Tag: health

Employment Society

~ cafebedouin

“Healthcare in the United States is in the midst of a massive wave of consolidation. For example, fifty years ago, virtually all non-academic, non-government U.S. physicians had an ownership interest in their practices. Today, approximately 70% of U.S. physicians are employed by hospitals or other corporate entities. Likewise, mergers and acquisitions have landed more than 70% of hospitals and 90% of hospital beds in multi-hospital health systems. As such, health care organizations have increased in size and their complexity has multiplied. For example, between 1975 and 2010, the number of U.S. physicians roughly doubled, but the number of healthcare administrators—employees of medical practices, hospitals, and health systems who do not directly care for patients—increased about thirty-six times.”

-Richard Gunderman, “Why Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better: A Swiftian Perspective.” econlib.org. June 5, 2023.

This is an interesting essay. One direction that I would have preferred to explore is how does moving from an owner to an employee to a bureaucratic organization impact physicians? There is a move toward a different model, where people pay for a physicians services on a subscription model. How does the physician/patient relationship change when a family purchases a subscription? What happens when you strip out the bureaucracy of insurance, hospital systems, and so forth and cut down all the unnecessary documentation that comes with them? What happens when the physician knows the costs and has their name on the door? Does quality go up? I would imagine so.

What to Eat

~ cafebedouin

“What then is the bottom line when it comes to some sort of recommendation about diet and mental health? Same as already discussed for other conditions. Look askew at supplements, reduce intake of red and processed meats in favour of fish and poultry, replace refined grains with whole grains, increase legumes, and eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. That then is the link between diet and health in a nutshell.”

-Joe Schwarcz, “Food For Thought- Literally.” McGill: Office for Science and Society. March 2, 2022.

Recommendations like these always talk about servings. It would be better if they included a chart of what they meant by that.

Hal Higdon’s Running Programs

~ cafebedouin

“[Hal Higdon]’s all about the democratization of running,” his daughter, Laura Sandall, said. “He was all about making sure that anyone who wanted to get out and run could have a training program at their fingertips.”

At their fingertips, and at the top of Google search results. His free training plans have remained some of the most frequently used — a rarity in a world where most plans and coaches cater to runners who are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for personalized schedules.

-Talya Minsberg, “The 90-Year-Old King of Training Plans.” The New York Times: Running Newsletter. July 19, 2021

The Hal Higdon website has a variety of plans for various distances. I simply looked at the base plan for intermediate runners, which as you can see below, is a perfectly sane running program. Bookmarking for future reference.

Ahead of the Castration Trend

~ cafebedouin ~ 7 Comments

“According to new research, there may be a surprisingly effective way for men to increase their lifespans — but it requires a pretty severe alteration to the physical body that may not appeal to everybody.

An international team led by researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand were able to show that castration of male sheep delays the aging of DNA, and the same principles could apply to humans as well.

–Victor Tangermann, “Wanna Delay Aging? Get Castrated, Scientists Say
It’s not an ideal solution..” Futurism. July 7, 2021.

I’ll just point to “Ask Your Doctor: Is Castration Right For You?” published on this very blog on May 25, 2017. Now, we can add sheep to the myriad examples.

Immortality Potions

~ cafebedouin

“Poisoned potions of immortality caused the death of up to seven Chinese emperors – the last less than three centuries ago.”

-“Death by immortality potion.” The Generalist Academy. May 4, 2021.

It occurs to me that the modern equivalent of the immortality potion is nutritional supplements, which offers extended or healthier life but are more likely to be causing harm. But, the good news is they won’t kill you as quickly as mercury sulfide.

Ordinary Invisibility

~ cafebedouin

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?'”

-David Foster Wallace, “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (transcription of the Kenyon Commencement Address), republished in Farnam Street, April 2012.

I’m surprised to find that I have not referenced David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water before. I thought about it in when thinking about the kinds of things that are so ubiquitous that we tend not to see them. Some things that come to mind that are water to us:

  • The hidden labor that makes everything in our lives possible, from migrant workers harvesting industrial agriculture, people working in slaughterhouses, sewing the clothing we wear, manufacturing electronics, etc.
  • There are more slaves today than at any other point in human history.
  • Related, sexual trafficking is a variety of slavery and is pervasive.
  • It is clear the modern lifestyles are destroying the environment, such as the use of plastics.
  • The Standard American Diet is giving us all chronic health conditions.
  • Mass media distracts people from engaging directly with ideas and the people around them.

I’ve only scratched the surface here. What else so permeates our environment that we don’t notice it, even though we know on some level it is there?

A Mass Message From My Doctor

~ cafebedouin ~ 1 Comment

Thought I’d pass this along in case your doctor isn’t as good as mine. Unsolicited, fantastic advice that everyone should read.

“Coronavirus and Clinic Updates:  

…The crisis of Coronavirus is the exponential growth. The number of cases are increasing 30% per day. So however many cases we have today, we will have 10 times as many in 10 days and 100 times as many in 20 days. We worry about having enough hospital resources to care for folks if the outbreak spreads too fast. As you can imagine our health care system will be challenged. Many of us are taking extra shifts in the hospital. This week is calm, but I suspect the next month will be difficult.  

As long as a sick person does not cough into your face, masks won’t help much. The way most of us will get this virus is by touching it with our hands and then touching our face. It seems to be spread by mucus on hands, and its also found in stool. So basically it’s spread like the flu (respiratory droplets) and spread like norovirus (stomach flu). And it’s much more severe. And it can be spread before you feel sick. So it’s basically a perfectly designed virus. Not good for us.  

Many patients will be contagious for days before they ever feel sick, and can spread it by touching doorknobs or preparing food for others. [Note: The CDC says there isn’t any evidence that coronavirus can be transmitted through food. He’s a good doctor, but no one’s perfect.] This is why hand washing and staying away from other people are the two primary ways to avoid covid. Masks help the sick person not spread covid, but they don’t prevent healthy people from catching it. So please save the masks for health care workers.  

If you get a cough and fever, you could have COVID and you should call to discuss. Especially as flu season winds down, the likelihood of COVID as the cause of fever will go up. Most patients don’t need to be tested, you just need to self quarantine and stay away from other people. As testing becomes easier to get, we may start testing everyone – but we are not there yet. Still a huge backlog. The major reason to get tested is if you have to work; Or if you are risk factors for a poor outcome: age > 60, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, cancer, HIV, weak immunity.

If you get severely short of breath, you should call our office or go to the ER. Generally, this would not happen all of a sudden, it’s usually after being sick for 7 days. Patients with covid who get sick, go from initial symptoms to needing the intensive care unit on day 7 -10. So it takes some time. Most young healthy people will never need to see a doctor. We are sending the majority of covid + patients home…Mortality in the USA is still only 1%. Mortality is greater when older than 60. And especially over 80. So keep grandchildren away from grandparents[.] Young kids do not seem to get sick, they can still carry the disease and transmit to others who might have risk factors.

A new symptom being described is loss of taste or smell. In South Korea where they tested widely, 30% of covid patients had loss of taste or smell, even without fevers. So if you have that symptom, you may not get sick but you are contagious, so avoid people for 14 days, wash those hands like crazy. Most people get sick within 5-6 days of exposure, but some take as long as 14. Which is why we’re using 14 days as an estimate for quarantine.

Information and thoughts about moving forward are changing every day. I encourage you to get your medical information from Dr. Fauci and other medical and public health experts, not from politicians or pundits. The CDC’s website has great (and scientifically accurate) information. I hope this has helped…”