Weight loss and Weight Chat Blog

All the recent talk about health care reform has me thinking about an article I read last year about who pays for health care. So let’s begin with a question; namely, who do you think pays for health care? Is it employers? The government? Insurance companies? Individuals? If you’re like most Americans, you probably believe that employers pay the bulk of their workers’ insurance premiums and that governments pay for Medicare and Medicaid (and some will remember to add in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program – SCHIP). Some of you will no doubt believe that insurance companies pay for a lot of our health care since that’s where so many of the bills seem to go. In actuality, according to the article I read in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the answer is that it’s individuals and households who pay for the entire health care bill. Moreover, […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

Most women are aware of the need to follow certain nutrition and lifestyle guidelines after they become pregnant, but did you know that it’s actually important to begin these regimens well before you begin to start a family? Most likely you knew about recommendations to take pre-natal vitamins and not to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes during pregnancy, but it’s equally important to start these behaviors much earlier, before you plan to become pregnant, so that you’ll be “covered” from the moment pregnancy occurs. But recent research has found that few women follow pre-pregnancy recommendations. In fact, a study just published online in the British Medical Journal found that only three percent of women who became pregnant were taking the recommended vitamins and limiting alcohol intake during the three months prior to conception.
One of the most important nutritional needs before and during pregnancy is folic acid. The American College of […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

Not long ago, I recommended you avoid CT angiography as a screening test for heart disease unless you were absolutely convinced that it was necessary and not just being ordered either because it’s a new, extremely cool, technology, or because your doctor has an equity position in the machine (meaning he or she or the practice profits every time the test is run because they own or lease the equipment). I noted that as a screening test for people without symptoms of heart disease, CT angiography has yet to be proven effective. Moreover, even though the test is quite short, there is significant radiation exposure from the X-rays used to obtain the high-tech images (orders of magnitude greater than that used in a simple chest X-ray).But let’s say that you actually have symptoms of coronary artery disease. Is CT angiography an appropriate diagnostic test for you? […]

Original post by natalieb and weightlossopinions.com

St. John’s wort, an herb long thought to be effective for the treatment of depression, is used widely in many countries for this purpose and is available over-the-counter in the United States (but not approved by the FDA as an antidepressant). But clinical studies have sometimes yielded conflicting results, in part because of variations in study designs (such as the exact definition of depression) as well as variations in the preparation of the herbal extract and the dosages used. But a new meta-analysis has reviewed 29 separate studies involving nearly 5500 patients and found that, overall, St. John’s wort was more effective than placebo and similar in efficacy to both older antidepressants (such as those called tricyclics of which amitriptyline is typical) and newer ones (such as those called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, of which Prozac and Celexa are typical). Most of the patients studied […]

Original post by natalieb and weightlossopinions.com

The world mourns the loss of Paul Newman, a great actor, philanthropist and humanitarian. He was the embodiment of the Yiddish word “mensch,” meaning a person of great character, integrity and honor. And while it has been widely reported that his death was due to lung cancer and that he was, formerly, a heavy smoker, whether his lung cancer was caused by smoking is unknown. What is known is that smoking greatly increases one’s risk of lung cancer. But what’s also known is that up to 15 percent of lung cancer deaths occur in people who have never smoked. Moreover, lung cancer in never smokers is, according to the Lung Cancer Alliance, “the sixth biggest cancer killer in the United States.”
Over 215,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008 and the majority will die within 12 months. More people die […]

Original post by natalieb and weightlossopinions.com

Two new checklists designed to help people over the age of 50 learn what they can do to stay healthy have been released by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the AARP. They provide all the information that women and men over 50 need to monitor and maintain their health. The two checklists are reprinted below, but originals can be obtained from the AHQR website, under the headings Tools and Resources, Health Care Consumers.

Women: Stay Healthy at 50+

Checklists for Your Health
Use the checklists in this flyer to help you stay healthy at 50+. The checklists help answer your questions about what daily steps you can take for good health, whether you need medicines to prevent disease, and which screening tests you need and when to get them.Select to download print version […]

Original post by natalieb and weightlossopinions.com

HealthTalk has partnered with CarePages to bring you another useful and, as always, free service. You may have already noticed some of their advertisements appearing on many HealthTalk pages, which have a logo that looks like this:

CarePages are free, easy-to-use Web pages that help family and friends communicate when a loved one is receiving care. It takes just a few minutes to create a CarePage, share it with friends and family, and build a community of support.
CarePages help families stay connected, informed and supported. When a loved one is hospitalized or receiving care, it can be difficult to communicate. With CarePages, updates are shared via e-mail automatically, and visitors can leave messages for the patient and family on the Web page. CarePages give families an emotional lift that is hard to deliver in any other way.

As described on the CarePages website, “Eric and Sharon Langshur started CarePages after their newborn […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

My father will turn 89 in early April and he was recently described by a visiting physical therapist as “a fall waiting to happen.” So the March 7, 2008 article in the CDC’s “MMWR” publication about seniors falling is one of personal interest to me. And since the CDC reports that falls are the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injury in persons 65 years and older, it’s likely that this subject will resonate with HealthTalk readers concerned with their personal risk of falls as well as with the risks to their parents, friends and other loved ones. The CDC has estimated that in a three month period in 2006, about 5.8 million persons over 65 fell and of those about 1.8 million sustained some type of fall-related injury. The overall estimate is that each year in the United States, nearly one third of older adults […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

Tysabri [natalizumab] has become the third biologic medication approved for the treatment of Crohn’s disease. Unlike the other two approved biologics, Remicade [infliximab] and Humira [adalimumab], Tysabri does not work by inhibiting tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Because of this it offers an alternative biologic treatment for those patients who either cannot tolerate or who do not respond well enough to the TNF inhibitors. Instead, it binds to a protein on the surface of certain types of white blood cells and prevents them from leaving the blood stream to enter the tissues where they would otherwise cause inflammation. Tysabri has already been approved for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.
Tysabri is approved for use in adults with moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease with evidence of inflammation who have had an inadequate response to, or are intolerant of, conventional Crohn’s therapies and TNF-inhibitors. Tysabri is given by […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com

Tysabri (natalizumab) has become the third biologic medication approved for the treatment of Crohn’s disease. Unlike the other two approved biologics, Remicade (infliximab) and Humira (adalimumab), Tysabri does not work by inhibiting tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Because of this it offers an alternative biologic treatment for those patients who either cannot tolerate or who do not respond well enough to the TNF inhibitors. Instead, it binds to a protein on the surface of certain types of white blood cells and prevents them from leaving the blood stream to enter the tissues where they would otherwise cause inflammation. Tysabri has already been approved for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.
Tysabri is approved for use in adults with moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease with evidence of inflammation who have had an inadequate response to, or are intolerant of, conventional Crohn’s therapies and TNF-inhibitors. Tysabri is given by […]

Original post by admin and weightlossopinions.com