May « 2010 « Silver Buzz Cafe

Updating Our Memories

Every Memorial Day I check the family web site and scour the web for items about the ship that my father served on during World War II. It’s a chance to try to learn more about what he and his friends did during those awful years. I’ve found some really interesting material over the years, but the best finds were photos and videos. [...]

Incidence of Rheumatoid Arthritis Increasing Among Women

Rheumatoid arthritis is a form of arthritis where the human immune system suddenly starts to attack body tissues, causing the wearing down of the protective layers on both sides of a joint. It often starts between 40 and 50 years of age and women are three times more likely to be affected by the condition than men. A new study suggests that incidence is on the rise again among women. [...]

iPhone/iPad Apps For Seniors – Part 4 – Weather Tools

In earlier articles in this series we’ve looked at health, travel and news Apps for the iPhone and iPad. Both devices come with a standard, but rather limited Weather tool. It’s adequate, but it only provides minimum and maximum temperatures and an icon for rain, cloud, sunshine etc. for the list of cities that the user selects. There are many other tools that provide better local or wide area information. [...]

New Drugs Cause Human Immune System To Attack Cancer

The human immune system consists of many types of cells, organs, proteins and tissues that interact in an elaborate and dynamic network to try to overcome threats to the human being. Researchers are now having some success at triggering the body’s own defense mechanism – the human immune system – to attack specific cancers. [...]

Proposed Device Could Reduce Deaths On Rural Roads

There were over 2300 road traffic accidents that resulted in fatalities in the United Kingdom in 2008 and 60% of them occurred on rural roads. The proportion is approximately the same in the United States, where 57% of road fatalities occur in rural areas, even though only 27% of the overall population live there. The first people to arrive at the accident scene will probably not be trained in triage, so a team of clinicians, computing scientists and physiologists from the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, is developing a device that would provide medical advice and support for injured persons. [...]

H.R. 3043 - The Forgotten Health Care Bill

Adult day centers play an important role in the lives of seniors who live alone at home. They generally provide social contact, basic health monitoring, inexpensive meals and activities. Private donations to them have declined as a result of the bad economy and Medicaid and other programs don’t have the funds to keep them running at their current level. One of the casualties of the protected health care and insurance reform battle was a little known bill called “The Medicare Adult Day Services Act of 2009, H.R. 3043“. [...]

iPhone/iPad Apps For Seniors - Part 3 - News Tools

In previous articles in this series we described iPhone/iPad Apps that are related to health issues and that travelers will find useful. Today we’ll look at news Apps. The browser on the iPhone is perfectly usable for reading newspaper and other media web sites, but there are also Apps supplied by media companies and news enthusiasts. We’ve compiled a list of our favorite news Apps. [...]

The Social Security Sky Isn't Falling!

The nation’s demographics have changed significantly since the Social Security program was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. The majority of retired Americans now rely on Social Security as their prime source of income. A report released to Congress last week includes various options for making Social Security more secure through “modest changes” to the program. [...]

Wall Street Reform Bill Should Help Main Street and Consumers

Last Thursday the Senate voted 59-39 in favor of passing the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, popularly known as the “Wall Street Reform Bill” and in congress as “The Stability Act.” A month ago it looked very likely that congress would only manage to pass a very watered down bill, mainly because of very strong lobbying from Wall Street. Today we look at what it is aimed to do and how it is likely to change on its way to the President’s desk. [...]

DNA Sequences Decoded For 178 Microbes That Live With Us

Each of us has millions of microbes living on or in our bodies. These fellow travelers outnumber our own cells by 10 to 1 and the total number of genes involved is about 100 times greater than in our own. Many of them have never been identified, let alone grown in the laboratory. Some of them are known to be essential to us – playing a role in digesting food and developing the immune system. Now an American consortium has set a goal of cracking the genomes of the 900 bacteria and viruses that we carry around. [...]

Everyone’s Guide to Medical Equipment – Part 21 – Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

With the exception of medical laboratory equipment, most of the devices we’ve looked at so far in this series are things that patients may have seen, or are likely to see, at a medical facility. In today’s article we’ll take a look at key pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment and how the finished products find their way to the pharmacy or retailer. [...]

Learn How To Be a Better Patient

The Joint Commission is a non-profit organization that was formed in 1910 to “evaluate health care organizations and inspire them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value.” They have produced an online quiz that is aimed at improving patients’ knowledge of health safety issues. [...]

Assessing Frailty Helps Predict Surgical Outcomes

Frailty is a relatively new clinical concept. It is best defined as someone’s physical reserve and their ability to withstand stress to the body. Many patients considered medically healthy can still be frail. Approximately half of all operations in the United States are performed on patients over 65. A new frailty test can predict with great certainty their risk for complications, how long they will stay in the hospital and whether or not they are likely to end up in a nursing home afterward [...]

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

Silver Buzz Cafe

What’s New?

Pages

WeatherWidget

Categories

Tag Cloud

“Green” Blogging

Updating Our Memories

iPhone/iPad Apps For Seniors – Part 4 – Weather Tools

iPhone/iPad Apps For Seniors - Part 3 - News Tools

The Social Security Sky Isn't Falling!

Wall Street Reform Bill Should Help Main Street and Consumers

Everyone’s Guide to Medical Equipment – Part 21 – Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Search

A Grim Reminder: 110,000 and Counting!

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives