Health Politics. Politics affects health, hospital management, physicians and patients in a big way. Dr. David Samadi will explore major national and global health political issues and debates affecting the patient outcome. Learn what you need to know and get Dr. Samadi's take.
No matter how many medical experts have chimed in that President Trump would benefit from more exercise to lose weight, Trump has declared he already gets plenty.
Read MoreThe main concern was that PSA screening for prostate cancer leads to the detection of indolent, low-grade prostate cancer that is not life threatening even in the absence of any treatment action
Read MoreInternational patients seeking medical expertise and treatment in the United States is a growing part of the U.S. healthcare landscape.
Read MoreMedical errors kill more than 250,000 people in the United States yearly.
Read MoreHeart conditions are some of the most common conditions that people suffer from in the United States. From heart disease to high blood pressure to strokes to heart attacks, millions of people suffer from these conditions every day.
Read MoreIf you are going to search for medical advice on Google, double-check the sources' validity before acting on the advice.
Read More· Phobias, panic attacks and PTSD extremely common
o 29% of American adults suffer anxiety at some point in their lives
· What is fear?
o Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus
§ Causes the release of chemicals that cause:
· racing heart
· fast breathing
· energized muscles
· also known as the fight-or-flight response
o Stimulus could be a spider, a knife at your throat, an auditorium full of people waiting for you to speak or the sudden, load noise
o The process of creating fear begins with a scary stimulus and ends with the fight-or-flight response.
· Fear and anxiety stems from emotional memory
o Emotional memory: associations you have between various stimuli and experiences and your emotional response to them.
o Because of emotional memory fear is learned
o Previously harmless situation can predict danger
· Current treatment for phobias
o Exposure therapy: repeated exposure to feared object or frightening memory in a safe setting
§ Done to create new safe memory in the brain alongside the bad memory
§ Fear is suppressed
§ If patient is re-traumatized or re-exposed to original experience, his old fear will return worse than before
§ Can be difficult to relive scarring memories
§ Limitations of exposure therapy
§ Only works for ~50% of PTSD cases
· New Research in Curing Fear
o New research from University of Amsterdam suggests that it may be possible to change and perhaps ERASE certain types of emotional memories
o Past research
§ Memories are uniquely vulnerable to alteration at two points
· when we first lay them down
· when we retrieve them
o Study published last month suggests emotional fear response in healthy people with arachnophobia, erased
o published in the journal Biological Psychiatry
§ compared three groups made up of 45 subjects in total
· One group was exposed to a tarantula in a glass jar for two minutes then given a beta-blocker (propranolol)
· One was exposed to the tarantula and given a placebo
· One was just given propranolol without being shown the spider, to rule out the possibility that propranolol by itself could decrease spider fear
§ subjects’ anxiety when they were shown the spider the first time, then again three months later, and finally after a year
o Results:
§ Those given propranolol alone and those who got the placebo had no improvement in their anxiety
§ Those exposed to the spider and given the drug were able to touch the tarantula within days and, by three months, many felt comfortable holding the spider with their bare hands
§ Their fear did not return even at the end of one year
o Mechanism:
§ Propranolol blocks the effects of norepinephrine in the brain
§ Chemical similar to adrenaline, enhances learning
· Blocking it disrupts the way a memory is put back in storage after it is retrieved — a process called reconsolidation
· By reactivating the fear, the fear memory was made susceptible to the influence of propranolol
An Oklahoma 2 year old died after ingesting button batteries, or lithium batteries. Died six days after swallowing one of the batteries, which are small, silver, and shaped like a button
Read MoreRepublicans in Congress are again demanding the government to cut all funding for Planned Parenthood which has been around for over a 100 years, providing women's health services. This latest uproar sparked after videos of officials from Planned Parenthood went record discussing compensation for providing fetal tissue from abortions. Other challenges the group is facing is with the Affordable Care Act. Formerly uninsured women are not less reliant on Planned Parenthood for access to birth control, abortions and other reproductive healthcare.
Read MorePuerto Rico is beginning to face another budget cut to a highly-used Medicare program as well as an alarming shortage of Medicaid funds. The health care system is moving towards a crisis which could further undermine the island's gutted economy. The first sign of this crisis regarding the health care system was seriously in trouble when a large amount of doctors, a total of 3,000 in 5 years, began to leave the island for better positions, more money and less stress in the United States.
Read MoreCalifornia House passed a proposal that would outlaw a family's personal and religious beliefs as reasons to exempt their children from school vaccinations.
Controversial proposal now returns to the Senate, which must approve amendments for so-called SB277 to advance to Gov.Jerry Brown for his signature. Senate passed the initial bill in May.
Read MoreThis morning, the Supreme Court ruled in favor, with a 6-3 decision, to uphold the Obamacare authorization of federal tax credits for eligible Americans living not only in states with their own exchanges but also in the 34 states with federal exchanges.
Read MoreChief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has saved Obamacare for a second time, writing the majority opinion Thursday that upheld the health care law’s key provision of paying tax subsidies to customers in all states and saying the law otherwise would be a mess — something he doubted Congress intended.
Read MoreResearch from Duke University shows that conservation policies aimed at improving the environment can also improve human health. Researchers estimate 24% of the global burden of disease is due to poor environmental quality.
Read MoreDozens of health insurers selling plans under ObamaCare have requested hefty premium increases for 2016. Here's what you need to know.
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