Sunday, January 19, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Fwd: Google contacts
'Google's smart contact lens: what it does and how it works
Wearables may be on everyone's list as the major tech trend of the year, but Google just kicked it up to a whole new level. The company announced a project to make a smart contact lens on its official blog Thursday.
But the lens isn't going to be used to deliver your e-mail straight into your skull — at least not yet. This project is working to tackle one of the biggest health problems facing the country today: diabetes.
The soft contact lens that Google's is introducing — it's still just a prototype — houses a sensor between two layers of lenses that measures the glucose levels in tears. The lens also features a small — really small — antenna, capacitor and controller, so that the information gathered from the lens can move from your eye to a device where that data can be read and analyzed.
According to a short explanation of the technology provided by Google, the chip and sensors are mounted on a small plastic-like film. A tiny pinhole in the lens lets tear fluid seep over the glucose monitor to get regular readings. Right now, the company said, it can get a level reading once every second.'
Since when did Google get into the medical devices business?
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Fwd: Sugar/Liver
'Nov. 1, 2013 — Despite current beliefs, sugar intake is not directly associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Rather, high-calorie diets promote the progression of this serious form of liver disease.
Researchers conducted a double-blind study of healthy, but centrally overweight men to compare the effects of high intakes of two types of sugar, glucose and fructose, in two conditions -- weight-maintaining (moderate-calorie diet) and weight-gaining (high-calorie diet). In the weight-maintaining period, men on neither diet developed any significant changes to the liver. However, in the weight-gaining period, both diets produced equivalent features of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, including steatosis (fatty liver) and elevated serum transaminase and triglycerides. These findings indicate that fructose and glucose have comparable effects on one's liver, and calorie intake is the factor responsible for the progression of liver disease.
"Based on the results of our study, recommending a low-fructose or low-glycemic diet to prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is unjustified," said Professor Ian A. Macdonald, study author and faculty of medicine and health sciences, University of Nottingham, UK. "The best advice to give a patient is to maintain a healthy lifestyle with diet and exercise. Our study serves as a warning that even short changes in lifestyle can have profound impacts on your liver."'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131101112406.htm
Monday, January 13, 2014
First large-scale study finds cognitive training aids in long-term function in older people
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/first-large-scale-study-finds-cognitive-training-aids-in-long-term-function-in-older-people/2014/01/12/f7ef34be-7bba-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Fresh hope on stem cells use to regenerate human organs
http://littlewww.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php/features/science/141297-fresh-hope-on-stem-cells-use-to-regenerate-human-organs
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Match 3 in a row game iPhone/Android game.
At times I get somewhat addicted to The Lorax Truffalufa game. I wasn’t thrilled with the movie, but the game is great fun.
I have heard that video games are a good way for older people to keep their mind active.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Re: Trans Fat
'In 1957, a fledgling nutrition scientist at the University of Illinois persuaded a hospital to give him samples of arteries from patients who had died of heart attacks….
It would be more than three decades before those findings were widely accepted — and five decades before the Food and Drug Administration decided that trans fats should be eliminated from the food supply, as it proposed in a rule issued last month.
In the past two years, he has published four papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, two of them devoted to another major culprit he has singled out as responsible for atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries: an excess of polyunsaturated vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower — exactly the types of fats Americans have been urged to consume for the past several decades.
The problem, he says, is not LDL, the "bad cholesterol" widely considered to be the major cause of heart disease. What matters is whether the cholesterol and fat residing in those LDL particles have been oxidized. (Technically, LDL is not cholesterol, but particles containing cholesterol, along with fatty acids and protein.)
"Cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease, except if it's oxidized," Dr. Kummerow said. Oxidation is a chemical process that happens widely in the body, contributing to aging and the development of degenerative and chronic diseases. Dr. Kummerow contends that the high temperatures used in commercial frying cause inherently unstable polyunsaturated oils to oxidize, and that these oxidized fatty acids become a destructive part of LDL particles. Even when not oxidized by frying, soybean and corn oils can oxidize inside the body.
If true, the hypothesis might explain why studies have found that half of all heart disease patients have normal or low levels of LDL.
"You can have fine levels of LDL and still be in trouble if a lot of that LDL is oxidized," Dr. Kummerow said.
This leads him to a controversial conclusion: that the saturated fat in butter, cheese and meats does not contribute to the clogging of arteries — and in fact is beneficial in moderate amounts in the context of a healthy diet (lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and other fresh, unprocessed foods).
Dr. Robert H. Eckel, an endocrinologist and former president of the American Heart Association, agreed that oxidized LDL was far worse than nonoxidized LDL in terms of creating plaque.
But he disputed Dr. Kummerow's contention that saturated fats are benign and that polyunsaturated vegetable oils promote heart disease. "There are studies that clearly show a substitution of saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats leads to a reduction in cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Eckel, a professor at the University of Colorado…
His early research on trans fats was "resoundingly criticized and dismissed," said Dr. Walter Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, who credited Dr. Kummerow with prompting his desire to include trans fats in the Nurses' Health Study. A 1993 finding from that study, which showed a direct link between the consumption of foods containing trans fats and heart disease in women, was a turning point in scientific and medical thinking about trans fats.
"He had great difficulty getting funding because the heart disease prevention world strongly resisted the idea that trans fats were the problem," Dr. Willett continued. "In their view, saturated fats were the big culprit in heart disease. Anything else was a distraction from that."'
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/health/a-lifelong-fight-against-trans-fat.html?_r=0
apple-day-keeps-doctor-away-and-statins-do-too
http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/apple-day-keeps-doctor-away-and-statins-do-too
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
HIV returns in "cured" Boston patients
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hiv-returns-in-cured-boston-patients/
The price of healthy eating: $1.50 extra a day
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2013/12/06/price-of-healthy-food/