Parents teach their children not to run in front of speeding cars. To survive a crisis, you learn from those who handle it well. As of today Taiwan has had six deaths from coronavirus, South Korea 234. Both learned from previous lethal coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. Both have robust public health structures where epidemic response […]
Treat the Chart Not the Patient
Killing Care Softly It’s official: doctors treat charts, not people. Harvard researcher Russell Phillips reckons physicians of many stripes are now “data entry technicians.” My preferred term is “checklist monkeys.” The results for your health care? Not good. How much time and energy are really wasted? Recent reports show ER physicians spending 44% of their time […]
Fighting Dementia Using Your Eyes and Ears
Dementia scares people. Rates are rising. New evidence shows decreased vision and hearing make dementia more likely. One study out of Stanford found people who had vision loss and did not seek treatment showed five times the cognitive decline rate, and over nine times the Alzheimer’s rate as those without problems, through a period of eight and a half […]
How Food Can Make You Smarter
Eating trains every part of your body. Except most of that education is not conscious. When you bite down into a juicy hamburger and watch your vegan friends turn their faces away, the effects of your taste preference are far greater than than just social and psychological. Food is more than taste, politics, culture and tradition. It’s training […]
Do Gut Bugs Change Cancer Therapy?
It appears your gut bug population changes cancer therapy effectiveness. A trial of immunotherapy on metastatic melanoma found those with greater variety of GI bacteria did far better than those with more limited populations. If you had a lot of ruminococcus around, you were more likely to stay alive. What Happened? People with immunotherapy trials […]