cook stoves with wood or coal cause asthma etc

SciDaily article...

About three billion people around the world live in households that regularly burn wood, coal or other solid fuels to cook their food. Solid fuels emit very high levels of pollutants, especially very small particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs. Typically, these households are found in the rural areas of low- and middle-income countries. Although China is rapidly urbanizing, one third of its population still relies on solid fuels.

here, I had to increase the salary of my maid so she could buy LPG gas for cooking because I got tired of treating her son for respiratory infections.

In Africa, they tended to cook outside, but in cold weather, they heated the huts with wood fires, so we saw not only respiratory illness in kids but severe burns from accidents.

Calorie lables mean people lose weight?

UPI Headline:


Calorie counts on menus are helping people lose weight, study says

then you find the details:

"We conducted an experiment with over 5,500 diners in real-world restaurants and found that calorie labels led customers to order 3 percent fewer calories," said study author John Cawley. The drop amounted to about 45 fewer calories consumed per meal. 

 "This was due to reductions in calories ordered as appetizers and entrees," he added, with little change seen in the calorie count of either drinks or desserts...

uh but don't desserts have a lot of calories? Shouldn't they be cutting these out instead of appetizers?

 "In interpreting that, it's important to remember that people will change their behavior when the information is new or surprising," he explained. "People may have already known that desserts are high-calorie and not cut back, but been surprised by the number of calories in appetizers and entrees, and so reduced calories there."

or maybe they cut out the appetizer so they wouldn't feel guilty about eating that calorie filled dessert...


what is not explained: if the 45 calories was in everyone, or if they added up everyone and divided it by the number of people. So a person omitting a high calorie appetizer (say, 1000 calories) but 24 people not doing anthing would amount to an average of 40 calories less per person.

even if this was true for everyone, and everyone cut their calories by 45 calories, how much weight would they lose?

Cawley calculated that over a three-year period, the calorie cut would lead to weight loss in the range of one pound.

assuming they don't go home hungry and then scarf down some potato chips and beer.

a third study was done in real time: with young 30 something white men.

Maybe biased toward the health obsessed?

Headlines you might have missed

Lifestyle changes could lower need for high blood pressure medicine.

Duh. Hippocrates knew this. The problem? Given the choice between a pill and diet/exercize, most people prefer the pill.

Lolo jogged until he hit age 88, but he wouldn't give up his soy sauce/patis/salty Fiilipino dishes.

and of course, for severe high blood pressure, mere diet and exercize doesn't work.

For some of us, exercize is hell. (arthritis, fear of ridicule). My only exercize is to walk George the cat killing Labrador, but even then, I go with the cook for fear of falling/being pulled down by the dog).

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Probiotics are useless. the study was in healthy people.

dirty little secret: Most medicines are useless in healthy people.

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another cholera epidemic in Harare (Zimbabwe).

The problem? infrastructure collapse from not repairing it.

The government is saying that it is doing what it can, but say it is hindered by the current economic crisis. The opposition blames the lack of resources on decades of corruption and mismanagement.

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two cases of monkey pox in the UK in people returning from Africa.

not usually fatal and not easily transmitted person to person.

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After every typhoon, we have a minor epidemic of Leptospirosis. It is easily treated with antibiotics, but often people don't seek help in time.

Article about the problem HERE.

Flu or MERS?

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the flight that was stopped in NYC with a lot of sick people. What caused it? Influenza is what is being told. Then why were so many people (10) hospitalized? Or was it a precaution?

BusinessInsider article says what I was thinking: Thank God it wasn't MERS.

And it appears that the illness might have been spread from pilgrims returning from last week's haj celebration.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating illnesses that sickened dozens of passengers on three separate international flights headed into the US this week. It looks like many of the sick passengers were traveling from Mecca, where the Hajj was recently underway, and massive crowds of millions of people gathered.

nor was that flight the only one.

First, there was an Emirates flight from Dubai that landed at JFK airport Wednesday morning and had to be quarantined... Nearly a dozen passengers on board that flight were hospitalized and given anti-viral drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said "preliminary tests indicate that some patients tested positive for influenza and/or other common respiratory viruses." But the agency isn't quite sure this was the common flu. 

 Then, on Thursday, two flights coming in to Philadelphia from Paris and Munich were briefly held upon arrival because of passengers on board with sore throats and coughs. As NBC reported, those sick passengers were all traveling from Mecca, Saudi Arabia where the annual Hajj pilgrimage was underway in late August. It's not too far from where the first plane took off (in the United Arab Emirates).

Infectious disease is always a worry for hij pilgrims, many of whom come from poor countries (poor people often are offered free pilgrimage paid for by richer Muslims).

But there are many requirements for the pilgrims, including vaccinations for infectious disease including seasonal influenza.

One problem being, of course, that the seasonal influenza varies from year to year and sometimes the vaccines don't cover that strain of the virus.

In contrast, MERS has similar "flu like" symptoms, but is a different virus, one related to SARS.
WHO LINK

Approximately 35% of reported patients with MERS have died.

Although the majority of human cases of MERS have been attributed to human-to-human infections in health care settings, current scientific evidence suggests that dromedary camels are a major reservoir host for MERS-CoV and an animal source of MERS infection in humans.

However, the exact role of dromedaries in transmission of the virus and the exact route(s) of transmission are unknown. The virus does not seem to pass easily from person to person unless there is close contact, such as occurs when providing unprotected care to a patient. Health care associated outbreaks have occurred in several countries, with the largest outbreaks seen in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and the Republic of Korea.

we had at least one scare here: and would be at major risk, not just because of returning Haj pilgrims but because we have so many caregivers in that area.

Influenza spreads quickly in crowded areas which is why during flu season they often stop visitors to nursing homes and even close churches and theatres to stop the spread of the flu.

In contrast, MERS requires close contact and does not spread easily person to person.

the source seems to be camels, and along with all the usual infectious disease precautions, there were campaigns about not kissing your camel.

cross posted from my main blog

Microwave attacks

BoingBoing reports that Cuba's "sonic weapon" that has caused cognitive problems for those in American embassies were microwaves.

The notion that our brains can perceive certain microwaves as sound isn't new, nor is the idea of using them in weapons. 'Directed Energy Weapons' have long been a thing. Russia uses them against drones. The United States militaryhas developed sonic weapons and used them on protesing Americans, but microwave attacks?

Yup.

Strikes with microwaves, some experts now argue, more plausibly explain reports of painful sounds, ills and traumas than do other possible culprits — sonic attacks, viral infections and contagious anxiety.

In particular, a growing number of analysts cite an eerie phenomenon known as the Frey effect, named after Allan H. Frey, an American scientist. Long ago, he found that microwaves can trick the brain into perceiving what seem to be ordinary sounds.

The false sensations, the experts say, may account for a defining symptom of the diplomatic incidents — the perception of loud noises, including ringing, buzzing and grinding. Initially, experts cited those symptoms as evidence of stealthy attacks with sonic weapons.

Members of Jason, a secretive group of elite scientists that helps the federal government assess new threats to national security, say it has been scrutinizing the diplomatic mystery this summer and weighing possible explanations, including microwaves.

more at the NYTimes.

the Pill changes women's brains

From MSNLifestyle via Instapundit:

In men, the androgens released at puberty are known to remodel the brain. This is also true in women, where relatively small quantities of testosterone can cause certain areas to shrink and others to grow.

so did anyone bother to check it out?

...One of the first such studies was conducted only eight years ago - after the pill had already been in use for 50 years. Dr Pletzer recruited a mixture of men and women on and off hormonal contraception, then scanned their brains. What she found was striking. The scans revealed that several brain areas were larger in the women on the pill, compared to those of women who weren't.

These areas just so happened to be larger in men than women, too. The study involved a relatively small sample and didn't separate androgenic and anti-androgenic contraception, so Dr Pletzer cautions against reading too much into the results. But other research has hinted that both types of hormones actually may be changing our behaviour.

It turns out that women taking pills with androgenic progestins have lower verbal fluency. They were also better at rotating objects. This makes sense, since men are thought to be slightly less articulate than women in certain situations and have better spatial awareness. Other studies have found that women on oral contraception remember emotional stories more like men - recalling the gist more than the details. They're also not as good at recognising emotions in others, such as anger, sadness, or disgust - just like men. It looks suspiciously like certain types of pill are "masculinising" women's brains....

As Dr Pletzer wrote in 2014, when athletes take steroids we call it 'doping' - it's considered abuse and strongly condemned by society. But we are happy for millions of women to take these hormones every day, sometimes from puberty to menopause. Scientists do not yet know if any of the pill's effects on the brain have much of an impact on our behaviour. But perhaps it is time we put it to the test. - 

on the other hand, the alternative might be ten kids, or ten abortions, so maybe it's okay.

STD increase: Blame anti HIV medicines?

A lot of headlines are touting the increase in STD diagnoses in the USA. AFP via Manila Bulletin:

In US, sexuallly transmitted infections hit new highs

But, like the Catholic "abuse" crisis, the elephant in the room is "MSM" or homosexual sex in men.

Between 2013 and 2017, syphilis diagnoses spiked 76 percent, going from 17,375 to 30,644 cases. Men who have sex with men made up almost 70 percent of syphilis cases.' 

Over those four years, gonorrhea cases increased 67 percent — from 333,004 to 555,608 cases. Gonorrhea diagnoses nearly doubled among gay men — going from 169,130 cases in 2013 to 322,169 last year.

translation: about 60 percent are in gay men.

Increases in gonorrhea among women “are also concerning,” said the CDC report, with cases going from 197,499 to 232,587 in a single year from 2016-2017.

they go on to discuss Chlamydia, but you know, with the newfangled idea you don't need yearly pap smears (where we docs routinely did Chlamydia testing) I wonder if some cases are missed.

they go on to lament that gonorrhea now is getting resistant to antibiotics like Zithromax (which also can treat Chlamydia, which often is missed or false negative test).

But not in the article:

It may not be an increase in gay MSM sex, but because of a decrease in the use of protection.

You see, if you take anti HIV retroviral medications, your viral load goes down and the rate of transmission of HIV goes way down too. So the fear of catching HIV is lower, meaning that there is probably less "safe sex" protection being done.

But I can't find the original report at the CDC so this is only an assumption.