For the most part, our genetic heritage is a “crap shoot” mixture of mom and dad. But the DNA of the engines powering our bodies, mitochondria, are inherited only from mom, which makes for some biological differences, including the Mother’s Curse.
Disease
Time with your doctor is limited. Here are some ways to get the most out of your appointment and make your healthcare expenditure in time and money more cost-effective.
The use of cigarettes has declined in the U.S. over the past decades. A hypothesis has emerged suggesting that those remaining smokers are “nicotine hardened,” that they are the "intractables" with significant nicotine dependence. A new JAMA Network Open study tests that theory.
Clean air has long been recognized as a requisite for mammalian survival. In fact, the National Library of Medicine lists over 8,000 publications citing this, including the terms “air pollution” and “mortality.” How have U.S. mortality rates and life expectancies changed during recent decades of improving ambient air quality?
In the last few weeks, there have been two articles on the benefit of supplements, specifically multivitamins and flavonols (extracted from cocoa), on improving memory. The media mentioned the multivitamins; the flavanols garnered no attention. What did the studies report?
Remember herd immunity, the early aspirational goal of our COVID strategy? It has arrived, at least according to some recent findings of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR).
The virus leads to approximately 60,000-120,000 hospitalizations and 6,000-10,000 deaths yearly in people over 65 in the U.S. It also threatens young children and pediatric vaccine approvals are expected soon.
With the growing concern – especially in the Northeast – about the air pollution now coming from the Canadian forest fires, we thought it would be worthwhile to address the potential health effects, especially the difference between acute and chronic.
Most of the daily air pollution studies on health have focused on statistical significance to establish the existence of the phenomenon, which has already been shown by the Great London Fog of 1952, during which black smoke levels increased about 10-fold, and thousands died over several days. The scientific community would be better served by addressing epidemiological and physiological questions.
The New York Times’ “Well” section recently published an article entitled, “What Dentists Wish You Knew,” which listed five points. We found them to be a somewhat odd and incomplete collection. We list the Times' offerings, with our commentary and some bonus suggestions of our own.
Long COVID remains an enigma wrapped within a conundrum. Many individuals claim the affliction. But without a consensus on its diagnosis, unraveling its underlying physiologic changes, let alone therapeutic approaches, is a random walk. It's a lot a drunk searching for their keys under a streetlamp because the light is better. Two developments this week may well begin the unwrapping.
To reduce swab testing for COVID, the ultimate goal is to have dogs able to perform rapid, large-scale, non-invasive screening, with antigen testing necessary only for confirmation after positive dog screening results.
Last week an article in City Journal wrote about a “scoping review” of the physical harms of masks. It is time for a bit of debunking. A note to the tl:dr – the too long, didn't read among us, it takes more words to correct a mistruth than to propagate one.