Morning Ed: Health {2017.07.27.Th}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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31 Responses

  1. Damon says:

    Shower: Well, I always shower at night after working out. If it’s a particularly hot evening, I’ll shower again in the morning. Of course, if I’m not dirty of body, and I have someone who wants to take a shower together, ANYTIME is a good time to “get soapy”.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    Of all the Kennedy’s, that one really needs to be fully marginalized. Have the more sane members of that clan publicly denounced him?Report

  3. fillyjonk says:

    Shower: anyone with bad pollen allergies who has to be outdoors during the day learns that showering (and washing your hair, if it’s longer than 1/2 inch or so) at night is your friend.

    Honestly, there are some days in the summer when I shower TWICE. It’s like the old line from “To Kill a Mockingbird” about how ladies in 1930s Alabama bathed three times a day but were STILL sweaty by dinnertime.

    As for the “dirt and germs and immune system” thing – well, I pretty much rolled in the mud as a child, there were times my mom hosed me off, clothes and all, in the backyard before letting me in the house, and I am STILL allergic to just about everything, so I don’t know. Maybe I’d be dead if she didn’t let me roll around in the mud?Report

    • Kimmi in reply to fillyjonk says:

      filly,
      Did you go into anaphalactic shock during the allergy test? 😉
      There’s allergic, and then there’s “systemic shock likely”Report

      • fillyjonk in reply to Kimmi says:

        No, never gone into full shock. (I had a case of chills and hives once, and my bp dropped).

        But I am miserable all summer long – sneezing, hives, scratchy throat, dysphoria. I am taking as much antihistamine as is safe/as I can still function on.Report

        • Kimmi in reply to fillyjonk says:

          filly,
          My husband lost consciousness. Sneezing and scratchy throats are good days for him, bad days he’s getting systemic issues, which leads to poor decision making and overall sleepiness…Report

          • fillyjonk in reply to Kimmi says:

            I am at the point where I will not try any food I have not eaten before if I am alone. In the past five years I have started to have reactions to anything in the cucumber/melon family, worse reactions to celery and its relatives, sometimes reactions to strawberries, and I suspect I am now sensitive to peanuts and peanut butter (so don’t eat it any more). I also have to read the labels of all the cosmetic/bathing products I use – no cucumber extracts or chamomile extracts.

            I am also on a beta blocker which adds another layer of worry because my doctor told me it’s harder to bring someone out of anaphylaxis when they are on one – something about epinephrine “not working.”

            My fear is I’ll live to see a day when all I can eat is (maybe) rice, chicken, and lamb (supposedly 3 of the least allergenic foods)Report

  4. North says:

    Coca Cola is phasing out Coke Zero. What in the nine hells are they thinking? It was one of their only growing product lines- also the only diet soda that doesn’t taste like dish detergent.Report

  5. Kimmi says:

    Re: Taking your own medicine
    So, let’s see: Either the science writer doesn’t know jack about this (likely) or the researchers haven’t read half the research on the subject (also likely). You can use probiotics to repopulate the gut (of course you can!) — it won’t be the same as when you started, of course, and some of the more effective “repopulate your gut” stuff isn’t bacteria at all. But when you’ve got enough noxious bacteria living down there, the procedure is “flood it with anything that’ll grow” — like freezedried yeast.Report

  6. Kimmi says:

    Okwerekwu’s piece reads a lot more brightly if you substitute the mentally deficient (um? What’s the right word here? I don’t keep track)… But of course, then you’re arguing that it’s a matter of human rights to have mentally deficient doctors [to be perfectly clear: I assume that there are fields where a doctor could be decently of service without having full mental capabilities].
    Fun Fun!
    (Note: We still have laws on the books about getting the mentally handicapped pregnant, and about allowing them to carry babies to term.)Report

  7. Jaybird says:

    As physicians get stretched more thin

    At what point will the powers that be say something like “we need more physicians!” instead of “we need better insurance that covers more people!”?Report

    • gregiank in reply to Jaybird says:

      Pols are all over the fewer people should have health insurance and access to care. It’s been in all the papers.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to gregiank says:

        Well, then, let’s continue ignoring the whole “doctors are getting stretched pretty thin” thing and argue over universal coverage.

        “There aren’t doctors anymore. There is only WebMD and hospital administrators.”
        “Well, at least I no longer have to worry about coverage.”Report

  8. Jaybird says:

    If you enjoy conversations about rescheduling drugs, here’s one that happened on Capitol Hill the other day:

    https://youtu.be/v_1VcPt-8y8

    Edit: looks like “yesterday”.Report

  9. Brandon Berg says:

    I’ve never really understood this fixation some people on the right have with cutting insurance costs by allowing people to opt out of coverage treatment for whole categories of afflictions. It seems to me that this is completely orthogonal to the best way to control costs, which is to opt out of coverage for low-value treatments across the board, while maintaining coverage of high-value treatments. There are many expensive treatments that are only marginally more effective than much cheaper treatments. Part of the reason that insurance is so expensive is that the government limits insurers’ ability to offer plans that don’t cover these treatments.

    The ideal system, from this perspective, would be one where different insurance plans are tiered according to the clinical value of the treatments they cover. For example, a discount plan might cover treatments that on average cost no more than $25,000 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) added. A stardard plan might go up to $50,000/QALY, premium up to $100,000, and the Cadillac plan would be the best money can buy.Report