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Practicing medicine without … a computer?
So this initially heart-tugging tale of a rural doctor who’s been practicing medicine in Maine since 1968, has never bought (or learned how to use) a computer, now being forced out of medicine by the...
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Iron Lungs
Iron Lungs are breathing assistance devices that were used to enable polio victims to survive. As polio recedes into memory here in the US (enough so that a lot of people have stopped vaccinating their...
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Comic books and dyslexia
Comic books are often recommended for dyslexics for training in reading, as the smaller chunks of text and illustrations can help make meaning clearer. There are typographic ways that comic book...
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On the Introduction of Diet Coke
While a bit self-congratulatory in places, this history of the development and roll-out of Diet Coke has some interesting trivia tidbits (the lower case “d” in the name was both a branding and legal...
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The Budget Words That Dare Not Speak Their Names
Officials at the Center for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) have been informed that certain terms must not, never, ever be used in their budget proposals. “vulnerable” “entitlement” “diversity”...
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Brainwave syncing, aging, and forgetting stuff
A change in how certain brainwaves sync up during deep sleep seems to be associated with getting memories to stick around for the long term. The challenge is, normal brain changes during aging...
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The Rise and Fall of Margarine
We were very much a margarine household when I was growing up in the 60s-70s — soft margarine in tubs was a convenience, as well as being (per the accepted wisdom of the day) healthier than all that...
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One solution for the opioid epidemic: legalized pot
Locales with legalized marijuana (recreational or medicinal) appear to have lower opioid overdose rates, and lower rates of opioid prescriptions. Places with legal marijuana issue fewer opioid...
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And once again, “normal” turns out not to be
We all know that a “normal” temperature is 98.6°F (37°C), right? Uhhhhh, no, not so much. That number was based on German research done 150 years ago, with a thermometer that wasn’t well calibrated and...
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The germiest place in the airport? The security line
All those hands and germs and sighs and growls and stuff make those buckets of x-ray baggage pretty viral, and not in a popular way. And how often do you think those touched-by-everyone buckets get...
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Bad Words for Good Health!
To the extent that swearing is cathartic, it makes perfect sense that doing it can relieve stress and make you more calm and lead to positive health outcomes. Unless doing it causes your mother to...
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Because now is the PERFECT time to expand vaccine exemptions
In apparent reaction to the measles epidemic going on in the Pacific Northwest — caused, it seems, by enough kids being opted out of measles vaccines that herd immunity has been compromised — the bold...
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Yeah, apparently “catching up” on sleep over the weekend … doesn’t really help
A lot of us (ahem) get less sleep than we should during the week. But, hey, there’s the weekend, amirite? Sleep in on Saturday, maybe even Sunday, catch up on those Zs, feel all better, right? Well,...
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Everybody gets tetanus shots, right? Wrong.
I grew up in a family paranoid about tetanus. If there was any sort of potentially infection injury or puncture (especially, but not exclusively, the proverbial rusty nail), records were consulted as...
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So now aspirin is *not* recommended to avert stroke and heart attack. Kinda....
So a few things to know about health science. Science as a whole is complicated and rarely conveyed well through half-glimpsed headlines. Popular media uses flashy headlines and forceful stories to...
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Researchers move ever-closer to a hormonal male birth control treatment
A means of sharing the birth control burden with men (other than through condoms) has been a long time coming, and researchers working with a testosterone / progestin gel (dabbed anywhere on the body...
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Heading toward the last Roundup?
Monsanto (now owned by German pharma giant Bayer) took a huge hit in court last week, with a jury finding that its star product, Roundup, is a carcinogen. On Wednesday afternoon, German chemical giant...
View ArticleBreakfast of Champions!
Pizza! Breakfast of Champions! https://t.co/iovqMJqNnC #health #pizza — ***Dave Hill (@Three_Star_Dave) May 30, 2019 Pizza! Breakfast of Champions! https://t.co/iovqMJqNnC #health #pizza Sure, it has...
View ArticleDonald Trump revisits why he banned transgender folk from the military
Oh, you British press. You don’t sweat over whether you’ll be invited to the next US Presidential Press Conference, so you’re free, free, to ask irritating questions … On his trip to the UK, Donald...
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Death by Willful Ignorance
James Garfield, potentially one of the best Presidents of the United States. James Garfield was a really cool guy. He didn’t aspire to the presidency — he became an unexpected compromise candidate. But...
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