Infrared-Reflecting Patches For Health?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Hi! I’ve been reading about LifeWave patches, would you recommend them?❞
For reference first, this is talking about these: LifeWave.com
Short answer: no
Longer answer: their main premise seems to be that the patches (subscription prices seem to start from about $100–$300 per month) reflect infrared energy back into your body, making you more energized and healthy.
Fun fact: aluminum foil reflects infrared energy (which we feel as heat), by the way, and that is why space blankets (of the kind used in emergencies and by some athletes) are made shiny like that, often with aluminized mylar.
We cannot comment too closely on the rest of the presented science of their products, as it seems quite unlike anything we’re accustomed to reading, and we were not able to make a lot of sense of it.
They do cite research papers to back their claims, including research conducted by the company’s founder and published via an open journal.
Many others are independent studies conducted by often the same researchers as each other, mostly experts in acupuncture and acupressure.
For the papers we looked at, the sample sizes were very small, but the conclusions were very positive.
They were published in a variety of journals, of which we cannot claim any prior knowledge (i.e:, they were not the peer-reviewed journals from which we cite most of our sources).
Also, none were registered with ClinicalTrials.gov.
To be on the safe side, their disclaimer does advise:
❝LifeWave products are only intended to maintain or encourage a general state of health or healthy activity and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent any disease or medical condition of the body❞
They do have a Frequently Asked Questions page, which tells about ancient Egyptian use of colored glass, as well as more modern considerations including joining, ordering, their commissions system, binary commissions and matching bonuses, and “how to rank up in LifeWave” as well as a lot of information about subscribing as a preferred customer or a brand partner, opting in to their multi-level marketing opportunities.
Here’s what “Honest Brand Reviews” had to say:
Honest Brand Reviews | LifeWave Review
Our position:
We cannot honestly claim to understand their science, and thus naturally won’t actively recommend what we can’t speak for.
An expert’s position:
Since we couldn’t understand how this would work, here’s what Dr. Paul Knoepfler has to say about their flagship product, the LifeWave X39 patch:
LifeWave X39 stem cell patch story has holes
Take care!
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In This Oklahoma Town, Most Everyone Knows Someone Who’s Been Sued by the Hospital
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McALESTER, Okla. — It took little more than an hour for Deborah Hackler to dispense with the tall stack of debt collection lawsuits that McAlester Regional Medical Center recently brought to small-claims court in this Oklahoma farm community.
Hackler, a lawyer who sues patients on behalf of the hospital, buzzed through 51 cases, all but a handful uncontested, as is often the case. She bantered with the judge as she secured nearly $40,000 in judgments, plus 10% in fees for herself, according to court records.
It’s a payday the hospital and Hackler have shared frequently over the past three decades, records show. The records indicate McAlester Regional Medical Center and an affiliated clinic have filed close to 5,000 debt collection cases since the early 1990s, most often represented by the father-daughter law firm of Hackler & Hackler.
Some of McAlester’s 18,000 residents have been taken to court multiple times. A deputy at the county jail and her adult son were each sued recently, court records show. New mothers said they compare stories of their legal run-ins with the medical center.
“There’s a lot that’s not right,” Sherry McKee, a dorm monitor at a tribal boarding school outside McAlester, said on the courthouse steps after the hearing. The hospital has sued her three times, most recently over a $3,375 bill for what she said turned out to be vertigo.
In recent years, major health systems in Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere have stopped suing patients following news reports about lawsuits. And several states, such as Maryland and New York, have restricted the legal actions hospitals can take against patients.
But with some 100 million people in the U.S. burdened by health care debt, medical collection cases still clog courtrooms across the country, researchers have found. In places like McAlester, a hospital’s debt collection machine can hum away quietly for years, helped along by powerful people in town. An effort to limit hospital lawsuits failed in the Oklahoma Legislature in 2021.
In McAlester, the lawsuits have provided business for some, such as the Adjustment Bureau, a local collection agency run out of a squat concrete building down the street from the courthouse, and for Hackler, a former president of the McAlester Area Chamber of Commerce. But for many patients and their families, the lawsuits can take a devastating toll, sapping wages, emptying retirement accounts, and upending lives.
McKee said she wasn’t sure how long it would take to pay off the recent judgment. Her $3,375 debt exceeds her monthly salary, she said.
“This affects a large number of people in a small community,” said Janet Roloff, an attorney who has spent years assisting low-income clients with legal issues such as evictions in and around McAlester. “The impact is great.”
Settled more than a century ago by fortune seekers who secured land from the Choctaw Nation to mine coal in the nearby hills, McAlester was once a boom town. Vestiges of that era remain, including a mammoth, 140-foot-tall Masonic temple that looms over the city.
Recent times have been tougher for McAlester, now home by one count to 12 marijuana dispensaries and the state’s death row. The downtown is pockmarked by empty storefronts, including the OKLA theater, which has been dark for decades. Nearly 1 in 5 residents in McAlester and the surrounding county live below the federal poverty line.
The hospital, operated by a public trust under the city’s authority, faces its own struggles. Paint is peeling off the front portico, and weeds poke up through the parking lots. The hospital has operated in the red for years, according to independent audit reports available on the state auditor’s website.
“I’m trying to find ways to get the entire community better care and more care,” said Shawn Howard, the hospital’s chief executive. Howard grew up in McAlester and proudly noted he started his career as a receptionist in the hospital’s physical therapy department. “This is my hometown,” he said. “I am not trying to keep people out of getting care.”
The hospital operates a clinic for low-income patients, whose webpage notes it has “limited appointments” at no cost for patients who are approved for aid. But data from the audits shows the hospital offers very little financial assistance, despite its purported mission to serve the community.
In the 2022 fiscal year, it provided just $114,000 in charity care, out of a total operating budget of more than $100 million, hospital records show. Charity care totaling $2 million or $3 million out of a $100 million budget would be more in line with other U.S. hospitals.
While audits show few McAlester patients get financial aid, many get taken to court.
Renee Montgomery, the city treasurer in an adjoining town and mother of a local police officer, said she dipped into savings she’d reserved for her children and grandchildren after the hospital sued her last year for more than $5,500. She’d gone to the emergency room for chest pain.
Dusty Powell, a truck driver, said he lost his pickup and motorcycle when his wages were garnished after the hospital sued him for almost $9,000. He’d gone to the emergency department for what turned out to be gastritis and didn’t have insurance, he said.
“Everyone in this town probably has a story about McAlester Regional,” said another former patient who spoke on the condition she not be named, fearful to publicly criticize the hospital in such a small city. “It’s not even a secret.”
The woman, who works at an Army munitions plant outside town, was sued twice over bills she incurred giving birth. Her sister-in-law has been sued as well.
“It’s a good-old-boy system,” said the woman, who lowered her voice when the mayor walked into the coffee shop where she was meeting with KFF Health News. Now, she said, she avoids the hospital if her children need care.
Nationwide, most people sued in debt collection cases never challenge them, a response experts say reflects widespread misunderstanding of the legal process and anxiety about coming to court.
At the center of the McAlester hospital’s collection efforts for decades has been Hackler & Hackler.
Donald Hackler was city attorney in McAlester for 13 years in the ’70s and ’80s and a longtime member of the local Lions Club and the Scottish Rite Freemasons.
Daughter Deborah Hackler, who joined the family firm 30 years ago, has been a deacon at the First Presbyterian Church of McAlester and served on the board of the local Girl Scouts chapter, according to the McAlester News-Capital newspaper, which named her “Woman of the Year” in 2007. Since 2001, she also has been a municipal judge in McAlester, hearing traffic cases, including some involving people she has sued on behalf of the hospital, municipal and county court records show.
For years, the Hacklers’ debt collection cases were often heard by Judge James Bland, who has retired from the bench and now sits on the hospital board. Bland didn’t respond to an inquiry for interview.
Hackler declined to speak with KFF Health News after her recent court appearance. “I’m not going to visit with you about a current client,” she said before leaving the courthouse.
Howard, the hospital CEO, said he couldn’t discuss the lawsuits either. He said he didn’t know the hospital took its patients to court. “I had to call and ask if we sue people,” he said.
Howard also said he didn’t know Deborah Hackler. “I never heard her name before,” he said.
Despite repeated public records requests from KFF Health News since September, the hospital did not provide detailed information about its financial arrangement with Hackler.
McAlester Mayor John Browne, who appoints the hospital’s board of trustees, said he, too, didn’t know about the lawsuits. “I hadn’t heard anything about them suing,” he said.
At the century-old courthouse in downtown McAlester, it’s not hard to find the lawsuits, though. Every month or two, another batch fills the docket in the small-claims court, now presided over by Judge Brian McLaughlin.
After court recently, McLaughlin, who is not from McAlester, shook his head at the stream of cases and patients who almost never show up to defend themselves, leaving him to issue judgment after judgment in the hospital’s favor.
“All I can do is follow the law,” said McLaughlin. “It doesn’t mean I like it.”
About This Project
“Diagnosis: Debt” is a reporting partnership between KFF Health News and NPR exploring the scale, impact, and causes of medical debt in America.
The series draws on original polling by KFF, court records, federal data on hospital finances, contracts obtained through public records requests, data on international health systems, and a yearlong investigation into the financial assistance and collection policies of more than 500 hospitals across the country.
Additional research was conducted by the Urban Institute, which analyzed credit bureau and other demographic data on poverty, race, and health status for KFF Health News to explore where medical debt is concentrated in the U.S. and what factors are associated with high debt levels.
The JPMorgan Chase Institute analyzed records from a sampling of Chase credit card holders to look at how customers’ balances may be affected by major medical expenses. And the CED Project, a Denver nonprofit, worked with KFF Health News on a survey of its clients to explore links between medical debt and housing instability.
KFF Health News journalists worked with KFF public opinion researchers to design and analyze the “KFF Health Care Debt Survey.” The survey was conducted Feb. 25 through March 20, 2022, online and via telephone, in English and Spanish, among a nationally representative sample of 2,375 U.S. adults, including 1,292 adults with current health care debt and 382 adults who had health care debt in the past five years. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample and 3 percentage points for those with current debt. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.
Reporters from KFF Health News and NPR also conducted hundreds of interviews with patients across the country; spoke with physicians, health industry leaders, consumer advocates, debt lawyers, and researchers; and reviewed scores of studies and surveys about medical debt.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
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Almonds vs Peanuts – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing almonds to peanuts, we picked the almonds.
Why?
No, it’s not just our pro-almonds bias… But it’s also not as one-sided, nutritionally speaking, as you might think!
In terms of macros, almonds have a lot more fiber, and moderately more carbs, the ratio of which give almonds the lower glycemic index. On the other hand, peanuts have a little more protein. Both of these nuts are equally fatty, but peanuts have the higher saturated fat content. All in all, we say the biggest deciding factor is the fiber, and hand this one to the almonds.
In the category of vitamins, almonds have more of vitamins B2 and E, while peanuts have more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B6, B7, and B9. An easy win for peanuts this time.
When it comes to minerals, almonds have more calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium, while peanuts have more copper, iron, selenium, and zinc. Thus, a 5:4 marginal win for almonds.
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for almonds, but as you can see, it was close and peanuts certainly have their merits too, so by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Unless you are allergic, in which case, obviously please don’t do that.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
Enjoy!
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Bridging The Generation Gap Over The Holidays
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Often seen as a time for family connection, this same holiday period is often experienced as a time of family tension. But it doesn’t have to be that way!
Hopefully this will be of benefit to readers of all ages, but we’re going to write with the largest age-group of our readership, which is people who are most likely to have Gen-Z grandkids.
why are we writing about this?
Not only are health and happiness closely linked, and not only is mental health also just health, but… In terms of the healthy longevity secrets of the “Blue Zones”, strong intergenerational connections are usually a feature.
First, the obvious:
Any holiday tensions, of course, don’t usually start with grandkids, and are more likely amongst the adults, but some points of friction can be the same:
- Differences of opinion on political/social/economic issues
- Difference of opinion on parenting/dating choices
- Differences of opinion on life priorities
And yes, by the way, that includes even young teens (and perhaps younger) having opinions on these things—we are living in an information age, and this does mean a lot of information is a lot more accessible than it used to be, including for kids. Problems (at all ages) may occur when someone is only really exposed to views from within a certain “bias bubble”, but for better or worse, most people will have an opinion on most well-known things.
As a general rule of thumb, all of these differences of opinion can be shelved if (and only if) those involved seek to avoid conflict. And while age is no guarantee of maturity, often it’ll be the older person(s) in the strongest position to redirect things. So, have a stack of “safe” topics up your sleeve.
Bonus: you can also have non-conversational distractions up your sleeve! These may be kitchen-related, for example (time to produce something distracting, or if the nascent conflict was only between you and one other person, time to go check on something, thus removing yourself from the situation).
Next, about “family time” and technology
It can be tempting to try to have a “phones away” rule, but this will tend to only exacerbate a younger person’s withdrawal.
Better: ask (with a tone of cheerful curiosity, not accusation) about what captures their attention so. Ask about their favorite YouTubers or TikTokers or whatever it is that it is for them. Learn about that Subreddit.
Or maybe (more likely for Millennials) they were following what is going on in the world via social media, which takes on an intermediary role for the delivery of world news. Hopefully this won’t run into the differences of opinion that we mentioned up top, but it could also be a perfectly good avenue of conversation, and maybe there’s more common ground than you might expect.
Meanwhile, if you’re the older generation present, chances are your own social media use is more about the human element. That’s great, but watch out:
A common faux pas is taking pictures without asking, let alone posting them online without asking. For many people this may seem an odd thing to object to, but generationally speaking, the younger someone is (down to the upper single digits, anyway) the more likely they might feel strongly about this. So, ask first.
The reason, by the way, is that in this age of digital hypervisibility, what we choose to share online can be a deeply personal thing. And, say what you will about the pros or cons of someone carefully curating an image of how they wish to be seen, shortcutting through that for them with a candid photo posted on Facebook will not endear you to them, even if you can’t see anything wrong with the photo in question, for example.
See also: Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health
Show an interest, but don’t interrogate
This one doesn’t take too much explanation. If people want to share about their lives, they’ll need only the smallest nudge to do so. If someone passes up an opportunity to talk about something you showed an interest in, chances are they have their own reasons for not wanting to talk about it. This might be hurtful if you feel like they’re keeping you out of their life, but the best way to get them to talk to you is just to be a good listener—not an interrogator that they have to dodge.
For some powerful tools on this, see: Listening, Better
Lastly, if things aren’t so good…
43% of people are currently experiencing some sort of familial estrangement, so if that’s you, you’re not on your own.
Sometimes, it really is too late to fix things, but sometimes it isn’t; we put together a guide that might help:
Family Estrangement & How To Fix It
Take care!
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Shoulders Range – by Elia Bartolini
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Shoulder flexibility and mobility can be a big deal, especially when it starts to decline—more so than other kinds of flexibility. Most seniors can get through the day without doing the splits against a wall, for example, but shoulder tightness can be more of a problem if you can’t easily get into or out of your clothes.
If you think it couldn’t happen to you: the great Jane Fonda has a now-famous photoset of her looking glamorous in a dress at a red carpet event, and then looking frazzled making breakfast in the same dress in her kitchen the next morning, because, as she wrote, “I couldn’t get my dress unzipped so I slept in it”.
Now, “to avoid ending up like Jane Fonda” is not a series of words that usually precedes advice, but in this case: this book delves into the science of one of the most quirky joints of the human body, and how to leverage this to maximize shoulder mobility, while maintaining adequate strength (because flexibility without strength is just asking for a dislocation) without doing anything that would actually bulk up our shoulders, because it’s just about progressing through passive, active, and tensed stretching, static, dynamic, and loaded stretching, as well as PNF stretching and antagonist stretching.
If that seems like a lot of stretching, don’t worry; the author presents a series of workouts that will take us through these stretches in a very small amount of time each day.
The style is instructional like a textbook, with clear diagrams where appropriate, and lots of callout boxes, bullet points, emboldening for key points, etc. It all makes for every easy learning.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve and maintain your shoulder mobility, this is an excellent book for that.
Click here to check out Shoulders Range, and perfect your shoulders and upper body flexibility!
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Why do disinfectants only kill 99.9% of germs? Here’s the science
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Have you ever wondered why most disinfectants indicate they kill 99.9% or 99.99% of germs, but never promise to wipe out all of them? Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind mid-way through cleaning your kitchen or bathroom.
Surely, in a world where science is able to do all sorts of amazing things, someone would have invented a disinfectant that is 100% effective?
The answer to this conundrum requires understanding a bit of microbiology and a bit of mathematics.
Davor Geber/Shutterstock What is a disinfectant?
A disinfectant is a substance used to kill or inactivate bacteria, viruses and other microbes on inanimate objects.
There are literally millions of microbes on surfaces and objects in our domestic environment. While most microbes are not harmful (and some are even good for us) a small proportion can make us sick.
Although disinfection can include physical interventions such as heat treatment or the use of UV light, typically when we think of disinfectants we are referring to the use of chemicals to kill microbes on surfaces or objects.
Chemical disinfectants often contain active ingredients such as alcohols, chlorine compounds and hydrogen peroxide which can target vital components of different microbes to kill them.
Diseinfectants can contain a range of ingredients. Maridav/Shutterstock The maths of microbial elimination
In the past few years we’ve all become familiar with the concept of exponential growth in the context of the spread of COVID cases.
This is where numbers grow at an ever-accelerating rate, which can lead to an explosion in the size of something very quickly. For example, if a colony of 100 bacteria doubles every hour, in 24 hours’ time the population of bacteria would be more than 1.5 billion.
Conversely, the killing or inactivating of microbes follows a logarithmic decay pattern, which is essentially the opposite of exponential growth. Here, while the number of microbes decreases over time, the rate of death becomes slower as the number of microbes becomes smaller.
For example, if a particular disinfectant kills 90% of bacteria every minute, after one minute, only 10% of the original bacteria will remain. After the next minute, 10% of that remaining 10% (or 1% of the original amount) will remain, and so on.
Because of this logarithmic decay pattern, it’s not possible to ever claim you can kill 100% of any microbial population. You can only ever scientifically say that you are able to reduce the microbial load by a proportion of the initial population. This is why most disinfectants sold for domestic use indicate they kill 99.9% of germs.
Other products such as hand sanitisers and disinfectant wipes, which also often purport to kill 99.9% of germs, follow the same principle.
You might have noticed none of the cleaning products in your laundry cupboard kill 100% of germs. Africa Studio/Shutterstock Real-world implications
As with a lot of science, things get a bit more complicated in the real world than they are in the laboratory. There are a number of other factors to consider when assessing how well a disinfectant is likely to remove microbes from a surface.
One of these factors is the size of the initial microbial population that you’re trying to get rid of. That is, the more contaminated a surface is, the harder the disinfectant needs to work to eliminate the microbes.
If for example you were to start off with only 100 microbes on a surface or object, and you removed 99.9% of these using a disinfectant, you could have a lot of confidence that you have effectively removed all the microbes from that surface or object (called sterilisation).
In contrast, if you have a large initial microbial population of hundreds of millions or billions of microbes contaminating a surface, even reducing the microbial load by 99.9% may still mean there are potentially millions of microbes remaining on the surface.
Time is is a key factor that determines how effectively microbes are killed. So exposing a highly contaminated surface to disinfectant for a longer period is one way to ensure you kill more of the microbial population.
This is why if you look closely at the labels of many common household disinfectants, they will often suggest that to disinfect you should apply the product then wait a specified time before wiping clean. So always consult the label on the product you’re using.
Disinfectants won’t necessarily work in your kitchen exactly like they work in a lab. Ground Picture/Shutterstock Other factors such as temperature, humidity and the type of surface also influence how well a disinfectant works outside the lab.
Similarly, microbes in the real world may be either more or less sensitive to disinfection than those used for testing in the lab.
Disinfectants are one part infection control
The sensible use of disinfectants plays an important role in our daily lives in reducing our exposure to pathogens (microbes that cause illness). They can therefore reduce our chances of getting sick.
The fact disinfectants can’t be shown to be 100% effective from a scientific perspective in no way detracts from their importance in infection control. But their use should always be complemented by other infection control practices, such as hand washing, to reduce the risk of infection.
Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Fibromyalgia – by Dr. R. Paul St Amand
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The core claim of the book is that guaifenesin, an over-the-counter expectorant (with a good safety profile) usually taken to treat a chesty cough, is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, and is rapidly metabolized and excreted into the urine—and on the way, it lowers uric acid levels, which is a big deal for fibromyalgia sufferers.
He goes on to explain how the guaifenesin, by a similar biochemical mechanism, additionally facilitates the removal of other excess secretions that are associated with fibromyalgia.
The science for all this is… Compelling and logical, while not being nearly so well-established yet as his confidence would have us believe.
In other words, he could be completely wrong, because adequate testing has not yet been done. However, he also could be right; scientific knowledge is, by the very reality of scientific method, always a step behind hypothesis and theory (in that order).
Meanwhile, there are certainly many glowing testimonials from fibromyalgia sufferers, saying that this helped a lot.
Bottom line: if you have fibromyalgia and do not mind trying a relatively clinically untested (yet logical and anecdotally successful) protocol to lessen then symptoms (allegedly, to zero), then this book will guide you through that and tell you everything to watch out for.
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