Day: May 30, 2025

Your PSA Is Essential

It is the end of the month and a good time for some FYI….I try to keep an eye on health news so I may pass it on to my readers….

Since I suffer from prostrate cancer I am always looking for info on the disease and write about it with the hope that more men will take it seriously and have their PSA tested….and this is an IST FYI post….I hope it helps.

PSA is from a blood sample and is an indication on how healthy your prostrate is at the time of the sample.

But the PSA test is not conclusive…..

News that former President Joseph Biden has advanced prostate cancer has revived long-standing questions about the benefits versus the harms of a blood test that screens for the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the U.S.

Prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, screening tests are an imperfect tool for detecting prostate cancer, doctors and public health experts say.

Part of the problem is identifying and treating aggressive cancers like Biden’s while not unnecessarily treating men with slow-growing cancers unlikely to sicken them. Autopsies found the disease to be so widespread that more than one-third of white men and half of Black men in their 70s had prostate cancers that would never do any harm.

“PSA testing alone leaves a lot to be desired as a cancer screening test,” said radiation oncologist Dr. Brent Rose, an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.

The test measures the level of PSA, a protein produced by normal as well as malignant prostate gland cells, in the blood. Elevated PSA can be a marker for cancer. It also can signal a false positive or an inactive cancer, triggering a painful biopsy, and leading to overtreatment with punishing side effects, including impotence, incontinence and bowel dysfunction.

“PSA screening is beneficial,” Rose said. “There are risks, though, and so it is a personal decision whether or not to do PSA screening.”

The key is to target and treat aggressive cancers while waiting and watching cancers that might never become troublesome, Rose and other oncologists told NPR. Physicians have been walking this tightrope since they began regularly using PSA tests to screen for prostate cancer in healthy men in the 1990s. There is no other test that effectively screens for prostate cancer — the second deadliest cancer for American men, oncologists said.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/21/nx-s1-5405613/prostate-cancer-psa-test-age

AS we men get older it is a good chance that something will go wrong in your prostrate…..please talk with your doctor about this test and ask as many questions as you can think of at the time.

As long as this is an FYI and about cancer…..let us look at another problem….colon cancer and what we eat…..

It’s often recommended as part of a balanced diet, but Italian researchers suggest too much of this meat could raise certain health risks.

It may be well known that vices such as smoking and drinking alcohol can up your risk for cancer, but so can your diet. What you eat or drink could potentially affect your health more than you’d think, as past studies have confirmed how sugar-sweetened beverages or processed meats could also increase cancer chances…and now another type of meat is getting a closer look.

The peer-reviewed journal Nutrients in April published the results of a study conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Gastroenterology in Bari, Italy. Reviewing data from 4,869 participants residing in southern Italy, researchers set out to see “for the first time” if there was a link between white meat consumption, gastrointestinal cancers, and all other causes of death, “focusing on the effects of poultry consumption.”

More than a quarter of all new cancer cases around the world are gastrointestinal, says a 2023 JAMA Network Open article. These include cancer of the esophagus, stomach, pancreas, small bowel, colon, rectum, and anus. Notably, colorectal cancer is the second deadliest cancer in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute.

A Surprising Meat Has Been Linked With Colon Cancer in a New Study

These two cancers can be very common so please as you grow older consult your doctor about ways to help you detect these killers early.

Please try to have a lovely weekend and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Butt Licker To The Rescue

Just days ago the US Court of International Trade put a whammy on Donny’s dreams of harsh tariffs on the world…..and yesterday a Trumpite came to the rescue.

President Trump’s tariffs were reinstated by a federal appeals court ruling on Thursday. The court’s ruling came after a second federal court found that an emergency powers law does not give Trump authority to enact tariffs, and that most of the ones he’s already ordered after invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are unlawful.

  • US District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that the law does not permit the president to “unilaterally impose, revoke, pause, reinstate, and adjust tariffs to reorder the global economy,” the Hill reports. The US Court of International Trade reached the same conclusion on Wednesday.
  • The appeals court didn’t rule on the merits of the tariffs or the trade court’s ruling, but granted an emergency request to hold up the ruling, allowing Trump to keep collecting the tariffs while the issue is being decided in the courts, per the AP.
  • The Justice Department asked two sets of judges to let the Trump administration proceed with its tariffs, per the New York Times. If need be, administration officials had said they’d ask the Supreme Court on Friday for emergency relief, per the Washington Post.
  • After the 33-page ruling by Contreras, who was appointed by Barack Obama, for the DC District Court, the government filed another appeal. His ruling gave the government 14 days to appeal before it took effect, meaning the tariffs are still in place for now.
  • White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that there are “other legal authorities” Trump could use to impose tariffs, per the Guardian, and that he “is willing to use those.” She criticized what she called “a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”
  • The Guardian notes that only three of the 11 judges who granted the stay were appointed by Republican presidents. After the ruling, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro blasted the 12 states that sued as elitist Democratic coastal states, though Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota aren’t on either coast and the first two voted for Trump last year.

A loyal visitor to IST asked if this could be settled by the Supreme Court…..and I answered that I did not know for sure….and now the answer is yes if could be settled by SCOTUS.

SCOTUS has been in Trump’s corner for many of its rulings….so the pathetic tariff question will be answered by a pack of political hacks.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Those Yo-Yo Trade Policies

One day there are up the next they are down…..is it to give his, being Trump, Fat Cat buddies a chance to make more money?

It appears so to me.

Donny’s newest threat was against Apple…..

President Trump’s latest tariff threat is directed at Apple—he is threatening a 25% penalty unless the company starts making iPhones in the US, reports NBC News. Most are currently made in China, though CNBC notes that the company has been recently moving some production to India.

  • “I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!”
  • EU, too: Trump also threatened to impose a 50% tariff on the European Union, one of the nation’s largest trading partners, per the Wall Street Journal. He faulted their “powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits” against US companies.
  • Markets: Dow futures were down more than 600 points on the combined threats. Apple shares fell about 3%.

Apple’s drop effected the entire market….

US stocks fell Friday after President Trump threatened 50% tariffs on the European Union that could begin in a little more than a week.

  • The Dow dropped 256.02 points, or 0.6%, to 41,603.07, off 2.5% for the week.
  • The S&P 500 declined 39.19 points, or 0.7%, to 5,802.82, finishing the week down 2.6%.
  • The Nasdaq fell 188.53 points, or 1%, to 18,737.21, down 2.5% for the week.

Trump threatened the tariffs before the US stock market opened, saying on his Truth Social platform that trade talks with the EU “were going nowhere” and that “straight 50%” tariffs could go into effect on June 1.

Stocks fell immediately in Europe, the AP reports. The US market also took a quick turn lower, and futures for US stock indexes tumbled after earlier suggesting only modest moves at the open of trading. The S&P 500 lost as much as 1.3% shortly after trading began, but it pared its loss as traders weighed whether Trump’s latest threats were just negotiating tactics aimed in hopes of getting a deal or something more. Apple dropped 3% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after Trump went after the company specifically. He said he’s been pushing Apple to move production of iPhones to the US, and he warned a tariff “of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the US” if it doesn’t.

I have thought from the beginning that these tariffs were a game that Donny is playing and the more he employs these yo-yo economic policies the more I am convinced that these tariffs are put in place to benefit him sand his Fat Cat thugs…..those people that care NOTHING for this nation and its people as long as they can continue to play the system for their benefit.

Does anyone see this as ‘making America great again’?

If so please define why.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”