“Amateur coders” with diabetes have hacked glucose pumps and written their own software to link blood glucose monitoring data to the amount of insulin delivered.
DIY diabetes pump
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Tag Archives: health
chemotherapy and antibiotic resistance
Antibiotic resistance will make some current cancer treatments “obsolete” or “unviable”, according to this article.
the stats on Bernie Sanders’s health risks
Slate has an interesting article on health risks for someone Bernie Sanders’s age with Bernie Sanders’s known health condition. The author points out that these estimates can be done for Bernie because he has released a fair amount of health information (although still not everything the author would like), while the other older candidates have not.
- His 12-month risk of a heart attack, stroke, or death is about 6%.
- His risk of being hospitalized for any reason between now and November is about 30-35%.
- His odds of surviving a first presidential term are about 65%, and his odds of surviving a second about 40%.
Ask Professor Obvious
Today on Ask Professor Obvious, it turns out that when you toss a heavy object into the air, it falls toward the Earth not away from it. And while that may not be completely obvious to everyone, most people may already be aware that Owning a car is linked to less physical activity and weight gain.
the “best” health advice from 2019
The Week has cherry picked a few studies from 2019 as best. Although they did pick ones with large sample sizes, what would be “best” to me would be some kind of meta-analysis of all studies published and what they said on balance, with some kind of grading for quality and communication of the uncertainty involved. That would be awesome journalism, but I imagine it would be expensive. The great news is that if you add up all the percentages that doing this and that can reduce your chances of death, you can live forever! Anyway, here is my quick summary:
- Exercise, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains just never go out of style. More whole foods (the thing, not the chain) and less processed foods in general seem to be a very good idea. Seriously, just orient your life style around these things and it is very unlikely the scientific consensus will change some day and tell you it was a bad idea.
- Napping is good for you – this particular study says “five minutes to an hour once or twice a week”. I’m not surprised that rest is good for the heart, but I thought there was an emerging consensus that maintaining a consistent schedule on all days was good, and this seems to contradict that a bit.
- Parents are stressed out while kids are young, then ultimately glad they had the kids later in life. This doesn’t surprise me since I am living through the stressed out part, but I do find it helpful to put myself in my future self’s shoes and ask if I would regret having children. In fact, my wife and I did that when we made the decision to have children, and the answer was and is no, we have no regrets. The distinction between happiness in the moment and overall life satisfaction also comes to mind.
- Aspirin and ibuprofen seem to help your heart, but also raise your risk of internal bleeding. It’s probably best not to self-medicate.
- Smoking and getting hit on the head, even gently, are not good for you.
sleep optimization
This article is about devices that can supposedly help you get more out of whatever hours of sleep you manage to get. It sound suspicious, but appears to be backed by at least some research and scientific/medical opinion.
One of the most promising techniques to do so works a bit like a metronome counting the brain into the correct rhythms. Experimental participants wear a headset that records their brain activity and notes when they have started to make those slow waves. The device then plays short pulses of gentle sound, beginning in sync with the brain’s natural slow waves, at regular intervals over the night. The sounds are quiet enough to avoid waking the participant, but loud enough to be registered, unconsciously, by the brain.
BBC
One of the devices commercially available is made by Phillips and costs around $370 (I do not get any sort of commission if you click on this link or buy one.)
bacteria, viruses, and fungi, oh my!
In the category of new diseases to worry about, and just in case you have not yet perused the latest issue of the Journal of Fungi, Candida auris is a really dangerous yeast fungus making the rounds in hospitals.
On the Origins of a Species: What Might Explain the Rise of Candida auris?
Candida auris is an emerging multidrug-resistant yeast first described in 2009 that has since caused healthcare-associated outbreaks of severe human infections around the world. In some hospitals, it has become a leading cause of invasive candidiasis. C. auris is markedly different from most other pathogenic Candida species in its genetics, antifungal resistance, and ability to spread between patients. The reasons why this fungus began spreading widely in the last decade remain a mystery. We examine available data on C. auris and related species, including genomic epidemiology, phenotypic characteristics, and sites of detection, to put forth hypotheses on its possible origins. C. auris has not been detected in the natural environment; related species have been detected in in plants, insects, and aquatic environments, as well as from human body sites. It can tolerate hypersaline environments and higher temperatures than most Candida species. We explore hypotheses about the pre-emergence niche of C. auris, whether in the environmental or human microbiome, and speculate on factors that might have led to its spread, including the possible roles of healthcare, antifungal use, and environmental changes, including human activities that might have expanded its presence in the environment or caused increased human contact.
June 2019 in Review
Most frightening and/or depressing story:
- The world economy appears to be slowing, even though U.S. GDP is growing as the result of the post-2007 recovery finally taking hold, juiced by a heavy dose of pro-cyclical government spending. The worry is that if and when there is eventually a shock to the system, there will be little room for either fiscal or monetary policy to respond. Personally, the partisan in me is thinking any time before November 2020 is as good a time for any for a recession to hit the U.S. I am a couple decades from retirement, and picturing that bumper sticker “Lord, Just Give Me One More Bubble”. Of course, this is selfish thinking when there are many people close to retirement and many families struggling to get by out there. And short-term GDP growth is not the only metric. The U.S. is falling behind its developed peers on a wide range of metrics that matter to people lives, including infrastructure, health care costs and outcomes, life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, addiction, suicide, poverty, and hunger. And it’s not just that we are no longer in the lead on these metrics, we are below average and falling. Which is why I am leading the charge to Make America Average Again!
Most hopeful story:
- There have been a number of serious proposals and plans for disarmament and world peace in the past, even since World War II. We have just forgotten about them or never heard of them.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
- In technology news, Elon Musk is planning to launch thousands of satellites. And I learned a new acronym, DARQ: “distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR) and quantum computing”. And in urban planning news, I am sick and tired of the Dutch just doing everything right.
the latest on male birth control
Wired’s Gadget Lab, strangely enough, has an episode on male birth control. This is not a gadget, but a hormonal pill men could take. This has been a goal for many decades with little or no progress, and now it sounds like it may be within reach in the near future. Opinions will vary, but I think anything that gives us more control over our reproductive options is good for individual freedom and for society as a whole.
what’s new with longevity treatments
This article in The Week mentions a few things.
Humans grow fewer blood vessels in their muscles with age, which is believed to result in the gradual breakdown of vital organs. The same pattern exists in mice. In 2018, Harvard researchers fed mice a chemical to manipulate the gene associated with blood vessel growth and found that old mice subsequently were able to run on a treadmill 56 percent longer. While that work continues, biohackers are transfixed by nootropics — “smart drugs,” amino acids, and other supplements that purportedly boost cognitive abilities and prevent brain aging.
Mainstream scientists and doctors are still saying nay. I don’t know but exercising to keep the oxygen level up seems like a good idea.