Some of the most covered topics in the media this day is related to diets and weight loss programs. One day you’re told to eliminate all fat from your diet. The next day, carbohydrates are the evil culprits you are advised to avoid.
Some of these diets are more stupid than others. Remember, the media is supposed to make headlines, and the more out of the picture, the better.
So what’s the problem with all these diets and weight loss programs?
To start with, most of them involve subtracting one or more food groups from your diet. The truth is, when you take carbohydrates or fat out of your diet, you’re doing more harm to your health than good.
The media often seems to have found a new mind blowing diet or weight loss program that is capable of getting you in the ideal shape ever.
They provide images of people that have lost HUGE amount of weight in NO TIME. This is the wrong picture to portray for two reasons: the word weight, and the methods advertised.
1. The BS About Weight
Just about anyone who wants to become healthy focuses exclusively on weight. Lets say you want to look good in the mirror or be able to fit into those astonishing jeans of yours.
Should you really focus exclusively on your weight? Definitely not!
For those of you who know anything at all about the human body and its functions, you know that muscles are more dense than fat, which leads to the fact that muscles mass is more compact than fat and only takes up 1/3 the space.
What we should focus on instead is body fat and the way we look and feel. Weight itself does not show whether you are unhealthy or not, at least not the way the general public tends to believe these days.
When you read about health in the newspaper, they always talk about weight! It is rarely about fat, and that’s really the big issue today.
2. BMI - A Good Way of Measuring Health?
BMI stands for Body Mass Index and is supposed to determine whether or not a person is healthy or overweight/obese.
Magazines often provide a BMI calculator for the reader so they easily can determine whether he or she’s in the danger zone.
You may think that BMI sounds like a decent measurement to determine health, but let me tell you that it is NOT! Look at this list:
- Shawn Crawford, Sprinter (USA)
- Mark Lewis-Francis, Sprinter (GB)
- Ryan Bayley, Cycling (AUSTRIA)
I could keep adding names to this list all day long. Wondering why I’m showing you this list?
These world class athletes are all classified as overweight by the BMI guidelines. You can also find athletes that have been classified as obese by BMI guidelines. Come on!
Do you really think world class athletes that basically live for training and health would be overweight and obese?
The reason you should take BMI guidelines with a grain of salt is similar to the issue of weight scales. BMI does not consider the fact that muscles are more dense than fat.
Bottom line is: from now on, do not use weight scales and BMI when it comes to monitoring or deciding whether or not you are unhealthy, or in the danger zone.
About the Author
Jonas Forsberg is the author of Burn Fat At Home, a workout program that helps people lose ugly belly fat and build sexy muscles in only 12 min per day.
He updates the official Burn Fat At Home Blog daily at http://burnfatathome.blogspot.com
[Source : Full text health articles - Content for Reprint]
Researchers at the University of Michigan have managed to show that four genes that have previously come under scientific scrutiny as they’re believed to help control cancer, also play key roles in the process of aging for humans and in human adult stem cell regulation.
Currently, the biological basis of ageing isn’t well-understood. There are many theories, each with some evidence supporting it, but no one universally accepted theory of why and how ageing occurs. Diseases which are a product of ageing can also contribute to it, and many of these can be treated with stem cells - for example, there’s stem cell therapy for stroke, stem cell therapy for diabetes, and stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
While the role of stem cells in ageing is seen, but not understood, there also exist several other theories. The telemore theory, where telemores at the end of chromosomes shorten with each successive division and then prevent further multiplication, is one. The free radical theory is another popular one, which states that ageing is a result of the effects of free radicals damaging our cells.
However, stem cell research has shown that human adult stem cells certainly play a big part in the process, or prevention, of ageing.
The four genes are known to scientists as Ink4a, Arf, Hmga2 and Iet-7b. They have been shown to suppress tumor formation, and now are known to also regulate the capability of human adult stem cells to replace worn-out tissues, and regulate the way that adult stem cells shut down during ageing.
These four genes switch themselves on and off, coordinating with each other as cells get older to help reduce the risk of cancer. The internal stem cell therapy function in ageing tissue is shut down, reducing its capability to regenerate.
One of the outcomes of stem cell research in conjunction with cancer research has been to show that mutated cells that are granted to divide may cause cancer - and cells mutate as they age. Stopping mutated cells from reproducing is your body’s way of helping stop cancer.
The results are from a three year stem cell research study of moiuse brains, and also explains why human adult stem cells don’t match the potency of embryonic stem cells where they’re used in stem cell transplants for stroke recovery and injury recovery.
Sean Morrison is the director of the University of Michigan Center for Stem Cell biology, and worked on the stem cell research. He said: “The genes identified in this study work together to reduce the function of adult stem cells as they age. Embryonic stem cells offer the advantage of not aging, not turning on this pathway. If you need to generate big numbers of cells to treat a major public health problem, such as juvenile diabetes this is a huge advantage.”
It was the same team that showed two years ago that ink4a, already known as a tumor suppressor, increases in activity as ageing progresses and also shuts down stem cell replication in older mice.
The defense against genetic mutations that cause cancer was seen immediately, however the main question after the study related to what caused the gene to turn on as the body ages? The chain of causation led back to Hmga2, and then to Iet-7b. Humans possess the same four genes, and the stem cell research on mice is apt to yield good potential for creating human drugs.
About the Author
ReturningHope.com - is an interdisciplinary group of individuals who have pooled their expertise together in order provide a service to patients globally and that will find them the best treatment method for their conditions.
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This day’s sedentary lifestyle is to blame for piling on unwanted pounds. That is a fact you really cannot argue with. However, everyone has a different idea on how to lose the weight.
One of the liver’s main functions is the conversion of energy from stored fat. That is the reason it is so critical that your liver is always operating at its ideal. Another function of the liver is to assist the kidneys in doing their job if they are dehydrated. To keep your liver focused on transforming energy from fat, drink lots of water! A critical need in maintaining a healthy body is water consumption. The bottom line: you should drink more water and consume fewer drinks that cause dehydration.
Just existing burns calories. Regardless of what we do in a twenty-four hour day, we constantly need energy. We all know that. What’s not as commonly known is that the amount of muscle on your body determines your resting metabolic rate. Your resting metabolic rate will rise by even a tiny addition of muscle mass, with the result being more calories expended throughout the day.
To benefit from increasing your metabolism, you don’t need to lift weights two or three hours a day. Who has that kind of time to invest? Not me. And probably not you.
If you are overweight and want to increase muscle mass, do not overdo it - limit yourself by starting with just squats and push-ups. Complete five of each exercise every day. Do these exercises at home and you don’t have to spend money on gas or a gym membership. If you want more workout than just push-ups and squats, do you need to buy a set of weights? Although it might sound silly, a pair of rocks will do the trick, even if they only weight three or four pounds each.
You must keep your entire body constantly rebuilding and repairing muscle to gain more muscle very quickly. That means you need to work everything: back, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, quads, glutes, calves, hamstrings, and abdominals. To do all that, do you need to kill yourself at the gym every day? I don’t think so. It bears repeating: push-ups and squats. Exercise every muscle in your body with just those two exercises (even better if you’ve the time to concentrate on individual muscles).
Nevertheless, do not ignore the last important factor of weight loss or weight gain: your diet. If three times a day you drink a regular sugar soda with a double cheeseburger and big fries, it’ll be difficult to lose weight despite how many exercises you do.
While there are lots of beliefs as to what type of diet works best (all fruit, all meat, all carbs, no fat, etc.), everyone can react differently to the same food. On the most fundamental level, everyone’s body metabolizes food differently. What’s good for one person is likely bad for another.
How do you figure out which diet your body will respond to the best? For starters, examine how many calories you consume every day. It’s important that your calorie count is the proper amount for your current body weight. Second, thirty minutes after you eat, pinpoint how you feel emotionally and physically. Are you lethargic? In need of a power nap? Or do you feel revitalized? You’ve probably deduced the answer already if you have ever listened to your body after you have eaten a meal, you already know what food is good for you.
A few light exercises, adequate water consumption, and a diet that makes you feel invigorated is the smartest way to begin losing weight. Integrate all three of the above, and you will lose weight and live healthier!
About the Author
Get rid of extra pounds with an online weight training log. You can also improve your financial health and make money on the web.
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Several researchers, scientists and professors who recently attended the President’s Cancer Panel in September were prompted by a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at SUNY Downstate Medical Center to halt the threat of asbestos among industrial workers by amending government policy on asbestos and mesothelioma cancer as well as all carcinogens in the workplace.
Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD, explained to the panel of individuals that “decades had been wasted on examining the problem of carcinogens” among the workplace and had contributed to the demise of American workers’ health. Dr. Stellman also explained to the panel that the government was responsible for the “lack of the will to prevent occupational disease, death and disability” among workers across the United Says.
The President’s Cancer Panel is an extension of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and is derived of experts who strive to “improve the investment in preventing cancers” that harm the American people, according to NCI’s Web site.
However, Dr. Stellman, who gave a deposition of industrial carcinogens claimed that the toxic effects felt by many workers had manifested through the years and eventually caused the development of cancer among thousands, and basically stated that the panel wasn’t doing enough to protect workers from carcinogens such as asbestos in the workplace.
Where Is Asbestos Used?
Asbestos has been classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the International Bureau for Research on Cancer as a human carcinogen. Asbestos was processed from vermiculite mines that were constructed across the country and employed thousands of Americans until they were deemed unsafe and shut in the 1970s and 1980s. The use of asbestos, however, had already been implemented throughout the construction industry in a vast number of products including the following, according to NCI:
* cement
* hot water pipes
* plastics
* insulation
* roofing
* fireproofing
* sound absorption
* boilers
* steam pipes
* automobile brake shoes and clutch pads
* ceiling and floor tiles
* paints
* coatings
* adhesives
Mesothelioma As ‘Industrial Manslaughter’
Dr. Stellman described to the panel that the carcinogens that industrial workers were exposed to was “ongoing industrial manslaughter” and that through research and records obtained from insulators belonging to a trade union there were and are extreme “cancer risks associated with asbestos and to the widespread control of asbestos that now exists.” safe
The EPA is currently responsible for the safe cleanup and disposal of asbestos in American homes, offices, apartment buildings, universities, schools, hospitals, est. However, according to a Seattle Post Intelligencer article from 2007, the EPA has had a “flawed system of examination and cleanup” of several hundred factories that had at one point processed asbestos or contained asbestos-contaminated vermiculite.
Developing Mesothelioma Cancer
According to the NCI, individuals who are at risk for developing asbestos-induced illnesses include those “exposed to asbestos in their workplace, their communities, or their homes.” Individuals who feel they might have been exposed to asbestos should contact a medical professional immediately. Additionally, the NCI explains that several signs and symptoms that indivduals can watch for to determine if they may be developing mesothelioma include:
* fatigue
* anemia
* weight loss, loss of appetite
* swelling of the neck or face
* difficulty swallowing
* pain or tightening in the chest
* coughing up blood
* persistent, worsening cough
* shortness of breath
* continued wheezing and hoarseness
Individuals who have been exposed to asbestos fibers or asbestos dust are advised to contact an experienced mesothelioma attorney who can provide a free legal consultation as to the development of a mesothelioma lawsuit. Litigation that’s developed surrounding the exposure to asbestos may be able to provide a return on monetary compensation to aid in paying costly medical bills commonly associated with mesothelioma treatments.
About the Author
To learn more about mesothelioma cancer and additional treatments, visit http://mesothelioma.legalview.com/ . Also, individuals can find other information about topics ranging from the Avandia risks to the latest on truck accident jury verdicts by visiting http://www.LegalView.com/ .
[Source : Full text health articles - Content for Reprint]
The vast amounts spent globally on health care do not seem to translate into access for many patients, quality care, and improved outcomes. The US, in particular, spends large amounts, now more than $2 trillion a year, without getting universal access, or superb quality and outcomes. While we spend all this money, the primary care and generalist practitioners on the front lines of care are paid less and less, are increasingly embattled and disgruntled, and their numbers are rapidly thinning.
Although these problems are large, there is not much clear discussion of them.
Thus, it was encouraging to see the vaunted New England Journal of Medicine, the premier US journal of medicine, take up the issue of the “future of primary care.” A few weeks ago, the journal published a series of commentaries on the issue,(1-6) and the transcript of a round table discussion among their authors.(7) It was touted as the views of experts on “the crisis in U.S. primary care.”
Unfortunately, even though the series acknowledged some surface characteristics of the US health care system that have lead to this crisis, it didn’t delve further into its causes.
On the surface, a major cause of the crisis is that payments to primary care doctors are so limited that we’re driving them out of business, while we pay lavishly for new, high-technology, often risky and invasive procedures.
However, understanding how and why this happens requires dissecting layer after layer of complex details. Doing so can be frustrating, if not eye glazing, and this might be one reason why the discussion of this pivotal issue has been so limited.
The first layer of complexity was implicitly acknowledged, but not discussed in the NEJM series. Bear with me through it.
The First Layer of Causation: Low Payments for Face-to-Face Visits, Rising Overhead
Doctors are paid for each encounter with a patient. Their pay only covers what they do in the presence of the patient, and not other efforts on patients’ behalf, e.g., communicating with patients when they’re not in the office, communicating with other professionals, paperwork required by insurance companies, etc, etc. Furthermore, pay for office visits is available only in a very small number of categories, and the pay for more complex visits isn’t commensurate with the increase in time and effort that they require, so that physicians who spend a lot of time trying to deal with complex problems won’t be paid commensurate with their work. Pay for office visits has not increased as fast as inflation, and certainly not as fast as the expenses of running doctors’ offices, i.e., office overhead, has increased. Thus, to try to maintain income, and to support increasingly complex office operations and overhead, primary care doctors must limit the time they spend with any one patient.
The result is the 15 minute visit for nearly all patients. But it is ridiculous to try to manage complex problems in 15 minute visits. Furthermore, primary care physicians spend hours of unpaid time doing paperwork, communications, etc.
The NEJM special articles dealt briefly with the contrast between how primary care physicians and proceduralists are paid, and the adverse effects of the 15-minute visit. The series coordinator, Dr Thomas Lee, noted that “procedure-oriented specialties offer higher potential incomes.”(1) Dr Allan H Goroll decried the “current volume-driven, fee-for-service approaches,” the “piecework payment system that perpetuates our ‘hamster-wheel’ environment.”(4) Dr Thomas Bodenheimer asserted that primary care doctors are”overstressed by big patient panels.” He blamed this on “the over-burdened 15-minute clinician visit.”(3) He mentioned the 15-minute visit three other times in his commentary. In the round table discussion that accompanied the articles, he protested, “it’s the tyranny of the 15-minute visit. If you come in to your practice in the morning and you see that you’ve 12 to 15 15-minute visits in the morning and another 12 to 15 15-minute visits in the afternoon, and you know you cannot do it all in 15 minutes….”(7) Finally, in the round table discussion that accompanied the series, Dr Katherine Treadway offered the longest and most impassioned discussion, first explaining the problem,
Since I’ve been in practice a long time and I have an elderly, sick population, that for every hour of face-to-face time, I’ve another hour, at least, of time that I spend that’s unreimbursed. So, if I’m there for 13 hours, I’m getting paid for about 6 of the hours I’m spending.
and
The RVU system is …designed for specialty care and single problems. There is nothing in the RVU system that grants you to consider the fact that you’ve just seen somebody with congestive heart failure, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary disease, renal insufficiency, and diabetes.
Why Are Payments Low for Face-to-Face Visits?
However, none of the commentaries addressed how we got to this pass, or, to continue the analogy above, none dissected the next layer. At best, they seemed to imply that this came about due to the forces of nature or an act of God. For example, in the round table discussion, Dr Lee said,
And I want to go to the payment system next. But do you think — I mean, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Is it in the water and in the culture, in the educational values? And then the payment system may just reinforce that? Or is it the other way around, the payment system’s where it begins and that’s why it’s in the water?
To which Prof Barabara Starfield could only reply,
Unfortunately, it’s the chicken and the egg cycle. It doesn’t start in any one place.
The Role of the RUC
Actually, one can find the next layer of explanations in one place. The current bizarrely distorted manner in which doctors are paid was the act of people, a few people operating largely in the shadows.
The US Medicare system determines what it pays physicians using the Resource Based Relative Value System (RBRVS). This system determines the pay for every kind of medical encounter according to a complex formula that’s supposed to account for physicians’ time and effort, physicians’ practice expense, and the cost of malpractice insurance. The components of physicians’ effort assessed are, in turn, technical skill and physical effort; the required mental effort and judgment; and stress due to the potential risk to the patient.
To keep the system, which was started in 1990, current, requires addition of new kinds of encounters, which means encounters involving new kinds of procedures, and updating of the estimates of various components, including physicians’ time and effort. To do so, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) relies nearly exclusively on the advice of the RBRVS Update Committee (RUC). The RUC is a private committee of the AMA, touted as an “expert panel” that takes advantage of the organization’s First Amendment rights to petition the government. Membership on the RUC is allotted to represent specialty societies, so that the vast majority of the members represent specialties that do procedures and focus on costly, high-technology tests and treatments. However, the identities of RUC members are secret, as are the proceedings of the group.
This opaque and unaccountable process has resulted in increases outstripping inflation in fees paid for procedures, while fees paid for “cognitive”medicine, i.e., for primary care, and for services that involve diagnosis, management of acute and chronic disease, counseling, coordination of care, etc, but not procedures, have lagged inflation. The effects of the RUC have been amplified by the unexplained tendency of commercial managed care and health insurance to track the RBRVS system when making their own payments to doctors.
For further details about the RUC, see these posts on Health Care Renewal (here, here, here, and here) and important articles by Bodenheimer et al,(8) and Goodson.(9)
The Unanswered Questions
Understanding this layer of the process raises some major questions, whose answers could help dissect the next layers.
- How did the government come to fix the payments doctors receive? Government price-fixing has not been popular in the US, yet this has caused no outcry.
- Why is the process by which they are fixed allowed to be so opaque and unaccountable? Why are there no public hearings on the updates, and why is there no input from practicing doctors or organizations other than the RUC?
- How did the RUC become de facto in charge of this process?
- Why does the AMA keep the membership on the RUC secret, and give no input into the RUC process to its general membership?
- Why is the RUC membership so dominated by procedural specialists? Why were primary care physicians, who made up at least a sizable minority of doctors when the update process was started, not represented according to their numbers?
- Why has there been so little discussion of the RUC and its responsibility for an extremely expensive health care system dominated by high-technology, high-priced, risky and invasive procedures?
Of course, since the NEJM series failed to address the role of the RUC in the collapse of primary care, it couldn’t raise, much less start to answer such questions. The series mentioned the RUC only once, and virtually parenthetically, (by Dr Gorroll, who noted, “the current system “relies on the Relative Value Scale Update Committee [RUC] of the American Medical Association to set values for primary care services, despite the committee’s marked overweighting in favor of procedural specialties….”[4]) Despite having written a key article explaining the role of the RUC,(8) Dr Bodenheimer was apparently only asked to write about practice innovations that could somehow compensate for continuing limits on the length of primary care visits.(3) It appears that it remains politically incorrect to question the RUC.
However, failing to comprehend, or even address the causes of the collapse of primary care will make it all the more difficult to find a way to revive it.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” attributed to George Santayana
References
1. Lee TH. The future of primary care: the need for reinvention. N Engl J Med 2008; 359: 2085-2086. Link here.
2. Treadway K. The future of primary care: sustaining relationships. N Engl J Med 2008; 359: 2086, 2088. Link here.
3. Bodenheimer T. The future of primary care: transforming practice. N Engl J Med 2008; 359: 2086, 2089. Link here.
4. Goroll AH. The future of primary care: reforming physician payment. N Engl J Med 2008; 359: 2087, 2090. Link here.
5. Starfield B. The future of primary care: refocusing the system. N Engl J Med 2008; 359: 2087, 2091. Link here.
6. Roland M. The future of primary care: lessons from the U.K. N Engl J Med 2008; 359: 2087, 2092. Link here.
7. Lee TH, Treadway K, Bodenheimer T, Starfield B, Goroll A. The future of primary care: perspective roundtable: redesigning primary care. Link here.
8. Bodenheimer T, Berenson RA, Rudolf P. The primary care-specialty income gap: why it matters. Ann Intern Med 2007; 146: 301-306. Link here.
9. Goodson JD. Unintended consequences of Resource-Based Relative Value Scale reimbursement. JAMA 2007; 298(19):2308-2310. Link here.
[Source : Health Care Renewal]
