Walking vs. Running to Improve Health, and Other Links
Runners are thiner than walkers; but walking may be better for heart disease.
A free market hospital — in the United States!
Tag: "heart disease"
Jun 11, 2013 | 15 comments | by John Goodman
How Half the Newly Insured Are Going To Be Insured
Medicaid patients experience significantly more deaths, longer hospitalizations and more serious complications from major surgery, cancers, heart disease, interventional procedures, transplants and AIDS than equivalent patients with the same illnesses and same health status but with private insurance ― objective data-based conclusions proven by medical scientists in the world’s top peer-reviewed medical journals like Annals of Surgery, Cancer, Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation and the American Journal of Cardiology. Medicaid outcomes are so shamefully poor that, when comparing patients with the same risk factors and same health status, Medicaid patients at times even fared worse than those with no insurance at all.
May 30, 2013 | 16 comments | by John Goodman
Immigrants Are Healthier until They Stay Here a While
As early as the 1970s, researchers found that immigrants lived several years longer than American-born whites even though they tended to have less education and lower income, factors usually associated with worse health. That gap has grown since 1980…Evidence is mounting that the second generation does worse. Exploratory estimates based on data from 2007 to 2009…show that Hispanic immigrants live 2.9 years longer than American-born Hispanics.
[One study] found that immigrants had at least a 20 percent lower overall cancer mortality rate than their American-born counterparts.
Mortality rates from heart disease were about 16 percent lower, for kidney disease 18 percent lower, and for liver cirrhosis 24 percent lower.
This is from The NYT.
May 20, 2013 | 12 comments | by John Goodman
Doesn’t Sound like the Cost Curve is Bending
Hospitals hoping to attract patients and build their brands are teaming up with medical-screening companies to promote tests aimed at consumers worried about potentially deadly heart disease or strokes. What their promotions don’t say is that an influential government panel recommends against using many of the tests on people without symptoms or risk factors…
Such screenings “not only can raise [health care] costs, but also can lead to additional testing that is harmful,” [Steven] Weinberger and two co-authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal in August, calling hospital involvement without disclosing potential downsides “unethical.” (Julie Appleby/Kaiser Health News)
May 15, 2013 | 12 comments | by John Goodman
Exercise Matters
There are four key patterns of results that emerge. First, the lagged effect of physical activity is almost always larger than the current effect. This suggests that current risk factors, not only obesity but also high blood pressure and heart rate, take years to develop, which underscores the importance of consistent physical activity to ward off heart disease. Second, we find that in general physical activity reduces risk factors for heart disease even after controlling, to some extent, for unobservable confounding influences. Third, not only recreational but work-related physical activity appears to protect against heart disease. Finally, there is evidence of a dose-response relationship such that higher levels of recreational exercise and other physical activity have a greater protective effect. Our estimates of the contemporaneous and durable effects suggest that the observed declines in high levels of recreational exercise and other physical activity can potentially account for between 12-30% of the increase in obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease observed over the sample period, ceteris paribus.
Source: NBER Working Paper.
Mar 08, 2013 | 10 comments | by John Goodman
More Children Means Longer Lives, and Other Links
Will having children make you live longer?
Should you trust your gut instinct?
Can “negative emotions” lead to alcohol and drug abuse?
Texting while walking is dangerous.
Can daylight savings time affect heart attacks?
Jan 24, 2013 | 9 comments | by Devon Herrick
The Secret of Ikaria
Ikaria, Greece, [is] a 99-square-mile island 30 miles off the coast of Turkey… [T]he island has 10 times as many siblings over the age of 90 compared with any other place in Europe…Ikarians also have less cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression and dementia than other parts of Europe, and men outlive women.
In addition to eating a healthy Mediterranean diet (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, healthy fats and fish and seafood), there are other key habits and values embraced by the Ikaria inhabitants.
Dan Buettner, author of Blue Zones: Nine Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, has seen those same habits in the other four Blue Zones: Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Loma Linda, Calif.; and Okinawa, Japan.
Janice Lloyd from USA Today.
Nov 14, 2012 | 10 comments | by John Goodman
The Cost of Drugs to Combat Normal Aging Exceeds the Cost of Drugs for Chronic Illnesses
The research suggests that cost and utilization of medications to treat conditions considered a normal part of aging, including those related to hormone replacement therapy, sexual dysfunction and mental alertness, are becoming so popular that they now rank third for cost impact only behind diabetes and cholesterol among commercially insured patients.
Researchers at Express Scripts in St. Louis looked at trends in prescriptions filled for aging medications among those commercially insured and found that in 2011 alone, per member cost for aging medications ($73.30) was 16 percent greater than the amount spent on both high blood pressure and heart disease medications ($62.80). The cost for diabetes medications was $81.12 and high cholesterol medications was $78.38.
Source: Health, Medical and Science Updates.
Nov 09, 2012 | 10 comments | by John Goodman
