December 29th, 2011 by PreparedPatient in Health Tips, Research
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Vitamins, herbs and other dietary supplements are sold as natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals and many people turn to them in an attempt to improve their health. Others seek supplements to lose weight or after hearing that they can help with serious medical conditions. These products are now used at least monthly by more than half of all Americans—and their production, marketing and sales have become a $23.7 billion industry, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.
What Are Dietary Supplements and How Are They Regulated?
98-year-old Bob Stewart, a retired podiatrist and senior Olympian, credits his use of supplements for his healthy aging. Writer Betsy McMillan, a mother of two now adult children, however, nearly suffered permanent liver damage due to a supplement that contained potentially fatal levels of niacin.
Unlike pharmaceuticals—which must be FDA-approved as safe and effective before they can be marketed—supplements are considered as foods by regulators and assumed to be safe until proven otherwise. Although pharmaceutical manufacturers face inspections to ensure that the right dose is in the right pill without dangerous contaminants, supplements do not undergo such intense government scrutiny.
Despite many reports of health problems, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
December 29th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Opinion
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In this week’s episode of Teen Mom 2, Kailyn heads to her gynecologist for birth control and leaves with a Mirena IUD in her uterus.
The entire encounter, obviously edited, ran more like a commercial for Mirena than a contraceptive counseling session. Other contraceptives were mentioned generically only -”a patch”, “a ring”, “the pill” – but when it came to the IUD, all we hear is the word Mirena – six times, to be exact, during the entire 2 and a half minute encounter with the doc.
DOC: If you don’t like the birth control pill, you do have other options. You know that there’s a birth control patch.
KAILYN: (suspiciously) Yeah
DOC: There’s a once a month vaginal ring. The ring itself is not uncomfortable. (Hands her the ring) They’re one size fits all – Right Isaac? (Baby plays with Nuvaring) They’re cool, right?
KAILYN: I just feel like me putting something in myself is all that much more room for error.
DOC: There’s also the Mirena.
KAILYN: Whaaaat is Mirena? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
December 28th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips, Research
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When you sit quietly, your heart slips into the slower, steady pace known as your resting heart rate. A new study suggests that an increase in this rate over time may be a signal of heart trouble ahead.
Your heart rate changes from minute to minute. It depends on whether you are standing up or lying down, moving around or sitting still, stressed or relaxed. Your resting heart rate, though, tends to be stable from day to day. The usual range for resting heart rate is anywhere between 60 and 90 beats per minute. Above 90 is considered high.
Many factors influence resting heart rate. Genes play a role. Aging tends to speed it up. Regular exercise tends to slow it down. (In his prime, champion cyclist Lance Armstrong had a resting heart rate of just 32 beats per minute.) Stress, medications, and medical conditions also influence the heart rate.
In today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Norway report Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
December 28th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Health Policy, Research
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For centuries, physician practices have been small business enterprises built on the sweat equity of intensive medical training. It was an economic reward system that often had physicians sacrificing family life for patient care. It continues today as the foundation of fee for service. We know it as the eat what you kill model of health care.
In the last ten years, physician practices have seen a dramatic shift from independent business practices to hospital owned practices. With that shift has come a titanic move toward the salary vs productivity compensation model.
Is this a good thing? Is a salaried physician better than a productivity based physician? That question can’t be answered because good depends on which part of the medical industrial complex you belong to and what you consider good.
As a physician, the answer on whether to become a salaried vs productivity based physician can only be answered after one defines what they value most. We know, across the board, that physicians who work in a 100% productivity model earn Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
December 28th, 2011 by BarbaraFederOstrov in News, Research
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Last week, I wrote about controversial research linking fallout from Japan’s earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant to infant deaths in the United States.
The research, which was harshly criticized by Scientific American’s Michael Moyer and others, was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of International Health Services, and I had asked the journal’s editor-in-chief Vicente Navarro for his response to the criticisms.
Navarro, professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, emailed me this comment today: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Reporting on Health - Barbara Feder Ostrov's Health Journalism Blog*
