Harvard Psychiatry Fails Again

HARVARD PSYCHIATRY FAILS AGAIN About a year ago I remarked upon the ethical tone deafness that characterizes Harvard psychiatry. It is bad enough that Harvard-MGH is the home of Joseph Biederman, MD, with whom Senator Grassley had so much fun a while back. Biederman is still in the news. It is also the home of Andrew Nierenberg, MD, who was rash enough to take on Marcia Angell in the New York Review over her well founded criticisms of the hyping...

What Causes Insulin Resistance? Part VI

In this post, I'll explore a few miscellaneous factors that can contribute to insulin resistance: smoking, glucocorticoids/stress, cooking temperature, age, genetics and low birth weight. SmokingSmoking tobacco acutely and chronically reduces insulin sensitivity (1, 2, 3), possibly via:Increased inflammationIncreased circulating free fatty acids (4)Paradoxically, since smoking also protects against fat gain, in the very long term it may not produce...

EHR Lowers Costs By 33% ... Oh ... Wait A Minute ... We Retract That Statement

There's this:Blue Cross Blue Shield of RI Pilot Lowered Monthly Costs By Up to 33% Through EHRsDecember 13, 2011Becker's Hospital Review.comSabrina RodakHealth plan members that received care from physician practices using electronic health records had an average of 17-33 percent lower monthly healthcare costs compared to members receiving care at non-EHR physician practices, according to a news release by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.BCBSRI...

"Barbarians at the Gate" - Making Private Equity Less Private, and Understanding Its Effects on Health Care

One good byproduct of the tumultuous everlasting 2012 campaign for the US presidency has been to shed light on a number of political and economic issues that had previously been ignored, especially those relating to the global financial crisis or great recession.  In turn, many of these issues may be relevant to our understanding of our ongoing health care dysfunction.  The latest issue to achieve prominence was the nature of private equity...

Paula Deen ~ A Classic Case of Type II Diabetes

Was anyone surprised by the revelation that Paula Deen has type 2 diabetes?   See here and here, for example.  Full disclosure here.  I'm a NorthEast girl and was raised pretty agnostic in terms of regional foods/cuisines.  Still, as an adult I've enjoyed learning different cooking styles, flavors and ways of preparing foods and I'm an admitted Food Network junkie.  But...

Signal Boost: Stop the Internet Blacklist Bills

If you went to google.com, boingboing.net, wikipedia, or dozens of other sites on the net today, you may have noticed they have been blacked out in protest. This was done to bring the public's attention to two bills before congress: SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act).Why the protest? Well, these bills were intended to curb online piracy and copyright infringement (good), but did so in a really technologically...

 our house was built in 1958 and it lacks storage, in a major way.  my husband constantly gets frustrated b/c we have piles everywhere...i have to admit, i am a pile maker.  i have stuff piled in lots of places: the kitchen corners tends to have phone chargers, lip gloss, pacifiers, and bananas in a nice organized pile.  my desk's alway is piled w/ magazines, receipts, coffee cups,...

The Team Behind the Team - Kathryn Brown

The Performance Nutritionist at Sport Wales, Kathryn Brown, works closely with athletes across Wales to develop nutrition strategies to support training and help optimise performance in competitions. With a BSc (Hons) in Sport and Exercise Science and an MSc in Sport and Exercise Nutrition from Loughborough University, Kathryn went on to complete a Performance Nutritionist internship with the English...