Public Health

I sometimes like to read the arXix preprint physics site. It's where a lot of papers go before they are in journals. It was open access, a way to see what scientists were working on before the results were locked behind a corporate journal paywall, before open access was even a thing. It's also fun to see what crazy stuff some theoretical physicists are writing. They used to be a rather niche part of the field - jobs where you were paid to think rather than do were once rare, even after Einstein and Heisenberg became science rock stars (1) - but now it's the experimental physicists that have…

Survey results presented at the American College of Cardiology 2019 Annual Scientific Session led to a declaration that went well beyond the evidence - they said electronic cigarettes can lead to a dramatic increase in the odds of having a heart attack, coronary artery disease, and even depression, and used that to state, "These data are a real wake-up call and should prompt more action and awareness about the dangers of e-cigarettes."  Except "these data" did not show that, and they were forced to admit it. The results were determined by collating results from the 2014, 2016, and 2017…

It won't be a surprise if you believe that most surgeons promote surgery - for you. For themselves, they're a little more cautious. It's no different than a real estate person who tells you to list your house at a lower cost than they would list it for themselves - their commission is 2-5% on your sale so moving a house faster is more important to them than if it was their own home, where they'd get up to 100% of the additional revenue and wait a little longer to get the higher price. Yet real estate agents don't determine banking policy. However, in the United States medical and medical…

An interesting study examining the relationship between push-up capacity and incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) was recently published in JAMA Network Open . The study followed 1104 firefighters from ten Indiana fire departments. These individuals were all male aged 18 or  older with the mean age being 39.6 years. None of the subjects had any job restrictions at the beginning of the study which included counting the number of push-ups each subject could perform. Medical surveillance of these subjects commenced between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2010 at a local medical…

The natural opioid kratom, the leaves of a tropical tree in Southeast Asia (Mitragyna speciosa) is a great analgesic because it's an opioid.  It has become popular because supplements are exempt from government oversight unless companies are causing people to fall over, which has happened - they seized 90,000 bottles of it in 2016 and want to ban its importation due to concerns about safety. Lobbyists for kratom managed to prevent the ban so Kratom is instead listed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as a "drug of concern" and it has not been approved for any medical use.…

Exposure to glyphosate — at 45 years of age the world’s most widely used, broad-spectrum herbicide and the primary ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup — increases the risk of some cancers by more than 40 percent, according to a meta-analysis published in the online journal Mutation Research/Reviews in Mutation Research, an imprint of publishing giant Elsevier. Various reviews and international assessments have found that glyphosate does not lead to cancer in humans but environmental groups and their allies insist it does. This meta-analysis, a review of existing papers, focused on the most…

Mention to doctors who run their own practice or a hospital administrator that malpractice and American tort culture are probably the biggest reason for high health care costs, they will likely correct you and say that it is instead defensive medicine - running tests and engaging in efforts a doctor knows are unnecessary or useless to check off boxes that will prevent a lawsuit if something ever does go wrong. And the belief that lawyers always win when they sue the medical community is also a false one. At least in some parts of the United States. And the type of treatment matters. It…

I got a butter shaper for Christmas. I asked for one because I make lot of butter in a mason jar and then just throw it in tupperware but my friends sometimes want butter and it feels a little dismissive to just hand them tupperware. Imagine my disappointment when I read the instructions which stated that it needed to be treated with "Organic Coconut Oil." Butter used to be something almost everyone made and now it was the providence of uninformed hippies, it seems. Or maybe this company was trapped in 2016? Because that is the last year Coconut Oil was being touted as essential for anything…

Exercise is good for you but some people worry there can be too much of a good thing, especially for middle-aged athletes. Extreme running and high-endurance exercise were a concern to some doctors but a study using coronary calcium scanning, an imaging test that helps physicians classify patients without cardiac symptoms as low, intermediate, or high risk for heart attack, show the fear is unfounded. Coronary calcium scanning represents how much calcium (and thus cholesterol deposits) has accumulated in the blood vessels that supply the heart. It can help physicians determine the need…

In a multi-center trial of almost 900 smokers(1), e-cigarettes were shown to be twice as effective as pharmaceutical "gold standard" approaches like gums, lozenges, and patches. After one year, nearly 20 percent were still off cigarettes, which is in line with U.S. survey results. Gums and patches are only around 10 percent effective and have been criticized by smokers for being a top down approach to cessation and harm reduction; pharmaceutical giants collaborating with government to force a product onto the market to displace tobacco giants. E-cigarettes were instead a free market approach…