• Are millions of patients getting stents that are unnecessary even when the rules give doctors a green light? Accumulating evidence says the answer is yes.  Most people getting stents don't need them even if scans show substantial blockage.
• Thanks to extraordinary promotion and advertising, stents have become a multibillion-dollar business, substantially contributing to soaring medical insurance costs and federal deficits. They’re a perfect illustration why American health care costs more but delivers less.
• Numerous patients getting stents would be better off exercising, changing diet, losing weight and taking appropriate drugs. That way they won’t risk the surgical complications of implants.

Too Much Salt Takes a Blood-Pressure Toll

• More Americans today have undetected or poorly controlled hypertension than ever before because they are too sedentary and overweight. They eat too much, especially salt, but too few potassium-rich fruits and vegetables. 
• Often times, Americans don't know that their blood pressure is too high because they wait for a calamity to strike before seeking medical care.
• Uncontrolled hypertension sets the stage for astronomically expensive heart and kidney disease and stroke-diseases that will become only more common as the population ages.
• A working partnership between health care professionals and patients is needed to encourage people to monitor their pressure and adopt protective habits like increasing activity levels and lowering salt intake.

Full Article NY Times

With Soap and Water or Sanitizer, a Cleaning That Can Stave Off the Flu

• One of the most powerful weapons against the new H1N1 virus is summed up in a three-word phrase: WASH YOUR HANDS!
• Hand to face contact, which happens about once every four minutes, accounts for about one-third of the risk of flu infection.
• Regular soap and water and alcohol-based hand sanitizers are both effective in eliminating the presence of the virus from the hands. 
   

Full Article: NY Times

 Preventative Care is the Best Cure

Diet and lifestyle choices can be more powerful than drugs and surgery at preventing and reversing our worst afflictions.

Some facts to consider:

• The US spent $2.1 trillion on medical care last year
• 75% of these costs were spent on treating preventable or reversible diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and obesity.
• 95 cents of every dollar was spent treating a disease after it had occurred
• Over $100 billion was spent on angioplasty and coronary bypass operations, procedures that are largely ineffective at prolonging life or preventing future heart attacks.

• Over the past three decades, children have put on nine pounds while adults have put on 17 pounds with no decrease in physical activity.
• Each day, children need to cut their calories by about 350 and adults by about 500, in order to lose the excess weight.
• The equivalent in physical activity would equate to children walking an extra two-and-a-half hours and adults nearly two hours each day.

•      Up to 45% of new patients are referrals
•      Referral rates in the U.S. are 2x’s higher than in Great Britain.
•       Referrals are the currency of day-to-day transactions in health care

• The food industry has the ability to combine and create foods that tap into our brain chemistry and create an insatiable desire for more.

• Restaurants and food companies understand human behavior, taste preference and the desire to eat – they manipulate ingredients to the point at which we obtain the greatest pleasure from fat, sugar, and salt.

• The over-stimulating food environment that surrounds us fuels overeating, but understanding personal food triggers and maintaining structured eating habits can help you gain control.

• Mandated health testing is a growing trend that can improve the health of employees and save money over time by preventing and managing chronic conditions.

• The recent pledge to cut billions in wasteful spending might be difficult to fulfill, since what some call waste, doctors and medical professionals call income.
• Rising commercialism has obvious effects on the public but surprising effects on doctors themselves, causing them to perform not only as caregivers but as businesspeople.
• Doctors are under more pressure than ever to maximize income, causing a marketplace environment to take hold in hospitals.

• 52,000 CAT scans were administered to a population of 300,000, each scan delivering 1,000 times as much radiation exposure as a chest X-ray.
• After a full internal audit, the physicians and hospital leaders responsible concluded that: "A large portion of them were almost certainly unnecessary, not to mention possibly harmful."

• Over 4 million Americans are exposed to very high doses of radiation each year from unnecessary medical imaging tests

• 400,000 of those tests expose patients to higher doses of radiation than the maximum annual exposure allowed for anyone who works with radioactive material.

• A cardiologist who has extensively studied the use of medical imaging said these tests would probably result intens of thousands of additional cancers over the next several decades.

•  Are millions of patients getting stents that are unnecessary even when the rules give doctors a green light? Accumulating evidence says the answer is yes.  Most people getting stents don't need them even if scans show substantial blockage.

• Thanks to extraordinary promotion and advertising, stents have become a multibillion-dollar business, substantially contributing to soaring medical insurance costs and federal deficits. They’re a perfect illustration why American health care costs more but delivers less.

• Numerous patients getting stents would be better off exercising, changing diet, losing weight and taking appropriate drugs. That way they won’t risk the surgical complications of implants.