When Science Brings Hope

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There’s a lot of bad news out there at present, including in the field of healthcare. So as some measure of respite from that, here’s some good news from the world of health science, including some actionable things to do:

Run for your life! Or casually meander for your life; that’s fine too.

Those who enjoy the equivalent of an average of 160mins slow (3mph) walking per day also enjoy the greatest healthspan. Now, there may be an element of two-way causality here (moving more means we live longer, but also, sometimes people move less because of having crippling disabilities, which are themselves not great for healthspan, as well as having the knock-on effect of reducing movement, and so such conditions yield and anti-longevity double-whammy), but for any who are able to, increasing the amount of time per day spend moving, ultimately results (on average) in a lot of extra days in life that we’ll then get to spend moving.

Depending on how active or not you are already, every extra 1 hour walked could add two hours and 49 minutes to life expectancy:

Read in full: Americans over 40 could live extra 5 years if they were all as active as top 25% of population, modeling study suggests

Related: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More

Re-teaching your brain to heal itself

Cancer is often difficult to treat, and brain tumors can be amongst the most difficult with which to contend. Not only is everything in there very delicate, but also it’s the hardest place in the body to get at—not just surgically, but even chemically, because of the blood-brain barrier. To make matters worse, brain tumors such as glioblastoma weaken the function of T-cells (whose job it is to eliminate the cancer) by prolonged exposure.

Research has found a way to restore the responsiveness of these T-cells to immune checkpoint inhibitors, allowing them to go about their cancer-killing activities unimpeded:

Read in full: New possibilities for treating intractable brain tumors unveiled

Related: 5 Ways To Beat Cancer (And Other Diseases)

Here’s to your good health!

GLP-1 receptor agonists, originally developed to fight diabetes and now enjoying popularity as weight loss adjuvants, work in large part by cutting down food cravings by interfering with the chemical messaging about such.

As a bonus, it seems that they also can reduce alcohol cravings, especially by targetting the brain’s reward center; this was based on a large review of studies looking at how GLP-1RA use affects alcohol use, alcohol-related health problems, hospital visits, and brain reactions to alcohol cues:

Read in full: Diabetes medication may be effective in helping people drink less alcohol, research finds

Related: How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

Take care!

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  • The Fruit That Can Specifically Reduce Belly Fat

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    Gambooge: Game-Changer Or Gamble?

    The gambooge, also called the gummi-gutta, whence its botanical name Garcinia gummi-gutta (formerly Gardinia cambogia), is also known as the Malabar tamarind, and it even got an English name, the brindle berry.

    It’s a fruit that looks like a small pale yellow pumpkin in shape, but it grows on trees and has a taste so sour, that it’s usually used only in cooking, and not eaten raw which makes this writer really want to try it raw now.

    Its active phytochemical compound hydroxycitric acid (HCA) rose to popularity as a supplement in the US based on a paid recommendation from Dr. Oz, and then became a controversy as supplements associated with it, were in turn associated with hepatotoxicity (more on this in the “Is it safe?” section below).

    What do people use it for?

    Simply put: it’s a weight loss supplement.

    Less simply put: least interestingly, it’s a mild appetite suppressant:

    Safety and mechanism of appetite suppression by a novel hydroxycitric acid extract (HCA-SX) ← this talks more about the biochemistry, but isn’t a human study. Human studies have been small and with mixed results. It seems likely that (as in the rat studies discussed above) the mechanism of action is largely about increasing serotonin, which itself is a well-established appetite suppressant. Therefore, the results will depend somewhat on a person’s brain’s serotonergic system.

    We’ll revisit that later, but first let’s look at…

    Even less simply put: its other mechanism of action is much more interesting; it actually blocks the production of fat (especially: visceral fat) in the body, by inhibiting citrate lyase, which enzyme plays a significant role in fat production:

    Effects of (−)-hydroxycitrate on net fat synthesis as de novo lipogenesis

    More illustratively, here’s another study, which found:

    ❝G cambogia reduced abdominal fat accumulation in subjects, regardless of sex, who had the visceral fat accumulation type of obesity. No rebound effect was observed.

    It is therefore expected that G cambogia may be useful for the prevention and reduction of accumulation of visceral fat. ❞

    ~ Dr. Norihiro Shigematsu et al.

    Read in full: Effects of garcinia cambogia (Hydroxycitric Acid) on visceral fat accumulation: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial

    As to why this is particularly important, and far more important than mere fat loss in general, see our previous main feature:

    Visceral Belly Fat (And How To Lose It)

    Is it safe?

    It has shown a good safety profile up to large doses (2.8g/day):

    Evaluation of the safety and efficacy of hydroxycitric acid or Garcinia cambogia extracts in humans

    There have been some fears about hepatotoxicity, but they appear to be unfounded, and based on products that did not, in fact, contain HCA (and were merely sold by a company that used a similar name in their marketing):

    No evidence demonstrating hepatotoxicity associated with hydroxycitric acid

    However, as it has a serotoninergic effect, it could cause problems for anyone at risk of serotonin syndrome, which means caution is advisable if you are taking SSRIs (which reduce the rate at which the brain can scrub serotonin, with the usually laudable goal of having more serotonin in the brain—but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and serotonin syndrome isn’t fun).

    As ever, do check with your pharmacist and/or doctor, to be sure, since they can advise with regard to your specific situation and any medications you may be taking.

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon

    Enjoy!

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  • Once-A-Week Strategy to Stop Procrastination – by Brad Meir

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Procrastination is perhaps the most frustrating bad habit to kick!

    We know we should do the things. We know why we should do the things. We want to do the things. We’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t do the things. And then we… don’t do the things? What is going on?!

    Brad Meir has answers, and—what a relief—solutions. But enough about him, because first he wants to focus a little on you:

    Why do you procrastinate? No, you’re probably not “just lazy”, and he’ll guide you through figuring out what it is that makes you procrastinate. There’s an exploration of various emotions here, as well as working out: what type of procrastinator are you?

    Then, per what you figured out with his guidance, exercises, and tests, it’s time for an action plan.

    But, importantly: one you can actually do, because it won’t fall foul of the problems you’ve been encountering so far. The exact mechanism you’ll use may vary a bit based on you, but some tools here are good for everyone—as well as an outline of the mistakes you could easily make, and how to avoid falling into those traps. And, last but very definitely not least, his “once a week plan”, per the title.

    All in all, a highly recommendable and potentially life-changing book.

    Grab Your Copy of “Once-A-Week Strategy to Stop Procrastination” NOW (don’t put it off!)

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  • In This Oklahoma Town, Most Everyone Knows Someone Who’s Been Sued by the Hospital

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    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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  • Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain – by Dr. Bradley Bale & Dr. Amy Doneen

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve often written that “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain”, because the former feeds the latter and takes away detritus. You cannot have a healthy brain without a healthy heart.

    This book goes into that in more detail than we have ever had room to here! This follows from their previous book “Beat The Heart Attack Gene”, but we’re jumping in here because that book doesn’t really contain anything not also included in this one.

    The idea is the same though: it is the authors’ opinion that far too many interventions are occurring far too late, and they want to “wake everyone up” (including their colleagues in the field) to encourage earlier (and broader!) testing.

    Fun fact: that also reminded this reviewer that she had a pending invitation for blood tests to check these kinds of things—phlebotomy appointment now booked, yay!

    True the spirit of such exhortation to early testing, this book does include diagnostic questionnaires, to help the reader know where we might be at. And, interestingly, while the in-book questionnaire format of “so many points for this answer, so many for that one”, etc is quite normal, what they do differently in the diagnostics is that in cases of having to answer “I don’t know”, it assigns the highest-risk point value, i.e. the test will err on the side of assume the worst, in the case of a reader not knowing, for example, what our triglycerides are like. Which, when one thinks about it, is probably a very sensible reasoning.

    There’s a lot of advice about specific clinical diagnostic tools and things to ask for, and also things that may raise an alarm that most people might overlook (including doctors, especially if they are only looking for something else at the time).

    You may be wondering: do they actually give advice on what to actually do to improve heart and brain health, or just how to be aware of potential problems? And the answer is that the latter is a route to the former, and yes they do offer comprehensive advice—well beyond “eat fiber and get some exercise”, and even down to the pros and cons of various supplements and medications. When it comes to treating a problem that has been identified, or warding off a risk that has been flagged, the advice is a personalized, tailored, approach. Obviously there’s a limit to how much they can do that in the book, but even so, we see a lot of “if this then that” pointers to optimize things along the way.

    The style is… a little salesy for this reviewer’s tastes. That is to say, while it has a lot of information of serious value, it’s also quite padded with self-congratulatory anecdotes about the many occasions the authors have pulled a Dr. House and saved the day when everyone else was mystified or thought nothing was wrong, the wonders of their trademarked methodology, and a lot of hype for their own book, as in, the book that’s already in your hands. Without all this padding, the book could have been cut by perhaps a third, if not more. Still, none of that takes away from the valuable insights that are in the book too.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to have a healthier heart and brain, and especially if you’d like to avoid diseases of those two rather important organs, then this book is a treasure trove of information.

    Click here to check out Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain, and secure your good health now, for later!

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  • Soap vs Sanitizer – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing soap to sanitizer, we picked the soap.

    Why?

    Both are good at killing bacteria / inactivating viruses, but there are several things that set them apart:

    • Soap doesn’t just kill them; it slides them off and away down the drain. That means that any it failed to kill are also off and down the drain, not still on your hands. This is assuming good handwashing technique, of course!
    • Sanitizer gel kills them, but can take up to 4 minutes of contact to do so. Given that people find 20 seconds of handwashing laborious, 240 seconds of sanitizer gel use seems too much to hope for.

    Both can be dehydrating for the hands; both can have ingredients added to try to mitigate that.

    We recommend a good (separate) moisturizer in either case, but the point is, the dehydration factor doesn’t swing it far either way.

    So, we’ll go with the one that gets rid of the germs the most quickly: the soap

    10almonds tip: splash out on the extra-nice hand-soaps for your home—this will make you and others more likely to wash your hands more often! Sometimes, making something a more pleasant experience makes all the difference.

    Want to know more?

    Check out:

    Mythbusting Handwashing

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Total Recovery – by Dr. Gary Kaplan

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    First, know: Dr. Kaplan is an osteopath, and as such, will be mostly approaching things from that angle. That said, he is also board certified in other things too, including family medicine, so he’s by no means a “one-trick pony”, nor are there “when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail” problems to be found here. Instead, the scope of the book is quite broad.

    Dr. Kaplan talks us through the diagnostic process that a doctor goes through when presented with a patient, what questions need to be asked and answered—and by this we mean the deeper technical questions, e.g. “what do these symptoms have in common”, and “what mechanism was at work when the pain become chronic”, not the very basic questions asked in the initial debriefing with the patient.

    He also asks such questions (and questions like these get chapters devoted to them) as “what if physical traumas build up”, and “what if physical and emotional pain influence each other”, and then examines how to interrupt the vicious cycles that lead to deterioration of one’s condition.

    The style of the book is very pop-science and often narrative in its presentation, giving lots of anecdotes to illustrate the principles. It’s a “sit down and read it cover-to-cover” book—or a chapter a day, whatever your preferred pace; the point is, it’s not a “dip directly to the part that answers your immediate question” book; it’s not a textbook or manual.

    Bottom line: a lot of this work is about prompting the reader to ask the right questions to get to where we need to be, but there are many illustrative possible conclusions and practical advices to be found and given too, making this a useful read if you and/or a loved one suffers from chronic pain.

    Click here to check out Total Recovery, and solve your own mysteries!

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