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Many patients are fearful of taking prescription drugs.

And who can blame them? Drug advertisements prominently communicate a litany of side effects, and news reports routinely proclaim black box warnings and newly discovered complications.

Within this fog of negativity, patients have to realize the benefits of many medications, and this is what the WSJ points out (via the WSJ Health Blog).

Statins are the most obvious example. There is good data supporting its use, especially in secondary prevention of cardiac events. However, many patients are wary about the side effects and stop taking them, perhaps not realizing that in some cases “the health consequences associated with stopping a medication, particularly for a chronic condition, may be far worse than the possibility of a side effect.”

Physicians are the ones who can properly weigh the risks and benefits of medications for individual patients. News reports, television, and drug advertisements have no ability to do so.

There’s a lot of talk about the patient centered medical home.

While some are labeling it a savior for primary care medicine, earlier this week I outline somed obstacles to the idea becoming a reality.

Family physician Doug Farrago however, takes a more cynical view. Like the ICD-based coding system, which has spawned an entire industry of medical coders, he thinks that the medical home will do nothing more than provide entrepreneurs an opportunity to start “a business that claims to certify whether your office is a ‘medical home’ or not.”

He’s skeptical of the idea, calling it another bureaucratic layer in an already bloated system.

It’s never a problem, until it affects you.

Baby Boomers are going to be Medicare beneficiaries within the next few years, and some are finding out how difficult it is to find a primary care doctor.

Nationwide, about 30 percent of Medicare patients had difficulty finding a primary care physician during the past year.

As one patient puts it, “I must have made 12 calls before I could nail it down . . . One or two weren’t taking new patients at all, but the vast majority were just not taking Medicare. And they were taking other forms of insurance.”

This demographic needs to continue to speak up. Politicians don’t read my blog, nor do they pay much attention to doctors. The Medicare beneficiaries however, carry weight, and need to clearly communicate the dire repercussions of inadequate primary care access.

Report Says U.S. Health Preparedness Being Affected By Cutbacks A new report has revealed that previous progress made in preparing to deal with disease outbreaks, natural disasters and bioterrorism in the United States is perhaps being affected by the economic crisis and budget cuts. This is the conclusion presented in the sixth annual “Ready or Not?” report, released Tuesday by Trust for America’s Health. Furthermore, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, also found that major gaps remain in many critical areas of emergency preparedness, including food safety and rapid disease detection. =========================== Emergency Departments Said To Be Under Burden Due To Recession According to an American College of Emergency Physicians report released Tuesday it has stated that an increasing number of unemployed and uninsured Americans are seeking treatment in hospital emergency departments. Very tellingly, this is said to be causing overcrowding that could make it difficult for the centers to handle such medical emergencies as heart attacks and trauma injuries. Dr. Angela F. Gardner, president-elect of the ACEP, who added that any public dialogue about overhauling the current health system has to include emergency departments is quoted as saying that “We have no capacity now. There’s no way we have room for any more people to come to the table.” =========================== Studies Say High-Fructose Corn Syrup Not The Cause of Obesity Epidemic In what may be seen as a surprise, according to five studies published this week in a supplement to the journal Clinical Nutrition it has been said that there’s no link between increased consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and the obesity epidemic in the United States. Very tellingly, for a number of years, high-fructose corn syrup (a liquid sweetener widely used in food and drinks) has been regarded as a major reason for the growing number of overweight Americans. However as the USA today newspaper reports, these new studies say that’s not the case. To conclude, Barry Hopkins, the author of one of the studies says: “It doesn’t appear that when you consume high-fructose corn syrup, you have any different total effect on appetite than if you consume any other sugar.” ========================== Report Says Diesel Truckers Have Higher Lung Cancer Risk It has been made public knowledge by reports issued in the San Francisco Chronicle that according to U.S. researchers who examined the records of 31,135 workers, diesel truck drivers are more likely to develop lung cancer than other workers. Reportedly, they add that short-haul drivers had a greater risk than long-haul drivers. The researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health said that this may be because long-haul drivers often keep their windows closed while short-haul drivers keep their windows open and have greater exposure to diesel exhaust. To conclude, the chronicle reported that the study findings will be considered by California’s Air Resources Board when it meets Friday to vote on a new regulation to reduce the public health threat posed by diesel truck exhaust. ========================= FDA Says Pistol Not a Medical Device As of monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that a single-bullet pistol designed to be used as protection by seniors and the disabled will not be approved as a medical device and won’t be covered by Medicare. As the Associated Press reports, the oval-shaped Palm Pistol fits in a person’s palm and the barrel sticks out through the fingers. In addition, instead of a trigger, the gun is fired by a thumb- activated button. As the wire service reports, the inventor, Matthew M. Carmel of Maplewood, N.J., said an FDA representative advised him to register his company as a medical device facility and list the Palm Pistol as a “recreational adaptor, however although the registration seemed to go smoothly, it was revoked Monday by the FDA. ============================================= After The Discovery of Bird Flu Over 80,000 Chickens Are To Be Killed In Hong Kong Recent reports have indicated that authorities in Hong Kong say over 80,000 chickens will be culled after a poultry farm was found to have chickens infected with avian influenza (bird flu). It is noteworthy of mention that the last time bird flu was detected in Hong Kong was in 2002. As York Chow, Health Secretary stated, approximately 60 dead chickens were found in the farm. At this stage, tests have confirmed the birds died from the H5N1 virus - the most virulent strain. To conclude, he adds that all chickens within a 2-mile (3-km) radius of the infected farm will be culled. For The Latest Health News Keep it Locked Here at BodyHealthsoul.com

Back pain is a pretty common complaint. But there isn’t just one type of back pain — and there isn’t just one thing that causes the problem. Here are three major causes of back pain. A sprain or strain is the most common cause of back pain.

Six million American man experience lowest point each year. There are many different causes and kinds lowest point. Kinds are to be identifizierenen more simply than others; Death, connecting collapse or its…

These are questions that you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon or even a responsible parent to know the obvious answer is “No”. Your kids will do enough drinking on their own later in life. You don’t need to provoke or promote it.

• Is it ok to serve children alcohol, even if it’s just wine?
• Is it ok to serve a toddler wine in a “sippy” cup?
• Is it funny to notice the served child feeling the effects of the alcohol, even if it only makes them sleepy?

I have a 7 year old nephew that will pick up a beer and start slugging it down without any knowledge of how it will effect him. We have to watch that one when you’re sitting around having a few cold ones with my brother.

So why do I bring this stupid question up? Because stupid people do stupid things…like giving a toddler wine in a sippy cup. Gerry over at Disease Proof shared a story about a woman that observed some family members giving their toddler wine in a “sippy” cup during the holidays and laughing when the child was showing effects from the wine.

Read more on this outrageously irresponsible story at Disease Proof.

Tags: alcohol, Children and wine, serving wine to toddlers, wine

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December 9, 2008 News Summaries For Early Morning Kids With Epilepsy Could Have Their Seizure Meds Safely Taken From Them In what might seem controversial, a Mayo Clinic study has stated that it’s generally safe to stop giving anti-seizure medication to children with epilepsy. The catch is, this only applies to those who’ve achieved seizure-freedom while on the medication and this is said to be due to the fact that these children aren’t at high risk of later developing intractable epilepsy. “It is often recommended that children with epilepsy who become seizure-free on anti-seizure medications be withdrawn from the drugs to avoid side effects of long-term use. Those potential side effects include cognitive slowing, incoordination, weight change, behavioral decline, and liver damage,” pediatric neurologist Dr. Katherine Nickels said in a Mayo news release. “However, few previous studies had examined the risk of intractable epilepsy following withdrawal of anti-seizure medication, and the reported risks varied widely.” ========================================================== Patients Get to Save Money Via Electronic Prescribing A new study has found that an electronic prescribing system that tells doctors which drugs are the least expensive can save millions a year. Dr. Michael A. Fischer, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and lead author of a report in the Dec. 8/22 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine: “One of the challenges physicians face is that they don’t know which drugs are preferred or not preferred. The insurance companies involved in the study provided that information by a color code—green for drugs that were preferred, red for drugs that were not preferred.” It is noteworthy of mention that the study of 17.4 million prescriptions filled by more than 1.5 million patients of nearly 1,200 Massachusetts physicians found that use of the least expensive drugs—classified as “tier 1” for the study, such as those available generically—increased by 3.3 percent when e-prescribing was used. ========================================================= In Latest Trials Malaria Vaccine Said To Be Effective Recent reports have indicated that results from two phase II trials in Africa show that a new malaria vaccine is effective at preventing both infection and the mosquito-borne disease itself in infants and children. Our sources quote Dr. Christian Loucq, director of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, as saying during a morning teleconference on Monday that “Malaria is killing almost 1 million people, mostly African children, every year. Clearly, the world needs a safe and effective malaria vaccine.” He noted that the vaccine, called RTS,S, is one of several vaccine candidates for malaria. To conclude, he says other vaccines are under development, but RTS,S is the one that is furthest along and ready for phase III testing. ========================================================== Asthma Risks May Be Increased By Poor Mental Health Are you asthmatic? Well, a new study suggests a link between your mental health and your respiratory health. Brown University researchers report that people who rated their mental health as poor were more likely to have asthma than those who described their mental health as good. Lead researcher, Dr. Thomas Chun, an assistant professor of emergency medicine says if you’re a person with both asthma and mental health problems, you should be treated for both conditions. Chun says to conclude this highlight that: “Though we can’t prove that the two are causally related, it may be important to treat both conditions. Successfully improving one condition may improve the other.” For The Latest Health News Keep it Locked Here at BodyHealthsoul.com

December 8, 2008 News Summaries For 2:19 pm Body Clock Gene Said To Be Linked To Diabetes Risk New details have surfaced indicating that after going over the results of ten genome-wide association scans covering over 36,000 people of European descent, an international group of scientists discovered that a variant of a gene involved in regulating the body clock may also be linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. It is noteworthy of mention that the study was the work of scientists from the University of Oxford, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge , and many others from MAGIC (Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-related traits Consortium) in Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and US. For interested persons, the study was published on 7 December in the online issue of Nature Genetics. ======================================================== Poor And Rich Kids Said To Have Different EEG Brain Activities It has been made public knowledge that US researchers who went over the EEG (electroencephalograph) brain patterns of 9 and 10-year old children discovered that in comparison to richer children those from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds had a lower level of activity in the prefrontal cortex. According to the report, this is the part of the brain that is important for creativity and problem solving. It is noteworthy of mention that this is reported to be the first study to show that the brains of low income kids behave differently to those of high income kids. ======================================================== Jimmy Carter Says Guinea Worm Eradication Is Almost Complete Recently published reports have emerged to the effect that the former US president Jimmy Carter said there are now fewer than 5,000 cases of Guinea worm disease in the world. The good news is this is the lowest ever. Furthermore, in order to help eradicate the disease altogether, the Carter Center campaign have received pledges totalling 55 million US dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Department for International Development. Background investigation into this highlight depict that Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, in partnership with Emory University, founded the Carter Center in 1982 to advance peace and health worldwide. Speaking at a press conference in Atlanta, home of the Carter Center, on Saturday, Jimmy Carter said: “Guinea worm is poised to be the second disease eradicated from Earth, ending needless suffering for millions of people from one of the world’s oldest and most horrific afflictions.” “The reduction of Guinea worm cases by more than 99 percent proves that when people work together, great positive change is possible,” added the former US president. ====================================================== 8.7 Million North Koreans Need Food Assistance It has been reported that approximately 40 percent of the population of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) ( statistically speaking, an estimated 8.7 million people, mostly young children, pregnant and nursing women and the elderly, will urgently need food assistance. The FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a joint report today that this is because of an expected cereals deficit in the coming months. “DPRK will face a severe food situation over the coming months,” said Henri Josserand, Chief of the FAO Global Information and Early Warning System. “Despite good weather and hard work by farmers and many city dwellers, they could not overcome critical shortages of fertilizer and fuel. The prospects for next year are bleak, with a substantial deficit of basic foods that will only partly be covered by commercial imports and anticipated food aid.” ====================================================== Cancer-Causing Chemicals May Be Found In Irish Pork New reports have indicated that irish pork that may be contaminated with cancer-causing dioxins has been removed from sale in Europe and Asia. The Agence France Presse reports that the Irish government ordered all pig meat products made since Sept. 1 to be withdrawn after dioxins were found in slaughtered pigs believed to have eaten tainted feed. At this stage, authorities are investigating a feed company suspected of being linked to the contamination and up to 100,000 pigs from affected farms will be slaughtered. ============================ Brain Stimulant Pills Said To Be Supported By Commentary The Associated Press has reported that in a controversial commentary article, a group of experts argues that healthy people should be able to use stimulants to give their brains a boost. Reportedly, they said using pills to increase brain function is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night’s sleep. At this stage, the AP reports that the commentary in the journal Nature calls for more research into this area and steps to manage any risks, Article co-author Michael Gazzaniga, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, said in a an e-mail: “I would be the first in line if safe and effective drugs were developed that trumped caffeine.” =================================== Alzheimer’s Said To Be Associated With Cold Sore Virus As have been published in the Journal of Pathology, according to British researchers who said the herpes virus that causes cold sores is a major cause of the brain protein plaques associated with Alzheimer’s, it has been said that people who develop cold sores may be at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The University of Manchester team found DNA evidence of the herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 in 90 percent of plaques in Alzheimer’s patients’ brains, BBC News reported. They state: “We suggest that HSV1 enters the brain in the elderly as their immune systems decline and then establishes a dormant infection from which it is repeatedly activated by events such as stress, immunosuppression, and various infections,” ===================================== For The Latest Health News Keep it Locked Here at BodyHealthsoul.com

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