Another Saturday and another News Dump….all the news that somehow is not reported….
I hope everyone had a safe Halloween…..
Local–Tomorrow we ‘fall back’ to real time….a worthless exercise that has no redeeming qualities….wee had a blast of cooler air….high low 60s and lows in the low 40s….below normal for this time of the year.
Personal–My trip to the doctor met with some good news, in a way, those two new ‘spots’ on my lung is not something they are worried about right now but will keep an eye on them.
I shall begin as always with health news….
Since we change our clocks tomorrow(fall back) I thought since I think the whole exercise is for crap I would post this piece of information….
It’s a hot (yet also sleepy) debate that ignites twice a year in the United States: Why are we still changing the clocks? The “spring forward” every March can feel particularly volatile, with research linking that loss of a precious hour of sleep to more heart attacks and fatal car accidents. Now, a new study published today in the journal PNAS indicates that sticking with standard time may improve health.
While many people support ending these seasonal time shifts, disagreements still persist over which policy to adopt–staying in standard time all year, or implementing permanent daylight saving time.
“You have people who are passionate on both sides of this, and they have very different arguments,” Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, a study co-author and circadian physiologist at Stanford Medicine, said in a statement.
https://www.popsci.com/health/daylight-saving-time-health-2/
What are your thoughts on this?
The invention of a ‘velcro bomb’…..
CAR-T cells are one of the most exciting breakthroughs in cancer treatment in recent years. Imagine a medicine, crafted from your own blood, that’s programmed to find and destroy your cancer; that’s CAR-T cells in a nutshell. For the better part of a decade, this revolutionary treatment has performed feats that a few decades ago would seem like miracles. It has taken patients with advanced blood cancers (leukemias, lymphomas) who were in the “small chances” group and, within a few months, given them back their lives.
The word “wonder cure” gets thrown a lot in medicine, but it’s one of the few instances where it’s actually true. But the CAR-T approach has a major problem: solid tumors.
Solid tumors kill the vast majority of patients. CAR-T works on blood cancers, but when it comes to cancers of the breast, lung, colon, etc, it doesn’t really work. The tumor acts like a fortress that withstands the immune assault.
Great research is being done but now it is time to put these ideas into action.
This is some troubling news….
Top scientists are calling for a prohibition on supermarket bacon and ham, cautioning that chemicals utilized in their manufacturing are connected to over 50,000 bowel cancer cases across the UK.
Nitrites – the additives that maintain processed meats’ pink color and prolong their shelf life – are believed to trigger approximately 5,400 cases each year, with treatment for individual patients costing around £59,000 and adding up to roughly £3 billion in NHS expenses throughout the last decade.
The alert follows the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) designating processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen – positioning it in the same high-risk tier as tobacco or asbestos.
https://www.themirror.com/news/health/ham-bacon-cancer-link-science-1466115
Getting older brings the inevitable gray hair…..
A strand of hair can tell a story about stress, time, and survival. Sometimes it turns gray, quietly marking age. Sometimes the same kind of cell that makes that color can turn dangerous.
Scientists from The University of Tokyo have found that one stem cell type can age safely or turn cancerous, depending on the stress it faces. The same decision that fades color can also feed disease.
These stem cells live in a small zone called the bulge-sub-bulge region. When hair sheds and grows again, these cells restart the color cycle.
Over time, tiny cracks form in their DNA – caused by sunlight, chemical exposure, or simply the everyday wear and tear of life.
Once that damage builds up, the cell must choose what to do next. It can protect the body by aging and stepping aside – or ignore the signal and risk turning rogue.
https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-discover-an-unexpected-link-between-gray-hair-and-cancer/
Innovation but yet a bit creepy…..enter the ‘poop cam’….
Kohler is no stranger to the bathroom, but it has historically provided ways for people to deal with their waste—not analyze it. The company is venturing into the world of personal health tech with the Dekoda, a device that clamps to the rim under your toilet seat and can analyze the contents of your toilet bowl with your health in mind. The Guardian calls it a “$600 poop cam”; Kohler more tastefully says the device uses “discreet optics” in order to track “the frequency, consistency, and shape” of your waste, scan for blood in the bowl, and evaluate your hydration levels based on your urine.
To ensure the analysis is tied to the correct user, Dekoda employs a fingerprint sensor for sign-in before use, reports CNET. Users can then review their health trends and daily summaries via a companion Kohler Health app. The Verge reports you must have a Kohler Health membership in order to access your data, at a cost of $70 a year for one person or $130 annually for up to five family members or roommates. If the idea makes you nervous, Kohler emphasizes that “Dekoda’s sensors see down into your toilet and nowhere else.”
But University at Buffalo health data system researcher Joana Gaia does tell the Guardian that “Kohler is not a medical organization, so they are not covered by HIPAA [the US law on medical privacy]. This is something that comes up a lot with apps that are healthcare-related.”
Sorry this is just too creepy for me.
Let’s talk anti-vaxxers….I think these people are idiots….why open yourself or your children to diseases that kill because of some bullshit false information?
But these morons have moved past people and onto their pets…..
Just when you thought it simply wasn’t possible for things to get any more stupid than they already are, the New York Times publishes a profile on veterinarians who have to deal with pet vaccine truthers.
In the four years since she opened her own veterinary practice, Dr. Kelly McGuire has seen her fair share of heartbreaking cases.
There was the dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial disease often carried by rodents. Several of her canine patients had come down with such severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition,” said Dr. McGuire, who owns Wildflower Veterinary Hospital in Brighton, Colo. And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had been forced to euthanize a 20-week-old puppy that was having seizures.
The deaths were wrenching, especially because they were preventable: Those pets would likely have survived had they received all their recommended vaccines.
Apparently it’s been “a thing” for a while now, particularly ever since the pandemic turned half of America into absolute loons. A Boston University study conducted in 2023 found that “nearly 40 percent of respondents believed that canine vaccines are unsafe, more than 20 percent believed these vaccines are ineffective, and 30 percent considered them to be medically unnecessary.” And, yes, “37 percent of dog owners also believed that canine vaccination could cause their dogs to develop autism.”
Or, as some call it, in all seriousness … pawtism.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/god-help-us-all-the-pet-anti-vaxxers
These dummies are everywhere…..sadly.
That is it for today…..enjoy your Autumn weekend and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”