.0. For this purpose we’ve set up a little questionnaire that you could fill in below.
To make the crowd as big as possible, we have also made it available to put on your own blog or website. We would encourage you to do this and inspire others to do the same.
You may remember that Lucien and his collegues published a review about the definitions of Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 currently available.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
August 24th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, News, Research
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Newsweek published an interesting and interactive infographic showing the rankings of countries based on different parameters such as quality of life, education, and health. Regarding the healthcare system, guess which country is in the first place?
Here’s the top 10:
1. Japan
2. Switzerland
3. Sweden
4. Spain
5. Italy
6. Australia
7. Singapore
8. Norway
9. New Zealand
10. The Netherlands
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
August 19th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, News, Research
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Mary Carmichael of Newsweek had a great series of articles focusing on direct-to-consumer genetic testing. An excerpt:
I’ve been following DTC genetics since 2007, when wide scanning first became available to the public. Since then, a number of writers have gotten wide-scale genetic tests and expounded on the results. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if I’m the last science reporter on earth with virgin genes. (Technical virgin: My doctor gave me a cystic fibrosis carrier test when I was pregnant.) Initially, I put off getting a full-genome scan because I wasn’t sure how useful such a test would be. I had no particular reason to take one, save curiosity. I wouldn’t expect to find anything serious and potentially life-altering like the Huntington’s disease gene in my results, because my family medical history is thankfully rather boring. The data most likely to be medically relevant to me would concern the genetics of common diseases, and at the time, many comprehensive and well-designed studies of those were still getting underway. I decided to wait a few years and see how research progressed. But here I am, three years later, still unsure.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
August 17th, 2010 by Berci in Better Health Network, Humor, Medical Art, Opinion
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I started my Ph.D. in clinical genomics last year and sometimes it really feels like what is shown in this figure. Click HERE for the full series of pictures.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
