urbansheep@gmail.com › Теги: занимательная медицина

"Inflammatory afflictions like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease are currently treated with drugs — painkillers, steroids and what are known as biologics, or genetically engineered proteins. But such medicines, Tracey pointed out, are often expensive, hard to administer, variable in their efficacy and sometimes accompanied by lethal side effects. His work seemed to indicate that electricity delivered to the vagus nerve in just the right intensity and at precise intervals could reproduce a drug’s therapeutic — in this case, anti-inflammatory — reaction. His subsequent research would also show that it could do so more effectively and with minimal health risks." • #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

“A wireless system developed by Assistant Professor Ada Poon uses the same power as a cell phone to safely transmit energy to chips the size of a grain of rice. The technology paves the way for new "electroceutical" devices to treat illness or alleviate pain.” • #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

"The results themselves were not surprising. The most effective nootropics were caffeine – which pretty much everyone in the world knows works – and modafinil (along with its fellow -afinils) which has been proven to work by countless studies and is a prescription drug much used by the medical establishment. Below these two, the most effective “exotic” nootropics were phenylpiracetam and coluracetam. I suspect that despite the nootropic community’s enthusiasm about phenylpiracetam it mostly just works as a mild stimulant not too different from other stimulants like amphetamines. Coluracetam, a very new and pretty unique substance currently being investigated as an Alzheimer’s treatment, is more exciting." • #схватил_за_мозг - #ноотропы - #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

“Overall I was not too impressed with the results of this survey. No unexpected substances jumped out as promising, there was a very wide distribution from “useless” to “life-changing” in nearly everything except the -afinils, and it was very hard to find much of a dose-response relationship anywhere. There is no “smoking gun” for most these substances being definitely-exciting, aside from the ones like modafinil that we were already aware of.” - × × ×

“It’s easy to mock places like the Cheesecake Factory—restaurants that have brought chain production to complicated sit-down meals. But the “casual dining sector,” as it is known, plays a central role in the ecosystem of eating, providing three-course, fork-and-knife restaurant meals that most people across the country couldn’t previously find or afford. The ideas start out in élite, upscale restaurants in major cities. You could think of them as research restaurants, akin to research hospitals. Some of their enthusiasms—miso salmon, Chianti-braised short ribs, flourless chocolate espresso cake—spread to other high-end restaurants. Then the casual-dining chains reëngineer them for affordable delivery to millions. Does health care need something like this?” • #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

"A study published Monday shows that patients often defer to their doctors for fear of being labeled "difficult." But patients who take that approach can hinder their ability to fully participate in decisions about their health, according to the study, which appears in the journal Health Affairs. • In the study, 48 Bay Area patients recruited from Palo Alto medical practices said they feared that challenging their physicians or asking too many questions might result in lower-quality care or strain their relationship." #ответственный_пациент - #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

"Most of us would agree that King Tut and the other mummified ancient Egyptians are dead, and that you and I are alive. Somewhere in between these two states lies the moment of death. But where is that? The old standby — and not such a bad standard — is the stopping of the heart. But the stopping of a heart is anything but irreversible. We’ve seen hearts start up again on their own inside the body, outside the body, even in someone else’s body. Christian Barnard was the first to show us that a heart could stop in one body and be fired up in another. Due to the mountain of evidence to the contrary, it is comical to consider that “brain death” marks the moment of legal death in all fifty states." • #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

“I saw a second, older doctor, my father’s internist, enter the room. My father opened his eyes, propped himself up again, and shook the man’s hand. I was several yards away, out in the hallway, but the two men appeared to be having an animated conversation. When the doctor exited, I said, “It looked like you were talking to him.” The doctor said, “Sure. I talk to Cliff every day.” I explained what the previous doctor had told me and pointed out the man, who was still on the floor. “Oh,” said the older doctor, “that’s a neurology resident. They teach them that in medical school today. Everybody is dead or in a coma.” - × × ×

"It's not something that we like to talk about, but doctors die, too. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care that they could want. But they tend to go serenely and gently. Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right)." • #занимательная_медицина - #die_fast - × × ×

“When patients are dealing with chronic conditions, you might see a doctor every six weeks or two months,“ said Joseph Flaherty, the senior vice president for marketing at AgaMatrix. “For people to have real command over these diseases, we need to close the feedback loop and give people the information they need to make smarter decisions in real time.” • #trendtaste - #ответственный_пациент - #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

An anonymous reader writes "How are you using smartphones and other portable devices to take charge of your medical care? The NY Times has an article about attachments to the iPhone for tracking blood sugar and blood pressure. There are also glorified web cams that take pictures of your ear drum, teeth or eyes to save you a trip to the doctor's. Some people are tracking the changes in their moles with an iPhone App. Is this the beginning of Med 2.0?" - × × ×

На Слэшдоте: “Odd as it sounds, I was able to be more quickly and reliably diagnosed with Lyme disease last fall because I'd taken some pictures on my phone of the lesion I'd wrongly thought was the result of a spider bite. Any camera would have worked, but I had my camera-equipped phone with me, rather than any other kind.” — http://science.slashdot.org/story... - × × ×

“In the late 1960s, medical researchers developed a way to find genetic defects in a fetus as young as 15 weeks, early enough to terminate a pregnancy with an abnormal fetus. Despite the need to have a long needle inserted into the uterus, many expectant mothers gratefully embraced amniocentesis, the now familiar genetic test. “It is truly a miracle,” a new mom told The New York Times in 1971. The woman’s three sisters had Down syndrome, and she had been terrified of passing on the disorder but got a null result. “I never thought I could have normal, healthy children.” #trendtaste - #ответственный_пациент - #занимательная_медицина - × × ×

Ок, теперь дождаться, когда это будет доступно в наших медцентрах (лет пять?), и одним из моих внутренних вопросов к семье будет меньше. А вот Гаттака и евгенические программы теперь станут близки, как никогда (ещё 20 лет на то, чтобы это вошло в стандартную практику и чтобы этические побоища начались и кончились, и много разного другого странного будет дальше). - × × ×

“Here’s how we tested: I took the allotted dose of each drug over a 48-hour period. At the same time every day, I took two GRE practice tests, one math and the other vocab-retention. The vocab test consisted of memorizing 15 new GRE words over 10 minutes, waiting a half hour, then retesting. The math consisted of 30 different problems in trigonometry, geometry and algebra. Between drugs I took a 24-hour break to (hopefully) clear out my system. ¶ With no drugs in my system, I got these control numbers: Vocab-Retention Score: 11/15; ¶ GRE Math Score: 22/30; ¶ A word of warning: These pills aren’t supported by FDA testing or scientific studies of their efficacy. Our testing was admittedly unscientific (N=1, a 24-year-old woman) but the results suggest that some, in fact, do work better than others. But our review’s no substitute for medical advice. So, if in doubt, consult your doctor.” • #better_living_through_chemistry - #схватил_за_мозг - #занимательная_медицина - × × ×