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6363. robertjayb - 11/8/2004 5:14:22 PM My double bypass nine years ago came about as a consequence of a botched (the doc's will never admit it) third angioplasty attempt. Despite cheery assurances I would be fine and fit in a brief time it took several weeks even with rehab therapy. We live on a slight hill and there is a park with jogging track about a block away at the bottom of the street. I could walk down and walk a few laps easily enough but I needed a ride back up the incline. I recognized the condition while watching Clinton and wanted to yell at the TV to get the guy out of some of the crowd scenes he attracted. Of course, Clinton being Clinton, the mobs were probably useful therapy.
I have attributed any possible diminution of my once-awesome mental powers to the effects of aging and booze. I had not heard of concerned's concerns about the heart/lung machine.
A concern that is concerning me presently is the rumored/alleged muscle impairing effects of my lipitor medication. Jar lids and such are getting to be a real challenge. 6364. arkymalarky - 11/9/2004 1:05:32 AM My great-uncle was one of the very first to get the surgery and he lived to be in his late 80s (I think he died--I'm losing track). 6365. thoughtful - 11/10/2004 8:26:06 PM Uh oh....looks like even too many vitamins can be a bad thing...now it's vit e!!!
Vitamin E
High doses of vitamin E, which millions of people take to protect themselves against heart attacks, Alzheimer's disease and other ailments, appear to actually increase the overall risk of dying, researchers reported today.
6366. Magoseph - 11/10/2004 8:36:42 PM thoughtful, rather scary article--I have to check what my husband takes now. I don't take any vitamins at all. Do you? 6367. thoughtful - 11/10/2004 8:46:11 PM I take tons of vitamins and I take herbs and flax seed oil, all in an attempt to get healthier. apparently though, even attempting to get healthy can kill you. go figure.
of course, I always crack up at articles like this one on vit e that note a 5% increase in death from all causes. So does this mean that people who take vit e become worse drivers? more accident prone? more likely to drown in a pool?
Perhaps all it means is that people take vit e because they already have health problems. perhaps just confounding cause and effect and simple correlation.... 6368. Magoseph - 11/10/2004 9:14:53 PM I just found that my husband gets only 100 IU in his morning pill. So he read the article and had the same thoughts as you had about it, toughtful. 6369. wonkers2 - 11/14/2004 9:21:31 PM The Centrum Silver multi-vitamin tablet I try to remember to take has 45 IU of vitamin E. I assume that amount is okay??? 6370. judithathome - 11/14/2004 10:29:34 PM I take massive amounts of Vit E and have for years...over 800 units a day at some periods of my life. (I credit it with staving off the onset of gray hair, for one pleasant side effect) My doctor once recommended 1000 units a day when a suspicious spot appeared on my annual mammogram...it went away in 3 months.
I think that study showed deaths from all sorts of things; the fact many people were taking vitamin e just happened to be a commonality they shared. And probably in one or two years, the study will be found to have been bogus and we'll all go back to taking vitamin e. 6371. judithathome - 11/14/2004 10:30:43 PM Wonk, the article said anything under 200 units was safe. But don't count on that being true in a few years...they once thought eggs were killing us all, too. 6372. robertjayb - 11/15/2004 6:24:41 PM 'Kangaroo Care' said good for preemies...
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Continuous skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her premature infant appears to help them to thrive just as well as traditional care in incubators, according to a new report.
In developing countries where mothers and doctors have less access to medical technology, this technique, known as kangaroo care, "can make the difference between life or death," lead author Dr. Juan Gabriel Ruiz-Pelaez of Javeriana University in Bogota, Columbia told Reuters Health.
Now, accumulating evidence suggests that kangaroo care, which costs much less than an incubator, would also help premature babies born in wealthier countries, even if their parents have access to incubators and other traditional tools for tiny babies, Ruiz-Pelaez noted.
6373. thoughtful - 11/15/2004 6:28:07 PM Gee, what a shock. If you're a suffering premie, which would you prefer...being locked in a box hooked up to all kinds of tubes, hoses and needles, trapped in a room full of strangers under bright lights? or in your mother's arms absorbing warmth from her body?
Actually being locked in a box under bright lights...isn't that a form of torture?
They talk about ICU psychosis as a common occurrence for adults. How could it possibly be any easier on infants?
6374. wonkers2 - 11/17/2004 4:19:37 PM New Scanner Stirs Cardiology Debate Here 6375. angel-five - 11/24/2004 2:38:42 AM So there's this kid at the condominium gym who gets some kind of stipend for being in there while it's open. There are two people who do it; the one of 'em just sits in the other room watching television and hollers at you to sign in and out. The other guy is this young man, really nice dude who knows a whole lot about working out (he goes to, or went to, Penn State and apparently spent most of his time hanging out in the gym with the ball players there). And he'll train people.
Now, I was an athletic trainer for a while and came within an eyelash of going to school for it, but this guy really knows his stuff. I've been going to the gym about three times a week since I moved down to MD, mostly working upper body and abs and hitting the heavy bag, and it's been working very well for me, but this guy saw me working my shoulders (dumbbell flies and reverse butterflies) and just said 'why don't you save shoulders for last and I'll guide you through a workout for 'em when you're done with everything else'. I'd already done two sets each as part of the rotation but I said 'sure'.
Now, I know what this dude had in mind -- he's big on low weight burn exercises where you grab like five pound dumbbells and do calisthenic-like exercises with them. And I've never been big on those, especially since my focus right now is building explosive strength and not slow-twitch muscle, but what the hell.
Right now I can barely lift my damned arms. I have to drive for six hours tomorrow and I have the sneaking suspicion that my arms are going to feel like molten lead when I'm doing it. And mind you I've been working out three times a week for a while now. My deltoids are about ready to rip out of my skin.
Yes, I think I'm gonna pay for this tomorrow. Oh well, time to go get some sushi. 6376. thoughtful - 11/24/2004 7:15:21 PM I think it's a grand conspiracy to get people to accept everything on faith as facts become mutable and truth undiscernible.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that its widely publicized estimate that 400,000 Americans die each year from being too fat is wrong and that it will submit a new, lower figure to the medical journal that published its original estimate last March....
Dr. Glantz estimates that the number of deaths from obesity to be more like 100,000 than 400,000. And the inflated numbers of obesity deaths, he added, represent " a very, very fundamental mistake that was made in the paper, which they have done nothing to address."
6377. thoughtful - 12/22/2004 4:09:50 PM Now there's this whole celebrex brohaha.
The tracings go back to a more rapid drug approval process that was designed to bring drugs on line faster for terminal patients like AIDS victims who would die anyway, with the thought that this would give them a better chance at survival. Of course it's since morphed into bringing all drugs on line faster than before with the general population being the lab rats.
Now i recognize that all drugs are toxic...duh. That's why they require a prescription from a doc. I also recognize that they carry risks. That's why a medical professional is supposed to help you through the process and help analyze the risks and benefits.
But this celebrex thing is over the top. Sounds more like corporate espionage to me. The study was done at higher doses than recommended for purposes not recommended and so why should the be surprised at results not expected?
So some are blaming it on ads to consumers. I have never gone to a doc and requested a drug I saw on tv. Ever. Rather I try to avoid the new ones as they are often insufficiently tested and extremely expensive. I often request the older drugs if I need any at all...though it's difficult to even get the docs to prescribe them.
Rather, the docs choose the drugs, usually based on the free samples stocked in their ample closets provided by the detail men. Patients wait unattended in the dr's office while docs meet with the detail men. Benefit to poor patients of the free samples, yes, but who's minding the cost of continuing the rx when the samples run out and they are stuck paying 10x or more for the drug that last year's generic handled well.
I'm not happy about the entire situation, but see little hope of anything improving. 6378. alistairconnor - 12/22/2004 4:48:46 PM I have never gone to a doc and requested a drug I saw on tv. Ever.
Of course, you are not the typical consumer. Otherwise they wouldn't bother to advertise on TV.
Over here, a doctor is not allowed to give drugs to a patient -- other than administering them on the spot in an emergency. Prescription, pharmacy. That seems a good, clear-cut rule that limits somewhat the corruptive effect of the drug pushers. 6379. PelleNilsson - 12/22/2004 5:35:48 PM Same here. Also, last year saw some serious efforts to clean up the unhealthy and corrupt symbiosis between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry in the form of lavish entertainment, consultancy fees and so forth. 6380. wonkers2 - 12/22/2004 11:06:57 PM The "ethical" drug industry is out of control, like the investment banking and mutual fund industry has been, not to mention Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Enron, WorldCom, et al ad infinitum. What an idiot the CEO of Pfizer appeared to be on television a couple of days ago. He doesn't even know how to speak correct English, let alone speak convincingly. 6381. Ulgine Barrows - 12/23/2004 10:02:32 AM The "ethical" drug industry is out of control
wonkers2, you are a delight.
I was taking some 'stuff' for my asthma, and my doctor abruptly switched me to something else, muttering "it changes the structure of the lungs." 6382. Ulgine Barrows - 12/23/2004 10:04:50 AM She didn't want to talk about the old medicine that changed the structure of my lungs, I did note.
The words 'class action suit' ran through my head briefly.
Then I decided to breathe.
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