tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-373558062012-01-28T18:39:26.855-07:00Critical examinations of studies and news on food, weight, health and healthcare that mainstream media misses. Debunks popular myths, explains science and exposes fraud that affects your health. Plus some fun food for thought. For readers not afraid to question and think critically to get to the truth.Sandynoreply@blogger.comBlogger12341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-15119197068187876602011-10-29T05:44:00.000-06:002011-10-29T08:24:43.166-06:00

Dear Readers,Thank you, again, for your letters of support. As you know, I continue to passionately believe everyone deserves sound information about their bodies and health, food and the world we live in. That is especially important in today's sea of junk science, disinformation, political and marketing agendas, and media hype. My personal commitment is unchanged and I hope to be able to return

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-16368996634491638292009-10-16T04:57:00.002-06:002009-10-16T05:12:08.495-06:00

Most heart disease occurs in healthy people without traditional risk factors and who aren’t considered to be at risk. That has led healthy people without symptoms to feel vulnerable to this ‘silent killer’ and seek ways to see if they could be at risk. The biggest growth industry of preventive health screenings are tests for an array of “emerging” cardiac risk factors. While these tests are

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-81594382421508815522009-10-04T15:24:00.007-06:002010-01-18T23:28:18.898-07:00

Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee approved a healthcare reform amendment that would penalize employees who are not following “healthy lifestyles” and participating in wellness programs. Employers will be allowed to raise healthcare premiums by as much as 50 percent for workers who are fat, smoke, don’t exercise, are noncompliant with preventive care, and not meeting certain health measures

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-11682014504078724872009-09-27T14:52:00.021-06:002009-09-28T05:28:07.800-06:00

According to Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina’s Annual Report, claims in 2008 reached $10.7 Billion — half the entire budget for the state of North Carolina. Claims increased nearly three times the growth in health plan members. Claims also cost the State Health Plan more than $200 million over that budgeted. Politicians had believed that preventive wellness and managed care in the State

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-44259096777001669142009-09-19T08:20:00.017-06:002009-09-19T09:37:11.038-06:00

Two New Mexico nurses have paid a heavy price for following their consciences and the basic tenet of the nurse’s Code of Ethics — the ethical duty to protect and advocate for the rights, health and safety of patients. After unsuccessfully going up the chain of command at the Winkler County Memorial Hospital, a small West Texas hospital in Kermit, Texas, they made an anonymous report to the Texas

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-17911351753187120772009-09-13T22:39:00.017-06:002009-09-14T06:06:13.311-06:00

Do you have friends who say that they feel physically sick and develop headaches, heart palpitations, nausea and dizziness when they eat sugar or anything with high fructose corn syrup? Do you know others who report feeling tired, bloated and nauseous when they eat meat or saturated fats, especially fatty meats processed with nitrates? Do you know people who say that they feel less energetic or

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-32403133432282457472009-09-12T23:32:00.000-06:002009-09-13T01:41:05.177-06:00

You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. — Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914-2009) One man is credited with saving more lives than any other person in world history. Born to Norwegian migrant parents in his grandparent’s Iowa farmhouse, Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug grew up during the Great Depression and the hunger he witnessed had a profound effect on him. He devoted

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-42369120966289704452009-09-11T00:01:00.003-06:002009-09-11T06:19:03.397-06:00

America Attacked 911 Dedicated to the men, women and children who lost their lives, those brave people who gave their lives, and the heroes who responded to the emergency 11 September 2001. We will never forget you.911 Phone Calls

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-64610021863527428642009-09-09T22:39:00.015-06:002009-09-10T05:31:57.334-06:00

The flu season is winding down in Australia, where their winter is nearing end. How did the expert claims, speculations and predictions of the deadly pandemic hold up to the facts? Three months ago, public health experts and even the President of the Australian Medical Association were warning that one-third of the population would get swine flu. As late as last month, the Australian

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-82667297711526743672009-09-07T21:52:00.006-06:002009-09-07T22:19:47.769-06:00

Clinical guidelines are used to measure the quality of care provided by physicians and are purportedly evidence-based. National childhood overweight and obesity policies in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia call for primary care physicians and pediatricians to monitor children’s BMIs and to counsel youngsters with BMIs ≥85th percentile and their families on diet, physical activity,

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-64447441106382724912009-09-07T07:44:00.007-06:002009-09-07T08:58:25.313-06:00

The health story for this Labor Day is the health of our labor force. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest employment figures on Friday. The unemployment rate jumped to 9.7% in August — a 26-year high — as payrolls fell by another 216,000 jobs. A total of 14.9 million Americans are now listed as unemployed, with an additional 9.1 million working at

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-90356083201413061082009-09-06T13:40:00.023-06:002009-09-06T18:09:59.586-06:00

The flu season has barely begun and yet the panic is already in full swing with 186,933 media stories about H1N1 and 47,159 news stories about the swine flu currently at Google News.* Do you know what is missing among the widespread pandemic alarm in the media and coming from government agencies, pharmaceutical and other stakeholders? The scientific evidence being reported by medical

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-17583917117465301592009-09-05T13:33:00.004-06:002009-12-25T07:07:23.292-07:00

The best quotes of the week: “You can’t trust your eyes. You never could.” — Russ White “When you live in a world heavily focused on the way things look, it’s increasingly important to focus on what is, and ignore, intentionally, the way things look.” “[P]eople don't dream collective dreams. People are individuals, with unique experience, genetic makeup and destinies. One size does not fit

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-86370697259399021092009-09-03T22:13:00.013-06:002009-09-04T05:07:03.975-06:00

On August 14th, mainstream media was reporting that osteoporosis-linked fractures have dramatically increased over the past decade. Among 723 news stories, not one questioned the study behind the news. The public not only lost an opportunity to learn the facts, but a valuable take-home lesson. According to a syndicated Reuters Health story, the number of Americans hospitalized for

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-76474626593075746402009-08-30T18:52:00.013-06:002009-09-02T05:27:23.844-06:00

The healthcare reform debate has become so discordant, it’s even been said to be a sign of a larger, irreconcilable ideological abyss growing in our country. In this environment, it can be hard to sort out the endless reports all claiming to debunk the myths surrounding healthcare reform proposals. There is one simple way to tell the difference between reports that are written to support an

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-283094799587984492009-08-23T07:26:00.005-06:002009-08-23T08:53:07.588-06:00

Millions of Americans have received emails and read blogs and commentary on social media sites and never realized that what they were reading was carefully crafted marketing messages from the government — paid for with their tax dollars and manipulating them to support government agendas, programs and legislation. Today’s news exposed that the White House had hired a private social marketing

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-57137275779656832122009-08-20T06:39:00.008-06:002009-08-20T22:07:26.763-06:00

Once again, the biggest health story of the year has found that we are healthier and living longer than in the history of our country. The latest vital statistics data from the CDC National Center for Health Statistics was just released. It is based on statistics representing 91 percent of the demographic file and 87 percent of medical records for all deaths in the United States in 2007. This

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-89220120144975081252009-08-19T21:54:00.008-06:002009-08-19T22:22:52.605-06:00

“Diversity” and “acceptance” have become politically correct ideas and appear in countless employee policy manuals and mission statements of nonprofit groups. As well-intentioned as they may be, they also hold a troubling side. As we’ve seen, advocacy for stigmatized groups can disguise and foster prejudices of the very same group. Seldom recognized is that behind “diversity” and “acceptance”

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-35064235102882728092009-08-17T01:36:00.012-06:002009-08-17T05:11:29.611-06:00

Scientific literacy isn’t the stuff found in a science textbook. That’s science literacy — and, while understanding the principles of science is important too, it’s not as important as knowing how to think and reason. Scientific literacy means the scientific process — also known as thinking critically and logically. It’s a way to carefully look at information, question ideas and test them, and

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-8087558973923279812009-08-12T22:12:00.019-06:002009-08-14T05:49:16.393-06:00

Before continuing with the obesity paradox series, one of the most important null studies of the year deserves mention… especially since the media universally ignored it. As the body mass index (BMI) is finally being recognized as an uncredible measure of health or predictive of premature death, other measures of body fat are being promoted because everyone “knows” that fat is unhealthy. It’

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-90984602098640297322009-08-11T23:04:00.003-06:002009-08-11T23:22:41.330-06:00

Dr. Rich hosts this week’s issue of Medical Grand Rounds. The topic is cost containment in healthcare reform. The commentary was true to his reputation for sharp, stinging humor. Good sarcasm is hard to do because if the audience doesn’t understand the issue, it can be taken all wrong. In the introduction, Dr. Rich (retired cardiologist Dr. Richard N. Fogoros, M.D.) reminded readers that

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-60126078394704714232009-08-08T08:32:00.003-06:002009-08-08T09:27:00.828-06:00

If more medical professionals shared with the public what it’s like to care for patients covered by managed care plans, the reason most doctors find it incompatible with medical ethics would be more widely understood. By controlling what care is available, managed care rations care and decides which lives are worth expending money to save. But government rationing is quiet, behind the scenes and

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-72312323308106923292009-08-02T21:45:00.023-06:002009-08-05T22:30:48.615-06:00

An ongoing debate has been unfolding among the public and medical professionals about whether the healthcare reform bill really requires mandatory counseling for every senior that will steer them to make advance healthcare decisions that could end their lives sooner, perhaps in order to lower healthcare costs. While quick reactions have come from both sides of the issue, few people have read

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-75381415457243212462009-07-30T23:23:00.027-06:002009-08-01T07:40:31.590-06:00

If anti-obesity news coverage has seemed to get a shot in the arm the past few days, you might want to know why. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity has literally given it an injection of media stories, even down to free graphics and banners, with its inaugural obesity conference, Weight of the Nation, held in Washington, D.C. on

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-25763893395754081082009-07-27T06:10:00.012-06:002009-07-27T22:22:22.971-06:00

We can never be allowed to hear good news about our health. The government won’t allow it. “Such is the strength of cultural miserabilism today that even the most smile-inducing good news stories can swiftly be turned into doom-laden tales about the terrible future humanity faces,” wrote Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked. Reporting on the latest U.S. Census Bureau report, finding that advances

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-34959633270832096502009-07-26T09:34:00.013-06:002009-07-27T22:22:48.464-06:00

As hard as some are trying to make healthcare reform to be about political sides, it is really about human lives. Sadly, because the general public largely doesn’t understand what healthcare reform is really about, the very people who are most likely to be harmed by it — older, fat, disabled, poor and the most vulnerable — are the ones being most led to believe that it’s about taking care of

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-31141478668025605812009-07-21T22:19:00.010-06:002009-07-22T05:05:48.075-06:00

Our thoughts go out to our friends across the pond today and to parents with sick children there. The King's Fund and the Institute for Fiscal Studies released a new analysis of National Health Services and found healthcare spending in England has more than doubled in real terms just since 1999/2000. “Our analysis shows that the NHS is facing the most significant financial challenge in its

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-37743072762850294412009-07-19T12:02:00.019-06:002009-07-19T22:09:35.741-06:00

There’s no such thing as a kindler, gentler capitation. — Pamela K. Mulligan, Ph.D., Canadian Family Physician, 2002 Last week, the Massachusetts’ state commission proposed a radical restructuring of how doctors, hospitals and healthcare providers will be paid in an effort to keep the state’s model universal coverage program from bankruptcy. Their proposals give us even more disturbing

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-50539038547941040372009-07-16T06:33:00.010-06:002009-07-17T06:08:13.740-06:00

Lumo (physicist Luboš Motl from Pilsen Czech Republic) welcomes America to the EU today with an animated flow chart of the healthcare system in the United States. It was created as a simplified visual of the healthcare reforms being proposed, perhaps as a last effort to get American’s to think about the reality of the bureaucratic monster that’s been created. Each agency created to oversee some

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-6303602517421598492009-07-12T20:20:00.026-06:002009-07-13T00:07:40.421-06:00

This should have been the lead:The long-awaited research on the effects of calorie restriction on aging in rhesus monkeys from the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin National Primate Research Center have just been released. It found no statistically significant difference in the number of deaths among the monkeys who’ve been eating a calorie-restrictive diet for more than 20 years compared to

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-39794512472265067712009-07-10T21:33:00.005-06:002009-07-10T21:49:16.300-06:00

Massachusetts was to be the nation’s test ground for universal health insurance. MassCare has been held up as the model for similar policies on a national level. Its key elements are part of the national healthcare reform measures being proposed for all of us. It is newsworthy what the experiment has learned and how things have been working. Yet, national media has been quiet on news about what

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-57233648834581392822009-07-07T22:20:00.008-06:002010-11-03T05:18:28.422-06:00

In light of what is being planned for Medicare coverage and with comparative effectiveness analysis increasingly determining health care coverage and access, mention of an old essay for nurses and medical professionals on medical ethics felt like an especially important reminder. I first read it when it was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association nearly a dozen years ago. As

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-24643624720579491692009-07-05T23:18:00.012-06:002009-07-06T05:02:24.162-06:00

The Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, just released proposed changes to its policies for paying doctors. The new rules will pay physicians based on the relative value of their services and adherence to performance measures, as determined by the Secretary of HHS. This affects more than one million medical professionals in our country who are paid under the

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-34875923341894050562009-07-04T08:42:00.013-06:002009-07-04T12:13:27.201-06:00

This Independence Day is a good day to read the Declaration of Independence, signed by our Founding Fathers on July 4, 1776, and remember what this day means. Most importantly, to teach our children. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-8189500852041642202009-06-28T16:17:00.015-06:002009-08-09T12:38:17.556-06:00

I wasn’t going to even cover this study looking for correlations between obesity and risks of dying. The predominance of evidence and carefully-designed studies have repeatedly failed to support BMI as a measure of health or predictive of our risks for dying. The value of null studies is wasted with yet more research in that direction. But this study has been so widely misrepresented in the

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-22016869227743416522009-06-27T10:50:00.010-06:002009-06-28T06:50:38.237-06:00

The “figure flaw paradox” is really a retake on the obesity paradox. As obesity has proven to be a poor measure of health or mortality risk, new renditions are being proposed. But the fallacies are the same. We’ve encountered all sorts of spins trying to preserve the myths of the deadliness of fat — from claims that the studies only show a paradox with really old people to that being

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-2414973608349804372009-06-25T20:31:00.005-06:002009-06-25T20:41:50.612-06:00

Yesterday’s news provided updates on two healthcare stories we’ve been following, so here’s a quick update. The Massachusetts Experiment Readers will remember when Massachusetts signed the nation’s first state universal health insurance program into law. This program was to be the test ground to see how universal health coverage by the government would work here in the United States. “This

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-52157732261759170592009-06-23T21:38:00.024-06:002009-06-29T06:15:16.765-06:00

This past week, when speaking to doctors about healthcare reform and the steps needed to reduce healthcare spending, the President answered a rhetorical question recently posed here about comparative effective research. JFS readers may find his answers interesting. His speech, however, didn’t receive widespread mainstream media coverage, at least in a form we would recognize. Before we look at

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-21302341599799288512009-06-21T10:24:00.008-06:002009-06-21T11:45:20.178-06:00

This week, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that Health Net, Inc., a managed care company covering more than two million Californians and nearly a quarter million New Yorkers, had agreed to end its relationship with Ingenix and pay $1.6 million towards the creation of an independent database. This was Cuomo’s twelfth settlement against a network of health insurers across the country (

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-1638078544153622632009-06-18T21:38:00.017-06:002009-06-19T06:06:50.760-06:00

Paradoxes Part One here. Continuing with paradoxical correlations recently published in medical journals that we didn’t hear about, comes an analysis of the Helsinki Businessmen Study. As the authors noted, ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’ is associated in the medical literature with a better prognosis and lower death rates compared with ‘normal’ weight people, especially as people get older. They set

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-12927208600771909652009-06-17T05:14:00.005-06:002009-06-17T06:43:05.977-06:00

It's a shame that too few consumers understand what medical professionals do about what’s coming and being planned for them in healthcare reform and the woo that is today’s preventive health movement. Dr. Westby G. Fisher, M.D., a board certified internist, cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist at NorthShore University HealthSystem and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Feinberg

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-4199106424667137502009-06-14T12:52:00.008-06:002009-06-15T19:09:30.464-06:00

The award for the most sensational swine flu story goes to The Age. The number of swine flu victims in Australia was overstated by 5,500–fold. Today’s news headlined: “One-third of Victorians may have flu.” According to the story, “up to one-third of Victorians could now be infected with swine flu, an expert said yesterday, as the Federal Government announced it was preparing to ramp up its

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-6499002816001616282009-06-13T09:48:00.008-06:002009-06-13T12:08:54.015-06:00

We may know, intellectually, that correlations can never show causation, but when a correlation seems to confirm a reason we believe, it’s very easy to find ourselves falling for the fallacy, anyway, and to not even consider other explanations. We may call our belief “common sense” or what “everyone knows,” without realizing that we’ve come to believe it simply because it’s all we ever hear. It

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-66295408618450856332009-06-07T06:52:00.008-06:002009-06-07T20:06:50.036-06:00

We’re beginning to learn what Senator Edward Kennedy’s secret meetings with key health insurance industry stakeholders have been creating in their vision for universal health coverage. If you want to keep your health care separate from your job, you will no longer have that choice, according to reports of the plan’s 170-page draft. Employers would be required to provide health care to

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-43655620536823113432009-06-06T23:20:00.021-06:002009-06-07T19:27:22.392-06:00

Sadly, judging by the news and internet buzz, a lot of innocent people are frightened all over again each and every time the same scare makes the news. But the lessons learned the first time you hear a scare can be applied the next time you hear it. Let’s look at three helpful adages: 1. Diagnosis ≠ incidenceMore people diagnosed with a disease does not equal more cases of a disease. The

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-19560746875468384702009-06-04T05:53:00.008-06:002009-06-04T06:10:09.780-06:00

When we hear about a study from a randomized, controlled clinical trial, it’s easy to give the findings more importance than we would correlations derived from an observational study. But a study from a randomized controlled clinical trials isn’t always about a randomized controlled clinical trial. Increasingly, it’s an epidemiological study in disguise. Even medical professionals get taken

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-63276974626692758232009-05-31T08:43:00.011-06:002009-06-01T06:20:01.571-06:00

Mainstream media paid little attention to this study, even though it provided a comprehensive look at the clinical trial evidence to date on whether keeping tighter control over blood sugars benefits people with type 2 diabetes. The facts could have extraordinary impact on support for population HbA1c surveillance programs with obligatory diabetes management that are being enacted by growing

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-90727093313614246952009-05-28T20:45:00.008-06:002009-05-28T21:00:08.516-06:00

Loving parents have a hard job. They want to protect their children from harm and make the best healthcare decisions for them, but with all of the health information and misinformation swirling around, it can seem impossible to know what to believe. One question for some parents is whether childhood immunizations are necessary anymore. With fewer children dying of childhood illnesses today, it

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-13993856140009591732009-05-26T00:01:00.012-06:002009-05-28T21:46:24.430-06:00

The media has widely covered the Hydroxycut recalls issued by the FDA earlier this month, making it unnecessary to repeat the recall notices here in detail. JFS readers aren’t the customers for dietary supplements marketed as being for weight loss, as fat burners, as energy-enhancers, and as low-carb diet aids. But one aspect of the news story hasn’t caught the attention of media and may provide

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-65909219228811764782009-05-25T05:00:00.003-06:002009-05-25T06:02:34.236-06:00

Today, we remember and pay tribute to the men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice to defend our country and ensure our freedoms. Thank you for your service, strength and valor. Flags will be flying at half staff in honor of another hero, John Brown, Jr., one of the original Navajo Code Talkers and a Navajo Councilman, who died this past week. The 29 Navajo Code Talkers had developed a

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-66392260710416481552009-05-24T19:55:00.024-06:002009-05-26T02:21:58.191-06:00

Last week, more than 400 news stories in just two days reported that a study had found conclusive evidence that fast food makes children stupid and lowers their school tests scores. How many journalists do you think actually went to the original source and read the study? None. How can we be so sure? Because there is no published study in a peer-reviewed journal. There was no ability

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-42908004484831870092009-05-21T05:52:00.019-06:002009-05-28T21:57:45.871-06:00

How much money does it take to buy your child’s educational curriculum? $269,000 That’s all it took to get curriculum standards for our nation’s schools published, as well as policies “to fight childhood obesity and promote healthy eating and physical activity” developed and mandated in schools by State Boards of Education… without any sound evidence that they are effective or safe. The

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-64960607548790841072009-05-16T20:17:00.012-06:002009-05-17T05:14:35.526-06:00

We haven’t covered a bird cage news story in awhile, so let’s test our critical reading skills with one that’s been in the news. It’s reported that researchers have found that women who take probiotics during pregnancy can ward off postpartum obesity. What tipped you off that this news story was worthy of lining your bird cage with the newspaper it was printed on? More than 246,000 news

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-49593800112788577822009-05-12T05:57:00.007-06:002009-05-12T06:21:13.845-06:00

“The Virginia Department of Health Professions is currently experiencing technical difficulties which affect computer and email systems. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” “We hope this information is helpful to you and we sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause you.” — H. Alan Rosenberg, LexisNexis Vice President, Investigations and Incident Response Last Monday,

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-81974762989230672352009-05-11T11:34:00.012-06:002009-05-16T02:56:12.663-06:00

Part One here. North Carolina legislators voted to use discrimination to help bail out the State’s Health Plan. As troubling as that sounds, the legislation passed without much trouble, perhaps because it’s been easy to convince the public that certain people are costing them and to blame for having health problems. Last week, the North Carolina State Auditor’s Office released its audit of

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-35365117640957226312009-05-10T16:34:00.014-06:002009-05-10T20:54:58.405-06:00

The current focus on teaching children “healthy” eating is popularly believed to be so healthful, helpful and necessary, that confirmation bias cannot let us see the evidence that suggests it isn’t. A major 3-year study found disturbing clinical evidence that children are being harmed by such initiatives… children as young as five. Yet, not only has the media not widely report this important

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-54407115613963805102009-05-08T20:10:00.006-06:002009-05-08T20:17:10.455-06:00

Australian parents are realizing that they’ve been deluded about an epidemic of childhood obesity. Lesson One — Never forget to ask the most important question of any health statistic: How is it being defined? It’s easy to lie with statistics, graphs and scary marketing, and even to get people to believe the opposite of reality, such as in an epidemic of obese, unhealthy and sedentary

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-86850310116777874302009-05-04T04:47:00.006-06:002009-05-04T05:12:00.668-06:00

A financial publication isn’t a place you might expect to find an insightful article on health, but Financial Times proved the exception. Last weekend, Stuart Blackman explored how seemingly helpful educational health messages can be bad for our health. In fact, they can lead us to believe we are unhealthy and to actually feel quite unwell. His article, “Why health warnings can be bad,” began

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-35921447397466385022009-05-03T21:24:00.005-06:002009-05-04T04:44:22.368-06:00

There are now nearly 2.3 million news stories on Google News about swine flu. The World Health Organization is now backing off it’s pandemic rhetoric and reports a total of 19 people worldwide have died from this particular strain of the flu, all from Mexico except for one child from Mexico who died in a Houston hospital in the United States. Despite last week’s exaggerated death count

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-77525525478223480792009-04-29T06:37:00.013-06:002009-05-02T05:41:22.403-06:00

Part One of the Swine Flu epidemic here. By the end of the day, panic over swine flu had reached pandemic proportions, with more than 117,607 news stories appearing on Google News. As media professor, Robert Thompson, at Syracuse University in New York, told Reuters this morning: “If as many people had swine flu as those [in media] that are covering swine flu, then it would be a pandemic to

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-5137393134403148772009-04-27T22:48:00.013-06:002009-06-03T19:36:26.721-06:00

The media loves a good scare and the word pandemic is a guaranteed headline grabber. By this evening, there were nearly 70,000 news stories about an influenza pandemic, many accentuated by pictures of crowds of people wearing blue surgical masks. But scaring you half to death with speculations of a new pandemic does little to help you. The known facts, offered in a balanced perspective, is

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-34340973139583652202009-04-26T11:38:00.013-06:002009-04-26T12:30:36.744-06:00

Genetic tests have received a lot of media attention. The public is being led to believe that genetic screening can identify people at risk for diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and that genes hold the promise of personalized medicine and nutrition. It all sounds so scientific. It’s not. While the marketing of genetic screening tests gets lots of buzz, the information

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-50355581853414449982009-04-21T20:07:00.003-06:002009-04-21T21:40:40.232-06:00

Or: Computer modeling is not science Fat people are now being blamed for contributing to climate change by breathing. Actually, it’s worse than that. Headlines are saying: “Fatties cause global warming.” Hundreds of news stories this week are based on the latest carbon dioxide paper just published in the online version of the International Journal of Epidemiology. Its authors were Phil

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-2846027210540989732009-04-19T10:21:00.016-06:002009-04-20T20:32:45.564-06:00

Why was one of the most important studies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention buried? Can we tell by a physical feature or measurement what our risks are for dying prematurely? As increased body weight and now BMI (body mass index) have proven to be poor predictors of mortality risk, the explanation sometimes suggested is that BMI doesn’t differentiate fat (“bad”) from

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-9065695313406845262009-04-17T23:11:00.004-06:002009-04-17T23:20:55.581-06:00

We thought the Change4Life campaign to eradicate fat children couldn’t get any worse ... than government health officials ignoring science, the evidence, and their own health statistics, and embracing reports of fabricated predictions and compilations of opinion polls. Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health, Sir Liam Donaldson, described the “obesity timebomb” facing the UK, and

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-37110217310024099982009-04-17T20:57:00.016-06:002009-04-19T19:15:33.232-06:00

Despite concerns of healthy school environments, this week’s news reminds us that, for many young people, school is anything but healthful. Sadly, many victims of bullying are on their own to find ways to deal with it and they can often respond in unhealthful and even risky ways. Healthcare professionals have been reporting for years that school-based anti-bullying programs are largely

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-32504642020976343922009-04-14T06:30:00.003-06:002009-04-15T21:52:01.521-06:00

Imagine your entire life and all your records were in the possession of other people and you could occasionally see parts of what they had, but you just figured the pros had it under control. Dave deBronkart, blogging as PatientDave, gained access to his personal electronic medical records from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and found “a whole lot of errors and the people carefully guarding

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-38773149462766900182009-04-12T19:13:00.005-06:002009-04-12T20:34:48.044-06:00

One of the most popular answers to childhood obesity is physical education. Countless governmental health and school officials have enacted programs to increase physical activity to combat childhood obesity. Are these interventions grounded on sound scientific understandings of the causes of obesity and have they been shown to have any effect on child obesity? A new study — the largest

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-39358871159524609052009-04-12T18:02:00.009-06:002009-04-19T19:01:02.027-06:00

When will our culture stop judging others by their looks, age and social status and begin to see the beauty, goodness and unique talent in each one of us?She was fat and working class, laughed at as a glutton and shown eating backstage. The stage was set to dehumanize her and make her the joke of the show. Everyone was cynical and against her. Her dream was to be a professional singer, she

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-53275786461231406112009-04-12T08:48:00.011-06:002009-04-12T10:20:12.441-06:00

When an article gets published in a major medical journal that wouldn’t even past muster for a Wikipedia article, you know something’s up. And it’s a pretty good bet that it’s not sound science. There were other clues, too. It was published online and the entire article offered for free to the public, with the journal’s standard $10 per article fee waived*. It wasn’t that the article was

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-78046923947539329532009-04-11T07:39:00.009-06:002009-04-12T21:45:05.328-06:00

As long as the public believes that “quality” of health care means measures shown to improve patient health outcomes, save lives, reduce medical errors or reduce healthcare costs, then the doublespeak will continue to be used in ways that cost them. Doctors, medical professionals and healthcare providers already know that “quality” measures, also known as “pay for performance” measures, have

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-53249337062652658602009-04-08T21:19:00.013-06:002009-04-09T04:57:04.680-06:00

If you were a government health official, where would you choose to focus limited healthcare resources — money and the time and attention of healthcare professionals — in order to most improve people’s health and provide the best evidence-based medical care? This week’s news from the UK provides an insightful array of choices: · Vaccinations for seniors and others at high risk of flu In the

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-495603377433586632009-04-05T23:32:00.013-06:002009-04-06T01:04:58.547-06:00

Chapter 1: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen… On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. The Ministry of Truth — Minitrue, in Newspeak — was

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-71478186168536136792009-04-04T07:28:00.033-06:002009-04-05T13:12:18.193-06:00

Children from socially deprived areas — 1,641 elementary students in all — were specifically targeted by a government-funded study that promoted a large drink vendor. The experimental intervention, which had no scientific basis and is known to put children at risk for harm, involved compulsory lessons of mythologies designed to scare these youngsters...thin. Medical ethics is, indeed, a fragile

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-33558965354491904452009-03-29T20:05:00.006-06:002009-03-29T20:53:58.217-06:00

The reality of nationalized electronic medical records is recognized among most medical professionals, who know that the claims of saving money and lives are not supported by the preponderance of credible evidence and that improving health care isn’t about having everyone’s medical records in a federal database for governmental oversight. But the general public has largely been kept in the dark

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-49198254987188967842009-03-29T19:31:00.006-06:002009-03-29T20:05:48.229-06:00

Remember Google Health? That story and the follow-up ones gave us cause to pause before downloading our private medical records for safekeeping with Google. This month, the industry giant made the news for failing to protect the privacy and security of user data stored on Google Docs, and for its latest move to collect, track and store users’ online behaviors. But how many Americans have heard

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-52075804441895155872009-03-28T08:10:00.008-06:002009-03-30T19:40:13.962-06:00

Nearly 3,000 news stories this past week jumped on the bandwagon to report that a new study had found that red meat may be deadly. This is another flagrant illustration that we’d all be a lot healthier if we just stopped reading medical news stories. Not one health journalist reported the study accurately, truthfully or responsibly. As a result, countless people have been needlessly frightened

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-18572082106199182972009-03-27T21:26:00.008-06:002009-03-28T05:24:02.476-06:00

Imagine if Mr. Greenjeans* decided to write a recommendation that every adult who was over 5 feet tall needed to take one of his green pills every day to be healthy. He then conducted a study in which he totaled the number of adults in the United States who was over 5 feet tall and found that his recommendation would apply to nearly all adults. ● Did Mr. Greenjeans just prove that most

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-15620026903769053932009-03-26T10:11:00.007-06:002009-03-27T06:41:27.077-06:00

A writer at the New York Times is finally beginning to get that those health risk assessments that ask about our lifestyle and health history are really fronts to sell drugs. One of the largest and most popular ones — that’s convinced more than 27 million consumers to fill out detailed questionnaires about their health and private lifestyle habits — is RealAge. As Stephanie Clifford writes, “

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-62121467322908844462009-03-26T06:09:00.001-06:002009-03-27T06:11:15.975-06:00

The Father of the Green Revolution, Dr. Norman Borlaugh is credited with saving more than one billion lives from starvation through his life devoted to improving food production. For his work on world hunger, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Happy 95th Birthday, Dr. Borlaugh.

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-43255616319766879362009-03-23T22:08:00.017-06:002009-03-24T16:48:27.100-06:00

A new experimental program at a nonconventional “lifestyle medicine” center is targeting pregnant women who are Black and Hispanic minority, poor and fat. These women are being enrolled into a free health program which tells them it will benefit them and their unborn babies and make their babies healthier. No mention is made in the patient literature that, by the soundest clinical evidence to

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-71985757832415194122009-03-21T08:25:00.011-06:002009-03-21T09:05:41.937-06:00

Spanish Ministry for Health announced a government plan to reduce the “epidemic of obesity.” Health Minister, Bernat Soria, introduced a plan to give free fruit to school children as part of the European School Fruit Scheme. Italian Minister, Luca Zaia, followed suit. In fact, this week, the European Commission endorsed the implementation policies for the European School Fruit Scheme by the

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-1847161108456746772009-03-19T06:42:00.003-06:002009-03-19T06:53:15.812-06:00

After receiving nearly a dozen alerts of extraordinarily high rates of patient deaths, the Healthcare Commission launched an independent investigation of Stafford Hospital. It just released the report of its findings. It and the reports from thousands of patients and families in UK paint a disturbing picture of what is being described as “Third World” conditions in the hospital. Sir Ian

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-25710755424178653092009-03-18T06:16:00.004-06:002009-03-18T06:35:15.803-06:00

For years, JFS has been warning about plans being made for nationalized electronic medical records, the doublespeak being used to sell them to an unsuspecting public, and their real purposes. While the reality is well-known among medical professionals, the public has been largely kept in the dark, wooed by political and special interest claims and promises. That is beginning to change. The

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-68930053332353615772009-03-15T23:08:00.014-06:002009-03-16T05:54:58.204-06:00

One year ago this month, a JFS Special report described the first human experimentation on a fat man who was surgically implanted with electrodes inside his brain and exposed to electrical currents trying to make him lose weight. Fifteen months after the procedure, the man weighed more. Last week, ABC News Nightline aired the exclusive testimonial from the second person in the United States

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-82261160838822568032009-03-14T18:33:00.005-06:002009-03-14T19:18:59.738-06:00

One of the largest known cases of academic fraud and misconduct made the news this week when Anesthesiology News reported that a leading medical researcher was found to have fabricated much, if not all, of the data in his research. Scott S. Reuben, M.D., of Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, is said to have made up and falsified data in at least 21, and perhaps many more,

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-33136017771370310262009-03-14T08:11:00.003-06:002009-03-14T08:26:14.007-06:00

Luboš Motl Pilsen, a physicist in the Czech Republic, has translated an article written by Václav Klaus, marking the 70th anniversary of a date the world must never forget. Václav Klaus is the President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. On March 14th, 1939, the Second Republic of Czechoslovakia disintegrated when Slovakia became part the Third Reich. One

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-72013980761793112932009-03-12T23:07:00.003-06:002009-03-12T23:15:13.601-06:00

The British Medical Association’s Scottish local medical committee voted today on Dr. David Walker’s proposal to tax chocolate in order to fight obesity and the “diabetic time bomb.” [Covered here.] The British Medical Association is a professional association with a membership of more than two-thirds of UK doctors. The medical professionals voted the idea down — by a mere two votes,

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-84666025317810932982009-03-09T22:45:00.007-06:002009-03-09T23:15:58.789-06:00

First-time mums heard worrisome news when The Times reported that a new study had ostensibly found that fat women were more likely to develop preeclampsia during pregnancy and to deliver low birthweight and premature babies. This study, first presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for Gynecological Investigation in Reno, Nevada, also reported that cesarean section rates among

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-10017196112732510852009-03-08T17:35:00.006-06:002009-03-08T18:06:39.666-06:00

In a perfectly titled Op-ed, “The computer will see you now,” Dr. Anne Armstrong-Coben, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia, shared the reality of adopting electronic medical records. She highlighted the greatest thing we’ll sacrifice… The loss of humanness of medicine and the private and personal relationships built between patients and their doctors. The

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-57515860775347892972009-03-06T00:00:00.001-07:002009-03-06T06:07:53.498-07:00

Laughing while you’re driving is now against the law in the police state. As Nigel Bunyan from the Telegraph reports: Motorist stopped by police for laughing A motorist was stopped by a police officer and questioned because he was laughing at the wheel. Gary Saunders, a company director, was using a hands-free phone when he burst out laughing at a joke told by his brother-in-law, who he

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-79964083397856816002009-03-05T22:41:00.006-07:002009-03-05T23:06:55.497-07:00

As predicted, private electronic medical records of consumers are being freely accessed, exchanged and used to document and grade doctors and hospitals according to their compliance with performance measures set by the state. The nation’s first such statewide program has just been launched in Georgia. The public is being told that the power of health information technology is being focused on

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-58678322792877030952009-03-05T05:26:00.004-07:002009-03-05T05:32:05.902-07:00

The British Medical Association’s Scottish local medical committee conference next week will include recommendations for the government to impose a heavy tax on chocolate to fight obesity and “improve the health of the nation.” As the Scotsman reports: We need a heavy tax on chocolate to fight obesity, says doctor CHOCOLATE should be taxed in the same way as alcohol to tackle the obesity

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-13762924876247260592009-03-02T04:46:00.002-07:002009-03-02T04:46:00.612-07:00

Mercury poisoning was again in the news this past week as actor Jeremy Piven became the focus of a closed-door hearing with the Actors’ Equity Association. He presented his defense against the grievance filed against him in January by the producers of Speed-the-Plow for leaving the production. The New York Times reported that the actor said he had been scared he might die and believed his

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-3299647494933459672009-03-01T16:06:00.008-07:002009-03-01T16:41:19.731-07:00

In vino veritas — Part One here. This past week, women around the world were frightened by hundreds of news stories, all telling them that even a single alcoholic drink a day was dangerous and could increase their risks for cancer. If we believed the media, the largest study ever conducted had found no amount of alcohol consumption to be safe. This is a case where the evidence could not

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-89467210640816365802009-02-28T13:50:00.013-07:002009-02-28T18:11:38.137-07:00

Within days of each other, two major news stories from Europe have reported sensational claims about alcohol and cancer. It appears no one has bothered to go directly to the studies behind the news and read them. Or, perhaps, media and governmental health ministries, don’t understand them or realize that not all studies are created equal. Just because something calls itself a study doesn’t mean

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-80980305156314762292009-02-26T22:14:00.004-07:002009-02-27T05:00:43.893-07:00

If we believe a thousand news stories that appeared in lockstep today, a new study just released by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research found that “cancer is mostly preventable with clean living.” The new policy report “is based on an exhaustive review of nearly 7,000 scientific studies” and said to have found that bad diets, obesity and sedentary

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-32669665777031754062009-02-25T21:07:00.009-07:002009-02-26T05:32:18.424-07:00

Whether they call themselves health or lifestyle coaches or wellness practitioners, the person at the other end of the telephone of the wellness program offered by your employer or healthplan could be anyone. Wellness is not a recognized or licensed medical discipline. This past week, the New York Business Strategies Examiner interviewed a wellness practitioner of therapeutic touch,

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-44008051881406640272009-02-24T21:20:00.013-07:002009-02-24T22:26:14.901-07:00

Nearly two dozen medical professionals in the UK took bold action this past week. They joined together to speak out and confront the National Health Services and call for patients to be given the full facts about preventive health screening. Public health recommendations and information women receive about breast cancer screening is not only unsupported and one-sided, they said, but denying

Sandynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37355806.post-2216787063857206912009-02-22T15:46:00.012-07:002009-05-06T21:23:43.430-06:00

As we’ve known was coming, employers and state governments providing health insurance to employees are increasingly requiring American workers to undergo regular metabo check and evaluations of their diets and lifestyles, and to participate in corporate “wellness” programs… or else. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports this week that city employees of Kennesaw, Georgia who are fat, smoke

Sandynoreply@blogger.com