Drinking Coffee Linked to Fewer Oral Cancer Deaths.

New York Times: 

A large study has found that drinking coffee is associated with a reduced risk of death from oral cancer.

Researchers studied 968,432 initially healthy men and women beginning in 1982. All completed questionnaires on health and dietary habits, including amounts of tea and coffee consumed, at the start of the study period. Twenty-six years later, 868 people had died of oral or throat cancer.

After adjusting for smoking, alcohol consumption and other factors, the researchers found that the risk of death from oral or throat cancer was 26 percent lower among those who drank one cup a day, 33 percent lower among those who drank two to three cups daily, and 50 percent lower among those who drank four to six cups daily, compared with those who drank no caffeinated coffee.

There was a barely significant association of decaffeinated coffee with reduced risk, and no link at all to tea. The report was posted online this month in The American Journal of Epidemiology.

The authors acknowledge that they could not distinguish whether coffee drinkers were less likely to get oral or throat cancer or more likely to survive it. The lead author, Janet S. Hildebrand of the American Cancer Society, said that the mechanism was unclear, but that coffee contains compounds that may have anticancer effects.

“We are not recommending that people start drinking coffee for cancer prevention,” she said. “But this is good news for those of us who enjoy coffee.”

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/risks-coffee-linked-to-fewer-oral-cancer-deaths/?ref=health

Attempts at expanding insurance coverage for acupuncture.

With so many recent studies showing that Acupuncture is in fact a viable treatment for a variety of ailments, with lab proven results, great efforts are being made to ensure that it is available as treatment under insurance carriers. 

From the New York Times: 

 "the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine mobilized 20,000 acupuncturists and their patients in a letter-writing campaign. (*To ensure inclusion of coverage on the new Health Care Law-cmj ed)

Efforts seem to have shown results. Most of the roughly two dozen states that have chosen their essential benefits — services that insurance will have to cover under the law — have decided to include chiropractic care in their package. Four states — California, Maryland, New Mexico and Washington — included acupuncture for treating pain, nausea and other ailments. It is also likely to be an essential benefit in Alaska and Nevada, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“To me, six is huge,” said Ms. Kang, an acupuncturist in Los Angeles, who helped coordinate the lobbying effort.

The main goal of the health care law has always been to guarantee medical coverage to nearly all Americans, but as states finalize their benefits packages, it is becoming clear that what is received will depend partly on location.

read the entire story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/health/interest-groups-push-to-fill-margins-of-health-coverage.html?ref=acupuncture

New York Times Opinionator: Endless Summer, the greenhouse effect.

In this insiteful piece, Mark Bittman goes over how climate change will affect what we eat and where we live over the next 100 years. 

It has been well over 100 years since the phenomenon called the greenhouse effect was identified, 24 years since the steamy summer of '88, when many of us first took notice, and, incredibly, 15 years since the Kyoto Protocol. That agreement stipulated that signatories would annually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and was ratified (and even acted upon) by almost every country in the world, including every industrialized nation but one. That would be the United States. Now that'sexceptionalism. (Bill Clinton signed Kyoto; George W. Bush, despite an election pledge, repudiated it.)

The climate has changed, and the only remaining questions may well be: a) how bad will things get, and b) how long will it be before we wake up to it. The only sane people who don't see this as a problem are those whose profitability depends on the status quo, people of money and power like Romney ("we don't know what's causing climate change"), most of his party, and Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chairman, who called the effects of climate change "manageable."

Which I suppose they are, as long as you're wealthy and able to move around at will. But it's not manageable to the corn farmers losing their crops (many are just chopping them down), the ranchers selling off their cattle, the thousands of people in Colorado burned out of their homes in fires caused by the worst drought since 1956 or those who will lose their homes or jobs to fire, flood, drought or whatever in coming years. How will they "manage"?

All of this is the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg is, of course, melting. As Bill McKibben points out in a piece to be published in Rolling Stone on Friday, not only was May the warmest on record for the Northern Hemisphere, not only was it "the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average," but it was also followed by a June in which some 3,200 heat records were broken in the United States.

The first page alone of the Rolling Stone article will scare the pants off you, but the chorus needs to grow bigger, louder and stronger. That's why the forthcoming book (due July 24) from Climate Central, "Global Weirdness," is so welcome. "Global Weirdness," which explains climate change in simple, easy-to-understand language and ultrashort chapters, is intentionally calm because, says Michael Lemonick, one of the authors: "Some people respond well to 'Big trouble is coming and we must do something immediately,' but others are overwhelmed and just turn off. We believe that if you look at all the available evidence it's clear we're pushing the earth into a regime where it hasn't been before, and the effects could well be disastrous."

The time to avoid calamitous effects has likely passed. This doesn't mean the situation is hopeless, but the longer we wait to curb emissions, the worse and longer-lasting the effects. Climate Central's projections show that the biggest cities in Florida, and a great deal of the Northeast coastline (including New York City), will be underwater by 2100, when almost everyone now alive will have "managed" to leave the scene. Of course, the calamities won't be limited to North America, nor is 2100 some magical expiration date; the end isn't in sight.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/the-endless-summer/

New Trend: Online Doctor Treatments via Phone and Web

With new technology, including Skype and Video Chat / Conferencing, getting professional therapy and help has gone from something that had to be meticulously scheduled along with often travelling long distances to see a specialist, to something that you can acheive in the comfort of your own home. 

From the New York Times: 

Since telepsychiatry was introduced decades ago, video conferencing has been an increasingly accepted way to reach patients in hospitals, prisons, veterans' health care facilities and rural clinics - all supervised sites.

But today Skype, and encrypted digital software through third-party sites like CaliforniaLiveVisit.com, have made online private practice accessible for a broader swath of patients, including those who shun office treatment or who simply like the convenience of therapy on the fly.

"In three years, this will take off like a rocket," said Eric A. Harris, a lawyer and psychologist who consults with the American Psychological Association Insurance Trust. "Everyone will have real-time audiovisual availability. There will be a group of true believers who will think that being in a room with a client is special and you can't replicate that by remote involvement. But a lot of people, especially younger clinicians, will feel there is no basis for thinking this. Still, appropriate professional standards will have to be followed."

The pragmatic benefits are obvious. "No parking necessary!" touts one online therapist. Some therapists charge less for sessions since they, too, can do it from home, saving on gas and office rent. Blizzards, broken legs and business trips no longer cancel appointments. The anxiety of shrink-less August could be, dare one say ... curable?

Ms. Weinblatt came to the approach through geographical necessity. When her therapist moved, she was apprehensive about transferring to the other psychologist in her small town, who would certainly know her prominent ex-boyfriend. So her therapist referred her to another doctor, whose practice was a day's drive away. But he was willing to use Skype with long-distance patients. She was game.

Now she prefers these sessions to the old-fashioned kind.

 Read the Original Story Here: http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=482B91B57CA7FE8619892CD3E87F24AB.w5?a=845424&f=35&p=1

Finding Clues to the Earth's Carbon Cycle in the Flaws of Diamonds

While this story is not medical health related directly, and not normally something that we cover here on the Classical Medicine Journal, it is still extremely interesting from a scientific point of view for those interested in the Earth,  where it came from, and possibly where it's headed. 

Diamonds that once lay more than 435 miles beneath the earth’s surface have provided researchers with an unexpected window into the planet’s history.

The diamonds, during their formation, captured evidence that slabs of the ocean floors descend deep beneath the earth’s surface, recycling carbon between the oceans and the earth’s mantle, the shell of rock, about 1,800 miles thick, that lies directly beneath the earth’s surface.

Understanding the fate of the slabs will help scientists better understand the earth’s carbon cycle and all the processes that depend on it, from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to the carbon compounds in living organisms and the formation of hydrocarbons in oil and gas.

Read more here: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/science/16diamonds.html?_r=1&ref=science

Using antibiotics for UTI, urinary tract infections has a side effect: antibiotic resistant E.coli.

A recent study highlights the problem with using Antibiotics as a cure-all: the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. 

Women with recurrent urinary tract infections sometimes must take low-dose antibiotics for months to control the problem. Many prefer to try something less onerous, like cranberry extract or juice, whichseveral studies have suggested can prevent these infections.

But a new study finds that a commonly used antibiotic works much better than cranberry, with one significant drawback: It encourages the development of resistant strains of bacteria.

Dutch researchers randomly assigned 221 women with a history of infections to two groups. The first took a daily dose of 480 milligrams of Bactrim, an antibiotic, and the second took 1,000 milligrams of cranberry extract.

The study, published Monday in The Archives of Internal Medicine, found that by any of three measures — the number of symptomatic infections, the proportion of patients with at least one infection or the average time to the first infection after starting the regimens — antibiotics controlled the infections more effectively in the study participants.

But when the researchers tested the subjects’ urine and feces, they found a large increase in the presence of antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli, the most common cause of the infections, in those who used the antibiotic.

Dr. Suzanne E. Geerlings, the senior author and an infectious disease specialist at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam, said the findings did not rule out using cranberry and noted that antibiotics have risks. “Antibiotics work better,” she said, “but when you get an infection resistant to antibiotics, you have a bigger problem.”

Read the original NY Times story here:

Regimens: Downside for a Urinary Infection Remedy

New Study: Simple Animals Can Exhibit Higher reasoning powers

Fascinating insight into some creatures we wouldn't normally suspect of having higher reasoning powers. Might make you wonder what else we're missing in the world outside?

Biologists from Duke University report that lizards have some of the same creative problem-solving abilities that birds and mammals do. Their findings appear in the current issue of Biology Letters.

The researchers, Manuel Leal and Brian Powell, exposed tropical lizards in Puerto Rico known as Anolis evermanni to a blue disc. Beneath the disc was some tasty prey — a freshly killed worm larva.

Four of the six lizards tested were able to get to the worm in one of two ways, either by biting the disc or by sticking their snouts underneath it and prying it off.

“Most people believed their behavior may be more robotic or not as flexible,” said Dr. Leal, the study’s lead author. But the lizards were creative, he said, using skills “which have no real ecological relevance.”

Read the full story here: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19oblizard.html?_r=2&ref=science

New Autism Study: Genes Not The Whole Story.

Below excerpts taken from the New York Times: 

A new and important study of twins suggests that conditions in the womb, and other environmental factors may be at least as important as genes in causing autism.

The researchers did not disclose which environmental influences might be at work. Other experts have said that the the new study, released online this month, markes an important shift in thinking about the causes of autism.

“This is a very significant study because it confirms that genetic factors are involved in the cause of the disorder,” said Dr. Peter Szatmari, a leading autism researcher who is the head of child psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at McMaster University in Ontario. “But it shifts the focus to the possibility that environmental factors could also be really important.”

As recently as a few decades ago, psychiatrists thought autism was caused by a lack of maternal warmth. And while that notion has been discarded in favor of genetic explanations, there has been growing acceptance that genes do not tell the whole story, in part because autism rates appear to have increased far faster than our genes can evolve.

"Other experts have cited factors like parental age, multiple pregnancies, low birth weight and exposure to medications or maternal infection during pregnancy."

Evidence from this study suggests that the enviroment that the child is developing in before being born could be as important as the genes themselves in triggering the onset of Autism. “I think we now understand that both genetic and environmental factors have to be taken seriously,” said Dr. Joachim Hallmayer, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and the lead author of the new study, which is to be published in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

In the new study, the largest of its kind, researchers looked at 192 pairs of identical and fraternal twins whose cases were drawn from California databases. At least one twin in each pair had the classic form of autism, which is marked by extreme social withdrawal, communication problems and repetitive behaviors. In many cases, the other twin also had classic autism or a milder “autism spectrum” disorder like Asperger’s syndrome.

Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes; fraternal twins share 50 percent of their genes. So comparing autism rates in both types of twins can enable researchers to measure the importance of genes versus shared environment.

Surprisingly, mathematical modeling suggested that only 38 percent of the cases could be attributed to genetic factors, compared with the 90 percent suggested by previous studies. And more surprising still, shared environmental factors appeared to be at work in 58 percent of the cases.

“We, like everyone else, were very surprised because we didn’t expect it to be that high,” said a senior author of the study, Neil Risch, a geneticist and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

The rate of autism occurring in two siblings who are not twins is much lower, suggesting that the conditions the twins shared in the womb, rather than what they were exposed to after birth, contributed to the development of autism.

A second article, also released early on the journal’s Web site, found an elevated risk of autism in children whose mothers took a popular type of antidepressant during the year before delivery. But the authors reassured women taking these drugs — so-called S.S.R.I.’s like Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa and Lexapro — that the risk was still quite low: 2.1 percent in children whose mothers used them in the year before delivery, and 2.3 percent in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Dr. Joseph Coyle, the editor in chief of the psychiatry journal, called the two studies “game changers.”

Clara Lajonchere, an author of the twin study and vice president of clinical programs for the research and advocacy organization Autism Speaks, said that “much more emphasis is going to be put on looking at prenatal and perinatal factors with respect to autism susceptibility.”

She added, “We need to not just study the environmental factors, but the relation between the genes and the environment.”

“For pregnant women or those thinking about having a family,” she said, “prenatal care is critical, and if a pregnant woman is taking any kinds of medication, she should work closely with a physician.”

Read the original story here: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 07/05/health/research/05autism.html

Read the original study notes here:  

http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archgenpsychiatry.2011.76