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How To Find A Good Psychotherapist
It's a difficult, yet brave and courageous moment when someone makes the decision to pursue mental health therapy. More difficult than the decision to go to therapy is the decision of who to choose as a therapist.So, how does someone find a good psychotherapist?Types of TherapistsFirst, it is important to think about the type of therapist you think is best for your presenting symptoms and issues. There are many kinds of mental health therapists, but sometimes understanding "who does what" can be confusing. Here is a list to help identify the specialties and degrees therapists can hold.PsychologistsIn the United States, Doc...
Source: Dr. Deborah Serani - May 15, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs

Hard Cases: The Traps of Treating Pain - NYTimes.com
I hadn't seen Larry in a dozen years when he reappeared in my office a few months ago, grinning. We were both grinning. I always liked Larry, even though he was a bit of a hustler, a little erratic in his appointments, a persistent dabbler in a variety of illegal substances. But he was always careful to avoid the hard stuff; he said he had a bad problem as a teenager and was going to stay out of trouble.It was to stay out of trouble that he left town all those years ago, and now he was back, grayer and thinner but still smiling. Then he pulled out a list of the medications he needed, and we both stopped smiling.According t...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 15, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs

What RDoC Research Might Look Like
The month of May is a violent thingIn the city their hearts start to singWell, some people sing, it sounds like they're screamingI used to doubt it, but now I believe itMonth Of May ------The Arcade FireToday is Mental Health Month Blog Day, sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA). It's designed to:...educate the public about mental health, decrease stigma about mental illness, and discuss strategies for making lasting lifestyle and behavior changes that promote overall health and wellness.If the public has been following the recent hullabaloo about how to diagnose mental illnesses, they ...
Source: The Neurocritic - May 15, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Stuck In A Chicago Suburb!
Ugh. Being stuck in the house all day, day after day, week after week, is just not healthy! Especially when the weather looks so nice outside! A nice surprise was that as everything started turning green and the lawn care company came to maintain our lawn, slowly tulips began peeking their way out of the garden bed and have bloomed! When you buy a house in the middle of winter that is covered in inches of snow, you have absolutely NO IDEA what you are getting yard-wise. We have some very, very pretty trees - some flowering, tulips in several flower beds, bushes, but for some rea...
Source: bipolar.and.me - May 14, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Source Type: blogs

NEJM Article: Massachusetts Payment to Physicians Sites Old Statistics to Support Anti Industry Bias
Over the last several years, we have covered the Massachusetts Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Manufacturer Code of Conduct (PCOC), enacted in 2009. Subsequently, the Massachusetts legislature rolled back some of the reporting requirements last fall. And we recently noted that Massachusetts saw a 3% drop in payments to physicians in 2011. Consequently, several researchers—led by Aaron S. Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H.—recently published a viewpoints article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) analyzing the distribution of industry payments to Massachusetts physicians. The authors maintain that �...
Source: Policy and Medicine - May 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs

D-Blog Week Day 2: We, The Undersigned
It's D-Blog Week...join your favorite diabetes bloggers as we write about/share/mouth off about different diabetes-related topics all week. Links and learn more at: Bitter-sweet Diabetes!Tuesday: Recently various petitions have been circulating the Diabetes Online Community, so today let’s pretend to write our own. Tell us who you would write the petition to – a person, an organization, even an object (animate or inanimate) - get creative!! What are you trying to change and what have you experienced that makes you want this change?A PETITION FOR GREATER SEXINESS AMONG PEOPLE WITH DIABETES(I'm pretty much addressi...
Source: Dorkabetic - May 14, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Hannah McDonald Source Type: blogs

Being Married to a Person with Depression or Bipolar: 6 Survival Tips
Some sobering statistics: Depression has a much greater impact on marital life than rheumatoid arthritis or cardiac disease. Ninety percent of marriages where one person is bipolar ends in divorce. Persons diagnosed with bipolar disorder have three times the rate of divorce as the general public, which is about 50 percent. This is all to communicate this message: marriages in which one person suffers from depression or bipolar disorder can be extremely fragile. I know, because I’m in one. Here are six tips that have helped us and other couples I know defy the statistics. 1. Cut Through the Crap If you are married to ...
Source: World of Psychology - May 13, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Therese J. Borchard Tags: Bipolar Depression Family General Marriage and Divorce Relationships Arthritis Bathroom Tiles Bedroom Closet Bipolar Disorder Cardiac Disease Couples Crap Denial Embarrassing Photos First House Good Doctors Long Time Pe Source Type: blogs

Tax and Expenditure Limits: The Challenge of Turning Mitchell's Golden Rule from Theory into Reality
Daniel J. Mitchell The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is to make sure the private sector grows faster than the government. But it’s very easy for me to bluster about “all that’s required” to satisfy this Golden Rule. It’s much harder to convince politicians to be frugal. Yes, it happened during the Reagan and Clinton years, and there also have been multi-year periods of spending discipline in nations such as Estonia, N...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 13, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Daniel J. Mitchell Source Type: blogs

Be Dubious About Longevity Hotspots
"Cui bono?", "to whose benefit?", is a question that should never be far from mind. It is rarely the case that the loudest threads in our grand, connected cultural conversation represent the best, the most useful, or the most virtuous of what is possible. That is just as true in any subculture as it is in the mainstream: follow the money and much becomes clear. Longevity hotspots might not be a term familiar to you, but Blue Zones might be thanks to a fair degree of publicity for that latter term. They mean the same thing, but the latter is a brand rather than a description. A small industry associated with this brand is ...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 13, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 13th 2013
In this study we used the hMTH1-Tg mouse model to investigate how oxidative damage to nucleic acids affects aging. hMTH1-Tg mice express high levels of the hMTH1 hydrolase that degrades 8-oxodGTP and 8-oxoGTP and excludes 8-oxoguanine from both DNA and RNA. Compared to wild-type animals, hMTH1-overexpressing mice have significantly lower steady-state levels of 8-oxoguanine in both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of several organs, including the brain. hMTH1 overexpression prevents the age-dependent accumulation of DNA 8-oxoguanine that occurs in wild-type mice. These lower levels of oxidized guanines are associated with in...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

How to know if your toddler has autism
About half of all children in the United States with an autistic spectrum disorder are diagnosed at age five or older according to a May 2012, NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics) data brief. However, many parents are suspicious much sooner. As part of autism awareness month, we bring you clues in toddler development that can alert you to a potential issue. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 11, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Conditions Neurology Pediatrics Source Type: blogs

DWP spanked by UKSA. Please help obtain a repeat for its ESA stats abuse
Reblogged from The SKWAWKBOX Blog: The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) has issued a new rebuke to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) for its abuse of statistics to misrepresent the effects of its benefits cap in forcing people into work. The UKSA also issued a letter to the Trades Union Congress (TUC) outlining its findings. It's worth seeing both in full: These documents are as emphatically damning as the official language of such letters can make them. Read more… 353 more words (Source: Dawn Willis sharing the News and Views of the Mentally Wealthy)
Source: Dawn Willis sharing the News and Views of the Mentally Wealthy - May 11, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: Dawn Willis Tags: Mental Health, The News & Policies. Source Type: blogs

CMS Provider Charge Comparison Data
Working your way through the large CMS Provider Charge Data file will take a bit of time and effort, but it’s certainly a gold-mine of comparitive costs. Charges for the top 100 DRGs with and without major complications / comorbid conditions, is searchable across locations and organizations. Downloadable as an Excel or comma delimited file. http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/index.html (Source: MSSPNexus Blog)
Source: MSSPNexus Blog - May 11, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: rkschwab Tags: Transparency cms cost compare CMS hospital compare Source Type: blogs

The Pot President
Hendrik Hertzberg on the hypocrisy of the hip. In a blog post at the New Yorker last week, Hendrik Hertzberg spotlighted a recent joke made by the President of the United States at the White House Correspondents dinner. In reference to the rapidly changing media landscape, Obama said: “You can’t keep up with it. I mean, I remember when BuzzFeed was just something I did in college around two A.M. (Laughter.) It’s true! (Laughter.)” The days of expressing a cringing contrition for your “youthful experimentation,” or claiming that you didn’t inhale, or clearly over. But of course, the president’s joke wa...
Source: Addiction Inbox - May 11, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs

What Mental Health Means to Me
It is Mental Health Awareness month, and I began to contemplate what mental health means to me. Mental health and wellness is the state at which one feels, thinks, and behaves. Mental health can be viewed on a continuum, starting with an individual who is mentally well and free of any impairment in his or her daily life, while someone else might have mild concerns and distress, and another might have a severe mental illness. Everyone has “stuff” that they keep contained in a tightly sealed plastic bag. There are some who occasionally can’t help but let the “stuff” leak, and there are those with the bag wide ope...
Source: World of Psychology - May 10, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Kristi DeName Tags: Disorders General Health-related Mental Health and Wellness Policy and Advocacy Psychology Research Anger Management Anxiety Disorder Art Therapy Chronic Migraines Health Awareness Month Health Concern High Blood Pressure Holis Source Type: blogs

Podcast interview with Cancer Treatment Centers of America CEO Steve Bonner (transcript)
This is the transcript of my recent interview with Cancer Treatment Centers of America CEO Steve Bonner. David Williams: This is David E. Williams from the Health Business Group. I’m speaking today with Steve Bonner, CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Steve, thanks for joining me today. Steve Bonner: You’re very welcome, David. It’s great to speak with you again. David Williams: What is Cancer Treatment Centers of America and how does it differ from other well-known cancer centers? Steve Bonner: Cancer Treatment Centers of America is a growing chain of hospitals that s...
Source: Health Business Blog - May 10, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: David E. Williams of the Health business blog Tags: Hospitals Patients Podcast Source Type: blogs

7 Reasons to Move In Together
This guest article from YourTango was written by Kim Olver. Should you go from boyfriend and girlfriend to roommates? According to the CDC, more and more couples are cohabiting. About 30 percent of these living arrangements will result in marriage, 27 percent of couples will break up and 32 percent will stay living together. This tells me that some couples are using it as a test run for marriage, while others are not necessarily “practicing” marriage, but are thinking about marriage as a possibility. So how do you know if it’s the right decision for you? Here are seven things to consider. 1. Young ...
Source: World of Psychology - May 9, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: YourTango Experts Tags: General Relationships YourTango Average Lifespan Boyfriend And Girlfriend Cdc Cdc Reports Committed To One Couples Financial Stability Guest Article Life Partner Marriage Mature Metamorphosis Olver Parents Perspective R Source Type: blogs

Primer for Clinical Researchers in the Emergency Department
EMA Virtual Issue from Andrew Gosbell & Tony Brown Research is important to emergency medicine as it provides the scientific underpinning for optimal patient care. A Primer for Clinical Researchers in the Emergency Department, a five part series guest edited by Professor Franz Babl, has been combined into a single FREE full-text online ‘Virtual Issue’ This Virtual Issue series addresses key topics for clinicians who conduct research as part of their work in the ED, including: Ethical and regulatory background Research science and conduct How to write a scientific paper Multicentre research How to describe data...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - May 9, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Mike Cadogan Tags: Clinical Research Education eLearning EMA Emergency Medicine Evidence Based Medicine Featured Journal emergency medicine australasia FOAM Franz Babl Professor Franz Babl Source Type: blogs

Esther Mcvey Letter Arrives @ Parliament
Reblogged from jaynelinney: Almost a month ago Debbie Sayers & I wrote a letter to Esther McVey disputing her use of statistics & offering a wide range of evidence which demonstrated just this. 866 people signed the letter and many left harrowing tales of suffering as a result of 'Welfare Reform'; which were then appended to the end of the signatures; the letter was posted yesterday by recorded delivery to arrive at Parliament today. Read more… 218 more words (Source: Dawn Willis sharing the News and Views of the Mentally Wealthy)
Source: Dawn Willis sharing the News and Views of the Mentally Wealthy - May 9, 2013 Category: Mental Illness Authors: Dawn Willis Tags: Mental Health, The News & Policies. Source Type: blogs

Another Drug for Alzheimer's Flops
Another promising treatment for Alzheimer's has failed to provide any evidence that it reduces cognitive decline and preserves functional abilities in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. +Alzheimer's Reading Room Another Phase 3 clinical trial for the purpose of finding a treatment for Alzheimer's has failed and ended. Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) failed to stop Alzheimer's in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. This is just another round of dissapointing and disconcerting news for the entire Alzheimer's community worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) someon...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - May 9, 2013 Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs

Alzheimer's Disease: Gammagard Fails
From the company press release: Baxter Announces Topline Results of Phase III Study of Immunoglobulin for Alzheimer's Disease DEERFIELD, Ill., May 7, 2013 - Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX) today announced that its Phase III clinical study of immunoglobulin (IG) did not meet its co-primary endpoints of reducing cognitive decline and preserving functional abilities in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. The Gammaglobulin Alzheimer's Partnership (GAP) study was conducted by Baxter in collaboration with the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), a clinical trial consortium supported by the United S...
Source: BrainBlog - May 8, 2013 Category: Neurologists Source Type: blogs

Time to revamp psychiatry and mental health in light of modern neuroscience?
Transforming Diagnosis (article by Thomas Insel, Director of the NIMH): “In a few weeks, the American Psychiatric Association will release its new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)…While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM...
Source: SharpBrains - May 8, 2013 Category: Neurologists Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Health & Wellness dementia DSM-5 mental-disorders Mental-Health NIMH psychiatry RDoC schizophrenia Thomas Insel Source Type: blogs

Tales of the Wayfaring Generic Manager - from Ritz Carlton Hotels to Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital to Cancer Treatment Centers of America
In 2006, we wondered what a former hotel manager, Mr Gerard van Grinsven, admittedly known for putting the "wow" back in the Detroit Ritz-Carlton, would be doing as a hospital CEO. This seemed at the time like a real "wow" example of how generic managers were taking over health care. Mr Grinsven had extensive experience in the hospitality field, but no known background in health care. Organic Local Produce, "Wellbeing Centers," Gourmet Dining, Wedding Receptions, and Corporate FunctionsOver the next few years, Mr van Grinsven's Henry Ford West Bloomfield hospital did make a name for itself. In 2009, ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - May 8, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: hospitals generic managers deception Henry Ford Health System Cancer Treatment Centers of America ill-informed management Source Type: blogs

Bureau of Justice Statistics Reports Firearm Homicides are Down 39% Since 1993; Continues to Severely Under-report Defensive Gun Use
Trevor Burrus Yesterday, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a special report, Firearm Violence, 1993-2011. Not surprisingly, at least for those who follow crime statistics, the report shows that firearm homicides went down 39% between 1993 and 2011. The report also reconfirms many things that gun-rights supporters have been saying for decades: that less than 2% of prison inmates in 2004 bought their firearm from a “flea market or gun show,” and that “2% of state inmates and 3% of federal inmates were armed with a military-style semiautomatic or fully automatic firearm.” Also not surprising is that ver...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 8, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Trevor Burrus Source Type: blogs

A good thing: More and more biology papers showing up in arXiv
Good to see some more papers in microbiology & genomics and related topics going to the preprint server arXiv. If you are interested in population and evolutionary genetics a good place to keep up with papers on this topic in arXiv is Haldane's Sieve. The good folks there in essence make a separate post about each paper of interest and then people can comment there on the papers, since the commenting functions at arXiv are, well, challenged. In areas related to this blog, here are some recent papers in arXiv: Adaptive reference-free compression of sequence quality scores Abundance-weighted phylogenetic diver...
Source: The Tree of Life - May 8, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Heritage Immigration Study and Government Spending
Chris Edwards Conservative and libertarian scholars are clashing over the findings and political implications of the new Heritage Foundation immigration study. The study spans 92 pages and is jam-packed full of statistics and detailed calculations. I’ll leave the immigration policy to my colleagues who are experts in that area. To me, the study provides a very useful exploration into how massive the American welfare state has become. Here are some highlights: “There are over 80 of these [means-tested] programs which, at a cost of nearly $900 billion per year, provide cash, food, housing, medical, and other services t...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 7, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs

Yo, Robot!
We interrupt this long-form essay to report on my afternoon at our Second Annual Symposium on Human-Robot Interaction. Really. I was there because I study human-human interaction and I've been roped in -- well alright, I didn't really mind, it's kind of interesting -- to letting computer scientists play with my concepts, and they might be useful for getting machines to communicate with us more usefully.I won't go into that in a lot of depth here, but what I do want to talk about is where the nerds think this whole thing is headed. You may or may not like it. One of the potential applications for interacting robots is to be...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 6, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs

Evidence Against an Influence of Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes on Human Longevity
A range of studies suggest that variations in mitochondrial DNA influence human longevity, which is what we'd expect given the mass of evidence for the importance of mitochondria DNA damage in aging, and the role of mitochondrial function in many age-related diseases. Here, however, is a study showing no statistically identifiable effects resulting from different mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in the old: Inherited genetic variation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) could account for the missing heritability of human longevity and healthy aging. Here, we show no robust association between common genetic variants of mtDNA and fra...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 6, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

May 2013 Update on Medical Innovation
As the weeks go by, we try to collect stories and news coverage regarding physician-industry collaboration and the breakthroughs and successes that come from such relationships. Below is a short summary of some recent physician-industry-academic-government collaborations and the impact they have had on individual patients, the U.S. healthcare system, and beyond. In light of the recently proposed budgets for FY 2014, numerous scientific and medical groups have urged Congress and the Obama Administration to increase funding for research. The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Researchers of America (PhRMA) recently note...
Source: Policy and Medicine - May 6, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs

Why your friends on Twitter are (probably) more interesting than you, and what to do about it
Statistical logic means that your lover has probably had more sexual partners than you. Similarly, at the gym, most of the other users train more frequently than you. And your friends have more friends than you do - this last observation was labelled the "friendship paradox" by sociologist Scott Feld. It's a fact because popular people get counted in more people's tallies of how many friends their friends have (here's more explanation). Now thanks to a new paper by Nathan Hodas and his colleagues, we can add to this humbling stats lesson the fact that for most users of Twitter, our followers and f...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 6, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Christian Jarrett Source Type: blogs

Does Announcing a Resolution Help You Keep It?
A recent post of mine, Beware of ‘decoy habits’, spurred a lot of conversation, and it’s clear to me that the subject is much more complex and interesting than I initially realized. Readers made many thought-provoking comments. One reader pointed to research that suggests that talking about a goal can lead to the false feeling of already having achieved that goal. I’ve seen that research — and I’ve also seen research suggesting that talking about a goal can help you stick to that goal, by making you feel more committed, and also more accountable to the people you’ve told. So it seems to go both wa...
Source: World of Psychology - May 5, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Gretchen Rubin Tags: General Habits Happiness Self-Help Barking Up The Wrong Tree Decoy Eric Barker External Accountability Glass Of Wine Great Time Lead Literature Lot Nature People Personal Experience Roommate Yoga Source Type: blogs

RDoC Dimensional Approach for Research vs. DSM-5 for Diagnosis
Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in the U.S., recently announced that NIMH will be re-orienting its research away from DSM categories:...While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clust...
Source: The Neurocritic - May 5, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Urinary Incontinence -- How We Beat Alzheimer's Disease Incontinence -- The Solution
Dealing with urinary incontinence is difficult, more so when the person suffers from Alzheimer's disease. By Bob DeMarco +Alzheimer's Reading Room My mother suffered from urinary incontinence long before I moved to Delray Beach to take care of her. My sister Joanne was the first to notice the problem. Urinary Incontinence (UI) is a stigmatized, underreported, under-diagnosed, under-treated condition that is erroneously thought to be a normal part of aging. One-third of men and women ages 30-70 believe that incontinence is a part of aging (National Institute of Health, NIH). You could put everything I knew abou...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - May 5, 2013 Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs

Relief From Death Anxiety: In Your Medicine Cabinet Already?
The radio show Wait, Wait....Don't Tell Me! has a weekly segment called "Bluff the Listener" during which a caller listens to three unbelievable stories and then guess which one of the three is actually true. Much to my surprise, this week's "true" (yet unbelievable) story is about evidence that acetaminophen might relieve existential angst. (Here's a direct link to the audio segment.) Julius Axelrod (Source: National Institutes of Health) Really? Good ole' Tylenol might relieve bothersome thoughts about the ultimate threat to our existence? How could I not investigate this further, if only because t...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - May 5, 2013 Category: Palliative Carer Workers Authors: Lyle Fettig, MD Source Type: blogs

More People Die by Suicide Than Car Accidents
Suicide. It remains a topic few health professionals want to discuss openly with their patients. It remains a topic avoided even by many mental health professionals. Policy makers see it as a black hole without an obvious solution. And now grim new statistics confirm a disturbing trend — more people are taking their own lives than ever before in the U.S. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released statistics yesterday showing that 33,687 people died in motor vehicle accidents, while nearly 5,000 more — 38,364 — died by suicide. Middle-aged Americans are making up the biggest leap in the...
Source: World of Psychology - May 4, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: John M. Grohol, Psy.D. Tags: Depression Disorders General Policy and Advocacy Adolescents Arias Baby Boomer Black Hole Car Accidents Cdc Cdc Officials Centers For Disease Control Centers For Disease Control And Prevention Cohorts Deputy Director Explanat Source Type: blogs

High Blood Pressure Education Month
By Web Team High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a serious condition that affects an estimated 1 in 3 adults in the United States and can lead to coronary heart disease, kidney failure, stroke, and other health problems. In honor of High Blood Pressure Education Month, we'd like to tell you about some resources that can help you to keep your blood pressure at a healthy level. The Web site of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute includes an explanation of what high blood pressure is and what it is caused by, information about who is at risk for the condition, suggestions for living with hypertension, and lin...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - May 4, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: Web Team Source Type: blogs

5 Reasons Couples Move In Together
This guest article from YourTango was written by Kim Olver. According to LiveScience, the CDC reports that more and more couples are co-habiting. About 30 percent of these living arrangements will result in marriage, 27 percent of couples will break up and 32 percent will stay living together. This tells me that some couples are using it as a test run for marriage, while others are not necessarily “practicing” marriage, but are thinking about marriage as a possibility. So how do you know if it’s the right decision for you? Here are a few things to consider. 1. It’s cheaper, and young adults are t...
Source: World of Psychology - May 3, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: YourTango Experts Tags: General Relationships YourTango Average Lifespan Cdc Cdc Reports Co Habiting Cohabiting Committed To One Couples Exit Strategy Financial Environment Financial Independence Financial Stability Guest Article Household Life Pa Source Type: blogs

Study Finds New Iodine Mouthwash May Impact LDL Cholesterol
20 Apr 2013 Clinical trials continue. Data presented to oral medicine conferenceCleaning your mouth and cleaning your arteries could be as simple as a once-a-day oral rinse if additional studies confirm preliminary findings about a new product.Biomedical Development Corporation (BDC) on April 23 will present data to the American Academy of Oral Medicine showing that its oral rinse was safe and effective at fighting gingivitis in a recent clinical trial. But the most surprising finding of the study was that users of the oral rinse showed lower LDL cholesterol levels than the placebo group."We didn't expect to see any d...
Source: Dental Technology Blog - May 3, 2013 Category: Dentists Source Type: blogs

Drug Assay Numbers, All Over the Place
There's a truly disturbing paper out in PLoSONE with potential implications for a lot of assay data out there in the literature. The authors are looking at the results of biochemical assays as a function of how the compounds are dispensed in them, pipet tip versus acoustic, which is the sort of idea that some people might roll their eyes at. But people who've actually done a lot of biological assays may well feel a chill at the thought, because this is just the sort of you're-kidding variable that can make a big difference. Dispensing and dilution processes may profoundly influence estimates of biological activity of comp...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 3, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Drug Assays Source Type: blogs

"Incidental Finding": No Symptoms and Rarely Dangerous: Now What??
Discussion Blog)
Source: Bioethics Discussion Blog - May 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs

Which Prescription Drugs Do Americans Abuse Most?
By: Laura Sciuto According to a 2010 study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, approximately 7 million people in the United States -- or 2.7 percent of the population -- annually abuse prescription drugs. This abuse primarily occurs when people take medication not prescribed to them or take their own prescription drugs at a higher dosage than recommended by their doctor. The most commonly abused prescription drugs fall into three categories: Opioids (pain relievers), depressants and stimulants. Below is a breakdown of each category, compiled using the latest statistics from the National Institute on Drug Abuse: O...
Source: PharmaGossip - May 3, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs

Chances of getting in MD & DO
by Enot (Posted Thu May 02, 2013 11:02 pm)WIth the instate advantage, you may have a shot, but all together, the odds are against you. Applying with your GPA and no MCAT is not a good idea. Applying in August or September really puts you behind the curve. What about applying next year? If you concentrated solely on the MCAT this summer, and got a really great score (aim for 35+), and then took the next year to beef up your GPA, you would be a pretty solid applicant. I may be misunderstanding your position, but if you can take the extra time. Taking an extra year to prepare is not the end of the world. There are some classe...
Source: Med Student Guide - May 2, 2013 Category: Medical Students Source Type: blogs

A Question for Medicaid Deniers
Michael F. Cannon A lot of people are writing about the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment results, released yesterday, which found zero evidence that expanding Medicaid to the most vulnerable people targeted by ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion improves their physical health. Here’s my take on the study and its implications. Megan McArdle, Shikha Dalmia, Avik Roy, and Peter Suderman are making solid contributions to the debate. Zeke Emanuel gets points for making an admission against interest (“It’s disappointing”). Points also to Jennifer Rubin for her take on what the OHIE says about ObamaC...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 2, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs

Aveo Gets Bad News on Tivozanib
The kinase inhibitor tivozanib (for renal cell carcinoma) was shot down this morning at an FDA committee hearing. There are going to be a lot of arguments about this decision, because feelings have been running high on both sides of the issue. And this has been an issue for over a year now. As that FierceBiotech story puts it: Tivozanib hit its primary endpoint, demonstrating a slim but statistically significant improvement in progression-free-survival of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma when compared to Nexavar (sorafenib). But the sorafenib arm experienced a slightly better overall survival rate, and Aveo ha...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 2, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs

Civil Liberties After Boston--My Take
Jim Harper It’s to be expected that privacy will suffer a bear market after a terrorist attack or attempt. I’ve seen worse, of course, but was concerned this week to read a piece by Richard Epstein on the Hoover Institution web site that I think sounds needless anti-privacy notes. Professor Epstein is not only an important public intellectual, but a Cato adjunct scholar of which we’re proud, and a friendly professional colleague (to whose defense I’ll leap when he’s wronged). The issue is what policies governments might adopt toward the end of terrorism prevention. Professor Epstein finds the...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 2, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jim Harper Source Type: blogs

E. O. Wilson's "Letters to a Young Scientist"
I've been reading E. O. Wilson's new book, Letters to a Young Scientist. It's the latest addition to the list of "advice from older famous scientists" books, which also includes Peter Medawar's similarly titled Advice To A Young Scientist and what is probably the grandfather of the entire genre, Ramón y Cajal's Advice for a Young Investigator. A definite personal point of view comes across in this one, since its author is famously unafraid to express his strongly held opinions. There's some 100-proof Wilson in this book as well: . . .Science is the wellspring of modern civilization. It is not just "another way of knowing...
Source: In the Pipeline - May 2, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Book Recommendations Source Type: blogs

Molecular Genetics and Genomic Approaches to Explore Fusarium Infection on Wheat Floral Tissue
from Martin Urban and Kim E. Hammond-Kosack writing in Fusarium: Genomics, Molecular and Cellular Biology:The most destructive phase of the wheat-Fusarium interaction commences at anthesis and results in lower grain yields, reduced grain quality and the contamination of grain with harmful mycotoxins. Current control strategies are often inadequate. Globally, F. graminearum is the most problematic species. A recent microscopic study has revealed a hitherto unsuspected latent phase where hyphae symptomlessly advance the infection through living wheat floral tissues prior to host cell death. Various forward and reverse geneti...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - May 2, 2013 Category: Microbiology Source Type: blogs

Patterns of maternity care in English NHS hospitals
This report presents findings of a study of hospital episode statistics data which found that wide variation in practice and outcomes exists across maternity units in England. The report makes a number of recommendations including calls for units to use the indicators as a basis for reflection upon current practice and recommends that units should audit themselves against existing clinical guidelines to help identify causes of variation at a local level. It also highlights the need for clinicians to take ownership of their own data in order to drive up data quality. Report RCOG - news (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - May 2, 2013 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Library Service Tags: Local authorities, public health and health inequalities Quality of care and clinical outcomes Source Type: blogs

Post Doctoral Position - Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig (Obleser lab)
The Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and the Max Planck Research Group “Auditory Cognition” (headed by Jonas Obleser) are now offering a Postdoctoral researcher position, for initially 2 years, preferably starting by October 2013. Successful candidates will have a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, or natural sciences. Prior experience with either fMRI or EEG/MEG methods is expected, and an interest in further applying and combining both domains in their research is highly desirable. Candidates with a background and/or interest in advanced fMRI methods are p...
Source: Talking Brains - May 2, 2013 Category: Neurologists Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs