Setting alerts for heart rate is a big one for me — Aaargh! I don’t know when these features were added — it may have been in WatchOS 9.0, and I had my mind on other things at the time. …

Musk, Bezos, and Trump are now officially “abnormal.” — New York, NY, December 5, 2022, 4:59 PM In what seems to be a move to raise awareness about the trillionaire psychos driving our civilization off a cliff, the psychology community has finally decided to do its part. They made a new disorder. It's a sliding scale. It gauges an…

New gene editing technology delivered by nanoparticles fixes a key mutation in mice with cystic fibrosis — Mucus Only recently we’ve seen a potential vaccine for fibrosis (in mice!) and now another advance comes along that aims to tackle cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis is caused by mutations in the CF transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene. That’s a mouthful. This gene codes for a channel in our cells that…

“How would you like to pay that today?” — Providence is a health giant whose anchor is a network of Catholic hospitals. They colluded with McKinsey to steal from their poorest patients, by deceiving them about their eligibility for free care, saddling poor, sick people with crushing debts: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/business/nonprofit-hospitals-poor-patients.html Though Providence is nominally a nonprofit, but it sits atop…

Groundbreaking research suggests the soleus muscle pushup is more effective than exercise, weight loss, and intermittent fasting for improving the regulation of blood glucose — Professor Marc Hamilton of Health and Human Performance at the University of Houston has identified the ‘soleus pushup’ as the most effective exercise to improve your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). The effect lasts for hours, even while sitting.

Not among my favorite days, but there it is — It’s Thursday, which for me means exercising my core and my hands. Both of these are important, but I truly can’t enjoy core. I endure it, and that’s the best I can say about it. I only started getting serious about hand strength recently when I could not unscrew a…

Just in case Democrats are looking for a way to win the midterms, here’s something they can use. — I just read about yet another depressing pollution study. Thanks to forever chemicals like PFAS, rainwater isn’t safe to drink. I notice that the businesses that created those novel substances aren’t stepping up to pay for the health care costs resulting from exposure to those chemicals. Better living through chemistry…

Should we consider creatine to prevent age-related muscle wasting? — Creatine Creatine is one of the world’s most popular supplements. It’s also one of the supplements with the most research to back up its use, safety, and efficacy. You can buy it in a few different forms, but the trusty good old creatine monohydrate will still give you the most bang…

The war on your pancreas continues. — Even if you don’t have diabetes, you can’t have missed that there’s something really terrible going on with how Americans with diabetes control their illness. Insulin — a century-old drug whose inventors refused any patents — has experienced double-digit, year-on-year price hikes (1123% between 2009–2017 alone!): https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/desperate-families-driven-black-market-insulin-n730026

This is going to shake things up — Politicians have been debating ways to address the obscenely high cost of prescription drugs in the United States for decades, and as is usually the case when politicians are the driving force behind anything, nothing has been accomplished. But what if a guy who exactly 40 years ago was tending…

Because it doesn’t work as well — I get dizzy fairly easily. All it takes is a little bending over or standing up too quickly, and sometimes not even that, to set my head spinning. I’ve even fainted while just walking back to bed from getting a sip of water. Yes, yes, I’ve been to the doctor…

It’s so heavy now — When I was a somewhat scrawny teenager in the early sixties, I could lift a 100 pound dumbbell over my head with either hand. I do mean lift: pushing it up in a controlled motion and letting it down, not jerking it up with the help of my legs. Yeah…

Why are we ignoring this discovery? — April 2020. In my part of the country Covid is a raging unknown killer and we are desperate to find a way to slow its progress. We go into lockdown across our communities. We stop going into work and school. We mask and walk wide circles around each other when…

Yup. I bought one for my wife. — My poor wife and I are suffering from damaged hearing. That is, she has the damaged hearing, but both of us suffer because of it. She’s tried hearing aids. The first pair we bought from a local audiologist. They weren’t fancy ones, but still pretty pricey at around $1500 for…

This will hurt them — There have always been disgruntled Apple employees, but Apple’s recent actions about working at home and their extreme reaction to union organizing activity by retail store employees have changed the mood and minds of many employees who once were quite happy with their employer and their job. I think Apple…

Six tiers and none of them mean a fucking thing. — CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article erroneously claimed Simon Lovell had passed away; I misremembered my contribution to a 2015 medical fundraiser for Mr Lovell as a contribution to a funeral expenses fundraiser. My sincere apologies to Mr Lovell (and I’m delighted to learn I was wrong!). Indie bookstores…

Or whatever thing it is that you want to get better at — I was broken for a few months last year. It wasn’t COVID, though some of the symptoms made me very suspicious of that. One of the more annoying things was that I lost strength. I struggled to do three pull-ups and six or seven push-ups were all I could squeeze…

For me and my wife anyway — or is it? — We recently had a contractor remove the stupid whirlpool tub from our bathroom. I wrote about the hows and whys of that at Death of a Bathtub if you care. The contractor noticed my Apple watch and commented that an old fashioned Timex was all he needed. In fact, he…

Have you wondered what causes the average human to die at 80? — Many marine animals make our average life expectancy of 80 years seem like a really bad deal. Bowhead whales can live more than 200 years. The Rougheye rockfish has a maximum life expectancy of at least 205 years, and Greenland sharks are estimated to live at least 272 years. On…

Under pressure in the emergency department — It’s the real deal. I know it as soon as I’m handed the electrocardiogram. The lines traced across the delicate pink squares on the page form an ominous, threatening pattern. Danger lurks. I’m standing idly by Duke’s emergency department intake area, chatting up the nurses, waiting for the next patient…