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 »
Professor Robert West, at University College London, has an interesting theory which suggests that glucose tablets can help smokers to quit. It is well known that when smokers quit smoking they put on weight, and that nicotine appears to act like a mild anorectic drug…it dulls the appetite. It has also been noted that smokers often crave high carbohydrate foods when they quit smoking. So it seems as though smoking dulls the hunger for carbohydrates. The glucose theory (or at least one version of it) suggests that when an addicted smoker quits smoking they experience a strong hunger/craving sensation, sometimes located in their stomach. When trying to interpret that sensation they think, “what am I craving? I just gave up cigarettes, it must be that.” Read more »
Most people automatically filter out spam e-mails, or delete them without ever opening them up.
But a surprising number of people actually take the time to read them, which is probably why annoying spam will continue unabated. From the New York Times’ Well, Tara Parker-Pope writes points an interesting study looking at who actually read health-related spam e-mails.
Looking at college students who were overweight, a study showed that an astounding 42 percent opened unsolicited e-mails touting weight loss products, and 19 percent actually ordered the product. And, perhaps more concerning, among those where were normal weight, 5 percent still bought what the spam was selling.
The effectiveness of spam e-mails, in this admittedly small study at least, certainly surprised me. I remember reading somewhere that it takes a success rate of 1 in 100,000 to make it worthwhile to a spam marketer.
But if they’re achieving success rates like these, it’s no wonder that the degree of spam, estimated to be 73 percent of all e-mails, will only rise.
That’s depressing.
*This blog post was originally published at KevinMD.com*
It has been a while since I’ve had a patient with postoperative alcohol withdrawal. I can still recall my first exposure to this problem as a 3rd year medical student at the Veteran’s Hospital. It was my first clinical rotation – surgery service at the VA.
Their protocol is based on three distinct clusters of symptoms characterize alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS). Central nervous system excitation usually occurs within 12 to 48 hours after the last drink. Read more »
Last week I had planned to write a comprehensive critique of a recent comment by Larry Dossey. He had posted it on Val Jones’s betterhealth website in response to Dr. Val’s essay, “The Decade’s Top 5 Threats To Science In Medicine,” originally posted here on SBM. Much of what Dr. Val had identified as the top threats involved recent dalliances, by government, medical schools, and the media, with the collection of implausible and mostly nonsensical health claims that advocates have dubbed “CAM.” As uncontroversial as Dr. Val’s assertions ought to have been—similar to suggesting that closing one’s eyes and “using the force” would be a threat to safe driving (even if some might quibble over the top threats to science in medicine)—Dr. Dossey demurred by distraction: Read more »
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