© Kandasamy M | Dreamstime.com

A very long day today (the alarm went off at 3:10am!), but hey, recycling is IN, right?

We’re all about doing the right thing here at Left-Handed Complement, and in that spirit we’re recycling some of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s favorite electrons. And, with nearly 470 fresh daily posts in the past 16+ months, the recycling process has an exceptionally rich vein to mine.

I hereby stop apologizing for observing the prime directive of blogging: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!

And, I’m guessing that most of you weren’t here nine months ago. As one of my favorite paper publications used to say as they flogged unsold back issues: “If you haven’t read it yet, it’s new for you!”

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, originally posted November 11, 2007, and truer now than ever, titled “mm190: U. S. Health Care – Excuses, not facts.”

MUDGE’S Musings

Access to affordable health care. Five words. Easy to write. Rolls off the keyboard fluidly even. Simple phrase; political cesspool. Can universal access to affordable health care ever happen in the U.S.?

Paul Krugman, the economist whose columns appear in the Opinion section of the NYTimes, this week reminds us that the failings of our health care system are manifest: we spend more, but get less – fewer covered and lower life expectancy than in any other western economy.

Moreover, the usual suspects (our lifestyle) and the usual bugbears (socialized medicine!) are distortions and outright lies.

By PAUL KRUGMAN | Published: November 9, 2007

The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.

For those fortunate enough to have health insurance, premiums keep rising, and employers are beginning to push employees to pay more of the freight, or even to start to pay additional for their lifestyle choices.

For example, several cases have hit the news recently where employers have fired, or failed to hire, otherwise qualified people who are smokers.

Aside from the disturbing privacy concerns, the entire concept of group insurance (where the large numbers of average members in good health balances those few with greater needs) is at risk here.

But, as Krugman tells us, what apologists and politicians like Rudy Giuliani have done is blanket us with excuses, not solutions, and inaccurate and downright wrong excuses at that.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Health Care Excuses – New York Times

As a reluctantly, increasingly active consumer of the U.S. healthcare system, one of the luckiest ones covered through a plan 80% subsidized by my employer, I take for granted that I see medical professionals regularly, for the cost of a nominal co-pay up to that 20%. For what is spent, my experience should be the rule and not exceptional.

Armed with Paul Krugman’s excuse-busters, let’s all work to shed light to undo all of the misinformation out there on this subject.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

So, back into the archives yet again.

I console myself by guessing that most of you weren’t here nine months ago. As one of my favorite paper publications used to say: “If you haven’t read it yet, it’s new for you!”

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, and always in season, originally posted October 17, 2007, and originally titled “mm172: Diabetes: Not so Simple, Simon! (And stay away from that pie!).”

MUDGE’S Musings

Continuing our medical mini-series, this story was among the NYTimes’ most emailed yesterday.

Type II, adult onset diabetes is the focus of the piece, delving in great detail into recent research that is raising more questions than answers.

It’s a lengthy article, but well written, and well worth your time.

MUDGE’S Musings

Continuing our medical mini-series, this story was among the NYTimes’ most emailed yesterday.

Type II, adult onset diabetes is the focus of the piece, delving in great detail into recent research that is raising more questions than answers.

It’s a lengthy article, but well written, and well worth your time.

By AMANDA SCHAFFER

An explosion of new research is vastly changing scientists’ understanding of diabetes and giving new clues about how to attack it.

The fifth leading killer of Americans, with 73,000 deaths a year, diabetes is a disease in which the body’s failure to regulate glucose, or blood sugar, can lead to serious and even fatal complications. Until very recently, the regulation of glucose — how much sugar is present in a person’s blood, how much is taken up by cells for fuel, and how much is released from energy stores — was regarded as a conversation between a few key players: the pancreas, the liver, muscle and fat.

Now, however, the party is proving to be much louder and more complex than anyone had shown before.

So, the usual suspects, pancreas, liver, muscle and fat have been joined by new candidates: a hormone produced by bone, osteocalcin; inflammation in the immune system; the brain; and the gut.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

In Diabetes, a Complex of Causes – New York Times

We rail in this country against the high cost of health care. We are outraged by the prices we pay for pharmaceuticals.

But people, there’s wonderful work being done to discover how the human system works, and how to repair it when it is impaired. This diabetes research is a perfect example.

Of course it’s partially financed by the big drug manufacturers. Be glad it is — where else would the big money come from? The government? A useful source of research funding, but always constrained.

You’ve heard this before. These days, the cost of bringing a drug to market is measured in $100s of millions (probably a cool $billion by now), and bunches of years (as many as 15!).

When that 1:10,000 long shot hits, drug companies have a very short patent life to receive top dollar for their intellectual property, which by the way is alleviating pain, curing disease, improving life for patients around the world, while providing the wherewithal for research and testing of the next great breakthrough.

When viewed that way, the high cost of medicine in this country doesn’t seem so extreme.

Yes, the insurance driven system at the patient level is broken, a subject for another day.

But, as a person who has been living with Type II diabetes for over a decade, and whose sister’s partner’s juvenile diabetes is rapidly killing her, MUDGE has a personal stake in successful diabetes research, and by extension, all the useful medical research in this country, however it’s funded.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Well, today was that Thursday that actually began at 10:00pm last night, flowing seamlessly from Wednesday, and save for about two hours between the end of one meeting at 2am and the preparation for the next at 5:15am, sleep for yr (justifiably) humble svt has been as scarce as home buyers.

So, we’re on a reduced blogging schedule, with just enough energy to faithfully observe the Prime Directive: Thou Shalt Blog Daily.

As we’ve opined in the past (recently, actually) one of our favorite bloggers regardless of topic is Sandy Szwarc.

The first time we found her was last October. Enjoy!

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, and always in season, originally posted October 8, 2007, and originally titled “mm165: Junkfood Science: Obesity Paradox No. 13 — Take heart.”

MUDGE’S Musings

Welcome to one of the newest members of the Left-Handed Complement blogroll, Junkfood Science.

Sandy Szwarc seems to have the credentials, and she has a point of view.

Points of view are not lacking in the blogosphere (although credentials may be!), but I was attracted to hers immediately.

Anyone glancing at the rendition of Yr (Justifiably) Humble Svt that graces the top of the sidebar of this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© can probably tell that one might charitably describe MUDGE as horizontally challenged.

Fat.

Obese even.

A war fought over all but six decades. Oh, a battle won here or there, but the trend is lousy. And, the implicit message has always been: get skinny or die early.

Well, heredity and Snickers bars have long impaired my ability to do the former.

And over the past decade, the promised life-shortening chronic diseases have appeared as threatened: diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, all controlled as well as can be expected through (to some extent diet, but mainly) the wonders of the pharmaceutical arts, which is pretty well indeed.

This past summer, a promising exercise program that played to the only exercise MUDGE can comfortably handle (other than blogging!), walking, turned into Achilles tendinosis, and the pounds lost so arduously over the past four years are packing on again, as the recreational and therapeutic walking halted while various medical professionals in MUDGE‘s life attempt to figure out how to end the annoying ankle pain.

Then, the other day, thanks I believe to reddit.com, I encountered Sandy Szwarc.

For the first time in MUDGE‘s time in the ‘Sphere was I tempted to write: “WTF!” But I won’t.

Take a look:

What is most amazing is how long it has been known that body fat doesn’t cause heart disease or premature death, yet how vehemently people hold onto this belief. “The notion that body fat is a toxic substance is now firmly a part of folk wisdom: many people perversely consider eating to be a suicidal act,” wrote Dr. William Bennett, M.D., former editor of The Harvard Medical School Health Letter and author of The Dieter’s Dilemma. “Indeed, the modern belief that body fat is a mortal threat to its owner is mainly due to the fact that, for many decades, the insurance companies had the sole evidence, and if it was wrong they would presumably have had to close their doors.” That can still be said today, although the obesity interests have since grown considerably larger.

But the evidence that fatness is not especially harmful has been shown from research that dates back to the 1950s — more than a half a century ago. While many remain incredulous, the soundest body of evidence has shown, and continues to show, that being fat is not a risk factor for heart disease or a cause of premature death, even controlling for the effects of smoking or cancer.

The people of the U.S. are simultaneously getting fatter, and living longer.

Well, knock me over with a feather (not too likely in practical terms; you probably would be more successful doing so with a 3,000-pound bale of feathers).

Quoted is Dr. William Bennett, former editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter:

“Detailed epidemiological studies, too, show no impressive connection between obesity and cardiovascular disease.

The occasion for Szwarc‘s article is another new, very underreported study, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Medicine, led by cardiologist Dr. Seth Uretsky, M.D., at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, showing the same counterintuitive findings: fat people survive cardiac episodes better than thin ones!

Take a look at the full story:

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Junkfood Science: Obesity Paradox #13 — Take heart

Is it really possible that I’m supposed to be losing this lifetime battle against obesity?

And if so, why have I been lied to– er, misled all of these years?

Bears researching further I’m thinking, and Sandy Szwarc‘s Junkfood Science blog will now become a regular read.

Because, funny thing: Except for this pesky ankle, I feel pretty good.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Simone Van Den Berg | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’s Musings

Summertime. People are vacationing. The weather, here in the Northern Hemisphere, at least (reportedly quite chilly in Oz, sorry guys!) is excessively hot and humid. The beach beckons.

News is sparse, but the need to sell the advertisers’ wares means that the 24-hour news cycle keeps on spinning.

Thus a story in the New England Journal of Medicine received undue prominence this week: a report on a clinical study of a comparison of two popular diet programs, the Atkins diet (once a tool of yr (justifiably) humble svt) vs. the Mediterranean diet (a favored tool of an official brother of y[j]hs). So it was all over the headlines for a day or so, midweek, filling those column inches and 30-second sound bites during the summer doldrums and of more than a little personal interest.

This was a 2-year study, and the weight loss reported was depressingly small. What was going on?

I turned, as often I do when trying to dig beneath the headlines on medical issues, to Left-Handed Complement‘s favorite authority on such medical studies, especially as regards weight loss, Sandy Szwarc, writing in her amazingly wise blog, Junkfood Science. Here are some previous occasions when she cut through the jargon and the statistical distortions for us.

Sure enough, yesterday’s Junkfood Science post provided a thorough analysis, detailed but not excessively technical, of the study. Were you aware, for example, that it was partially funded by the Atkins people?

Round eleventy-seven in the diet wars

Junkfood Science | Sandy Szwarc | July 19, 2008

Here we go again in the battle of the diets. Another weight loss study was published this week. This one, partly funded by Atkins Research Foundation, pitted a low-fat diet against a Mediterranean diet against an Atkins-like diet. The news has either declared Atkins the winner, or that they all worked, or that they all failed.

This study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, actually confirmed everything already known about weight loss diets. The quickest post would be to simply refer you here, here and here and say “step and repeat.” But new readers might not like that.

So, at the risk of boring regular readers with a rehash of diet study fallacies, here’s a quick rundown.

Overview

This trial was conducted in 2005-2007 in Dimona, Israel. It was registered as a phase 1 trial (ClinicalTrials.gov registration #NCT00160108), explained here. Given its size and duration, though, it appears more a combined phase 1 and 2, designed to evaluate the safety and note the effects of the dietary interventions on weight loss.

The objectives of this 2-year randomized trial were to evaluate not just the safety and weight loss effectiveness of the three diet plans, but also to test the effectiveness of a workplace weight loss program.

For most people, diets just don’t work on any long-term basis. Weight lost by reducing calories, carbohydrates, fats, whatever, eventually comes back. And this two-year study, despite some chartmanship that Szwarc clarifies for us, proves this disappointing law of nature yet again.

Since the first low-calorie diet book was published nearly a century ago, diet doctors have come up with every imaginable gimmick for reducing calories, manipulating macronutrients in every conceivable way. If anything was truly effective, after nearly a century, there would be no diet industry and everyone would be slim. Any contrivance to cut calories works to enable most everyone to lose some weight… but only temporarily… and only to a point. Then, those homeostatic metabolic adjustments work to return body weights to their genetically-determined setpoint range, in both naturally obese and nonobese bodies. These biological adjustments are so powerful, as much as a four-fold increase in metabolic efficiency, that to keep weight off below one’s natural range, or to try to lose more, requires increasing severe caloric restrictions, not optimal for nutritional health or wellbeing.

Diets. Just. Don’t. Work.

Junkfood Science: Round eleventy-seven in the diet wars

One of her most intriguing points is that there was no attention given in the analysis of the data to any medical outcomes: was heart disease risk lessened? Did any pre-diabetic conditions fail to become diabetes as a result of the diets?

This was dieting for the sake of dieting (okay, to lose some weight), but the clinicians were apparently disinterested in whether the weight loss experienced by the study participants had any positive therapeutic value.

Looking better (at least for a few months) in their Speedos at the beach (this was an Israeli study after all) doesn’t seem sufficient, does it?

5-1/2 years ago, I bravely embarked on the Atkins program, with some excellent early results. Of the ultimately nearly 50 pounds lost, in the past year about 15-20 have returned, but I’m “guilty with an excuse.” My level of exercise was slashed due to the pesky Achilles tendinosis issue that, nearly a year along, still bedevils and restricts activity. And of course, as the weight started coming back, the rigidity about the virtual carb-free daily choices disappeared; four years of denial needed to rebound, and did. Sigh.

Am I better off 30-35 pounds down? Yes. Have I any confidence in my ability to get that pesky 15-20 back off, not to speak of the further 40 or 50 beyond that my BMI says I need to lose. None whatsoever.

Diets. Just. Don’t. Work.

But, as always, I appreciate Sandy Szwarc’s careful reading and literate daylighting of what most of us take at face value, because we are all too willing to let the MSM do our chewing and digesting for us, with the expected results.

Mainstream media is the medical reporting equivalent of a Hostess Twinkie, absolutely empty calories.

Sandy Szwarc’s Junkfood Science is the high fibre, whole grain, naturally sweetened, real deal.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Encountered this at lunch last week; it became a formidable challenge to finish (the story / the lunch: pick one!). Consider yourself warned, faithful reader, should you be snacking on some luscious sweet or casserole while perusing this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©.

And remember, this comes not from some fringe or undocumented source, and also remember, April Fool’s day was some time ago.

Surgery Without the Slicing

Going in through existing orifices is good for patients and device makers, less so for doctors and hospitals

by Catherine Arnst | Business Week Sci Tech April 3, 2008, 5:00PM EST

On Mar. 11 Jeff Scholz, a 42-year-old former U.S. Marine, developed severe abdominal pain. It wasn’t as bad as the gunshot wound to the leg he suffered while in the service, but it kept him doubled over for most of the night. At the insistence of his fiancée, he went to the emergency room at the University of California at San Diego med center the next morning, where he learned his appendix was inflamed and had to come out. That’s how Scholz, the owner of a wholesale clothing company, ended up making medical history. He’s the first patient in the U.S. to have his appendix removed through his mouth.

Perhaps yr (justifiably) humble svt is more sensitive to this topic, as surgery is possible/probable sometime within the next few months for that pesky partially torn, incompletely healed Achilles tendon which he has been favoring via the awkward, weather exposing “fracture walker” mentioned occasionally in this space.

But, removing organic bits through one’s mouth, or perhaps, gender permitting, through one’s vagina sounds just wrong. And as BW points out, surgeons and their hospitals aren’t thrilled either, since saving patients healing and recovery time and minimizing scars is quite low on their priority lists.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Surgery Without the Slicing

The health insurance providers of the nation will have the final say on this of course. It will be an interesting tug of war: surgery that might take double the time at the surgeon’s, anesthesiologist’s, surgical nurses’s aggregated hourly rates of half-a-$zillion/hour, versus hospital stays that are half or less the time at their rates of three-quarters of a $zillion/day, or even eliminating overnight stays altogether as scarless surgery procedures are performed on outpatients.

But, while we watch the game we have two observations.

Thankfully, there will be no vagina involved, nor will my mouth be a suitable access orifice, for Achilles tendon surgery.

And, ewwwwwww!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Yr (justifiably) humble svt has been practicing this hobby? trade? avocation? for nearly nine months. Early on, I was exposed to the Prime Directive of Blogging: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!

Okay, started (seriously) 07-May-2007… tonight it’s 28-January-2008… timeanddate.com (as discussed previously) … 266 days … this is mm268 (and there have been some WCW’s and decimals) and WordPress.com tells me that I’ve produced 293 posts up to now: I have met the Prime Directive of Blogging. 293 posts in 266 days. Whew!

With some difficulty. Take this week, for example. And by week, I’m referring to the past seven days, actually just the past six will do.

Wednesday…

… was typical, up until late afternoon, as I was wrapping up ready to head home. Cell phone rings. It’s my mother, who I was due to call (as I do every Monday and Wednesday on the way home from work): don’t call me, I took a blood test today, and my doctor’s office called and I’m to go to the emergency room at once to have them retake the test.

As I headed south through the light but persistent snowfall, I quickly realized that the commute home (or directly to the hospital) would take twice as long as usual, and I had a commitment to lead a class for an individual in Tokyo beginning at 7pm. As I explained my conundrum to Mrs. MUDGE, long suffering and angelic, she instantly volunteered to head to the emergency room to assist my mother. Bless you, Mrs. M.

The class, conducted from the home office via web conference, went as well as one might expect, considering English was the student’s second or third language, and the instructor was rather distracted.

Turns out that my mother’s earlier blood test was correct; she was desperately anemic and needed two units of blood immediately. She was admitted, as the process takes several hours per unit, and the medical staff wanted to run some further tests to attempt to ascertain the cause(s).

I should say here that my mother is a clear thinking, quite young 80 years old, and save for difficulty walking due to a calamitous fall some years ago, is generally healthy.

And thanks again to my wife, for patiently staying with her mother-in-law until she was settled into her room. A saint.

Thursday…

… had actually planned to work from home, and this became more important as I wanted to be able to get to the hospital quickly if necessary, and to visit in any event.

And the visit is what happened, as she continued to undergo tests as well as receiving other intravenous nutrition. So I wrapped up early, picked my wife up after work from her job in town, and we went to visit.

This may be the point to interject an even more personal note. Since the summer, when I somehow subtly injured my ankle, I have been limping along.

Currently I am for the second time wearing a “cam boot” contraption that is awkward, and now, during a Chicago winter, downright obnoxious, but that allows me to walk mostly without irritating the partially torn tendon.

But it’s slow going, especially while making our way through the mammoth teaching hospital we are pleased to have so close by.

Quite a nice family reunion. Mother was in good spirits, resigned to another night (and another unit of blood) as well as some further testing Friday morning. My brother was there when we arrived – splits his time between Chicago and Florida, and travels constantly around the country, so we see him seldom, and it was good catching up. Later, MUDGElet No. 2, our older son, joined us after work, concerned about his grandmother.

On our way home, we dropped my mother’s car at her home (she had driven herself, anemia and all to the hospital the day before), and picked up some Steak ‘n Shake (comfort food, and fast).

So, not a bad day (easy for me to say; I wasn’t hospitalized!), but certainly not routine, and of course worrisome. What was going on that Mother’s red blood count was so low?

Friday…

… another day where a sketchy plan to work from the home office became definite, as sure enough at around 10:30am I called my mother, who advised that she was going to be released any time after 12:00pm.

I arrived around noon, found her sitting in a chair, dressed, coat on, ready to go. No, I don’t need a wheelchair. Let’s go.

So we went, and we made quite a pair easing through the hallways all the way out to the garage: Mother with her omnipresent cane, never very fast; and yours truly squeaking along on that amazingly awkward, but miraculously pain-diminishing boot.

We stopped for a large sandwich and coffee, and I delivered her home.

Her main concern was answered: felt fine; blood count excellent; and her doctors had cleared her to go off on her scheduled trip to visit my California brother next week. See your doctor when you get back to discuss whatever test results there are.

All was well with the world.

Saturday…

… usual errands day; found time, as also usual, to blog. In fact, through the turbulence, hadn’t missed a day. Made a decision to change the blog’s theme once again; and we discussed the reasoning at the top of that day’s post. My wife talked to my mother; all was well. I fully expected to resume the Monday-Wednesday schedule.

Sunday…

… another routinely quiet weekend day: read the Sunday paper, did a weekly chore, was gathering myself to begin blogging when the phone rang.

My sister, who with her partner had just returned from a visit to my mother and wanted to report in.

She’s fine, alert, not anywhere near the stage in life (as I had proposed in an email to my siblings Thursday evening) to sell her beloved house where she rattles around alone and move into an assisted living facility.

Discussed some measures, though, like getting her a more modern cell phone that she could actually carry with her around the house, in case of misadventure. She has fallen twice in the past 20 years; the second time she was alone, and broken pelvis and all, had to drag herself some distance to reach the telephone.

Not more than 60 seconds after completing my conversation with my sister, my cellphone rang.

My mother.

I was on an errand (she drives a couple of times a day to a large store or mall to get some indoor walking in), and somebody rammed into my car. The police want to tow it. I’m upset. Can you please come get me?

Off to the northwest end of town, where I found the expected circus. First of all, I’d seen an ambulance heading, slowly, in the opposite direction I was driving, a good sign. And it turned out that, of the three vehicles, and four drivers or passengers, no person was even scratched. Let’s hear it for seat belts and airbags. Speaking of airbags; both of my mother’s had fired.

As she and the car in front of her had slowed for a stop light, the person behind them did not, and slammed into my mother’s car, who though she was braking, slammed into the car in front of her.

The person at fault had already seen his car towed; the car in front had a really damaged rear bumper, but its two occupants were okay, and quite solicitous toward my mother, as were the police officers, and, she related later, the paramedics, who pronounced her good to go.

Her car was towed, not from any visible damage (just bumper scrapes were obvious and the car seemed drivable) but because the airbags had deployed.

So, I took her home, and made on her behalf the first call to her insurance company (which of course was endless).

Now she’s calmed down, and as I prepare to depart, I ask to see her cell phone, which she extricates from her purse.

It’s suitably tiny, so a replacement wouldn’t be necessary. Mother, I’d like you to carry this with you in the house, not in your purse, but in your pocket.

No, that isn’t necessary.

Yes, it’s a good idea. What if you felt faint (like just before the hospital episode – how soon we forget!), and fell again?

No, I don’t need it. I’m not accident prone.

Not a good day to say that to me, I said with an ironic smile. See, it’s not just Gens X and Y that understand irony.

Monday…

… which had all the earmarks of a blessedly routine workday, until I actually arrived at work, and found that I, along with many, many other of my co-workers, were without email.

A mainframe computer server had failed on Saturday, taking out about 1/3 of the enterprise’s email boxes with it.

Until one is forced to do without, and, thankfully, that doesn’t happen for any prolonged period of time, ever, one doesn’t realize how much of one’s work is tied up in electronic mail.

Had work to do, scheduling classes for March and April. Tough luck — no access to my calendar.

Had work to do, an expense report for a telephone headset I had ordered. Tough luck — no access to the vendor’s emailed receipt.

Had work to do, but no access to the documents I needed. And they (my departmental colleagues who handle the software side of mail administration) are telling me that we’ll be without email until midday Wednesday.

Ugh.

Then, because there was some down time, I took a quick look at Left-Handed Complement using my office PC’s browser, Internet Explorer v6.

I had some months ago discovered, thanks to my friends at BlogExplosion.com, that the site can look different in IEv6 than in v7, or MUDGE’s preferred browser, Firefox.

One false move (or slightly too wide an element, such as an errant link, or an insufficiently resized photo) and all of the sidebar plummets to the bottom of the page. And my office PCs are my only access to IE6; long since installed IE7 at home.

Remember on Saturday, when I changed themes? IE6 didn’t like the new look nearly as much as I do.

So we’re back to Contempt, our original and longest used choice, and the easiest to change to on short notice from the office (where I never, never, ever blog!).

Monday, 10:15pmCST…

… and I’m wrapping up this post. Through the routine turned upside-down, the mayhem, the emotional roller-coaster, we blog.

Hobby? Trade? Avocation?

Nah, it’s an obsession.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the links to Steak ‘n Shake and ankleshop.com used above is for illustrative purposes only (did you really know what a cam boot was until we showed you one?) and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

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Yes, fan, it’s a Health/Medical edition of SASB!

©

We begin with a doubly frightening topic: Cancer combined with cancerous Stem Cells. This story hit NYTimes:

Scientists Weigh Stem Cells’ Role as Cancer Cause

By GINA KOLATA | Published: December 21, 2007

Within the next few months, researchers at three medical centers expect to start the first test in patients of one of the most promising — and contentious — ideas about the cause and treatment of cancer.

The idea is to take aim at what some scientists say are cancerous stem cells — aberrant cells that maintain and propagate malignant tumors.

Although many scientists have assumed that cancer cells are immortal — that they divide and grow indefinitely — most can only divide a certain number of times before dying. The stem-cell hypothesis says that cancers themselves may not die because they are fed by cancerous stem cells, a small and particularly dangerous kind of cell that can renew by dividing even as it spews out more cells that form the bulk of a tumor. Worse, stem cells may be impervious to most standard cancer therapies.

Not everyone accepts the hypothesis of cancerous stem cells. Skeptics say proponents are so in love with the idea that they dismiss or ignore evidence against it. Dr. Scott E. Kern, for instance, a leading pancreatic cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said the hypothesis was more akin to religion than to science.

“…more akin to religion than to science.” How fitting when stem cells are the topic!

Of course these are one’s own, cancerous stem cells in question.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Scientists Weigh Stem Cells’ Role as Cancer Cause – New York Times

Here’s the telling quote:

“Not only are some of the approaches we are using not getting us anywhere, but even the way we approve drugs is a bad model,” he said. Anti-cancer drugs, he noted, are approved if they shrink tumors even if they do not prolong life. It is the medical equivalent, he said, of mowing a dandelion field.

Cancer patients and their families are desperate, so promising drugs can get expedited approval, even if, as noted, they don’t prolong life.

It would be spectacular if this stem cell related research might yield an effective, more permanent treatment.

Now, let’s get angry together…

©

For some time now, we’ve had Esoterically.net/weblog as a member of L-HC’s blogroll . The subtitle has changed since we originally captured it, “Life is too short to live it as a Republican,” but the blog continues to highlight the important issues. Here’s one also from Dec. 21 that set me off:

Health insurance screwup

Published by Len Dec. 21, 2007 at 17:50 under General, Politics

I hope the Sarkisyan family wins their lawsuit and is award millions and millions of dollars. It is time for these $7.00/hour clerks at the insurance companies to stop playing doctor.

Family to Sue Insurer in Transplant Case

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The family of a 17-year-old girl who died hours after her health insurer reversed a decision and said it would pay for a liver transplant plans to sue the company, their attorney said Friday.

Nataline Sarkisyan died Thursday at about 6 p.m. at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. She had been in a vegetative state for weeks, said her mother, Hilda.

Len updated the post with a link to a more complete analysis — definitely worth the detour.

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Esoterically.net/weblog » Health insurance screwup

Tragedy is tragedy, but the absolute worst ones are those that were preventable: Katrina, the I-35 bridge, and now Nataline Sarkisyan are all examples of bureaucratic failures caused by a deliberate policy of undercutting the public good in the service of private political agendas, in the first two examples, and shareholder profit, in poor Nataline’s case.

U.S. healthcare needs fixing, and here’s a story pointing to an unexpected cause, and potential fix.

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This week, NYTimes published its list of top economics books as chosen by its columnist, David Leonhardt. His No. 1 book is one I’d not encountered — shame on me!

No. 1 Book, and It Offers Solutions

By DAVID LEONHARDT | Published: December 19, 2007

In 1967, Jack Wennberg, a young medical researcher at Johns Hopkins, moved his family to a farmhouse in northern Vermont.

“Overtreated” by Shannon Brownlee, above, diagnoses the big flaw in medical spending.

Dr. Wennberg had been chosen to run a new center based at the University of Vermont that would examine medical care in the state. With a colleague, he traveled around Vermont, visiting its 16 hospitals and collecting data on how often they did various procedures.

The results turned out to be quite odd. Vermont has one of the most homogenous populations in the country — overwhelmingly white (especially in 1967), with relatively similar levels of poverty and education statewide. Yet medical practice across the state varied enormously, for all kinds of care. In Middlebury, for instance, only 7 percent of children had their tonsils removed. In Morrisville, 70 percent did.

Dr. Wennberg and some colleagues then did a survey, interviewing 4,000 people around the state, to see whether different patterns of illness could explain the variations in medical care. They couldn’t. The children of Morrisville weren’t suffering from an epidemic of tonsillitis. Instead, they happened to live in a place where a small group of doctors — just five of them — had decided to be aggressive about removing tonsils.

But here was the stunner: Vermonters who lived in towns with more aggressive care weren’t healthier. They were just getting more health care.

That last bears repeating: “Vermonters who lived in towns with more aggressive care weren’t healthier. They were just getting more health care.”

As you’ve doubtless heard, this country spends far more money per person on medical care than other countries and still seems to get worse results. We devote 16 percent of our gross domestic product to health care, while Canada and France, where people live longer, spend about 10 percent.

So, we’re overtreated, but undercured. Part due to our fee-for-service system; part due to our own ignorance of medicine’s true costs when we ourselves are the patients; part due to that “byzantine health insurance system” that dazzles and confuses us, and lets Natalines die rather than pay.

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No. 1 Book, and It Offers Solutions – New York Times

As Leonhardt makes clear, the true value of this book is that it has clear and achievable recommendations for reforming our sick healthcare system.

When it’s back in stock (ah, the power of the press!) we ought to buy copies for every senator, congressperson and presidential candidate.

So, that’s our Health/Medicine edition of SASB ©. Stay healthy!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the links to Amazon.com used above is for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

Last post, we picked up on the report that stem cell researchers have an alternative source for the miracle tools. The writer of that NYTimes story follows up with a sidebar on the lead scientist, James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, who has played a leading, even defining, role in stem cell research for more than a decade.

By GINA KOLATA

If the stem cell wars are indeed nearly over, no one will savor the peace more than James A. Thomson.

Dr. Thomson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin was one of two that in 1998 plucked stem cells from human embryos for the first time, destroying the embryos in the process and touching off a divisive national debate.

And on Tuesday, his laboratory was one of two that reported a new way to turn ordinary human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without ever using a human embryo.

Turns out that Dr. Thomson was, as he and his UW colleagues report it, concerned about the ethical implications of stem cell research from the beginning.

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Man Who Helped Start Stem Cell War May End It – New York Times

Some of the commentary others in the blogosphere have shared since the original story hit the other day have expressed a good deal of knee-jerk cynicism regarding the nature of this latest twist. It’s just so perfect that this latest news fits so well with Bush administration dogma. See, you can do your research without abortion!

People, this isn’t politics, or religion; it’s science. Forced by ethical, political and/or religious imperatives to curtail stem cell research, many wrung their hands, took off to more scientifically adventurous locales, or found a new field to pursue.

Thomson, and, separately, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, decided that the potential for breakthrough discoveries was too important, and figuratively lit a candle rather than curse the darkness, and began the work that resulted in this weeks breakthrough announcements.

MUDGE chooses to suspend cynicism (after all, it’s a holiday in the U.S. today!), and believe the best. Okay, so this fits with distorted agenda of the neo-con know-nothings who have distorted too much and spread a huge swath of medieval ignorance over too much of our culture.

But, sometimes, even good news for the dolts is good news for humankind, and this discovery, whose potential to accelerate further discoveries into the cause, prevention and cure of many neurological diseases that have caused such misery in the world, is worthy of our Thanksgiving celebration.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Stem cell research, emblematic of all that’s promising regarding the ability of scientists to remedy hitherto incurable diseases. Stem cell research, emblematic of the George III administration’s wrong-headedness in nearly every important issue of our times.

Until yesterday, stem cell researchers found their most promising source material in human embryos, whose availability is, one presumes, mainly dependent upon the supply resulting from aborting pregnancies.

Since 1973, such supplies have been legally available to science in the U.S. Since the Bush administration outlawed the practice (or severely curtailed the use of new embryonic material by restricting federal funds required to finance it), researchers into cures for the crippling and fatal diseases that include multiple sclerosis, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease), Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s have been thwarted from fully pursuing this most promising field of research.

Now it appears that scientists have discovered an alternative to embryos as the feedstock for stem cells.

By GINA KOLATA

Published: November 21, 2007

Two teams of scientists reported yesterday that they had turned human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without having to make or destroy an embryo — a feat that could quell the ethical debate troubling the field.

All they had to do, the scientists said, was add four genes. The genes reprogrammed the chromosomes of the skin cells, making the cells into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body, be it heart, brain, blood or bone. Until now, the only way to get such human universal cells was to pluck them from a human embryo several days after fertilization, destroying the embryo in the process.

Science in the pursuit of prevention or remediating disease is critical, and the fact that it has been hamstrung over this moral quandary, mainly promoted by those same folks who brought you Creationism, is yet another embarrassing lowlight of the past seven years.

So much of what research has been occurring moved offshore (as so many other occupations have). But, science is always attempting to navigate new ways around knowledge gaps, and this promising achievement is an eye-opening demonstration.

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Scientists Bypass Need for Embryo to Get Stem Cells – New York Times

So there’s much work left to do before this new process is proven successful — the fact that a cancer gene is part of the process sounds distressing — but we can’t help but be hopeful that, after years of roadblocks, necessary research into the causes, prevention and cures of some of the most dreadful diseases can resume at full throttle.

In the long run, the new process might prove to be more useful, with wider application than the controversial one. So in a way, maybe the know-nothings did science a favor.

Irony. Today’s sixth sense.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Access to affordable health care. Five words. Easy to write. Rolls off the keyboard fluidly even. Simple phrase; political cesspool. Can universal access to affordable health care ever happen in the U.S.?

Paul Krugman, the economist whose columns appear in the Opinion section of the NYTimes, this week reminds us that the failings of our health care system are manifest: we spend more, but get less – fewer covered and lower life expectancy than in any other western economy.

Moreover, the usual suspects (our lifestyle) and the usual bugbears (socialized medicine!) are distortions and outright lies.

By PAUL KRUGMAN | Published: November 9, 2007

The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.

For those fortunate enough to have health insurance, premiums keep rising, and employers are beginning to push employees to pay more of the freight, or even to start to pay additional for their lifestyle choices.

For example, several cases have hit the news recently where employers have fired, or failed to hire, otherwise qualified people who are smokers.

Aside from the disturbing privacy concerns, the entire concept of group insurance (where the large numbers of average members in good health balances those few with greater needs) is at risk here.

But, as Krugman tells us, what apologists and politicians like Rudy Giuliani have done is blanket us with excuses, not solutions, and inaccurate and downright wrong excuses at that.

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Health Care Excuses – New York Times

As a reluctantly, increasingly active consumer of the U.S. healthcare system, one of the luckiest ones covered through a plan 80% subsidized by my employer, I take for granted that I see medical professionals regularly, for the cost of a nominal co-pay up to that 20%. For what is spent, my experience should be the rule and not exceptional.

Armed with Paul Krugman’s excuse-busters, let’s all work to shed light to undo all of the misinformation out there on this subject.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Turns out that yesterday’s NYTimes didn’t stop at the two sleep stories we picked up yesterday. The obvious topic: pharmaceutical aids to sleep.

By STEPHANIE SAUL

Your dreams miss you.

Or so says a television commercial for Rozerem, the sleeping pill. In the commercial, the dreams involve Abraham Lincoln, a beaver and a deep-sea diver.

Not the stuff most dreams are made of. But if the unusual pitch makes you want to try Rozerem, consider that it costs about $3.50 a pill; gets you to sleep 7 to 16 minutes faster than a placebo, or fake pill; and increases total sleep time 11 to 19 minutes, according to an analysis last year.

If those numbers send you out to buy another brand, consider this, as well: Sleeping pills in general do not greatly improve sleep for the average person.

Seen the Rozerem commercials. Kind of silly.

As a person with occasional sleep problems (staying asleep, rather than falling in the first place), I’ve consulted my physician and received over-the-counter advice, but no prescriptions.

Based on this story, that’s probably just as well.

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Sleep Drugs Found Only Mildly Effective, but Wildly Popular – New York Times

At one time I worked with people who swore by a specific, popular sleep drug to beat jet lag. This was an international marketing research group, and its members were always on the go, with multiple-week business in Europe, mainly. Somehow, MUDGE never got invited. Oh, well.

Based on the incidence of reported odd side effects, like sleep-driving, I am happy enough not to need to indulge, for jet lag relief, or any other purpose.

I guess I’ll wait until they perfect them:

Still, researchers and drug companies have yet to find a holy grail. “The problem is, there is no ideal hypnotic,” said Dr. Manisha Witmans, a sleep medicine specialist at the University of Alberta’s Evidence-Based Practice Center. “The magic pill for sleep has not been invented yet.”

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Not one, but two fascinating stories featuring the universal topic of sleep hit NYTimes today.

Some editor must have insomnia.

But this is really interesting stuff. First, a story about the processing that goes on while one sleeps.

An Active, Purposeful Machine That Comes Out at Night to Play

By BENEDICT CAREY

The task looks as simple as a “Sesame Street” exercise. Study pairs of Easter eggs on a computer screen and memorize how the computer has arranged them: the aqua egg over the rainbow one, the paisley over the coral one — and there are just six eggs in all.

Most people can study these pairs for about 20 minutes and ace a test on them, even a day later. But they’re much less accurate in choosing between two eggs that have not been directly compared: Aqua trumped rainbow but does that mean it trumps paisley? It’s hazy.

It’s hazy, that is, until you sleep on it.

In a study published in May, researchers at Harvard and McGill Universities reported that participants who slept after playing this game scored significantly higher on a retest than those who did not sleep. While asleep they apparently figured out what they didn’t while awake: the structure of the simple hierarchy that linked the pairs, paisley over aqua over rainbow, and so on.

Scientists have been curious about sleep for 100 years, fitfully. Lately, there has been renewed interest in what goes on while sleeping, and the discoveries reinforce what wise people have known instinctively for a long time: sleep is a curative.

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth*

The research covered in this story deals specifically with learning and memory.

Yet the new research underscores a vast transformation in the way scientists have come to understand the sleeping brain. Once seen as a blank screen, a metaphor for death, it has emerged as an active, purposeful machine, a secretive intelligence that comes out at night to play — and to work — during periods of dreaming and during the netherworld chasms known as deep sleep.

Again, the poets were there ahead of the scientists.

“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” ~Ovid **

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.  ~John Steinbeck *

The full story makes for interesting reading. Go to.

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An Active, Purposeful Machine That Comes Out at Night to Play – New York Times

I give up my time to sleep only grudgingly. I guess I feel as did James Thurber (sadly unremembered these days):

Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
~James Thurber, Fables for Our Times, 1940 *

The second story also concerns sleep — or the perceived lack of it, especially as felt by the elderly.

The Elderly Always Sleep Worse, and Other Myths of Aging

By GINA KOLATA

As every sleep researcher knows, the surest way to hear complaints about sleep is to ask the elderly.

“Older people complain more about their sleep; they just do,” said Dr. Michael Vitiello, a sleep researcher who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington.

And for years, sleep scientists thought they knew what was going on: sleep starts to deteriorate in late middle age and steadily erodes from then on. It seemed so obvious that few thought to question the prevailing wisdom.

Now, though, new research is leading many to change their minds. To researchers’ great surprise, it turns out that sleep does not change much from age 60 on. And poor sleep, it turns out, is not because of aging itself, but mostly because of illnesses or the medications used to treat them.

“The more disorders older adults have, the worse they sleep,” said Sonia Ancoli-Israel, a professor of psychiatry and a sleep researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “If you look at older adults who are very healthy, they rarely have sleep problems.”

Insomnia is fertile ground for the quotable.

Insomnia is a gross feeder.  It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.  ~Clifton Fadiman *

In my experience, the elderly people who complain about sleep do have a lot of other health issues to complain about.

Question is: are they having health issues because they’re having trouble sleeping?

Or are their health issues causing them to have trouble sleeping? This story believes the latter.

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Aging – Sleep Problems – Health – New York Times

This quote, from another of our favorite science fiction writers, Brian Aldiss, wraps both of these stories together. Insomnia happens, and it might not be a totally bad thing.

It’s at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull.  I don’t know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind.  I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while.  Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around.  Perhaps that’s why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it!  A “bad night” is not always a bad thing.  ~Brian W. Aldiss *

We’ll let that keen observer of the human condition, Bill Fields of Hollywood, have the final words on the subject.

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
~W. C. Fields ***

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Quotation sources:

* The Quote Garden

** ThinkExist.com

*** BrainyQuote.com

Continuing our medical mini-series, this story was among the NYTimes’ most emailed yesterday.

Type II, adult onset diabetes is the focus of the piece, delving in great detail into recent research that is raising more questions than answers.

It’s a lengthy article, but well written, and well worth your time.

By AMANDA SCHAFFER

An explosion of new research is vastly changing scientists’ understanding of diabetes and giving new clues about how to attack it.

The fifth leading killer of Americans, with 73,000 deaths a year, diabetes is a disease in which the body’s failure to regulate glucose, or blood sugar, can lead to serious and even fatal complications. Until very recently, the regulation of glucose — how much sugar is present in a person’s blood, how much is taken up by cells for fuel, and how much is released from energy stores — was regarded as a conversation between a few key players: the pancreas, the liver, muscle and fat.

Now, however, the party is proving to be much louder and more complex than anyone had shown before.

So, the usual suspects, pancreas, liver, muscle and fat have been joined by new candidates: a hormone produced by bone, osteocalcin; inflammation in the immune system; the brain; and the gut.

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In Diabetes, a Complex of Causes – New York Times

We rail in this country against the high cost of health care. We are outraged by the prices we pay for pharmaceuticals.

But people, there’s wonderful work being done to discover how the human system works, and how to repair it when it is impaired. This diabetes research is a perfect example.

Of course it’s partially financed by the big drug manufacturers. Be glad it is — where else would the big money come from? The government? A useful source of research funding, but always constrained.

You’ve heard this before. These days, the cost of bringing a drug to market is measured in $100s of millions (probably a cool $billion by now), and bunches of years (as many as 15!).

When that 1:10,000 long shot hits, drug companies have a very short patent life to receive top dollar for their intellectual property, which by the way is alleviating pain, curing disease, improving life for patients around the world, while providing the wherewithal for research and testing of the next great breakthrough.

When viewed that way, the high cost of medicine in this country doesn’t seem so extreme.

Yes, the insurance driven system at the patient level is broken, a subject for another day.

But, as a person who has been living with Type II diabetes for over a decade, and whose sister’s partner’s juvenile diabetes is rapidly killing her, MUDGE has a personal stake in successful diabetes research, and by extension, all the useful medical research in this country, however it’s funded.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

An interesting week for medical news here at L-HC.

And by the way, it’s not an accident that health-related news dominates our attention.

“Our attention” being that of the ubiquitous Boomers, the oldest of whom are fast approaching age 62!

And we weren’t to trust anyone over 30!

The pharmaceutical companies are aware of demographics big time, as they prepare for the largest individual age-group ever, in the wealthiest nation ever, to treat their assorted and accumulating ailments with the finest chemicals a PPO can buy.

And, as a group we Boomers are as self-absorbed, especially regarding our health issues, as our parents, the so-called Greatest Generation, was self-sacrificing.

So, health related news dominates.

This story by Associated Press by way of Wired magazine concentrates on aging’s effects on the brain.

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — When aging hampers memory, some people’s brains compensate to stay sharp. Now scientists want to know how those brains make do – in hopes of developing treatments to help everyone else keep up.

This is not Alzheimer’s disease, but the wear-and-tear of so-called normal aging. New research is making clear that memory and other brain functions decline to varying degrees even in otherwise healthy people as they age, as anyone who habitually loses car keys probably suspected.

The medical establishment is turning its attention to aging’s effects on the brain, and the brain’s effect on aging.

“We need to understand how to defer normal cognitive aging … the way we’ve invested in fighting heart disease and cancer.”

Amen. The prospect of a decayed brain in a reasonably healthy body is just as foreboding as its opposite. Take a look at the rest of the article:

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Wired News – AP News

So, while the medical wizards research, what’s a guy or gal on the cusp of old age to do?

Staying at intellectually demanding jobs, even crossword puzzles might be an answer. Use it or lose it, indeed.

Drugs. For our generation, definitely the easiest of all.

Finally, exercise. In fact, I can think of an exercise that might be especially appropriate in so many ways, as picked up in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© earlier: sex.

And, to turn an old saying on its tail: I guess now I aspire to remaining bright eyed and bushy brained.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Welcome to one of the newest members of the Left-Handed Complement blogroll, Junkfood Science.

Sandy Szwarc seems to have the credentials, and she has a point of view.

Points of view are not lacking in the blogosphere (although credentials may be!), but I was attracted to hers immediately.

Anyone glancing at the rendition of Yr (Justifiably) Humble Svt that graces the top of the sidebar of this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© can probably tell that one might charitably describe MUDGE as horizontally challenged.

Fat.

Obese even.

A war fought over all but six decades. Oh, a battle won here or there, but the trend is lousy. And, the implicit message has always been: get skinny or die early.

Well, heredity and Snickers bars have long impaired my ability to do the former.

And over the past decade, the promised life-shortening chronic diseases have appeared as threatened: diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, all controlled as well as can be expected through (to some extent diet, but mainly) the wonders of the pharmaceutical arts, which is pretty well indeed.

This past summer, a promising exercise program that played to the only exercise MUDGE can comfortably handle (other than blogging!), walking, turned into Achilles tendinosis, and the pounds lost so arduously over the past four years are packing on again, as the recreational and therapeutic walking halted while various medical professionals in MUDGE‘s life attempt to figure out how to end the annoying ankle pain.

Then, the other day, thanks I believe to reddit.com, I encountered Sandy Szwarc.

For the first time in MUDGE‘s time in the ‘Sphere was I tempted to write: “WTF!” But I won’t.

Take a look:

What is most amazing is how long it has been known that body fat doesn’t cause heart disease or premature death, yet how vehemently people hold onto this belief. “The notion that body fat is a toxic substance is now firmly a part of folk wisdom: many people perversely consider eating to be a suicidal act,” wrote Dr. William Bennett, M.D., former editor of The Harvard Medical School Health Letter and author of The Dieter’s Dilemma. “Indeed, the modern belief that body fat is a mortal threat to its owner is mainly due to the fact that, for many decades, the insurance companies had the sole evidence, and if it was wrong they would presumably have had to close their doors.” That can still be said today, although the obesity interests have since grown considerably larger.

But the evidence that fatness is not especially harmful has been shown from research that dates back to the 1950s — more than a half a century ago. While many remain incredulous, the soundest body of evidence has shown, and continues to show, that being fat is not a risk factor for heart disease or a cause of premature death, even controlling for the effects of smoking or cancer.

The people of the U.S. are simultaneously getting fatter, and living longer.

Well, knock me over with a feather (not too likely in practical terms; you probably would be more successful doing so with a 3,000-pound bale of feathers).

Quoted is Dr. William Bennett, former editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter:

“Detailed epidemiological studies, too, show no impressive connection between obesity and cardiovascular disease.

The occasion for Szwarc‘s article is another new, very underreported study, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Medicine, led by cardiologist Dr. Seth Uretsky, M.D., at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, showing the same counterintuitive findings: fat people survive cardiac episodes better than thin ones!.

Take a look at the full story:

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Junkfood Science: Obesity Paradox #13 — Take heart

Is it really possible that I’m supposed to be losing this lifetime battle against obesity?

And if so, why have I been lied to– er, misled all of these years?

Bears researching further I’m thinking, and Sandy Szwarc‘s Junkfood Science blog will now become a regular read.

Because, funny thing: Except for this pesky ankle, I feel pretty good.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Technorati Tags: health, blogosphere, medicine, weight loss, Sandy Szwarc, Junkfood Science, obesity, fat