Live Long and Prosper

“I hope I die before I get old” -- The Who My Generation Composed in 1965 by Pete Townshend, currently 65 years old

The good news is that people are living longer all the time.  This trend has been happening as long as records have been kept and shows no sign of stopping.  Better hygiene and sanitation, safer living environments, and antibiotics have nearly eradicated death in childhood and early adulthood.  As progress continues battlin...

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A Meta-Post about Meta-Research

… or, How to Love the Null Hypothesis First, bear with me for an important definition.  “Meta” used as a prefix, has come to mean self-reference, or “an X about X”.  For example, meta-analysis is an analysis of other analyses.  If you are arguing with your boyfriend about how unfairly he argues, you’re having a meta-argument, an argument about other arguments.  You with me? I usually write about a current study in the medical literature, but this week I’m writing about a researcher, John Ioann...
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Meridia Withdrawn from US Market

… or, So Long Sibutramine Over two thirds of Americans are overweight.  A safe and effective medication that helps people lose weight would be a boon for the health of millions who are struggling to take off the pounds.  Unfortunately, this has been an extremely tough nut to crack for the pharmaceutical industry. The existing medications for weight loss have been only modestly effective, and last week the choices became fewer.  Meridia (the brand name of the medicine sibutramine) was voluntari...
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Sleep Deprivation Sabotages Dieting

The correlation between obesity and inadequate sleep has been known for some time.  But does one cause the other or are they coincidental?  It’s also known that inadequate sleep increases hunger, an effect I can attest to from my memories of medical training.  I always ate more than usual on the days following nights spent in the hospital. So people who don’t sleep enough feel hungrier and presumably eat more than people who get enough sleep.  Is that the only mechanism connecting poor sleep to...
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Spiriva: A New Option for Asthma Patients

Patients whose asthma symptoms are only mild and intermittent usually don’t need daily asthma medications.  They just use a rescue inhaler, like albuterol, whenever symptoms come up. Patients with daily or almost daily symptoms, on the other hand, need daily preventive medications to control their asthma.  The first choice for a preventive asthma medicine is a low dose of an inhaled steroid.  If this first choice doesn’t control symptoms well, patients generally face a choice between increasing...
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