Something strange is going on in medicine. Major diseases, like colon cancer, dementia and heart disease, are waning in wealthy countries, and improved diagnosis and treatment cannot fully explain it.Scientists marvel at this good news, a medical mystery of the best sort and one that is often overlooked as advocacy groups emphasize the toll of diseases and the need for more funds. Still, many are puzzled. Cont
Health
Quick and Easy Workouts
By Tara Parker-Pope
Think you’re too busy to work out? We have the workout for you. In minutes, high-intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.) will have you sweating, breathing hard and maximizing the health benefits of exercise without the time commitment. Best of all, it’s scientifically proven to work. Cont
What Is H.I.I.T.?
SHORT WORKOUTS 101 by Jane Brody
High-intensity interval training — referred to as H.I.I.T. — is based on the idea that short bursts of strenuous exercise can have a big impact on the body. If moderate exercise — like a 20-minute jog — is good for your heart, lungs and metabolism, H.I.I.T. packs the benefits of that workout and more into a few minutes. It may sound too good to be true, but learning this exercise technique and adapting it to your life can mean saving hours at the gym. If you think you don’t have time to exercise, H.I.I.T. may be the workout for you. Cont
Sometimes Pain Is a Puzzle That Can’t Be Solved
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D (New York Time)
My elbow is killing me.
I mean that quite literally. Yes, it hurts, but it is also destroying me, the me as I was without a bad elbow, a happily balanced collection of parts all working modestly, silently, efficiently toward a common good. Kidneys, liver, knees, elbows — what a great team we were. I put my hands in my pockets without wincing, typed without thinking, sat at work judiciously evaluating everyone else’s distress. Cont
In the Hospital, Resisting the Urge to Do More
By JESSICA NUTIK ZITTER, M.D. (New York Time)
There was absolutely no way around it. She was dying. I gave her a few hours at best, with maximum pedal to the metal intensive medical care. Paramedics had picked up this homeless woman after she collapsed under a bridge in Oakland, Calif. Her heart had completely stopped. She had died under that bridge. But the paramedics had somehow pulled her back, with a jump-start to her heart. And then brought her right to my service in the intensive care unit.
Jessica Nutik Zitter is featured in the upcoming Netflix documentary “Extremis.”
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How People Learn to Become Resilient
BY MARIA KONNIKOVA (New Yorker)
Perception is key to resilience: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as a chance to learn and grow?
Norman Garmezy, a developmental psychologist, and clinician at the University of Minnesota met thousands of children in his four decades of research. But one boy, in particular, stuck with him.
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Checking on Bullying at the Doctor’s Office
I let out a huge sigh as I picked up the next chart in clinic. “Chief complaint: Behavioral concerns” was typed out on the top of a thick packet of papers. My young patient was sitting on the exam table comfortably. His parents sat stoically with furrowed brows in the chairs next to him. They were nervous, rigid, clearly concerned.“What’s been going on?” I asked. Apparently he had been acting out at his elementary school. I sifted through the papers, chock full of documentation from teachers, detailing his behavior. He was on the verge of expulsion. His parents expressed understandable frustration to me given his remarkably normal behavior at home.
I gathered my history per usual, directing my questions toward him as he swung his legs back and forth on the exam table. I did not seem to be getting anywhere when I happened to ask, “Is anyone at school making fun of you?”
Yes.
Benefits of Affordable Care Act
Researchers say there has been a substantial increase in women under the age of 26 who have received a diagnosis of early-stage cervical cancer since the health law came into effect in 2010. Cont
Creative Resilience
In an age in which terrorism, natural disasters, illnesses, shootings, and wide-scale industrial errors and accidents are occurring with increasing frequency, there is a tremendous need to develop ways to cope with the aftershocks. Post-traumatic illnesses are on the rise, and we need to find new ways to curtail and prevent their rise. Building resilience has become an important topic. In this story, I tried to illustrate the ways our family dealt with a personal tragedy. Cont
“Suleika’s Shield”, by Anne Francey
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Nanoparticles and more…
Nanoparticle Delivery Approach Targets Atherosclerotic Plaques
Tracy Hampton, PhD
JAMA. 2015;313(13):1305. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.2440.
A promising new strategy against atherosclerosis uses nanoparticles to deliver a peptide fragment of annexin A1 (Ac2-26), a glucocorticoid-regulated protein that helps resolve inflammation, to arterial plaques (Fredman G et al. Sci Transl Med. 2015;7[275]:275ra20). The nanoparticles loaded with Ac2-26 are coated with peptides that target atherosclerotic lesions by binding to type IV collagen, a component of the basement membrane that becomes exposed at sites of vascular injury. ContImagining A Future When The Doctor’s Office Is In Your Home
Extracting medical care from the health care system is all too often an expensive exercise in frustration. Dr. Eric Topol says your smartphone could make it cheaper, faster, better and safer.
That’s the gist of his new book, The Patient Will See You Now. Lots of people are bullish on the future of mobile health to transform health care, but Topol gets extra cred because of his major medical chops: Former head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic and present director of the Scripps Translations Science Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
GetWell.org 