April « 2010 « Silver Buzz Cafe

Foods That Affect Your Sleep

We’ve probably all woken up in the night with indigestion or some other problem that we can attribute to food. It’s important to get a good night’s sleep both to help our bodies recover and work and to let our brains do their job properly. There are all kinds of old wives tales about foods that will keep you awake, or make you have nightmares, cheese being a favorite culprit. However, the real story is much more complex. [...]

Five-Minute Test May Be As Useful As Colonoscopy

There are around one million new cases of colon cancer every year and it accounts for about 600,000 deaths worldwide every year. Last year in the United States there were 106,100 new cases of colon cancer and 49,920 deaths from colon and rectal cancer combined. As with most forms of cancer, the prognosis is better if the disease is detected in the early stages. A new study shows that a one-time, five minute test may be effective in detecting colon cancer. [...]

Another Big Pharma Hit With Fine For Off-Label Marketing

The Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) works with pharmaceutical companies to certify a new or modified drug for use in treating a specific disease or condition. The uses and risks are clearly identified on the drug container label. The pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to market or sell the drug for any unapproved usage, i.e. “off-label”. However, there are no restrictions on what a physician can prescribe a drug for, so there is a great temptation for the “Big Pharmas” to increase their profits by persuading physicians to prescribe their products for as many uses as possible. [...]

Laughter may boost appetite

A 1996 study by researchers at Loma Linda University in California claimed that prolonged laughter can lower blood pressure and boost immune activity. Now they’ve built on their findings to investigate other effects of laughter by measuring levels of two hormones, leptin and ghrelin, in their volunteers’ blood, both of which are linked to appetite. Both are known to change during exercise and it is believed that they help stimulate appetite. [...]

Bad Habits Can Age You By 12 Years, Study Suggests

We all know that our bad habits are bad for us and that we should exercise, eat properly and keep our minds active by socializing, but now the British have worked out just how bad it can get if we don’t take that advice. A newly published study1, carried out over twenty years, looked at 4,886 adults in the United Kingdom who started the period aged 18 and older (average age 44). They found four bad habits that can dramatically affect mortality. [...]

Are We Kidding Ourselves About Modern Medicine?

It would be nice to think that everything your physician does is based on sound medical science, but a recent study in the United Kingdom found that only just over a third of medical treatments are beneficial, or likely to be beneficial. A similar evaluation by the US government in 1978 reached a similar conclusion, finding that only 10 to 20 percent of medical treatments had evidence of efficacy. [...]

Warning Strokes Often Go Unheeded

A stroke, sometimes called a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), occurs when a blood vessel carrying oxygen and nutrients to the brain is blocked or bursts. The American Heart Association says that stroke is the number three killer in the United States. It’s also a leading cause of severe, long-term disability. A new study underline the need to know the warning signs and react quickly. [...]

Earth Day 2010

It’s Earth Day! So what? Should we be throwing parties, or marching on the Town Hall and Washington? The Earth Day Network claims to have more than 20,000 partners and organizations in 190 countries and that over a billion people participate in Earth Day activities. The organization says this about itself: “Earth Day Network [...]

High Glycemic Index Carbohydrates Increase Women's Risk Of Heart Disease

The glycemic index ranks the rates at which different sources of carbohydrate affect a person’s blood-sugar level. Researchers in Italy studied the relationship between the types and amounts of carbohydrates that 48,000 people ate and heart disease. They found significant correlation and surprising differences between the impact on men and women. [...]

Health Insurance and Financial Status Influence Reaction To Heart Attacks

Acute myocardial infarction ( AMI), commonly known as a heart attack, is an interruption of the blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die. Heart attacks are the leading cause of death for both men and women worldwide. On average, one American dies every minute as a result of heart disease, about two thirds occuring after heart attacks. A multi-institution study has looked into the relationship between the time that AMI victims take to seek medical help and the status of their health insurance and finances. [...]

Everyone’s Guide to Medical Equipment – Part 19 – Dialysis Equipment

In the latest in this series on medical equipment, we look at the dialysis machine. [...]

Don't Fall Prey To the Anti-Aging Hormone Scam

The dream of slowing or stopping aging has probably been with humans since prehistoric times. Although we are beginning to understand the relationship between lifestyle, nutrition and the aging process, no magic, guaranteed, anti-aging substance has been found to date. That doesn’t stop “entrepreneurs” from selling gullible clients sophisticated substances that promise to have anti-aging properties. Some of them have been promoting and distributing growth hormones for non-medical uses, such as anti-aging and sports. [...]

Insurers Are Big Investors In Fast Food Companies

Researchers at Harvard Medical School have discovered that eleven large companies that offer life, disability, or health insurance owned about $1.9 billion in stock in the five largest fast-food companies as of June 2009. Why would they invest in a sector that is notorious for promoting unhealthy eating habits? [...]

President Obama signed the second part (reconciliation) of the health care reform bill on March 30, 2010. That's great, but the provisions that will cover the uninsured haven't clicked in yet.

Our elected officials started work on the proposed health insurance reform bill on July 30, 2009. Harvard researchers estimate that 122 Americans die every day as a result of not having health insurance.

So, the estimated number of uninsured Americans who have died while the politicians in the Senate and Congress played politics and delayed new benefits for the sake of the health care insurers is

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“Green” Blogging

Foods That Affect Your Sleep

Another Big Pharma Hit With Fine For Off-Label Marketing

Laughter may boost appetite

Bad Habits Can Age You By 12 Years, Study Suggests

Earth Day 2010

Everyone’s Guide to Medical Equipment – Part 19 – Dialysis Equipment

Don't Fall Prey To the Anti-Aging Hormone Scam

Insurers Are Big Investors In Fast Food Companies

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