Public Health
The food police have argued amongst themselves for many years over how to change consumers' eating habits. Some have suggested that 'pricing strategies' (i.e. higher taxes) may change behavior while others say subsidies for healthy foods are the way to encourage people to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The thought is that if you make it cheaper, people will eat more of it, more expensive and people will eat less.
To sort out the controversy, a team of researchers from the University of Buffalo set out to determine in the laboratory which method is best for dictating to consumers…
It's about 5.30 pm in England and the Court of Appeal in the case of the British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh has closed for the day. No official news as yet but the Singh supporters from Twitter seem to have smiles on their faces.
No doubt they will blog about this soon, but for the latest take a look at Jack of Kent and the list he has compiled of live Twitters from the hearing.
The three Law Lords sitting in judgement include two of the highest ranked judges in England. This case has been taken very seriously in terms of evidence based science versus unfounded claims. The BCA…
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Abu Ali al-Hussein Ibn Sina famous with the name of Avicenna, was born in Persia in the 980 at Qishlak Afshona, near Bukhara, Uzbekistan. By the age of eighteen years, possessor of an immensest philosophical-scientific culture, undertakes the doctor profession. Avicenna was studious of Hippocrates and Galen therefore developed the theory of four humors and the derived complexions. Avicenna is also known to fuse philosophy and medicine all in one. Follower of Aristotle and Plato, its infuence on the western medicine was enormous, especially through a work that…
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"The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated." Plato.
"Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'ame." Rabelais (1483-1553).
"The most dangerous physicians are those who, being born actors, imitate born physicians with perfect imposture". (Nietzsche, Human All-too-Human, I, 1878).
" The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade: a calling not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have…
Depression raises stress hormone levels in adolescent boys and girls but may lead to obesity only in girls, according to research in a recent issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. Authors of the study suggest that early treatment of depression could help reduce stress and control obesity.
The hormone Cortisol regulates various metabolic functions in the body and is released as a reaction to stress. Researchers have long known that depression and cortisol are related to obesity, but they had not figured out the exact biological mechanism.
Although it is not clear why high cortisol…
A new study published this week in PLoS Biology suggests that seasonal changes in absolute humidity are the apparent underlying cause of wintertime influenza outbreaks. The study also found that the onset of outbreaks might be encouraged by anomalously dry weather conditions, at least in temperate regions.
Researchers used 31 years of observed absolute humidity conditions to drive a mathematical model of influenza and found that the model simulations reproduced the observed seasonal cycle of influenza throughout the United States. They first examined influenza in New York, Washington,…
NHS Should Cease Funding Homeopathic Medicine - Cross-Party Group
On 2nd Feb 2010 I asked Is Homeopathy Good For The British Economy?
In a reductio ad absurdum I concluded that if homeopathy works, and is cheaper than other therapies, then the UK could save billions by switching its NHS to the use of only homeopathy.
The House of Commons cross-party science watchdog commitee has just released its findings:
there is no evidence that homeopathic remedies work beyond the placebo affect.
The NHS should cease funding all homeopathic medicine, the House of Commons science watchdog said today.
The…
Good to see that even if journalists can't be bothered to investigate the links between tobacco companies and so-called scientific research, then at least some scientists are doing so. This study, published in January in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, is a meta-analysis of previous studies looking at the effects of smoking on the incidence of Alzheimer's disease. Big tobacco have made much of claims that smoking actually reduces the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's. So how much truth is there to this?
The University of California at San Francisco team reviewed 43 published studies…
People who live in areas with lower household incomes are much more likely to die because of their personal and household characteristics and their community surroundings, according to research conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University and published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Researchers analyzed census data and vital statistics from Virginia counties and cities between 1990 and 2006. They demonstrated that one out of four deaths would have been averted if the mortality rates of Virginia's five most affluent counties and cities had existed statewide. In some of the…
People who are usually happy, enthusiastic and content are less likely to develop heart disease than those who tend not to be happy, according to a purely observational study that needs to be confirmed with clinical research.
Over a period of ten years, researchers followed 1,739 healthy adults (862 men and 877 women) who were participating in the 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey. At the start of the study, published in the European Heart Journal, trained nurses assessed the participants' risk of heart disease and, with both self-reporting and clinical assessment, they measured symptoms of…