anamnesis

Various findings about a fundamental misconception we've had about cholesterol seems to have finally broken through to mainstream media . This hasn't slowed the market for statins yet though. The real secret behind statins' effects in the much more limited applications than they are currently marketed for (e.g. men under 70 who have had a previous heart-attack) isn't because it lowers cholesterol. Statins screw up a building block that affects the creation of a number of chemicals in the body; cholesterol is one, but another is Rho-kinase, an enzyme responsible for inflammation. It was puzzling why a number of populations with LDL cholesterol averages as high as America, like Spain, have half the the number of heart attacks. Or the Swiss, whose are even higher than us, have less heart disease. Or the aborigines of Australia, which have very low cholesterol, have even higher incidence of heart disease. Something was missing from the picture. Inflammation is implicated in...

About 1 minute, 45 seconds in... watch the guy in the middle. He's got to have one of the most infectious laughs I've ever heard. This one is good for stress relief :-)

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, we are told that each of us will be judged at death by weighing our heart on a scale against the feather of truth. I've often wondered about this criterion for a life well-lived. How light would one's heart need to be to pass the test? It reminds me of one of my favorite movies, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." In the movie are an interlocking set of relationships, with each character struggling to construct their own sense of existence, and a life of meaning. The narrator, at the beginning, states: "What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?" ...deeming the import of existence itself as encompassed within these terms. How many of us plod through our daily lives with the weight of the world on our shoulders? How many hold ourselves so lightly that death is not a threat? Where are we on this continuum? In our culture, life is seen as a line. The longer that line, the more "fulfilled", somehow, we assume our...

An Okie was stopped by a game warden with two ice chests full of fish leaving a cove well known for its fishing. The game warden asked the man, 'Do you have a license to catch those fish?' 'No, sir', replied the Okie. 'I ain't got none of them there licenses. You must understand, these here are my pet fish.' 'Pet fish?' 'Yeah. Every night, I take these here fish down to the lake and let 'em swim 'round for awhile. Then, when I whistle, they jump right back into these here ice chests and I take 'em home.' 'Fish can't do that!' The Okie looked at the warden for a moment and then said, 'It's the truth and I'll show ya. It really works.' 'OK', said the warden. 'I've got to see this!' The Okie poured the fish into the lake and stood and waited. After several minutes, the warden says, 'Well?' 'Well, what?', says the Okie. The warden says, 'When are you going to call the...