January 18th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: Bacterial Growth, Beef Production, Calcium Sulphate, Cattle, Chemicals in Food, Dr. Peggy Polaneczky, Farm Woo, Farming, Food Chain, Food Safety, Frequential Bio-Conditioning, Gypsum, Meat Production, Medical Woo, Scientific Woo, Serio Bio-Hygienization, SOP Life Vibration, TBTAM, The Blog That Ate Manhattan
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Google is an amazing thing — it occasionally tosses you a link that lands you in an alternate universe of folks you’d never encounter in real life.
Like cattle ranchers. I’ve just spent the good part of an hour wandering their world — reading about their concerns (water, wolves, the economy), seeing how cattle breeding has changed (you pick a sire at Bullsemen.com, then do genomic profiling on your stock — did you know that cows bred for docility have more tender meat ?), and learning that ranchers are not immune to marketing from the world of scientific woo.
Check this out — it’s called SOP Life Vibration or “Serio Bio-Hygienization.” They’re selling it to farmers and ranchers in Europe and the U.S. as the latest and greatest answer to bacterial growth and odors in farm feed and bedding:
SOP products are formulated with the innovative Sirio Operating Process technology to improve the environment of the farm in a more effective and longer lasting way than current available means.
SOP® products are natural and scientifically tested. They are not enzymes, bacteria nor disinfectants. Using a process of “frequential bio-conditioning” they selectively favor the activity of the “beneficial” micro-organisms and create unfavorable conditions to inhibit the development of the “pathogenic” ones.
A 100% natural product. Through a bio-frequency method, SOP® is created with strategic wavelength and harmony. This same technology is comparable to the electronic systems used for radio broadcasting.
“100% natural,” “Bio-hygeinization,” ”Frequential bio-conditioning”…
I smell a woo. And that makes me nervous.
After all, I’m a meat eater. If someone’s putting something wacky into and around my food source, I want to know about it. So I decided it was worth my while to find out what the heck was in this SOP® stuff. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at tbtam*
January 17th, 2011 by Medgadget in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: Brain Imaging, Brain Scan, Childhood Development, Children's Health, Developmental Disabilities, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, DTI, fMRI, Functional MRI, Future Reading Progress, Imaging Studies, Kids With Dyslexia, Learning Tools, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Medgadget, Medical Imaging, Neural Systems, Neurology, Pediatrics, PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Reading Skills, Reading Test, Vanderbilt University
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An international team of researchers has developed a rather reliable test that predicts the future improvement of reading abilities in kids with dyslexia. The method uses functional MRI (fMRI) and diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) to scan the brain, and data crunching software to interpret the data. The researchers hope that the finding will help parents and therapists uniquely identify which learning tools are best for each child.
From the announcement by Vanderbilt University :
The 45 children who took part in the study ranged in age from 11 to 14 years old. Each child first took a battery of tests to determine their reading abilities. Based on these tests, the researchers classified 25 children as having dyslexia, which means that they exhibited significant difficulty learning to read despite having typical intelligence, vision and hearing and access to typical reading instruction.
During the fMRI scan, the youths were shown pairs of printed words and asked to identify pairs that rhymed, even though they might be spelled differently. The researchers investigated activity patterns in a brain area on the right side of the head, near the temple, known as the right inferior frontal gyrus, noting that some of the children with dyslexia activated this area much more than others. DTI scans of these same children revealed stronger connections in the right superior longitudinal fasciculus, a network of brain fibers linking the front and rear of brain. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
January 17th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: Birth Control Pills, Chewable Contraceptive, Dr. Toni Brayer, Everything Health, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Global Brands, Low-Dose Birth Control, Oral Contraceptive, Preventing Pregnancy, Reproductive Health, Watson Pharmaceuticals, Women's Health
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Just in time for the new year, the FDA has approved the first low-dose chewable birth control contraceptive.
The daily chew will be marketed by Watson Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Fred Wilkinson, executive vice president of Global Brands said: “We believe this product is an important addition to the oral contraceptive category, and that its characteristics will make it a desirable choice for women.”
I have to ask myself: “Why?”
Most birth control failures occur because the woman forgets to take the pill. Will a chewable be more reliant? Is it aimed at gals who just love chewing gum? I don’t get the concept.
Marketing for this breakthrough will begin the in the second quarter of 2011.
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
January 17th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Better Health Network, Research
Tags: ACP Internist, American College Of Physicians, Cancer Prevalence, Cancer Treatment, CMS, Cost of Cancer Care, Cost of Healthcare, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, NCI, NIH, Oncology, Ryan DuBosar, SEER, Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results, U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services
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Medical expenditures for cancer are projected to reach at least $158 billion in today’s dollars by 2020. That’s a 27 percent increase, assuming that incidence and treatment costs remain at 2010 levels, according to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) analysis of growth and aging of the U.S. population.
But new diagnostic tools and treatments could raise medical expenditures as high as $207 billion, assuming that the costs of new treatments increases 5 percent, said the researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the NIH. The analysis appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Recent trends reflect a 2 percent annual increase in medical costs in the initial and final phases of care, which would boost projected 2020 costs to $173 billion.
Projections of expenses, assuming steady incidence and survival rates and no increase in treatment costs
Projections were based on the most recent data available on cancer incidence, survival and costs of care. In 2010, medical costs associated with cancer were projected to reach $127.6 billion, with the highest costs associated with breast cancer ($16.5 billion), followed by colorectal cancer ($14 billion), lymphoma ($12 billion), lung cancer ($12 billion) and prostate cancer ($12 billion). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
January 16th, 2011 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Opinion
Tags: 33 Charts, Aristotle, Clinical Judgment, Decision-Making Ability, Doctor-Patient Communication, Doctors' Experience, Doctors' Judgment, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, General Medicine, Good Medical Decision Making, Listening To A Patient, Medical Reasoning, Patient Intuition, Patient Phronesis, Patient-Physician Relationship, Personal Health Decisions, Practical Judgment, Shared Decision-Making
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I used to think they didn’t, but they do.
Clinical judgment is the application of individual experience to the variables of a patient’s medical presentation. It’s the hard-worn skill of knowing what to do and how far to go in a particular situation. It’s having the confidence to do nothing. Clinical judgment is learned from seeing lots of sick people. Good clinical judgment is when the gifted capacity of reasoning intersects with experience. Some doctors have better judgment than others.
Aristotle called this phronesis — or practical judgment.
Patients have practical judgment. We often can tell when something’s amiss with our own body. Things feel different or look different. Taking action on these observations is how we exercise judgment as patients.
Parents of children with central venous lines, for example, can often identify the early signs of infection before fever has ever appeared. They know the subtleties of their child’s behavior. The same goes for children with epilepsy. People with diabetes increasingly have the latitude to apply judgment to the management of their disease. This tends to be quite defined, however, with fixed variables and limited options for intervention. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
Google is an amazing thing — it occasionally tosses you a link that lands you in an alternate universe of folks you’d never encounter in real life.
