Healthcare

Healthcare Future

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I think improving healthcare affordability should be a top priority of our leaders in Washington DC. Not putting forward message bills, but making practical changes to existing law to make prices on health insurance come down, and ensure people have access to affordable healthcare at all stages of life.

While I’m quite young and relatively healthy still, I am well aware how the high-cost of health insurance outside of a job can be a limit. Even if I have enough money at some point in the future to retire or work part time, in a place where I actually want to live, having access to affordable care may prove difficult. I am not sure if we should be going for universal care, but we should be going for something that is better and more affordable for all.

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Americans Warned To Start Planning For Spread In U.S. : Shots – Health News : NPR

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Coronavirus: Americans Warned To Start Planning For Spread In U.S. : Shots – Health News : NPR

Federal health officials issued a blunt message Tuesday: Americans need to start preparing now for the possibility that more aggressive, disruptive measures might be needed to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S.

The strongly worded warning came in response to outbreaks of the virus outside China, including in Iran, Japan, South Korea and Italy, which officials say have raised the likelihood of outbreaks occurring stateside.

"It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but more really a question of when it will happen — and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters during a briefing.

Why vegan junk food may be even worse for your health – BBC Future

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Why vegan junk food may be even worse for your health – BBC Future

They might sound like a guilt-free alternative or a gateway for the vegan-curious, but vegan fast food alternatives are often worse for your health than the meat equivalent.

“Obviously the pros are that [veganism] is getting people to think about plant-based foods, but the con is that it makes us think that it is good for you when it can be equally or more unhealthy,” says Megan Rossi, a dietician at King’s College London and author of Eat Yourself Healthy.

“Tofu contains omega 3 but it is a type that is not as active as animal sources,” says Rossi. Plant-based sources contain a type of omega 3 called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). For our bodies to be able to do anything particularly useful with ALA, we need to convert it into eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) or docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). However, humans are not particularly well equipped to do this.

Lungs ‘magically’ heal damage from smoking – BBC News

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Lungs ‘magically’ heal damage from smoking – BBC News

Your lungs have an almost "magical" ability to repair some of the damage caused by smoking - but only if you stop, say scientists.

The mutations that lead to lung cancer had been considered to be permanent, and to persist even after quitting.

But the surprise findings, published in Nature, show the few cells that escape damage can repair the lungs.

The effect has been seen even in patients who had smoked a pack a day for 40 years before giving up.

The thousands of chemicals in tobacco smoke corrupt and mutate the DNA in your lung cells - slowly transforming them from healthy to cancerous.

China’s Coronavirus Outbreak Reminds Me of the Irish Polio Epidemic I Survived – CounterPunch.org

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China’s Coronavirus Outbreak Reminds Me of the Irish Polio Epidemic I Survived – CounterPunch.org

China is responding to the spread of the coronavirus in Wuhan much as countries have always reacted to life-threatening epidemics. At every level of society and government, fear of death – or, more accurately, fear of being held responsible for death – drives decision-making, which is consequently often ill-judged.

Officials do not want to cause a panic – but then again, nor do they want to be accused of inaction, or of hiding dire truths about the health crisis (many people have become convinced that more people have been infected, have even died, than the authorities are admitting).