In the total study population, treatment with 100 mg of low-dose aspirin per day did not affect survival free of dementia or disability. Among the people randomly assigned to take aspirin, 90.3 percent remained alive at the end of the treatment without persistent physical disability or dementia, compared with 90.5 percent of those taking a placebo. Rates of physical disability were similar, and rates of dementia were almost identical in both groups.
For the full NIH news release click here.
More than 40% of the elderly experience loneliness on a regular basis, according to a 2017 study. That loneliness puts them at a higher risk of cognitive decline, depression, stroke, and multiple other problems; even the symptoms of the common cold are more severe when someone is lonely. Seniors who report feeling lonely also have a 45% increased risk of mortality.
This is one of the coolest start ups I’ve read about. Check it out here.
Happy older people live longer, according to researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. In a study published today in Age and Ageing, the scientific journal of the British Geriatrics Society, the authors found that an increase in happiness is directly proportional with a reduction in mortality.
This is one of the few Asian studies to have assessed the association between happiness and mortality among older people, while accounting for several social factors, such as loneliness and social network, therefore extending the generalisability of the findings to non-Western populations.
Stay happy my friends. Check out the entire article here.
Public-health experts worry about the increasingly potent options available, and the striking number of constant users. “Cannabis is potentially a real public-health problem,” said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University. “It wasn’t obvious to me 25 years ago, when 9 percent of self-reported cannabis users over the last month reported daily or near-daily use. I always was prepared to say, ‘No, it’s not a very abusable drug. Nine percent of anybody will do something stupid.’ But that number is now [something like] 40 percent.” They argue that state and local governments are setting up legal regimes without sufficient public-health protection, with some even warning that the country is replacing one form of reefer madness with another, careening from treating cannabis as if it were as dangerous as heroin to treating it as if it were as benign as kombucha.
But cannabis is not benign, even if it is relatively benign, compared with alcohol, opiates, and cigarettes, among other substances. Thousands of Americans are finding their own use problematic in a climate where pot products are getting more potent, more socially acceptable to use, and yet easier to come by, not that it was particularly hard before.
Read the entire Atlantic article here.
A new study in the journal Addiction finds that, after legalization, the use of marijuana among students at an Oregon college increased relative to that of students in states where the drug is still illegal. But, in a twist, the rise was mainly seen among those students who had also reported drinking heavily recently. The Oregon students who binge drank were 73 percent more likely to also report using marijuana, compared to binge-drinking students in states that didn’t legalize marijuana.
Interestingly, though, this study does suggest that legal marijuana, at least among college kids, does not seem to have much of a substitution effect. Contrary to the predictions of some legalization enthusiasts, teens don’t seem to be foregoing binge drinking—arguably a more physically harmful practice—in order to smoke weed. Instead, they’re doing both.
Read another Atlantic article on the topic here.
Binge drinking AND smoking pot. A fine combination.
For more charts go to the source article.
Hip fractures had the highest excess mortality (33% higher in men and 20% higher in women) at one year post-fracture. One-year excess mortality was 20-25% after femur or pelvis, 10% following vertebral, 5-10% following humerus, rib or clavicle, and 3% following lower leg fractures.
Source article here.
Read the ZeroHedge article here.
Mexico posted its highest homicides on record, with a new government report Sunday showing murders in the country rose by 16 percent in the first half of 2018.
The Interior Department said there were 15,973 homicides in the first half of the year, compared to 13,751 killings in the same period of 2017.
According to the AP, the record-breaking homicides have surpassed the violence seen during the dark years of Mexico’s drug war in 2011, along with exceeding all government data since records began in 1997.
Liver disease deaths jumped by 65 percent in the United States, from 1999-2016, disproportionately affecting adults ages 25-34. The increase in deaths among young adults was driven entirely by alcohol-related liver disease, according to a new study.
Liver specialist Elliot B. Tapper, M.D., says he’s witnessed the disturbing shift in demographics among the patients with liver failure he treats at Michigan Medicine. National data collected by Tapper and study co-author Neehar Parikh, M.D., M.S., confirms that in communities across the country more young people are drinking themselves to death.
Read the source article here.
Translation:
The penalties for criminal violations of HIPAA are substantial — generally a fine of up to $50,000 and up to one year in prison. A violation of HIPAA committed under false pretenses, such as disclosing a patient’s information for a reason the provider knows to be untrue (such disclosing a patient’s protected health information on the premise that the patient is an imminent threat to the public when the provider knows this to be false), can carry a fine of up to $100,000 and imprisonment for up to five years.
A gentle reminder for those of us in the financial services industry, especially life underwriters who deal with protected health data on a daily basis.
lifeunderwriter.net 
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