Duke Surgery Patients Benefit From Acupuncture During Anesthesia - Durham County - MyNC.com

Duke Surgery Patients Benefit From Acupuncture During Anesthesia - Durham County - MyNC.com

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Cholesterol and supplemements

Two years ago I went to my MD for a physical and standard blood tests. My total cholesterol came back at a whopping 320 with triglycerides at over 700. Ouch. These are the sort of readings that make your doctor give you the concerned voice.

I didn't do anything about it for a long time, but recently thought it might be a good idea to try to get a handle on these sorts of things, in other words: be an adult about it.

So I did some research and started taking red yeast rice and Omega 3 fatty acids. About 6 months after that I had my blood drawn and tests done. Amazingly my total cholesterol is 191 and triglycerides are normal.

Red yeast rice is a natural form of Lovastatin. I would recommend RYR as a great first step instead of going on a drug company statin. If you have moderately high cholesterol and eat a sensible diet and get some exercise you may be able to bring your numbers down with a natural product that costs about $15/month and if you have private health insurance taking RYR should not make your premiums go up because it is a food. That would be like raising your rates because you are eating more fiber.

Acupuncture works better drugs for treating hotflashes.

Turns out that what thousands of women already know has been the subject of a study conducted by researchers from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and presented at a meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

Acupuncture works better and has fewer side effects than standard drug treatment. Oddly enough, this matches my findings in clinic perfectly. Some of the women who got the most relief were undergoing cosmetic facial rejuvenation acupuncture. Those patients were all thrilled when they saw a dramatic reduction in wrinkles and lost the night sweats and hot flashes.

More health care spending

Here is a fun thing to do with this graph. Let's see what the annual per capita spending looks like over a life time. Let's take Japan first. The average lifespan is 81.5 according to this graph and they spend about 2,000 standardized international dollars. That comes to a lifetime cost of $163,000. Now lets take the US. Per capita annual spending $4,500 times 77 years $346,500. Finally we take Cuba with a life expectancy of 76ish and about $150 annual expenses. This comes to$11,400.

I'm encouaged by these numbers because they suggest to me that our spending is way out of line with our goals and those goals are being achieved around the world for much less money. This means that even some marginal changes in how we do things could have a big impact on our longevity.

Health costs around the world

Here is a very interesting graph. Countries above and to the left of the line have lower per capita health care expenditures compared to average longevity. It looks like, from the line, that there seems to be a point where the gain from more money spent on health starts to produce smaller marginal to diminishing returns in life expectancy. You will notice that the United States us WAY below the line with the highest per capita expenditures and an estimated longevity of, well.... Cuba (who spends about 1/40 of what we spend) This, of course, assumes that the goal of healthcare spending is to produce longevity.