The ideal combination of the internet and science is to put data (lots of data) into a easily/readily searched database. The hypothesis becomes a search: Want to know what people are prone to which disease? Want to know what genetic backgrounds compell certain behaviors? Run a search. That's the ideal - and though this idea has been hashed about for a few years, we're a long way from there now. There is no such database out there, an ongoing research project that combines enough data and enough flexibility in interogation and enough variety in populations that it might adequately reflect a broad enough pool of data to be meaningfully searched.
Read MoreSuffering an orthopedic injury can be devastating. It can preclude us from athletic competition or force us to take time off work, not to mention the added strain it puts on completing normal daily tasks while partially immobilized or in pain. Regardless if surgery is required, a physical therapy rehabilitation program is usually prescribed to aid recovery. Say hello to countless hours of sweat, pain, and foul language (primarily in the form inner monologue, often directed toward the therapist that you are certain is trying to tear your limbs from your body, but occasionally a choice expletive might just slip out in frustration or exhaustion). Well, not necessarily, says Caitlin Kelly, who recently blogged about what she felt was the unsuspecting upside of physical therapy-- the healing power of the friendships formed during the sessions. Day after day, through all the pain and suffering, she got to know and relate to other patients, and maybe even more importantly, developed an open-communication relationship with her therapists. Ultimately, the injury healed, and the unforeseen personal bonds persisted long after the pain subsided.
Read MoreMaking a choice that leads to better health is not always easy. Otherwise, we would have many more ex-smokers and far fewer holiday pounds to shed. We would have no need for nicotine gum and patches, or Weight Watcher's meetings. So if it's that difficult, why bother? For years, physicians have told the American public that reducing your calorie intake, eating a diet low in salt/sugar/saturated fat, and exercising 3-5 days per week will reduce your risk for heart disease and diabetes. Now, new information has shown that the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are even more far reaching than initially thought -- diet and exercise can affect our minds. About 5-8% of people over the age of 65, and nearly 50% of people in their 80's, show signs of dementia. As the baby-boomer generation increases the population of the 55-64 age group in the U.S. from 29 to 40 million by 2014 , and their life expectancy continues to rise, the number of people affected by dementia is poised to increase as well. Recent studies have shown that regular exercise may prove to be a potent mediator of dementia and Alzheimer's Disease. In one study, those who exercised 3 or more days per week had a 32% risk reduction in developing dementia compared to those who exercised less. Exercise has also been linked in similar studies to moderate cognitive improvements in adults who are at risk for Alzheimer's Disease, as well as a lower occurrence of vascular dementia.
Read MoreThe NewScientist recently blogged about C.P. Snow's idea of "two cultures": those trained in the sciences and those trained in the humanities. In this 1959 lecture, Snow proposed that a communications chasm between these groups hindered the effort to solve the world's problems with new technology. He concluded that the two groups essentially spoke different languages that made it impossible to identify common goals. Snow's lecture captured the proverbial differences in "left vs. right brains", and showed us that scientists need to be better at communication while non-scientists need to be more conversant in basic technical and scientific concepts.
Read MoreThe New York Times had a story on Friday criticizing the National Cancer Institute for its new decision tool on colon and rectal cancers. The problem, the reporter says, is that the tool - an interactive questionaire that creates a risk estimate for developing colon cancer - only works for white people. African-Americans or Hispanics who try the tool get a message that says: “At this time the risk calculations and results provided by this tool are only accurate for non-Hispanic white men and women ages 50 to 85.” It's an odd story for a couple reasons. First, the reporter seems to have created the controversy on her own - she quotes only one critic of the tool, and that critic is described as reacting negatively "after being referred to the site by a reporter." The same reporter, I assume, who's writing the story. Hmm.
Read MoreI started thinking about the usefulness of personal health monitors last year. Heart disease runs rampant through my family, and several of my maternal uncles have had heart attacks, one of them at the age of 35. With my 30th birthday rapidly approaching, I started to think about my own mortality -- my blood pressure and cholesterol were both already well above average. Given my family's history of heart disease, I decided to go talk to my general physician. We decided the best course of action was to treat the problem with diet and exercise modifications. Although I have been physically active my entire life, I realized that I no longer had the metabolism of a teenager, and had to start thinking about what I was eating and how I was exercising before there was a serious impact on my health.And so, I began running again for the first time in a very long while. I knew that as I ran more and more, I would start to just feel "better", but that notion just wouldn't satisfy the science geek inside me, and I needed to put numbers to my improvements. So I started tracking my heart rate (via a standard chest-strap heart rate monitor ). I figured, at the very least, tracking my heart rate (HR) during my run would allow me to understand how it correlated to my exertion level. It would also be interesting to see how my HR changed as I got back into shape. I bought the basic version -- the one that shows your current heart rate, but doesn't store any of the data or calculate statistics like max/min/average HR. I was surprised how consistent my HR was during exercise, and soon began to use this information to gauge the intensity of my runs. For example, some days I would be feeling fine and I would be running at my normal pace, but my HR was running about 3-4% higher than usual. While I'm not sure if that is abnormal, it happens very infrequently, and I used it as a signal that I should slow down and take it easy. While my current understanding of my HR during exercise is far from the interpretation of body metrics talked about here at The Decision Tree, I believe my analysis has me headed in the right direction.
Read MoreA brief tangent: I'm at the TED conference this week, and today I put on my editor hat and moderated a panel on how to change our global energy priorities, by moving away from oil/gas towards renewables. On the panel were two luminaries - Richard Sears, a VP at Shell and visiting scientist at MIT, and Dan Reicher, head of energy initiatives at Google.org (Dan was a member of the Obama transition team and on the shortlist, reportedly, to be Obama's secretary of energy). The lunch went well - among others, Bill Gates was in the audience - and it seemed a lively discussion about what can actually be done, right now, to incentivize both the oil industry as well as consumers to start the shift to other energies.
Read MoreThe ideas behind The Decision Tree, in a sense, focus on ways to create the next-generation patient. This new kind of patient will have to understand the context of their own medical self through a combination of genetics, personal metrics/data, and statistics. Needless to say, understanding one's own medical self will also require an increased medical literacy, where patients understand both their conditions, as well as where they fall within the spectrum of their disease.
Read MoreThough predictive medicine and preventive health are common sense to some people, sometimes I have the feeling that I'm shouting into a hurricane about how the right tools & the right information can change healthcare. So I'm always thrilled - truly thrilled - when somebody tells me: "I read what you wrote - and I've been thinking the same thing." A couple years ago I had this experience when I got an email from a fellow with some astute questions about my approach to writing about science. Except this wasn't a journalist - this was from a scientist. And that both flattered and scared me. Flattered, in that a bonafide PhD took my stuff seriously. Scared, in that a bonafide PhD was reading my blog - and taking it seriously.
Read MoreOne thing I've learned covering technology over the years is to be wary of cool hardware. I've seen amazing devices and toys and gadgets and gizmos and scarce few of them ever catch-on. Which is to say, if it's hard to make a good gadget, it's even harder to make it succeed as something people actually want to buy and learn how to use and integrate into their lives. And when something does work - when something is good enough to get people to change the way they live and adjust their routine and introduce new habits - then there's something about that product that deserves study.
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