Politics: Bernie Sanders “Medicare For All” (NPR)

NPR PodcastsAs we head into South Carolina’s primary and gear up for Super Tuesday, the 2020 candidates are looking to stand out to voters. But perhaps no policy proposal has marked this election more than Sen. Bernie Sanders’s push for Medicare for All.

While the Democratic candidates agree on expanding health coverage, they’re divided on how to insure everyone, whether to insure everyone, and, of course, how to pay for it all.

Bernie Sanders Website

So how are they similar? How are they different? And how does that compare to President Trump?

Rachana Pradhan, correspondent for Kaiser Health NewsNoam Levey, national healthcare reporter for The LA Times; and Dan Diamond, health reporter for Politico and host of the “Pulse Check” podcast helped us break down where each candidate stood on health care.

Heart Health: “Statins” Are Beneficial Only With Healthy Diets & Lifestyle

Taking a statin helps keep your cholesterol levels in check. How can that be?

Mayo Clinic LogoDr. Stephen Kopecky explains that some people ask to be put on a statin. That’s because statins, while important and effective, are just one part of the whole heart-healthy picture. When you combine a statin with regular exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, controlling stress, not smoking and eating foods based on the Mediterranean diet, you can improve your heart health.

Dr. Kopecky says if you work in lifestyle changes slowly over time, you’ll be on your way to better heart health.

Statins are drugs that can lower your cholesterol. They work by blocking a substance your body needs to make cholesterol. Statins may also help your body reabsorb cholesterol that has built up in plaques on your artery walls, preventing further blockage in your blood vessels and heart attacks.

Several statins are available for use in the United States. They include:

  • atorvastatin (Lipitor)
  • lovastatin (Altoprev)
  • pitavastatin (Livalo)
  • pravastatin (Pravachol)
  • rosuvastatin (Crestor)
  • simvastatin (Zocor)

Sometimes, a statin is combined with another heart health medication. Examples are atorvastatin/amlodipine (Caduet) and simvastatin/ezetimibe (Vytorin).

Increasing evidence suggests that statins do more than just lower bad cholesterol. Research has found that the medicines can safely prevent heart disease in certain adults ages 40 to 75. But the benefits aren’t entirely clear for the elderly. And doctors still want to know more about the side effects of statins.

Inteviews: 67-Year Old British Author Hilary Mantel – “Extraordinarily Probable Fiction” (NYT)

Excerpts from a New York Times interview (Feb 24, 2020):

Hilary Mantel by Ellie Smith for the New York Times
“All that time I was listening to the past, and now I’m almost talking for a living,” Mantel said, “and it feels very frivolous and empty compared to the stillness that there used to be in every day.”Credit…Ellie Smith for The New York Times

“Hilary has reset the historical patterns through the way in which she’s reimagined the man,” said Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford theology professor who published a new Cromwell biography in 2018. “It’s fiction which is extraordinarily probable, and it’s remarkably like the Cromwell I’d been excavating myself.”

Hilary Mantel has a recurring anxiety dream that takes place in a library. She finds a book with some scrap of historical information she’s been seeking, but when she tries to read it, the words disintegrate before her eyes.

“And then when you wake up,” she said, “you’ve got the rhythm of a sentence in your head, but you don’t know what the sentence was.”

To an unusual degree for a novelist, Mantel feels bound by facts. That approach has made her latest project — a nearly 1,800-page trilogy about the 16th-century lawyer and fixer Thomas Cromwell — more complicated than anything she’s undertaken in her four decades of writing.

Read full interview article

New Video Travel Guides: Where To Go In “Vienna”

Our Vienna Travel Guide! So many layers to this wonderful Austrian city and we barely had time to scratch the surface. Vienna is one of those cities that offers something for everyone; culture, food, adventure.

Vienna is polished on the surface but dig a little deeper and there’s so much more to discover. Beyond the incredible museums, cathedrals, and markets, this Austrian city is an exciting year-round destination for all travelers.

Website

Health: “2020 National Diabetes Statistics Report”

CDC Centers for Disease Control and PreventionThe National Diabetes Statistics Report is a periodic publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that provides updated statistics about diabetes in the United States for a scientific audience. It includes information on prevalence and incidence of diabetes, prediabetes, risk factors for complications, acute and long-term complications, deaths, and costs. These data can help focus efforts to prevent and control diabetes across the United States.

national-diabetes-statistics-report-page-5

 

Video Profiles: 91-Year Old Bob Moore, Founder Of Bob’s Red Mill (CBS)

At 91, Bob Moore is an unexpected celebrity in the natural and organic foods industry, as the face of the company he founded, Bob’s Red Mill. He talks with correspondent Luke Burbank about his recipe for success.

Bob’s Red Mill is a brand of whole-grain foods marketed by employee-owned American[3] company Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods of Milwaukie, Oregon. The company was established in 1978 by Bob and Charlee Moore.

Bob MooreBob’s Red Mill Natural Foods is a producer of natural, certified organic, and gluten-free milled grain products, billing itself as the “nation’s leading miller of diverse whole-grain foods.” Its products are distributed throughout the United States, Canada, and a number of other locations such as the Caribbean. It produces over 400 products, primarily whole grains that are ground with quartz millstones which come from several 120-year-old mills, as well as baking mixes, beans, seeds, nuts, dried fruits, spices, and herbs. They are sold through seventy natural food and specialty grocery distributors in the United States and Canada, their online store, and the company’s factory store and restaurant.

Website

From Wikipedia

Political News: Tamara Keith And Amy Walter On The Nevada Caucus (PBS)

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report join Lisa Desjardins to discuss the latest political news, including fears Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ ideology is too far left for him to be the 2020 Democratic nominee, why the race is currently a “referendum on Donald Trump,” Nevada caucus results along racial lines and which moderate candidates could struggle to gain traction.

Top New Travel Books: “American Surfaces” By Stephen Shore – Road Trip Photos From Early 1970’s

Stephen Shore American Surfaces book April 2020Stephen Shore’s images from his travels across America in 1972-73 are considered the benchmark for documenting the extraordinary in the ordinary and continue to influence photographers today.

The original edition of American Surfaces, published by Phaidon in 2005, brought together 320 photographs sequenced in the order in which they were originally documented. Now, in the age of Instagram and nearly 50 years after Shore embarked on his cross-country journey, this revised and expanded edition will bring this seminal work back into focus.

Stephen Shore photo by Alec Soth May 10 2019
Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore is one of the most influential living photographers. His photographs from the 1970s, taken on road trips across America, established him as a pioneer in the use of color in art photography. He is director of the photography program at Bard College, New York.

Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer, critic, curator, and author. He is the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.

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Health Study: Low-Dose Aspirin Reduces Risks Of Bone Fracture (BMJ)

From a BMJ Open Journal study release (February 20, 2020):

BMJ Open JournalAspirin is an inhibitor of prostaglandin production and may influence the cellular basis of bone remodelling responsible for maintaining the material and structural strength of bone.

The consistent findings of reduced risk of fracture across studies included in this review is encouraging. It is important to keep in mind that studies were quite diverse in design, populations included, data collection methods and follow-up periods and we did observe high heterogeneity especially for fracture risk. While we need to interpret this finding with some caution, there appeared to be a consistent indication that aspirin use is associated with positive bone outcomes. 

The anti-inflammatory effects of aspirin via prostaglandin inhibition have recently gained attention. Chronic low-grade inflammation contributes to age-related cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory and musculoskeletal conditions. Low-grade inflammation is associated with increased bone loss and fracture risk. Prostaglandin, an important inflammatory mediator, is likely to have a key role in bone remodelling attributable to inflammation. Prostaglandin E2 stimulates bone resorption and formation and is produced largely from cyclooxygenase-2 induction. Prostaglandins acutely inhibit osteoclast function. However, their chronic effect is to stimulate bone resorption by increasing replication of osteoclast precursors, and differentiation to mature osteoclasts.

Read full study