Numbers needed to treat. This is a crucial concept. It illustrates brilliantly the concept of First, Do No Harm, which also happens to be the title of the first chapter of my writing project “Deep Resilience”. This graphic comes from
We discussed the concept of complexity with aging here. This article reinforces that principle. The full article is behind a paywall and since it’s an older article, I will skip the purchase and just cite the article. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1023306419861 Published: March
Unnecessary care. It’s a real problem! Not only wasteful but possibly leads to injury. This article is 5 years old, but I’m reviewing it for the writing project I’m doing. The one that got me thinking, however, was a study
I’m still working on my shelter-in-place project called “Deep Toughness: the cutting edge science behind ancient practice and modern health hacks” (still working on the title). The list of implants that carry well-documented dangers goes on. In 2004, there was
This is a horribly sad story of medical interventions going awry. Back pain which continued after retirement in 2008. Treatments were ineffective, and in 2016 he ended up getting a spinal cord stimulator. Unfortunately the battery migrated somehow into
From Harvard Medical School blog Calling steroid injections into question Steroid injections can quickly relieve inflammation in the joints, and the effects may last from several weeks to several months. I’ve seen a number of patients who got significant
Frail, older patients frequently undergo such operations, which surgeons tend to see as routine, simple fixes — but may not be. “Our data indicate that there are no low-risk procedures among patients who are frail,” Dr. Hall and his co-authors
This pdf of the presentation from last week’s conference on Controversies in Women’s Health. It’s hard to say if there is an upshot per se. In general, guidelines are getting much more nuanced and recognize the real harms of false
” This is far from the first study to suggest that stents and bypass are overused. But previous results have not deterred doctors, who have called earlier research on the subject inconclusive and the design of the trials flawed.
I’m becoming more aware of the anti-aging “movement” out there that subscribes to various biohacks to promote brain health and overall longevity. One such hack which I always dismiss out of hand is the taking of Metformin. My general philosophy
