Recently in Health History Category

Nearly two dozen medical schools that have recently opened or might open across the country, the most at any time since the 1960s and '70s.

These new medical schools are seeking to address an imbalance in American medicine that has been growing for a quarter century.

Many bright students were fleeing to offshore medical schools, or giving up hope entirely, when they could not get into domestic schools. 

In a weird aberration of "outsourcing", the medical field was outsourcing medical education to foreign countries, and then hiring foreign nationals to work in our American healthcare system, presumably at lower rates and longer hours.

During the 1980s and '90s only one new medical school was established.

"Huge numbers of qualified American kids were not getting into American medical schools or going abroad to study," Dr. Lawrence G. Smith, dean of the proposed Hofstra University School of Medicine, in Hempstead, N.Y., which is not yet recruiting students, said last week. "I think it was a kind of wake-up call."

The proliferation of new schools is also a market response to a rare convergence of forces:

• a growing population;
  
• the aging of the health-conscious baby-boom generation;
  
• the impending retirement of, by some counts, as many as a third of current doctors;
  
• the expectation that, the present political climate notwithstanding, changes in health care policy will eventually bring a tide of newly insured patients into the American health care system.

Colleges serve a "Gatekeeping Function" as well as education of new practitioners.  By carefully limiting the number of trained professionals, those with established careers have less competition -- and that can be important to personal care services that must maintain a full staff even when they have a light load of patients.  Under-staffing also causes long delays in getting an appointment, and has healthcare consequences when care is delayed.

If all the schools being proposed actually opened, they would amount to an 18 percent increase in the 131 medical schools across the country.

Read more at the REFERENCE SOURCE:  New York Times

Antioxidants increasingly have been praised for their benefits against disease and aging, but recent studies at Kansas State University show that they also can cause harm.

Researchers in K-State's Cardiorespiratory Exercise Laboratory have been studying how to improve oxygen delivery to the skeletal muscle during physical activity by using antioxidants, which are nutrients in foods that can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to the body. Their findings show that sometimes antioxidants can impair muscle function.

Antioxidant

"Antioxidant is one of those buzz words right now," said Steven Copp, a doctoral student in anatomy and physiology from Manhattan and a researcher in the lab. "Walking around grocery stores you see things advertised that are loaded with antioxidants.

I think what a lot of people don't realize is that the antioxidant and pro-oxidant balance is really delicate.

One of the things we've seen in our research is that you can't just give a larger dose of antioxidants and presume that there will be some sort of beneficial effect. In fact, you can actually make a problem worse."

David C. Poole and Timothy I. Musch, K-State professors from both the departments of kinesiology and anatomy and physiology, direct the Cardiorespiratory Exercise Laboratory, located in the College of Veterinary Medicine complex. Researchers in the lab study the physiology of physical activity in health and disease through animal models. Copp and Daniel Hirai, an anatomy and physiology doctoral student from Manhattan working in the lab, have conducted various studies associated with how muscles control blood flow and the effects of different doses and types of antioxidants.

Abnormalities in the circulatory system

Abnormalities in the circulatory system, such as those that result from aging or a disease like chronic heart failure, can impair oxygen delivery to the skeletal muscle and increase fatigability during physical activity, Copp said. The researchers are studying the effects antioxidants could have in the process.

"If you have a person trying to recover from a heart attack and you put them in cardiac rehab, when they walk on a treadmill they might say it's difficult," Poole said. "Their muscles get sore and stiff. We try to understand why the blood cells aren't flowing properly and why they can't get oxygen to the muscles, as happens in healthy individuals."

Some of the oxidants in our body, such as hydrogen peroxide, are helpful to increase blood flow.

Copp said there is a potential for antioxidants to reverse or partially reverse some of those changes that result from aging or disease. However, K-State's studies have shown that some of the oxidants in our body, such as hydrogen peroxide, are helpful to increase blood flow.

"We're now learning that if antioxidant therapy takes away hydrogen peroxide - or other naturally occurring vasodilators, which are compounds that help open blood vessels - you impair the body's ability to deliver oxygen to the muscle so that it doesn't work properly," Poole said.

Antioxidants can actually suppress key signaling mechanisms that are necessary for muscle to function effectively.

Poole said antioxidants are largely thought to produce better health, but their studies have shown that antioxidants can actually suppress key signaling mechanisms that are necessary for muscle to function effectively.

"It's really a cautionary note that before we start recommending people get more antioxidants, we need to understand more about how they function in physiological systems and circumstances like exercise," Poole said.

Mobility for advancing age and diseases like heart failure

Hirai said the researchers will continue to explore antioxidants and the effects of exercise training. Their studies are looking at how these can help individuals combat the decreased mobility and muscle function that comes with advancing age and diseases like heart failure.

"The research we do here is very mechanistic in nature, and down the road our aim is to take our findings and make recommendations for diseased and aging populations," Copp said.

The researchers have published their recent findings in several journals, including the Journal of Applied Physiology, Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology, Microvascular Research, The American Journal of Physiology and Experimental Physiology.

The Cardiorespiratory Exercise Laboratory has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association and intramural awards from the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Despite a general belief among physicians that extreme obesity is too difficult to treat, except with bariatric surgery, researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center have learned a substantial proportion of individuals with extreme obesity can lose 10-percent or more of their body weight through medical treatment that does not include surgery.

10% Loss Improves Risk Factors and Health

Furthermore, even though those individuals are still obese, they have improvements in risk factors and other health markers.

Weight Loss Surgery Not Often Affordable or Reimbursed by Insurance

"This is important, because surgery is not often affordable or reimbursed by insurance," said leading scientist Dr. Donna Ryan. "In fact, many medical treatments are frequently not reimbursed by insurance if they are for obesity. So this research is needed to show that primary care doctors are capable of helping obese patients lose weight to improve health, even those with extreme obesity. "

Ryan said losing only five-percent of body weight can reap healthy benefits for the extremely obese, and nearly 61-percent of those in her clinical trial achieved that. More than 40-percent lost 10-percent body weight or more.

Physicians Trained in Intensive Medical Intervention

Ryan and her team spread out across Louisiana to recruit and train practicing physicians and their office staffs in eight cities in what she called "intensive medical intervention," in which physicians used a combination of medication, low-calorie diets and behavior changes. All of the techniques were endorsed by national guidelines for obesity management. Training of physicians and their staffs took about a day and a half.

Funded by the Louisiana Office of Group Benefits, which provides health coverage for state employees, the research team contacted state employees, seeking participants to screen for and enroll in the trial. Nearly 400 participants enrolled in the two-year trial, called LOSS, using the nearest trained physicians.

About half of the participants received the intensive medical intervention, the other half received what Ryan called "usual care." 

Program Starts with Low-calorie Liquid Diet

Those in the intense intervention group were immediately placed on a low-calorie liquid diet. They gradually moved to a low calorie, highly controlled diet using meal replacements, and received weight loss medication and group behavioral therapy that included lessons in exercise, activity, self-monitoring and recommendations for walking, water exercise and weight training. The group sessions were supervised by office staff.

Recommended Activities

• exercise
• activity
• self-monitoring
  
• recommendations for walking
• water exercise
  
• weight training

Success in Daily Routine of Doctor's Practice

"We conducted this trial as close to the reality of a typical clinic setting as we could," Ryan said, "We didn't want to learn just if these strategies worked, but if they would work in the daily routine of a doctor's practice."

Challenge of Keeping Weight Off

Ryan noted that the continual challenge in weight loss is keeping weight off, and that means sticking with a routine.

More than 50% of the LOSS participants stuck with it for two years or more, keeping much of the weight off, but Ryan said that does leave room for improving weight loss maintenance.

The LOSS trial results were published in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is a campus of the Louisiana State University System and conducts basic, clinical and population research.

I'm more impressed every day with the quality and helpfulness of health information provided by reliable providers on the Web.  It's now possible to learn about common skin rashes or the benefits of exercise or cautions about a medication are...all from the privacy and handiness of your computer. 

My favorite health websites to research medical and health topics are WEBMD.com and MAYOCLINIC.com

They both have stellar reputations and a vast array of topics with information about symptoms, causes, cures, medications, and prevention options available in general medical practice.  As doctors become busier and more expensive, many consumers are taking more responsibility for educating themselves that narrow the possibilities so they can choose health care providers more effectively, explore lifestyle behaviors that keep them fit and healthy, and research medications and therapeutic options. 

And online research is a great part of your health kit!  Truly Solutions For Your Health Care!

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have discovered that

restricting consumption of glucose, the most common dietary sugar, can extend the life of healthy human-lung cells and speed the death of precancerous human-lung cells, reducing cancer's spread and growth rate.

Calorie-Intake Restriction: Longevity and Prevent Diseases

The research has wide-ranging potential in age-related science, including ways in which calorie-intake restriction can benefit longevity and help prevent diseases like cancer that have been linked to aging, said principal investigator Trygve Tollefsbol, Ph.D., D.O., a professor in the Department of Biology.

• Extend the Lifespan of Healthy Cells
• Kill Off Cancer-Forming Cells
  

"These results further verify the potential health benefits of controlling calorie intake." Tollefsbol said. "Our research indicates that calorie reduction extends the lifespan of healthy human cells and aids the body's natural ability to kill off cancer-forming cells."

The UAB team conducted its tests by growing both healthy human-lung cells and precancerous human-lung cells in laboratory flasks. The flasks were provided either normal levels of glucose or significantly reduced amounts of the sugar compound, and the cells then were allowed to grow for a period of weeks.

"In that time, we were able to track the cells' ability to divide while also monitoring the number of surviving cells. The pattern that was revealed to us showed that restricted glucose levels led the healthy cells to grow longer than is typical and caused the precancerous cells to die off in large numbers," Tollefsbol said.

In particular, the researchers found that two key genes were affected in the cellular response to decreased glucose consumption. The first gene, telomerase, encodes an important enzyme that allows cells to divide indefinitely. The second gene, p16, encodes a well known anti-cancer protein.

Healthy Cell Growth

"Opposite effects were found for these genes in healthy cells versus precancerous cells. The healthy cells saw their telomerase rise and p16 decrease, which would explain the boost in healthy cell growth," Tollefsbol said. "The gene reactions flipped in the precancerous cells with telomerase decreasing and the anti-cancer protein p16 increasing, which would explain why these cancer-forming cells died off in large numbers."

The UAB research into the links between calorie intake, aging and the onset of diseases related to aging is thought to be a first of its kind given that it used the unique approach of testing human cells versus laboratory animals.

Caloric Restriction

"Our results not only support previous findings from the feeding of animals but also reveal that human longevity can be achieved at the cellular level through caloric restriction," Tollefsbol said.

"The hope is that this UAB breakthrough will lead to further discoveries in different cell types and facilitate the development of novel approaches to extend the lifespan of humans," he added.

Tollefsbol's research team included Yuanyuan Li, Ph.D., M.D., a UAB biology research associate, and Liang Liu, Ph.D., a UAB assistant professor of medicine.

The group's study titled "Glucose Restriction Can Extend Normal Cell Lifespan and Impair Precancerous Cell Growth Through Epigenetic Control of hTERT and p16 Expression" has been published in the online edition of The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, or FASEB Journal.

The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research.

About UAB
Known for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to education at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, UAB is an internationally renowned research university and academic medical center. Providing a broad-based graduate and undergraduate curriculum, the UAB Department of Biology is a dynamic academic partnership. Most members of the graduate faculty have research specialties in comparative biochemistry, physiology, environmental microbiology and eco-physiology of aquatic organisms.

Surgeon General Declares Thanksgiving as "Family Health History Day"

Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin, today declared Thanksgiving Day 2009 to be the nation's sixth annual "Family Health History Day," when families can make plans for gathering their health history, with the aid of the My Family Health Portrait Web site.

"An important first step in preventing illness is learning about health conditions in our families that may put us at risk for inheriting diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, mental illness, and many others," said Dr. Benjamin.  "Discussing family health information with each other can often uncover things you never knew, simply because no one ever asked."

Your family health history can help direct your doctor, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner to specific tests or treatment plans you may need to take to prevent or delay disease.  For example, you can be tested for a heart condition or cancer because it's in your family history.

You can find the Office of the Surgeon General's
My Family Health Portrait Web site at
https://familyhistory.hhs.gov.

Once you have entered family health information, the on-line portal assembles the information into a medical "family tree" format that is useful for health care clinicians. This tool is free for anyone to use.

Filling out the "My Family Health Portrait" usually takes about 20 minutes.  You can share the Web portal with your family members to help fill in missing information. The portal also allows relatives to create their own family health history by adding to information already entered by another family member.

After filling in the information, you can save the information to your computer and -- if you want to -- share it with your doctor.  The Surgeon General's Web site does not retain the information once the tool has been used to assemble it.

"On this Thanksgiving holiday, I hope you and your family will take a few minutes to create a family health portrait," Dr. Benjamin said.   "Learning your family's health history is a valuable investment to make in your health and your family's health."