Medical Health

Blood Tests Away From Home

If you must have blood tests every 4 to 8 weeks while you are away from home, then compare what the lab provides with what your doctor requires. Your doctor might ask for a series of individual tests, but the lab might include all those tests in one package. The package of tests is often cheaper than the total cost of the individual tests ordered separately. For example, the Hepatic Function Panel (which is a group of liver-related blood tests) is cheaper than the total
price of the separate tests ordered individually.

Have your doctor give you a lab test requisition form. Then when you arrive at your vacation destination, ask the lab if they have a package of tests that includes the tests your doctor has ordered. If their package is cheaper, phone your doctor, tell him the name of the package of tests, and have him FAX a new requisition to the lab.

from Palm Treo

C-Reactive Protein

Most of us have our cholesterol and other lipids checked every year. You might also ask your doctor to order a test for c-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation. However, my family doctor says that the c-reactive protein test is no longer in vogue and that the results would not alter the way she goes about preventing and treating heart disease.

Plastic Bottles in Garbage

If concerned (aka intrusive) citizens continue to harass individuals who use disposable plastic water bottles, then those individuals might start hiding their empty bottles in the garbage, where they won’t be seen (in dark plastic garbage bags), rather than in recycle boxes out front of their homes.

Multi-tasking, Texting, and the Service Economy

We hear all this hype on TV about how the younger generations are now experts at multi-tasking and texting and how video games help our children grow up to be surgeons. But who wants a surgeon who multi-tasks and texts? I mean neither multi-tasking nor texting contribute to a surgeon’s operating-room skills. Both multi-tasking and texting interfere with our ability to concentrate at the task at hand; multi-tasking and texting help us waste our time.

Multi-tasking and texting are products of our service economy; as skills they benefit secretaries, telemarketers, and corporate middle managers. Conversely, specialists (scientists, astronauts, mechanics, doctors, nurses, drivers, engineers, etc.) need to concentrate, not multi-task. Writers need to write, not text.

When the TV pundits and news anchors praise multi-tasking and texting and the younger generation’s ability to simultaneously do homework, watch TV, surf the Internet, and text, they are leading our young people down the drain, to lives of drudgery in a service economy.

Did Alan Greenspan Cause the Economic Meltdown?

I am good at seeing patterns in life and in data, and I am often good at predicting (although sometimes I do not follow my own good advice), but right now I am unwilling to spend the time necessary to perhaps substantiate the following possibility:

When Alan Greenspan decided to pop the High Tech stock bubble by raising interest rates back in 1999 – 2000 (despite the fact that corporate leaders said he was doing the wrong thing, that he should let the good times continue), he did not take into account unforeseen disasters. Yet unpredicted disaster was on us soon enough, in 2001, when the World Trade Towers fell to dust on 9/11, furthering the decline on Wall Street and in our economy.

So the big-money guys on Wall Street had to find another way to make the money they had been making during the High Tech boom, and when the government reduced interest rates in order to counter the effects of 9/11 and of Greenspan’s earlier decision to blow the High Tech stock bubble, the big-money guys saw that the housing market could be manipulated. They saw a way to make the money they used to make buying and selling High Tech stocks.

If Greenspan had taken unforeseen disaster into account when he decided to manipulate, pop, and blow the High Tech bubble, maybe the money and the money men would have stayed in the High Tech sector rather than moving on to manipulate home mortgages and subprime loans.

These guys in the government should know by now that if anything can go wrong, it will.

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October 28: A friend said, “Yeah, if Greenspan hadn’t popped the High Tech stock bubble, America would be a high-tech economy instead of a service economy.”

The Last of Brazil’s Lost Tribe

On the news last night, the reporter called it the lost tribe, but that label seems like propaganda, given that the news report was about how Brazil’s ranchers and farmers had exterminated the tribe over a number of years–obviously the tribe was not lost to these ranchers (or to the Brazilian government, which has been synonymous with unfettered ranching and rainforest destruction for decades now).

I mean the world has been after Brazil to change its ways. The world has been after Brazil for decades. Yet the Brazilian government allowed its ranchers to commit blatant genocide, and neither the United Nations nor any of its members have instituted sanctions against Brazil. I think this state of affairs–a renegade, evil Brazilian government; a United Nations that looks the other way over and over again, even after acknowledging the crime–shows us that our so-called world leaders are a sham. They come from the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. They are not doing their jobs and are probably too brainwashed and greedy to ever do the right thing.

That so-called lost tribe in Brazil, the one they talked about on the news last night, there are only 6 members left: 2 old men and 4 old women. They are too old to reproduce. The tribe and its customs and language will soon go extinct. The Brazilian ranchers wiped them off the face of the earth. And our leaders did nothing, and are doing nothing, despite the fact that millions of concerned citizens have been complaining about Brazil and its ranchers for the last 30 years or more.

Spinal Stenosis and Surgery

One of my friends will soon find out if she needs surgery for spinal stenosis, a narrowing of her spine. Back surgery can be dangerous and often only partially alleviates the pain and immobility associated with spinal problems. I made an online search. The reputable sites recommend that patients obtain second opinions before proceeding with surgery. Here are links to valuable information:

Mayo Clinic’s spinal stenosis information: Mayo Clinic

Mayo’s section on spinal surgery: Back surgery: When is it a good idea?

New minimally invasive back surgery: Science Daily

Fitness and the Superbowl?

The Super Bowl was boring, as usual (you know . . . football) and had way too many TV commercials, as usual. And Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ half-time show was like brown snow — tired winter, dead flowers, bronchitis brought on by lifestyle — which brings me to my point: The half-time show’s producer (the company that put it on) asked for 600 volunteers (and got them), but I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would give their time for free to millionaires like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or to an event that makes millions of dollars (never mind the Super Bowl’s sponsors’ earnings, the ones who bought the commercials — they paid 2.7 million dollars for 20 seconds of air time).

Makes me wonder about Mankind. With all those millions of dollars floating around, why did 600 Arizonans work for free?

The Carnival of Healing

Just a short note to say that my earlier post where I explained that consumers should refrigerate Emu Oil was “published” in the 84th Carnival of Healing.

You may submit your best blog entries to a variety of sites and subject areas listed on blogcarnival.com.

Truth is Ugly

A quote from John Updike’s book Seek My Face, page 48:

Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth. The only virtue left in this day and age is courage before the hopeless.

He means your courage best serves the hopeless.