Monthly Archive for February, 2011

To Eat Less, Imagine Eating More

Published on February 23, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Greg Miller at ScienceNOW…

Before dipping your hand into that bowl of M&Ms at the holiday party, think about what you’re about to do. A lot. A new study finds that people who imagine themselves consuming many pieces of candy eat less of the real thing when given the chance. The finding, say experts, could lead to the development of better weight-loss strategies.

Picturing a delicious food—like a juicy steak or an ice cream sundae—generally whets the appetite. But what about visualizing yourself eating the entire sundae, spoonful by spoonful? There’s reason to think that might have the opposite effect, says Carey Morewedge, an experimental psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Researchers have found that repeated exposure to a particular food—as in taking bite after bite of it—decreases the desire to consume more. This process, which psychologists call habituation, dampens appetite independently of physiological signals like rising blood sugar levels or an expanding stomach. But no one had looked to see whether merely imagining eating has the same effect. More…

Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats – BBC Four

Published on February 22, 2011 in News. 1 Comment

International Health, Wellness and Society Conference Report

Published on February 17, 2011 in Headline and Newsletter. 1 Comment

By all indications the International Conference on Health, Wellness and Society was very well received and successful in attracting a truly international knowledge community.

If you participated , thank you for your contribution to the International Conference on Health Wellness and Society,  20-22 January, 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley USA. Regardless of how far you traveled, your discipline area or professional focus, your involvement advanced the conference’s commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and knowledge sharing. We greatly appreciate the addition of your particular perspective and expertise to the discussion.

We would also like to thank the conference virtual participants who, although unable to attend the conference, join the conference community by submitting their papers and contributing to the refereeing process.

Delegates who attended the conference as well as virtual delegates may upload their presentations and videos to the Common Ground YouTube site. Information about uploading your presentation may be found at: http://healthandsociety.com/conference-2011/online-presentations/ . You can also be a part of our Common Ground YouTube community by joining the conference group and becoming a subscriber at: http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPublishing?feature=chclk#p/p (click on the yellow “subscribe” button near the top left corner of the screen). In addition, you are invited to join our online conversation by subscribing to our monthly email newsletter and RSS feeds at http://healthandsociety.com/conference-2011/. We also have a Facebook community at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Health-Wellness-and-Society/103687329680957 and a Twitter feed at: http://twitter.com/healthnsociety.

We would like to give our sincere thanks to the outstanding conference plenary speakers , Gary Kreps, Department of Communication, George Mason University, USA, George Lambie, Department of Public Policy, De Montfort University, UK, Linda Neuhauser, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, USA and Brigadier General Margaret Wilmoth, U.S. Army Reserves.

Our thanks go out as well to Larry Adelman, California Newsreel, for the special screening of the moving documentary, Money Driven Medicine. For those in attendance who requested more information regarding the film please visit:

Dr. Donald Berwick’s pioneering article, “Escape Fire: Lessons for the Future of Health Care,” which reconceptualizes the delivery of hospital care: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/berwick_escapefire_563.pdf

Maggie Mahar’s blog, Health Beat: www.healthbeatblog.org

Background, transcripts and teaching materials for Money-Driven Medicine: www.moneydrivenmedicine.org

Of related interest: Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, the award-winning series that explores the root causes of the nation’s alarming class and racial inequities in health: www.unnaturalcauses.org

Once again, thank you all for attending and presenting. If you are a virtual participant, we owe our thanks to you as well for submitting presentations to our YouTube site as well as for submitting papers to the journal.

We hope that there will be news soon about the location of the 2012 Health Conference. Please keep checking our website for updates at http://www.health-conference.com

Treating Chronic Pain and Managing the Bills

Published on February 6, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 1 Comment

MICHELLE ANDREWS, New York Times, 4 February 2011

MAYBE the question is not who suffers from some type of chronic pain, but who doesn’t?

“If you tally up everybody who has chronic, recurring back, headache and musculoskeletal problems, it includes almost everybody by the time people get into their 30s,” said Dr. Perry Fine, a professor of anesthesiology at the Pain Research Center and theUniversity of Utah and incoming chairman of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

Given the prevalence of chronic pain — often defined as recurrent pain that lasts more than three to six months — you might expect that by now medical science would have figured out how to alleviate it and that health insurers would routinely cover its treatment.

If only it were that simple. Pain is a sneaky opponent. Invisible, it cannot be detected with a blood test or a scan; sometimes it has no identifiable cause. Pain is perception, and what one person considers intolerable may be only moderately uncomfortable to another.

This makes treatment challenging. And insurers often do not make it any easier.

For the last 15 years, Ernie Merritt III, 46, has been coping with the aftermath of a back injury he suffered working as a pipefitter in southeastern Maine. At the time, he thought he had just pulled a muscle. But after an M.R.I. revealed a herniated disc pressing on his sciatic nerve, he underwent the first of four operations.

Surgery has not been enough. Mr. Merritt’s back still hurts, and now he must wear a brace full time to stabilize it. He has developed carpal tunnel syndrome and shoulder problems. The nerves in his legs are damaged, and doctors cannot figure out why.

Read more…

Africa Genomics Effort Taking Shape

Published on February 2, 2011 in News. 1 Comment

GenomeWeb staff reporter, 01 February 2011

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – A new international effort will seek to expand and enhance the capabilities for using genomics in Africa by creating new infrastructure, investing in training, and funding specific genomics and bioinformatics research projects.

A partnership between the National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, and the African Society of Human Genetics (AfSHG),The Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) project will aim to catalyze and enable human genomics-based science in Africa, of particular interest to Africans, and conducted by African researchers, according to a new white paper proposal for the project.

The goal of the project is to establish “a viable, productive clinical and research infrastructure” by creating a network based around centers in hubs and regional nodes that branch out into the country, according to the authors of the white paper, which included scientists in Africa, Europe, and the US.

As GenomeWeb Daily News reported when the initial plans for H3Africa were released, NIH has committed $5 million per year for five years, and the Wellcome Trust has committed at least $12 million over the term of the project.

More than simply enhancing research into certain disease areas, the H3Africa project was designed to “improve the capabilities for doing research in Africa,” Mark Guyer, director of NIH’s Division of Extramural Research and acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, told GWDN today.

“To the extent possible we are trying to develop what is essentially an Afrocentric plan, where the ideas, the identification of the issues, will all come from the African scientific community. The awards when they are made will be made directly to African scientists and institutions, and they will be the driving force,” Guyer said.

Read more…