My first short feature for Slate ran last week, covering the importance of tummy time for infants.
The Back To Sleep Campaign was instituted by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1992 to battle the number of infants dying each year from SIDS. And it was hugely successful, cutting SIDS cases in the US in half since it started.
Read MoreMy latest post at Wired Playbook profiles Mark Drakos, an orthopedic surgeon who uses cadaver legs to test the biomechanics of ACL injuries:
Read MoreMore and more young athletes are reporting symptoms of concussions at emergency rooms across the country. Now, the American Academy of Neuorlogists (AAN) has released formal guidelines stating those suspected of suffering a concussion should not return to play until they are evaluated by a physician. As I reported at Wired Playbook, this is a great step forward to ensure the safety of athletes. The AAN provisions also indirectly call for improvements in the diagnostic tools physicians use to determine if a player has had a concussion or not:
Read MoreMy latest post on Wired Playbook went up today, "Titanium Baseball Neckwear Big on Hype, Short on Science", which looks at the science & tech behind the popular rope necklaces that many Major League Baseball players are wearing:
Read MoreMy latest post is up at Wired Playbook, describing the optical illusion we commonly refer to as the curveball:
Read MoreI've been out of the country for the past weeks, which may explain my silence on the blog.
However, while I was gone, my latest post at Wired Playbook ran on September 29th.
Read MoreEnough about patients: What is a doctor to do? In the past few months, since The Decision Tree book came out, I've had the privilege to talk with many doctors about the opportunity and challenge of engaging patients in their own health. Some physicians, not surprisingly, have been suspicious, and even hostile to the idea that patients have a role to play. But thankfully, those have been rare exceptions. Most doctors I've spent time with have been eager to hear about new tools that might engage their patients, and they've been eager to share well-earned advice on where there's work to be done. It has been a delight and an education to talk about the potential of healthcare with these physicians who are, after all, doing the hard work of providing medical care every day.
Read MoreA New York Times story grabbed my attention today, “Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs”. Telling the story of 21-year-old Seth Priebatsch – a guy who successfully secured a $750,000 investment from venture capitalists for what some may argue is just a crazy idea – the article showed how this certain young entrepreneur seemed to tread a very fine line between being a workaholic, self-confident entrepreneur, and full-blown clinical manic. With hypomania, people experience similar mood and behavior swings as those with clinical mania. But although the two conditions share common symptoms like increased vigor, persistently elevated moods, and reduced desire or need for sleep, hypomania does not seem to prevent people from experiencing a fully functioning life. In fact, some have argued the symptoms may be conducive to success. The NYT article highlighted several well-known, professionally-accomplished hypomaniacs, such as George S. Patton and Theodore Roosevelt, both of whom seemed able to keep the condition in check – arguably, just enough – to rise to the top of their respective professional circles.
Read MoreHats off to Misha Angrist over at Genome Boy for bringing this fascinating story about personal genomic experiments that ran in Nature Medicine to my attention. Raymond McCauley and a small team of DIY-researchers wanted to know how effective different types of vitamins were for clearing "undesirable" amino acids from their bodies. One of the supplements they investigated was a standard, over-the-counter vitamin B tablet. But the other, was a more highly active B vitamin, called L-methylfolate. McCauley's genetic profile differed from the rest of his team in two particular SNPs (he was homozygous at both locations).
Read MoreAlthough the results may not be that surprising to readers of this blog, I was intrigued by Wired Science's coverage of a new paper in the journal Science that showed that highly interconnected soical networks are much more powerful that randomly connected groups for changing behaviors.
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