The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours. The study, conducted with the International Labour Organization (ILO), also showed almost three quarters of those that died as a result of working long hours were middle-aged or older men. Often, the deaths occurred much later in life, sometimes decades later, than the long hours were worked. Is this science? You know, people say “follow the science” but most people aren’t smart enough to understand science, let alone explain it to others. Lots of problems with this one, starting with the fact that “associated with” doesn’t imply cause and effect and doesn’t mean the same thing as “hard work is killing a specific number of people every year.” Were obesity… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Health
Vaping-Related Deaths Are BS. You Heard it Here First.
Trump administration readies ban on flavored e-cigarettes amid outbreak of vaping-related deaths CNBC Condolences to the victims but do six deaths in a country of 320 million people really represent an “outbreak”? Also, “vaping-related deaths” is bullshit as the article itself says in the first paragraph: The Trump administration is preparing to ban flavored e-cigarettes as federal health officials call for restrictions to combat an outbreak of a mysterious lung disease . . . “Mysterious lung disease.” In the headline, vaping is flat-out killing people; in the article it’s a mystery disease. I’ve read specifically about three of the deaths. One was here in Southern California, in Los Angeles County. The deceased was described as an older adult male, at least 55 years old, with chronic health conditions. A woman who died in Kansas was older than 50 and had a history of health problems. In Minnesota, the state’s “first… Read more →
If I Were a Cardiologist
I drove through Carl’s Jr. for lunch . . . “Would you like to try a Triple Bacon Cheeseburger?” the girl asked. Triple?! A triple bacon burger!? The burger itself is 1,300 calories. If you go with the combo, it’s well over 2,000 calories. If I were a cardiologist, I’d be sending a thank you note to whoever thought this up . . . Read more →
Fat Bike Riders
There are a lot of cyclists in Irvine . . . if you visit the local coffee shops on the weekend, you’ll see a bunch of them after their ride, usually in groups, all togged out like Tour de France participants. While actual bike racers are very lean, these folks ironically are always among the fattest people in the establishment, a fact emphasized by their skin-tight attire. I’m tempted to ask, “Why don’t you ride in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, given that 1) your racing togs just emphasize what a physical mess you are, and 2) no amount of aerodynamic material is going to make you a bike racer because you’re too fat.” Read more →
Life Gets Better After 50?
About 15 years ago, economists made an unexpected finding: the U-shaped happiness curve. Other things being equal – that is, once conditions such as income, employment, health and marriage are factored out of the equation – life satisfaction declines from our early 20s until we hit our 50s. Then it turns around and rises, right through late adulthood. — The Guardian So once you factor out all the things that make life miserable, it turns out older people can be just as happy as anyone else! Read more →
Notes on Existential Well-Being
I’m taking an online class on existential well-being . . . posting some notes and thoughts: Well-being implies physical health, comfort, pleasure. It is also essential for human beings to have relationships with other people and to have a place in society. We speak of personal well-being when a person is able to develop their talents and feel at peace with him or herself. Beauty, compassion, truth, love — these are experiences of the “life force” or the “spirit.” In these spiritual experiences we transcend our limited self. We become part of something bigger and participate in universal qualities that nourish and enhance life. We are conscious of the physical, the social, the personal and the spiritual dimensions of human experience. We make no hierarchy between these dimensions. We recognize that human life is also characterized by suffering, pain and many limitations. We acknowledge that because of limitations, we are… Read more →
Good News, Bad News
Bad News: Americans are retiring later, dying sooner and are sicker in-between. Good News: I found this video of a rescued raccoon who thinks she’s a dog: Read more →
It’s Not Your Head
I’m telling my doctor about these shooting pains that I get near the back of my head, behind my left ear. Sometimes they don’t happen for months and sometimes they happen several times a day. She says it’s likely to be caused by stress and tension. “You don’t think it’s a brain tumor?” I ask. “No, because a brain tumor would hurt all the time and the pain would get worse over time.” “OK . . . that’s good to know because I didn’t want to deal with a brain tumor right now.” “I’m not worried about it. And if I’m not worried about it, you shouldn’t be worried about it.” “That’s what my wife said this morning. She said she wasn’t worried about it. I said, ‘Of course you’re not worried about it. It’s not your head.’ She said she wouldn’t worry about it even if was her head.”… Read more →
Free Advice on Free Advice
Today a colleague offered to fix the pain in my shoulder. “Sounds like a problem with the connective tissue,” he said. “I can push it back into place.” “No,” I said. “No no no no no no no.” “Why not? Are you homophobic?” “Not wanting you to push on my shoulder is not homophobic.” Also this guy is not gay. “You don’t trust me?” “I was trying to think of a nice way to say that.” “I have a gift for this. I’ve helped a lot of people.” “You might be able to fix it. Probably you could. On the other hand, you might, just perhaps, push on it the wrong way and I lose the use of my left arm. Not worth the risk.” He then recommended that I go to a health food store and buy some red something-or-other algae to use as an anti-inflammatory. Which I’m not… Read more →
Baldness vs. Malaria
Why is there so much more research done on baldness than on malaria? Because rich people go bald, and they don’t die of malaria. — Bill Gates Read more →
See You in Hell, O Ye of Little Faith
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings from the underworld! I was catching up on Facebook this morning and saw that a woman is going in for brain surgery and her family and friends are asking for prayers for her recovery. Isn’t that overkill — prayer and brain surgery? Why not just pray for her recovery and if she doesn’t make it, you chalk it up to God’s will? Some “true believer” religions, e.g., the Christian Science church, do that. They believe more in prayer than in medicine. They decline medical care because they believe that God can heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, etc. as he did in the Bible. These are the folks you hear about when they come up on criminal charges after refusing medical care for their seriously ill children and the… Read more →
People Who Don’t Want Me to Know Things
What I want to know is why there are so many people who don’t want me to know things . . . What the 1% Don’t Want Us to Know Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About 20 Terrifying Facts Food Companies Don’t Want You to Know 11 things the Koch brothers don’t want you to know What hospitals don’t want you to know about C-sections 5 Things Hackers Don’t Want You to Know The Sad Secret Successful People Don’t Want You To Know 7 Rip-Offs Corporations and the Wealthy Don’t Want You to Know About Something Most Christians Don’t Want You to Know 11 Secrets Supermarkets Don’t Want You to Know Conspiracies: Five things they don’t want you to know The 25 Shadiest Things Drug Companies Don’t Want You To Know 11 Secrets Pilots Don’t Want You To Know Bottled Water: 10 Shockers “They” Don’t Want You… Read more →
Ten Steps to Being Fat, Lonely and Broke
Some behaviors come naturally while others require more effort. For example, there are dozens of bestsellers on finding love, losing weight and creating wealth but no market for books like Ten Steps to Being Fat, Lonely and Broke. Read more →
Thank You for Smoking
According to the American Cancer Society, smoking kills about 1 in 5 people in the United States. Is that bad? If so, why? You’ve got to die somehow. Would it be better if those people died from some other cause? How would you prefer to see them die? Also: Some percentage of Americans would rather be dead than alive anyway. I don’t know what that number is, but I’d bet it’s higher than 1 in 5. (If you Google “percentage of people who would rather be dead,” the top results all point to a 2008 survey in which 52 percent of respondents said they would rather be dead than disabled. If you change the search to “percentage of people who would rather be dead than alive,” you get a mishmash of links, including a few more links to the “dead vs. disabled” survey, but you still don’t get the number… Read more →
Drive Me to the Junkyard in my Cadillac
Well buddy when I die throw my body in the back And drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac — Bruce Springsteen, “Cadillac Ranch” Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor’s office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past. . . . Then blame — or credit — the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees. — High-End Health Plans Scale Back to Avoid ‘Cadillac Tax’ – NYTimes.com You’re probably thinking: “So what? I don’t have a high-end health care plan. I’m a working stiff. Let the Wall Street fat cats pay their Cadillac tax.” Actually, because the plan cost that triggers the Cadillac tax is not indexed for inflation, Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, estimates that as many as 75 percent… Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Alternative Medicine Advocates
Alternative medicine is not a real thing. You don’t have a choice between medicine and alternative medicine. You have a choice between medicine and Things That Have Not Been Proven to Work. Alternative medicine that works is called “medicine.” Some people tell me that regular doctors don’t know about alternative medicine because they don’t teach it in medical schools. They don’t teach it in medical schools? If I didn’t know anything about my job beyond what I learned in school 25 years ago, I’d be in bad shape. I’d be unemployable. If there are any doctors out there who’ve never learned anything outside of medical school, those are not the doctors you want to be going to. Read more →
Thomas Jefferson Solves the Country’s Obesity Problem
A slight minority of Democrats (48%) say the government should be extremely or very involved compared to 13 percent of Republicans. Non-whites (47%) are more likely than whites (25%) to say the government should be very or extremely involved in finding solutions to the country’s obesity problem. — Obesity in the United States: Public Perceptions My fellow Americans — The country doesn’t have an obesity problem. If you’re obese, that’s your problem, not the country’s problem, and you bear the costs of it, financial and otherwise. Some people might argue that obesity causes an increase in public health costs. That is untrue. Think about it. If you die in your 40s because you’re too fat, you have saved us all a lot of money, to the extent that your healthcare costs are borne by the public. If you’d maintained a normal weight and lived to be 80, you’d still have end-of-life… Read more →
Beware of Chest Physicians Bearing Gifts
I work for a healthcare organization. In the lunch room today was one of those cylinders full of caramel corn and cheese corn that turn up everywhere around the holidays. This one had a note attached: Compliments of your colleagues at the American College of Chest Physicians. Are caramel corn and cheese corn good for cardiac health? They’ve gotta be terrible, right? Beware of chest physicians bearing gifts! CARDIOLOGIST: Who referred you to our office? PATIENT: I saw your name on a container of cheese corn. CARDIOLOGIST: Ha ha, yeah, those things pay for themselves a million times over in stents and angioplasties. Read more →
Aside
If you’re fat, don’t say you “work out,” just say you “exercise.”
Monday Morning Sets the Tone for the Week
L.A. Fitness at 5 a.m. I don’t like exercising in a crowded gym. I also don’t like to get up early, but not as much as I don’t like exercising in a crowded gym, and if you get in there at 5 a.m., the gym isn’t crowded. For 2011, I started doing different exercises every day of the week and changing up the entire workout every four weeks, instead of doing the same basic routine that I’d been doing since, like, forever. I’m taking all major muscle groups by surprise on a regular basis. They have no idea what’s coming next. If you’re not incorporating the element of surprise into your exercise regimen, you’re blowing a major opportunity. Read more →