Survival strategies

Unusual Presentations of COVID-19

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“Even in a bad flu season, you never see something like this; it’s just unheard of,” said Harlan Krumholz, MD, a Yale cardiologist…”When they get to the ICU, we are seeing lots of people with acute kidney injuries; lots of people developing endocrine problems; people having blood sugar control issues, coagulation issues, blood clots. We are just waking up to the wide range of ways this virus can affect people. Our ignorance is profound,” but physicians “recognize that this thing has the capability of attacking almost every single organ system, and it may or may not present with respiratory symptoms.”

Read the entire Medscape article at Unusual Presentations of COVID-19

This shit is real and it is scary.

But hey, let’s go to the beach!

Floridamorons

Photo credit: as noted in the photo but stolen shamelessly from the Twitter feed #FloridaMorons

 

Meat Intake and Colorectal Polyps

/ SupremeCmdr / 5 Comments

Meat Intake and Colorectal Polyps

Research professor of medicine Martha Shrubsole, Ph.D., and colleagues at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have published the first study to evaluate intakes of meat, cooking methods and meat mutagens and risk of developing sessile serrated polyps (SSPs, also called sessile serrated lesions). Shrubsole previously reported that consuming high levels of red meat increased the risk of developing all types of polyps, but that the likelihood of developing SSPs was two times greater than the risk of developing adenomas and hyperplastic polyps (HP).

Conventional colorectal adenomas are the precursor lesions for most colorectal cancers. SSPs, however, represent an alternative pathway to carcinogenesis that may account for up to 35 percent of colorectal cancers. Because a diagnostic consensus for SSPs was not reached until 2010, few epidemiologic studies have evaluated risk factors.

 

Any Polyp Type Raises CRC Risk

/ SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

A finding of any type of polyp in the colon increases the risk for colorectal cancer (CRC), according to new findings from a large Swedish study.

At 10 years, the cumulative colorectal cancer incidence was 1.6% among patients with hyperplastic polyps, 2.5% among those with sessile serrated polyps, 2.7% for tubular adenomas, 5.1% for tubulovillous adenomas, and 8.6% for villous adenomas, as compared with 2.1% for the control group.

However, a higher risk for colorectal-related death was only observed in patients with sessile serrated polyps, tubulovillous adenomas, or villous adenomas.

The study was published online March 16 in Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.

Any Type of Polyp Increases the Risk for Colorectal Cancer

Boldface sections are mine.

I had my first virtual visit with my physician yesterday.  I mentioned that I was postponing my colonoscopy this year for pandemic reasons.  She said that’s fine, don’t worry about it.  I read this article today.  Now I know why I’m on a three year callback.

 

Covid-19 Buzz Cut – Day One – 03.29.20

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I am back in my home office learning and sharing about shelter in place.  Yesterday my son helped me cut my hair.  He’s been cutting his own hair since medical school.  As the doctor inspected my work he said,

“You missed a few spots.”

So he finished up what I started.

Today I researched “essential” businesses.

Barbershops are not considered “essential”

I expected this hence the shelter in place buzz cut.

Yes, it’s real short.  Top view.

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Backside view.

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Step It Up!

/ SupremeCmdr / 3 Comments

Previous studies have been done on step counts and mortality. However, they were conducted primarily with older adults or among people with debilitating chronic conditions. This study tracked a representative sample of U.S. adults aged 40 and over; approximately 4,800 participants wore accelerometers for up to seven days between 2003 and 2006. The participants were then followed for mortality through 2015 via the National Death Index. The researchers calculated associations between mortality and step number and intensity after adjustment for demographic and behavioral risk factors, body mass index, and health status at the start of the study.

They found that, compared with taking 4,000 steps per day, a number considered to be low for adults, taking 8,000 steps per day was associated with a 51% lower risk for all-cause mortality (or death from all causes). Taking 12,000 steps per day was associated with a 65% lower risk compared with taking 4,000 steps. In contrast, the authors saw no association between step intensity and risk of death after accounting for the total number of steps taken per day.

Higher daily step count linked with lower all-cause mortality

I am so screwed.