Woman Shoots Herself in the Arm to Get Medical Treatment
A Michigan woman shot herself in an effort to get treatment for her painful shoulder injury. She doesn't have health insurance and was desperate to stop the pain. The woman's effort failed. Her injury was not considered serious enough for her to get treatment. She could also face charges for firing the weapon within city limits. Take a look:
Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on the connection between Winter and increased asthma. The onset of cold weather can increase asthma attacks and make people with asthma feel worse. Dr. Sanjay Gupta says "cold air can exacerbate the condition as can getting sick." There are more colds and other viruses around. These illnesses can be problematic for people with asthma. Take a look:
The Medpedia Project has announced the public launch of the beta version of Medpedia.com, a health resource and technology platform for the worldwide health community. Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other health organizations, are contributing in various ways to Medpedia. The goal of The Medpedia Project is to create a new model of how the world will assemble, maintain, critique and access medical knowledge. Since the announcement of The Medpedia Project in July 2008, over 110 organizations have contributed or pledged over 7,000 pages of content to the knowledge base, and thousands of people have become a part of the community.
For the general public, this page explains how to use Medpedia and this page list all the topics covered on medpedia.com.
Everyone likes to search for information about their ailments online. There's always detailed information all kinds of diseases and conditions. There are also online communities filled with people dealing with similar ailments and illnesses. The BBC reports on a study that found some of this online research may feed health fears and breed a "generation of cyberchondriacs." The study surveyed 515 Microsoft employees about their health-related searching.
The researchers found Web searches for common symptoms such as headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.
Searching for "chest pain" or "muscle twitches" returned terrifying results with the same frequency as less serious ailments, even though the chances of having a heart attack or a fatal neurodegenerative condition is far lower than having simple indigestion or muscle strain, for example.
About a third of the 515 Microsoft employees who answered a survey on their medical search habits "escalated" their follow-up searches to explore serious, rarer illnesses.
It seems the study only found the obvious. Sure a search for "chest pain" or even "itchy rash" can send you toward some very serious conditions if you search hard enough. The study is missing the point as to how valuable all this information is that people could not easily get before the Internet. No one is suggesting the Internet replaces your physician. It's important that people have access to all this information so they can conduct their own research and so they can communicate with - and learn from - others suffering from similar conditions and diseases.
Man quarantined with super-TB. CDC concerned he may have exposed fellow passengers on plane flights. CDC seeks people who may have been exposed to extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) infected person.
Serious concerns raised about soft drinks and your health.
FDA approves Lybrel, first birth control method that stops women's monthly periods.
Studies find male human minds deteriorate faster than female human minds.
We have launched a twitter profile which provides health news updates. Twitter is a microblogging service and communication tool that allows you to post short 140 character
updates. To get our updates on Twitter you need to join Twitter and then follow our Twitter profile.
GE's BloggingNEXT blog reports on a new technology called Veinviewer that makes it easy to view the structure of a person's veins.
This isn't a GE product - but it's fascinating. Anyone who's ever gotten an IV knows how unpleasant the process can be. The Veinviewer is fast (no waiting for a scan) and uses simple near-infrared light, a digital video camera, and a digital video projector (using DLP technology from Texas Instruments) to project onto your skin an image of the vein structure below. It's tough to overstate how simple and easy this is.
Here is Luminetx description of its VeinViewer technology.
The VeinViewer by Luminetx uses a combination of near-infrared light and patented technologies to image vascular structures, thus allowing physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals to clearly see accessible vasculature (or lack thereof) in real time, directly on the surface of the skin.
Hopefully, this technology will be used in hospitals and it will help to reduce the number of unsuccessful sticks patients have to suffer through before a vein is found for the IV.
NuMetrex has a new sports bra, the NuMetrex Heart Sensing Sports Bra, that has heart monitoring technology sewn into the fabric. The bra monitors the heart's pulse and transmits data to a wrist watch.
The NuMetrex Heart Sensing Sports Bra was launched by Textronics in December 2005, and was named 2006 Sports Product of the Year by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. The garment features electronic sensing technology that is actually integrated right into the knit of the fabric, which picks up the heart's electrical pulse and radios it to a wrist watch via a tiny transmitter in the bra. It offers a new level of comfort and convenience for women wishing to monitor their heart rate while they exercise.
Textronics is currently working to expand the NuMetrex clothing collection to include a heart rate sensing shirt for men which will be released to market this fall. Also in development is a larger size heart rate sensing sports bras for women targeted for release in early 2007.
NuMetrex uses technology from Textronics, which develops what they are calling electro-functional fabrics. There should be many more developments like this one in the years ahead.
MSNBC.com reports that FDA has approved a spay-on mixture of viruses for use on meat and poultry that people buy at grocery stores.
A mixture of six bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on meat and poultry to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday.
The mixture of special viruses, called bacteriophages, would target strains of Listeria monocytogenes, the Food and Drug Administration said in declaring it is safe to use. The viruses are designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products just before they are packaged.
The bacterium they target can cause a serious infection called listeriosis, primarily in pregnant women, newborns and adults with weakened immune systems. In the United States, an estimated 2,500 persons become seriously ill with listeriosis each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 500 die.
They say it is safe. There is also a Faq here that
says food labels will indicate when the bacteriophage additive has been used.
8. Will the additive be declared on the food label?
Use of this additive must comply with the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act, which are both administered by USDA. According to USDA, the use of the phage preparation will need to be declared as an ingredient on the label of the treated meat or poultry product, e.g., "bacteriophage preparation." In addition, when the phage is applied to meat and poultry products with standards of identity that do not permit the addition of antimicrobial agents, the products will need to be descriptively named, e.g., "beef steak treated with an antimicrobial solution to reduce microorganisms."
A study by the Heart Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, compared people eating two meals of carrot cake and a milkshake one month apart. One meal was high in saturated fat -- using coconut oil -- and the other was high in polyunsaturated fat -- using safflower oil. MSNBC.com reports that the study found that ill effects from eating the meal high in saturated fat were discovered almost immediately.
Effect seen in 3 hours
The researchers, led by Dr. Stephen Nicholls, a cardiologist now at the Cleveland Clinic, found that three hours after eating the saturated-fat cake and shake, the lining of the arteries was hindered from expanding to increase blood flow. And after six hours, the anti-inflammatory qualities of the good cholesterol were reduced.
But the polyunsaturated meal seemed to improve those anti-inflammatory qualities. Also, fewer inflammatory agents were found in the arteries than before the meal.
To put this study into a real life situation it means that any meal you eat that is high in saturated fats probably creates inflammation and hinders your blood flow that very same day.
Forbes has an article about fifteen ways to live longer. The articles frange from being optimistic to getting a pet.
"Those low on adult conscientiousness died sooner," Friedman concluded. Conscientiousness does not mean looking both ways before crossing the street, it means looking both ways when the light turns green so you don't accidentally run down a slow-moving pedestrian. Beyond that, a conscientious person's long-living qualities probably have to do with the fact that they are predisposed to constructively reacting to emotional and social situations, and are more likely to create work and living environments that promote good health.
There are also more traditional practices that the aspiring centenarian can take. People should stop smoking, eat a balanced diet and maintain a healthy weight. While these may sound "nanny-ish," they are factors that cannot be overlooked. This might not sound like much fun, but it's a lot more fun than being dead.
Here is the complete list of fifteen.
Don't oversleep
Be optimistic
Have more sex
Get a pet
Get a VAP
Be rich
Stop smoking
Chill out
Eat your antioxidants
Marry well
Exercise
Laugh a little
Lose weight
Manage stress
Meditate
Stop smoking and exercise look like the two most frequently mentioned ways to live longer. The article listed "don't oversleep" but regularly undersleeping is probably a bad idea as well.
A new baby in England will be born without the inherited cancer gene found in her mother. The Times Onlinereports that doctors used a genetic-screening technology to keep a hereditary form of eye cancer from passing to the child from the mother.
Although they did not have fertility problems, the woman and her partner created embryos by IVF. This allowed doctors to remove a cell and test it for the cancer gene, so only unaffected embryos were transferred to her womb.
The couple are the first to take advantage of a relaxation in the rules governing embryo screening.
When the technique was developed in 1989 it was allowed only for genes that always cause disease, such as those for cystic fibrosis. However, it was approved last year for the eye cancer, which affects only 90 per cent of those who inherit a mutated gene.
The pregnancy will increase controversy over the procedure, which the Government’s fertility watchdog authorised on Wednesday for genes that confer an 80 per cent lifetime risk of breast and bowel cancer.
Eventually these types procedures will be common to insure that newborns do not possess hereditary cancers. The ethical concerns are that you will end up with a situation like that portrayed in the movie Gattaca where genetic engineering is used to predetermine everything about the child even issues like hair and eye color. The Times Online article says there are also concerns from religious groups concerned about the embryos that are destroyed in the screening procedure.
A new report published in the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity forecasts child obesity to soar in children worldwide. The AP reports that the forecast says nearly half of North and South American children will be over weight by 2010.
The number of overweight children worldwide will increase significantly by the end of the decade, and scientists expect profound impacts on everything from public health care to economies, a study published Monday said.
Nearly half of the children in North and South America will be overweight by 2010, up from what recent studies say is about one-third, according to a report published by the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity.
In the European Union, about 38 percent of all children will be overweight if present trends continue — up from about 25 percent in recent surveys, the study said.
Half of all American kids will be overweight within 3-4 years? Many health experts continue to suggest "less exercise, better diet" but there seems to be more going on here. Dr. Phillip Thomas, a surgeon who works with obese patients in Manchester, England, told the AP, "This is going to be the first generation that's going to have a lower life expectancy than their parents."
The Medpedia Project has announced the public launch of the beta version of 
We have launched a 
GE's BloggingNEXT blog 
NuMetrex has a new sports bra, the NuMetrex Heart Sensing Sports Bra, that has heart monitoring technology sewn into the fabric. The bra monitors the heart's pulse and transmits data to a wrist watch.
