September 14th, 2010 by Maria Gifford in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Interviews, Research, True Stories
Tags: #txfm10, Behavior Changes In Kids, Children's Eating Habits, Children's Health, Dietetics, Fed Up With Lunch, Food and Nutrition, Healthy Diet For Kids, Healthy Kids, Kids and Exercise, Maria Gifford, Mayo Clinic Transform 2010, Mrs. Q, National School Lunch Program, NSLP, Nutrition and Health, Nutrition and School, Pediatrics, Physical Activity For Kids, School Lunch Program, School Lunches
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Appearing as a Second Life 3D virtual-world avatar at Mayo Clinic’s “Transform 2010” symposium (watch the video here), Mrs. Q — a teacher and the anonymous author of the blog “Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project” — told the story of how her unique health mission has come to be. She’s determined to help people understand just how sick our “healthy” school lunches really are.
Mrs. Q has sparked the interest of child health advocates around the country. Thanks to programs like First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move Initiative” and Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution,” the nation is paying more attention to childhood obesity and school lunch reform.
Mrs. Q’s blog was started because of her own experiences with school meals after she ate the food prepared at school because she forgot her lunch at home. She keeps her identity a secret due to fear of losing her teaching job. Read more »
September 14th, 2010 by Shantanu Nundy, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips, Opinion, Research
Tags: Archives of Internal Medicine, Diabetes, Dietetics, Food and Nutrition, Food Labels, Food Science, Food-Based Approach To Eating, Gary Taubes, General Medicine, Good Calories Bad Calories, Heart Disease, In Defense Of Food, JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, Michael Pollan, Nutrient-Based Approach To Food, Nutritional Facts, Obesity, The Science Of Nutrition
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The science of nutrition is changing and not in the way you might expect. After years of “reductionist” thinking — where food has been viewed as the sum of its parts -– a call to treat food as food has been sounded. No more poring over nutrition labels to calculate grams of fat or chasing down the latest go-to chemical –- be it vitamin E, fish oil or omega-3. Instead we are being asked to call a potato a potato and a piece of steak — well, a piece of steak.
If you haven’t heard about this sea change yet, you are not alone. The food science industry that markets “food products” for our consumption has done a good job giving their laboratory creations a semblance of health with phrases like “low fat” and “high in vitamin C.” For our part, the medical community is also to blame. Despite evidence to the contrary, we have been slow to renounce the “fat is bad” mantra or break away from the nutrient-based approach to eating that first swept the country over 30 years ago. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at BeyondApples.Org*
September 13th, 2010 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Research
Tags: Evidence-Based, Health Journalism, Healthcare Apps, iMedicalApps, Inaccurate Health Reporting, iPhone App, iStethoscope App, Medical Technology, Misleading Healthcare Readers, Mobile Health, Monitoring Medical Apps, Peter Bentley, The Guardian, University College London
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An article in The Guardian, the popular British newspaper, on an iPhone medical app that attempts to replicate the stethoscope starts out as:
The stethoscope — medical icon, lifesaver and doctor’s best friend — is disappearing from hospitals across the world as physicians increasingly use their smartphones to monitor patients’ heartbeats.
More than 3 million doctors have downloaded a 59p application — invented by Peter Bentley, a researcher from University College London — which turns an Apple iPhone into a stethoscope.
It’s obvious to those intimate with medicine that “3 million doctors” using this app was a ridiculous number. Unfortunately, it took The Guardian one full week to realize this egregious error — they meant to say “3 million overall downloads” –- but by then the news had been disseminated to hundreds of news websites, blogs, and potentially millions of readers. Leading readers to infer that with “3 million physician downloads” the medical community had signed off on the app.
The story went on to say:
Experts say the software, a major advance in medical technology, has saved lives and enabled doctors in remote areas to access specialist expertise.
Lets be clear what this application does. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
September 13th, 2010 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Anticancer Effects, Big Pharma, Biguanides, Cancer Prevention, Diabetes Drug, Dr. David Kroll, Drug Companies, Guanidine, Herbal Medicine, Metformin, Natural Medicines, Natural Product Extracts, Natural Remedies, Oncology, Pharmaceutical Industry, Pharmacology, SBM, Science Based Medicine, Traditional Folk Medicines
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I’m only a monthly contributor here, but between being a Science Based Medicine (SBM) reader and having my own blogs, I often grow weary of the blind criticism that researchers and drug companies couldn’t care less about traditional folk medicines as drug products. My laboratory spends every single day working on natural product extracts in the search for compounds that may have selective effectiveness against cancer. So this is a bit of a sore spot for me.
Two [recent] papers from Cancer Prevention Research on the potential anticancer effects of a diabetes drug (see Nathan Seppa’s story here) remind me to tell the story of a Middle Ages European herbal medicine used to treat polyuria that gave rise to one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, metformin (Glucophage in the U.S.). Metformin, known chemically as a biguanide, dimethylguanide to be precise, traces its roots to the plant Galega officinalis. Known as goat’s rue, French lilac, or professor weed, this plant was shown to be a rich source of guanidine and a less toxic compound later called galegin or galegine (isoamyline guanidine). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
September 12th, 2010 by GarySchwitzer in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: Breast Cancer Prevention, Breast Cancer Research, Breast Cancer Screening, Diagnostic Radiology, Family Medicine, Gary Schwitzer, General Medicine, Gynecology, HealthNewsReview.org, Internal Medicine, Interventional Radiologist, Mammograms, Mammography Wars, New England Journal of Medicine, Oncology, Preventive Health, Preventive Screening, Primary Care, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, Women's Health
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This is a thoughtful “sounding board” piece in the New England Journal of Medicine this week: Lessons from the Mammography Wars.
It is so important to keep this discussion alive. The miscommunication that took place last November of what the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force tried to convey, and the complicity of some news organizations in adding to that confusion, provide lessons from which we simply must learn to do better.
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
