Merry Christmas!
Mexico Suffers Deadliest Year Ever: Violence Hits Cabo, Tourist Havens
Mexico is on track to have the deadliest year ever since modern records began. In the first 10-months of 2017, there were more than 20,878 murders nationwide, as many in the war-torn country have blamed President Enrique Pena Nieto’s failure to tackle drug violence.
Read the source article here.
Myths debunked: Physicians’ incomes are too high and they are the cause of rising health costs
The deeply respected and revered Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Mike Royko, who wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune is remembered as a no-nonsense, tough but fair and probing reporter. Politicians cringed at the very mention of his name, especially if he was doing a story on them. When asked about a poll critical of physician earnings in April of 1993, he did not mince any words – in typical Royko style. In a column entitled, “Doctors’ Pay Poll Reflects a Whiny and Stupid Society,” he addressed those who felt that physicians were being paid too much. “Maybe the poll questions should have been phrased this way,” he began: “How much should a person earn if he or she must, (a) get excellent grades and a fine educational foundation in high school in order to, (b) be accepted by a good college and spend four years taking courses heavy in math, physics, chemistry and other lab work and maintain a 3.5 average or better, and, (c) spend four more years in grinding study in medical school, with the 3rd and 4th years in clinical training, working 80 to 100 hours a week and, (d) put in another three to ten years of post-graduate training, depending on your specialty and, (e) maybe wind up $ 100,000 in debt (editor’s note-more than $166,000 today) and, (f) then work an average of 60 hours a week, with many family doctors putting in 70 hours or more until they retire or fall over?”
He closed with one other pertinent comment: “Let us talk about medical care and one of the biggest problems we have. That problem is you, my fellow Americans. Yes, you, eating too much and eating the wrong foods; many of you guzzling too much hooch; still puffing away; getting your daily exercise by lumbering from the fridge to the microwave to the couch; doing dope; filling the big-city emergency rooms with gunshot victims; engaging in unsafe sex and catching a deadly disease while blaming the world for not finding a cure. You and your habits, not the doctors, are the single biggest health problem in the country. If anything, it is amazing that the docs keep you alive as long as they do.” Harsh words perhaps, but he uttered them 24 years ago, and there is still some truth in them.
Emphasis mine. I try not to get into this debate with anyone. But when I do, I don’t lose.
Source article here.
Vegetarian Resource Group Scientific Update
Eat more beans, eat more plants. Access the summaries here.
Are we destroying children’s resilience?
Protein Ingestion before Sleep Increases Overnight Muscle Protein Synthesis Rates in Healthy Older Men: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Conclusions: Protein ingested before sleep is properly digested and absorbed throughout the night, providing precursors for myofibrillar protein synthesis during sleep in healthy older men. Ingestion of 40 g protein before sleep increases myofibrillar protein synthesis rates during overnight sleep. These findings provide the scientific basis for a novel nutritional strategy to support muscle mass preservation in aging and disease. This trial was registered at www.trialregister.nl as NTR3885.
WOW. Small study size but if these findings hold up in future studies…
Diet Success may Depend on Your DNA
Perhaps as could be expected, both in earlier research and in anecdotal evidence in humans, the animal models tended not to do great on the American-style diet. A couple of the strains became very obese and had signs of metabolic syndrome. Other strains showed fewer negative effects, with one showing few changes except for having somewhat more fat in the liver. With the Mediterranean diet, there was a mix of effects. Some groups were healthy, while others experienced weight gain, although it was less severe than in the American diet. Interestingly, these effects held, even though the quantity of consumption was unlimited.
The results demonstrated that a diet that makes one individual lean and healthy might have the complete opposite effect on another. “My goal going into this study was to find the optimal diet,” Barrington said. “But really what we’re finding is that it depends very much on the genetics of the individual and there isn’t one diet that is best for everyone.”
Read the source article here.
This is the first research study I’ve come across exploring genetics and diet. This supports a belief I have about diet. Eat what your ancestors ate.
Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats
The number of cortical neurons is a hallmark of intelligence, the Vanderbilt University team said. They found that dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons while cats have about 250 million. Humans have about 16 billion.
Source article here.
I’ve had cats and dogs as pets. My cats did awful things when my first child was born.
My Australian Shepherd grand dog told me my dishwasher was on fire.
Case closed.
Sleeve gastrectomy lowers women’s tolerance to alcohol
A new study from a team of researchers at the University of Illinois and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that after undergoing sleeve gastrectomy, women could be legally intoxicated after drinking half the number of drinks than women who did not have this surgery.
Oops. Source article here.
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