Category Archives: Health

Podcast Interviews: “Exercise Is Medicine” Author Judy Foreman

Science Talk logoHealth journalist Judy Foreman talks about her new book Exercise Is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging

downloadThis is Scientific American’s Science Talk, posted on April 24th, 2020. I’m Steve Mirsky. And under our current, often locked-down situation, it’s still really important to try to get some exercise. Judy Foreman is the author of the new book Exercise is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging. She’s a former nationally syndicated health columnist for the Boston Globe, LA times, Baltimore Sun and other places, and an author for the Oxford University Press.

Judy Foreman is the author of “A Nation in Pain” (2014), “The Global Pain Crisis” (2017), and “Exercise is Medicine,” (2020), all published by Oxford University Press, and was a staff writer at The Boston Globe for 22 years and the health columnist for many of these years. Her column was syndicated in national and international outlets including the Los Angeles TimesDallas Morning NewsBaltimore Sun and others.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College and has a Master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She spent six months as a guest reporter for The Times of London. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She was also host of a live, weekly call-in radio show on Healthtalk.com.

Judy has won more than 50 journalism awards, including a 1998 George Foster Peabody award for co-writing a video documentary about a young woman dying of breast cancer and the 2015 Science in Society award from the National Association of Science Writers.

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Coronavirus: Dire Health Consequences Of Using Ventilators (Prognosis)

Prognosis PodcastVentilators have become prized in hospitals across the U.S. and beyond because they are desperately needed to treat very ill Covid-19 patients. But they are also feared for the damage they can inflict, and for the slim odds of survival they offer. 

Michelle Fay Cortez and Olivia Carville report that it’s not yet clear what the long-term consequences ventilators have for those lucky enough to recover after having been on one.

Coronavirus: Race To Expand Antibody Testing And Investing In Public Health (Nature Podcast)

Coronapod ReportBenjamin Thompson, Noah Baker, and Amy Maxmen discuss the role of antibody tests in controlling the pandemic, and how public-health spending could curtail an economic crisis. Also on the show, the open hardware community’s efforts to produce medical equipment.

In this episode:

02:08 Betting on antibodies

Antibody tests could play a key role in understanding how the virus has spread through populations, and in ending lockdowns. We discuss concerns over their reliability, how they could be used, and the tantalising possibility of immunity.

News: The researchers taking a gamble with antibody tests for coronavirus

10:25 Economy vs public health, a false dichotomy

Jim Yong Kim, former president of the World Bank, argues that strong investment in public health is crucial to halt the ongoing pandemic and to prevent a global financial crisis. We discuss his work with US governors to massively increase contact tracing, and his thoughts on how researchers can help steer political thinking.

News Q&A: Why the World Bank ex-chief is on a mission to end coronavirus transmission

19:00 One good thing this week

Our hosts talk about staying positive, and pick a few things that have made them smile in the last 7 days, including a tiny addition to the team, a newspaper produced by children in lockdown, and a gardening update.

Six Feet of Separation, the newspaper staffed by kids

22:51 Open hardware

Researchers are stepping up efforts to design and produce ventilators and personal protective equipment for frontline medical staff. We hear how the open hardware movement is aiding these efforts, and the regulations that teams need to consider if their designs are to make it into use.

New Science Podcasts: How Coronavirus Kills People, Quantum Diamond Microscopes & Magnetism

science-magazine-podcastsCoronavirus affects far more than just the lungs, and doctors and researchers in the midst of the pandemic are trying to catalog—and understand—the virus’ impact on our bodies. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about how COVID-19 kills. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here, and all of our Research and Editorials here.

Also this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with Sarah about quantum diamond microscopes. These new devices are able to detect minute traces of magnetism, giving insight into the earliest movements of Earth’s tectonic plates and even ancient paleomagnetic events in space.

Diet Infographic: Most “Macronutrient Diets” Reduce Weight & Blood Pressure In 6 Months (BMJ)

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From a BMJ Study article (April, 2020):

Compared with usual diet, moderate certainty evidence supports modest weight loss and substantial reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure for low carbohydrate (eg, Atkins, Zone), low fat (eg, Ornish), and moderate macronutrient (eg, DASH, Mediterranean) diets at six but not 12 months. Differences between diets are, however, generally trivial to small, implying that people can choose the diet they prefer from among many of the available diets (fig 6) without concern about the magnitude of benefits.

Introduction

The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2018.1 In response, authorities have made dietary recommendations for weight management and cardiovascular risk reduction.23 Diet programmes—some focusing on carbohydrate reduction and others on fat reduction—have been promoted widely by the media and have generated intense debates about their relative merit. Millions of people are trying to lose weight by changing their diet. Thus establishing the effect of dietary macronutrient patterns (carbohydrate reduction v fat reduction v moderate macronutrients) and popular named dietary programmes is important.

Biological and physiological mechanisms have been proposed to explain why some dietary macronutrient patterns and popular dietary programmes should be better than others. A previous network meta-analysis, however, suggested that differences in weight loss between dietary patterns and individual popular named dietary programmes are small and unlikely to be important.4 No systematic review and network meta-analysis has examined the comparative effectiveness of popular dietary programmes for reducing risk factors for cardiovascular disease, an area of continuing controversy.

Read entire study

New Medical Podcasts: E-Cigarette Deaths, Heart Disease And 10-Weeks To Crush The Curve (NEJM)

New England Journal of Medicine Podcast This WeekFeaturing articles on deaths due to e-cigarette– or vaping-associated lung injury, apixaban for venous thromboembolism in cancer, the management of coronary disease in patients with advanced kidney disease, health-status outcomes in the ISCHEMIA-CKD trial,  and ten weeks to crush the curve. 

Additionally, renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system inhibitors in patients with Covid-19, and teasing the immune system to repair the heart; a review article on the care of patients with diabetic retinopathy; a case report of a man with high blood pressure, renal insufficiency, and hematuria; and Perspective articles on clinical and social risk adjustment, on prediction models, and on medical care during the pandemic.

Coronavirus: “The Patients Left Behind” (Prognosis Podcast)

Prognosis PodcastDoctors are delaying procedures and surgeries in order to save resources like hospital beds and ventilators for Covid-19 patients, and prevent the infection from spreading.

Emma Court reports on the difficult choices doctors are forced to make, and the danger that we’re creating another health care crisis.

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Analysis: “Coronavirus Pandemic – A Tale Of Two Washingtons” (Frontline)

An investigation into the U.S. response to COVID-19, from Washington State to Washington, D.C.

How did the U.S. become the country with the worst known coronavirus outbreak in the world? FRONTLINE and veteran science reporter Miles O’Brien investigate the American response to COVID-19, and examine what happens when politics and science collide.

News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious