Health
New GLP-1 drug guidelines recently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) were reviewed in a JAMA article published online a few days ago. One major point? Global obesity rates have been rising substantially for more than 30 years. But change is in the air! To illustrate: adult obesity in […]
Are politics and medicine entwined? A report published this week in JAMA Forum suggests these two fields actually have connections. Are you scratching your head? The link between the two is revealed in a few snippets from that report. Read the following: In the nearly 50 years that Gallup has queried […]
Read The Color of North if you are awed by astonishing facts of life, such as the frog that freezes solid each winter and thaws and returns to life in the spring, or the amazing bacteria that survive in scalding temperatures. Read the book if you’re intrigued by information such […]
Introducing Exerkines: The Magical Molecules of Exercise. Everyone knows that exercise improves health. That’s old news. Here’s something far more exciting. Scientists have demonstrated that our skeletal muscles do much more than just move us about. While contracting, our muscles release swarms of molecules that spread throughout our bodies and blend […]
Selling faster than hotcakes: GLP-1 medications are flying off pharmacy shelves, and at fancy prices. Total spending in the U.S. for these drugs in 2023 (the latest year I found data for) was $71,700,000,000 (yes, 71.7 billion. See here.). Sales have been growing steadily. In 2018, total U.S. sales of […]
Our deluded HHS Secretary Kennedy is at it again. Earlier this week he fired all 17 members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee and will replace them with new members. Have you read how he justified this change? “Today we are prioritizing the restoration of […]
HHS dumps successful vaccine developer. Do you remember Operation Warp Speed? During the first Trump administration that program led to the unbelievably fast development of Covid-19 vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer. Those companies used newly-developed mRNA techniques to produce their vaccines in record time. According to Dr. Ashish Jha, who […]
Facts about vaccines? Here are some worthy of notice. One hundred years ago, on May 2, 1925, the Journal of the American Medical Society cited W. W. Keen’s personal experiences with three epidemics of “the most loathsome, nauseating, sickening disease,” smallpox. To summarize his experiences, JAMA reported that before the […]
Medical topics for 2025. Happy New Year, readers! You may have noticed that I skimmed through the holiday season without writing anything here. Nevertheless, I have been thinking of topics to be considered in 2025. I plan to focus more on medicine, medical costs, and various methods believed to prolong […]
Absurd prescription drug costs! It is hard to believe that prices for a month’s supply of dozens of prescription medicines can differ by thousands of dollars, depending on where you buy them and what insurance plan (if any) you may use. Just last month The Journal of the American Medical […]
