New York Times | Fruit May Have Benefits for Diabetes New York Times A large study has found that eating fresh fruit may reduce the risk for developing diabetes, and the risk for its complications. Fresh fruit has well-known health benefits. But some experts, and some people with diabetes, question whether its high ... |
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Fruit May Have Benefits for Diabetes - New York Times
An award that could potentially help find a solution to diabetes has been given to an associate professor in the mechanical engineering department at UCSB. Sumita Pennathur received the Visionary Award from the American Diabetes Association, which includes $1.625 million over the course of five years to fund her research.
Pennathur is one of two researchers nationwide who received this award in 2017. The Visionary Award is given to established, experienced investigators with demonstrated success in a different field who want to bring their expertise to diabetes research for the first time.
Im totally out of the field of diabetes. I had nothing to do with it until my daughter was diagnosed, Pennathur said.
Pennathurs daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2015 when she was four years old.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas produces little to no insulin, a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. This happens when the bodys immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells known as beta cells. Without insulin, the body cannot allow sugar to enter the bodys cells to produce energy.
Currently, the causes of Type 1 diabetes are not known, and the most effective way of treating it is through insulin therapy. Although effective, the treatment includes constant blood glucose monitoring that involves pricking finger tips and finding a way to get insulin into the body.
The Pathways to Stop Diabetes Initiative is aimed at addressing the shortage of research talent in diabetes. The ADA believes that by supporting researchers like Pennathur, they can help generate new solutions to these critical problems. Kevin Son/Daily Nexus
My daughter has to take 10 [insulin] shots a day in her stomach, maybe five but sometimes 10, Pennathur said. She needs to do the shots by herself in her stomach. Shes six years old. Imagine being a little kid and having to do that all the time.
Her daughters diagnosis has inspired her to address the challenge of diabetes monitoring, or continuous glucose monitoring (CGM).
More than several hundred attempts have been made to develop a technique for CGM, but only a couple of them have received FDA approval. The CGM devices currently on the market, including subcutaneous needles that stay in the body for about a week, need to be calibrated twice daily and can give inaccurate readings.
Instead of a monitor that remains inside of the body, Pennathur and her research group have planned to develop a daily disposable patch.
We have to make it disposable because you dont want to stick stuff in your body. Its like a Band-Aid. Were making it like a Band-Aid, Pennathur said.
Although a small device, the patch combines engineering, chemistry and biology, which requires help from other departments.
On campus were doing a patch, so its like an array of needles so its not individually going in and out; its all at once. On the patch is a little hydrogel just think of it as a gooey gel and inside that gel is a bunch of chemicals that were working [on] with [Guillermo] Bazan of the chemistry department, Pennathur said. Hes building a chemical that can not only, if glucose is there, recognize it, but when it recognizes it, it changes its structure so that it fluoresces differently. Itll amplify the fluorescence a lot if the glucose is there.
As of now, Pennathur and her group have built the microneedles and have established how to make the necessary chemicals.
We actually just figured it out. The postdoc is named Bing Wang and hes in Bazans group. He has just figured out the path hes going to take to [make] the gel. Its a bunch of steps. You have to build the chemistry, make sure it works, proof of concept and so he figured out the steps and now we get to do all the steps. Were hoping itll get done in a year, Pennathur said.
Karen Scida, a postdoc who is a part of Pennathurs group is testing the patch and making sure it accurately measures glucose at different levels. Additionally, Scida is coming up with a way of incorporating a thin layer of insulin on the patch itself.
It could talk to the glucose monitor, so its just an artificial pancreas. In other words, you dont have to keep measuring. No finger pricks, its just a patch and you can eat whatever you want to eat, Pennathur said.
Pennathurs approach seems to be the most promising one, but interestingly enough, her background is not in chemistry or biology. She received her bachelors and masters degree in aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Stanford.
I feel really lucky because I got some of the best education you could possibly get in building these things, and now Im a professor on these things and I want to build a medical device, so the fact Im doing this is terrible serendipity, Pennathur said. I dont want to say serendipity because that has a good connotation. This is terrible what happened to my daughter but at the same time Im going to fix it. No one is going to stop me. My motivation knows absolutely no bounds because this is the most important thing in my life my daughter and Im going to save her life.
With a problem this big, Pennathur believes that a solution can be found in areas outside the typical research.
Its interesting because a lot of times, for these types of problems, you need to think outside the box. You need innovative solutions. You got to do stuff that nobody else knows about, and somebody coming from aerospace engineering, right? Who would know that that person could do research in diabetes, and thats because theres all these things I know, like I build microneedles. I know how to build microneedles, I can make them better than anyone. I can physically go in the clean room and make them myself. People who study diabetes cant make microneedles, Pennathur said.
It is the skills she developed as an engineer that could find help find a way to continuously monitor blood glucose levels.
Its those extra little things you learn that help you get somewhere in life. Again, I hate using the word serendipity, but Ive been trying to do this all my life. I didnt really have some problem to solve; I was just making my tools, and then my daughter got diagnosed and now I have my problem to solve, Pennathur said. Theres nothing else Im going to do but this, and I am so blessed to have the tools in my toolbox to actually try to help. Im going every way and any way to make this happen as quickly and efficiently as humanly possible.
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Engineering a Solution for Diabetes - Daily Nexus
May the fourth be with you ... Sorry, I just couldnt help myself. Happy (early) Cinco de Mayo and Kentucky Derby Day, too! I hope youve gotten your tickets and will be joining us at your LifeSpan Center this Friday or Saturday to celebrate with us. I guarantee we will offer you delicious food and beverages, some laughs, and a great time.
Before we have that good time, lets get serious for a few minutes. Nearly 29.1 million Americans and one fourth of adults over the age of 65 have diabetes, a serious disease in which blood sugar (glucose) levels are above normal. Most people with diabetes have type 2, which used to be called adult-onset diabetes. At one time, type 2 diabetes was more common in people over age 45, but now, even children have the disease.
Diabetes can lead to problems such as heart disease, stroke, vision loss, kidney disease, and nerve damage. One out of four people do not know they have diabetes. Many people dont find out they have diabetes until they are faced with problems such as blurry vision or heart trouble. That's why you need to know if you are at risk for diabetes. This is nothing to brush to the side and ignore, folks.
The importance of managing diabetes to prevent diabetes-related health problems such as heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, vision loss, and amputation is very real. More and more people are being diagnosed with it every day. Approximately one-half of older adults have prediabetes. Scary!
And to add to the drama, many older adults may not show classic symptoms of hyperglycemia (including, but not limited to confusion, dizziness, hunger, and sweating). The extra glucose in the blood accumulates in the kidneys until the kidneys see it as an impurity to be filtered out. Common symptoms are dehydration, dry eyes, dry mouth, confusion, incontinence, and diabetes complications, such as neuropathy or nephropathy.2.
Regardless of age, diabetes is often a life-long condition and requires careful treatment. Eating better, sticking to a healthy diet that is low in sugar (including sugar from fruit) and saturated fats is the first step. It may help to see a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) who is a diabetes educator to help you create a healthy meal plan. Medicare will cover the visits every year so you wouldnt have to pay out of pocket for the visit.
Aerobic exercise can help you control your glucose level, manage your weight, and stay strong. The American Diabetes Association recommends exercising 30 minutes each day, at least five days a week. You can split up the exercise into 10-minutes of activity three times a day. In addition, do strength training such as free weights, resistance bands, or yoga, at least two times per week. Strength training builds muscle and helps control glucose levels.
Monitoring your blood sugar levels and taking your prescribed medications correctly is also a must. Your health care team should look at all of your health issues, and help mold a plan that is individualized for you. You should see a certified diabetes educator (CDE) to learn about all the aspects of self-management that you will need to know in order to diminish your risks for the complications of diabetes.
Six month from now millions of Americans will observe National Diabetes Month. So many people suffer from this disease and it is observed every November to bring attention to diabetes and its impact on millions of Americans. It also serves as a reminder to people who may be struggling with the demands of managing diabetes that they are not alone.
Living with diabetes has its ups and downs, but healthy lifestyle choices can give you more control over them. And more control means fewer health problems down the road and a better quality of life now.
The Coles County Council on Aging offices are located at the LifeSpan Center, 11021 E. Co. Rd. 800N, Charleston. The telephone number is 217-639-5150 for the Coles County Council on Aging and LifeSpan Center. Come join us each weekday at noon for Lunch at LifeSpan.
Peace Meals, sponsored by Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center, are served Monday through Friday at a suggested donation of $3.50. To register, reserve a lunch or learn more, call 217-348-1800.
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Diabetes' prevalence can be managed with diet, exercise | Lifestyles ... - Journal Gazette and Times-Courier
CLEVELAND - An alarming number of new cases of diabetes are being diagnosed among American kids. A CDC report revealed last month that Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are both on the rise.
The findings have doctors raising concerns and making sure parents know the signs and symptoms of diabetes among their children.
She just wasnt acting right but it was nothing I had experienced with the other children, said Tiffany Barzacchini.
Barzacchinis 7-year-old daughter was just 1 year old when she was rushed to the ER with the tell-tale symptoms of diabetes.
She was just lethargic at times, craving water, and by the third day of this, her breathing became real intense, said Barzacchini.
Isola is the youngest of five. None of her older siblings have ever displayed symptoms of diabetes and genetically, theres no trace of the disease in either her moms or dads family history.
The CDC is reporting though that Isola is not alone. In a ten year study of kids from just a few months, to 19-years-old it was discovered each year, there was an increase of 1.8% of new Type 1 diabetes cases and an increase of 4.8% of new Type 2 cases.
Frankly, we dont know the cause, said Dr. Roy Kim, the Section Head of Pediatric Endocrinology at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital.
Kim finds the surge in new diabetes cases alarming.
We know that individuals must have a certain genetic predisposition to be at risk for Type 1 Diabetes but there must be other environmental triggers and frankly we just havent figured out what those triggers are, he said.
An increase in Type 2 among kids can be linked to an increase in overall American childhood obesity. Type 2 is directly tied to weight gain, lack of exercise, and unhealthy eating habits. But whats more confusing is a rise in Type 1, a lifelong condition, with the root cause still unknown.
What goes underappreciated is how life changing the diagnosis is for those kids and what they have to go through, said Kim.
It doesnt ever go away, you dont ever get a break from it, it is literally 24/7 that you have to manage it, said Barzacchini.
For Isolas family, managing her disease is a full time job. Her blood is checked for insulin first thing in the morning when she wakes up, at every meal and after physical activity which must be limited.
Its the same story for millions of Americans. According to the American Diabetes Association, every 23 seconds in this country, theres a new diabetes diagnosis. Its estimated those patients will pay around $14,000 a year in medical expenses dealing with the disease.
Ultimately in her lifetime Im hoping they have a cure, said Barzacchini.
Symptoms parents should be on the lookout for include increased thirst and urination among their children, a feeling of constant exhaustion or hunger, sometimes weight loss and in its severe form, Type 1 can lead to vomiting, severe dehydration, and a coma-like state.
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CDC reports diabetes is on the rise among children - News 5 Cleveland
A phase 2b trial of Poxels Type 2 diabetes candidate imeglimin has met its primary endpoint. The data sent shares in Poxel soaring 40% and set the company up to push into a phase 3 trial before the end of the year.
Investigators in Japan enrolled 299 patients and randomized them to receive one of three doses of imeglimin or placebo. Participants received the treatment twice a day for 24 weeks. The primary endpoint looked at glycated hemoglobin A1c, a type of hemoglobin that shows the three-month average plasma glucose concentration. A secondary efficacy endpoint looked at levels of fasting plasma glucose.
All three doses of imeglimin outperformed placebo in terms of reducing levels of the hemoglobin. The response was dose dependent. Subjects who received the lowest, 500 mg dose experienced a reduction of 0.52%. Participants who took the highest, 1500 mg dose experienced a reduction of 1.00%. The declines are larger than those seen in earlier trials in the U.S. and Europe.
Dose dependency was also evident in the analysis of the secondary endpoint. Only the two higher doses1000 mg and 1500 mgmet that endpoint. Analysis of additional secondary endpoints is ongoing. Poxel said the safety profile was consistent with that seen in earlier trials. Those studies found the safety profile of imeglimin was comparable to placebo.
Buoyed by the data, Poxel plans to talk to regulators in Japan in the third quarter and kick off a phase 3 study in the fourth quarter. That would set Poxel up to generate pivotal data in a market that is central to its plans.
In Japan, we believe imeglimin may be a prime candidate for first-line treatment as monotherapy and as an add-on to other glucose lowering therapies for the treatment of patients with Type 2 diabetes, Poxel CEO Thomas Kuhn said in a statement. Japan represents the second largest single market for Type 2 diabetes and is expected to grow to approximately $6 billion (5.5 billion) in annual sales in 2020.
Kuhn has previously expressed a willingness for Poxel to run clinical trials of imeglimin in Japan without the support of a partner but bring someone on board to handle commercialization. Poxel raised 26.5 million last year to fund a phase 3 trial in Japan. That round came two months after Poxel floated the idea of a Nasdaq IPO, only to back away in the face of an unreceptive market.
The development strategy in Europe and the U.S. is different. Poxel has long expressed an interest in partnering the asset in those markets before taking it into phase 3.
Merck Serono spinout Poxel thinks imeglimin can claim a slice of the diabetes market by affecting the bioenergetics of mitochondria and, in doing so, preserve the function of beta cells.
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Poxel shares jump 40% after diabetes trial hits primary goal - FierceBiotech
Local instructor Chazz Glaze will cover important diabetes-nutrition topics during this course. (Courtesy photo)
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting preventive medicine, is offering a cooking class designed to help local residents with type 2 diabetes avoid complications from the disease and reduce or eliminate the need for medications.
Food for Life: The Power of Food for Diabetes Nutrition and Cooking Class will be held Thursdays from May 18 to June 8 at Salud Family Health Center, 1950 Redtail Hawk Dr. There is a suggested donation of $10 to attend the classes.
The course teaches participants how food choices can prevent and treat type 2 diabetes and arms them with practical cooking skills for making healthy and delicious meals. People who have type 2 diabetes, or concerns about developing diabetes and their friends and family members will benefit from the class.
"Research shows type 2 diabetes can be controlled and even reversed with a healthy plant-based diet," said Susan Levin, M.S., R.D., the director of nutrition education for PCRM. "A vegan diet can help people with diabetes control blood sugar more effectively than the standard diabetes dietary regimen."
The class, designed by physicians, diabetes educators, registered dietitians and professional chefs, offers an easy-to-follow dietary approach based on scientific research. Population studies and clinical research show that a low-fat, plant-based diet is effective at improving blood glucose levels, promoting weight loss, reducing cholesterol and lowering the risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases.
Local instructor Chazz Glaze will cover important diabetes-nutrition topics and guide students through the preparation of tasty and easy-to-prepare recipes. Participants will watch a 30-minute DVD featuring Neal Barnard, M.D., speaking on the role of meal planning, as well as inspiring interviews with people who reversed their diabetes with a vegan diet. They will also enjoy food samples of the recipes prepared in class.
The class details are as follows:
Thursday, May 18, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. How Foods Fight Diabetes
Thursday, May 25, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Power of Your Plate (and Grocery Cart)
Thursday, June 1, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Understanding Type 2 Diabetes and Recognizing and Treating Low Blood Sugar
Thursday, June 8, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Designing a Diet for Maximum Weight Control
Students will leave the class with delicious recipes, information on how to switch to a vegan diet and additional diabetes resources, including information on online webcasts and group support. Participants are strongly encouraged to work with their health care team to safely make dietary changes.
For more information about the Food for Life Diabetes Nutrition and Cooking Class program or to register for the classes, email Glaze at aveganwithaltitude@gmail.com or call (970) 235-1586.
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Diabetes prevention and treatment cooking classes start May 18 - Estes Park Trail-Gazette
We all grow old. We all die.
For Aubrey de Grey, a biogerontologist and chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, accepting these truths is, well, not good enough. He decided in his late twenties (hes currently 54) that he wanted to make a difference to humanity and that battling age was the best way to do it. His lifes work is now a struggle against physics and biology, the twin collaborators in bodily decay.
He calls it a war on age.
Grey considers aging an engineering problem. The human body is a machine, he told me in the following interview, and like any machine, it can be maintained for as long as we want.
This is not an isolated view. There is a broader anti-aging movement afoot, which seems to be growing every day. As Tad Friend describes colorfully in a recent New Yorker essay, millions of venture capital dollars are being dumped into longevity research, some of it promising and some of it not. Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, is among the lead financiers (hes a patron of Greys organization as well).
Greys work is particularly interesting. For too long, he argues, scientists have been looking for solutions in all the wrong places. There is no monocausal explanation for aging. We age because the many physical systems that make up our body begin to fail at the same time and in mutually detrimental ways.
So hes developed what he calls a divide-and-conquer strategy, isolating the seven known causes of aging and tackling them individually. Whether its cell loss or corrosive mitochondrial mutations, Grey believes each problem is essentially mechanical, and can therefore be solved.
But even if this Promethean quest to extend human life succeeds, several questions persist.
If we develop these anti-aging technologies, who will have access to them? Will inequality deepen even further in a post-aging world? And what about the additional resources required to support humans living 200 or 300 or 500 years? The planet is stretched as it is with 7 billion people living roughly 70 years on average (women tend to live three to five years longer than men) and is already facing serious stresses around food, water, and global warming going forward.
Grey, to his credit, has thought through these problems. Im not sure hes alive to the political implications of this technology, specifically the levels of state coercion it might demand.
But when pressed, he defends his project forcefully.
Is there a simple way to describe theoretically what the anti-aging therapies youre working on will look like what theyll do to or for the body?
Oh, much more than theoretically. The only reason why this whole approach has legs is because 15 or 17 or so years ago, I was actually able to go out and enumerate and classify the types of damage. We've been studying it for a long time, so when I started out in this field in the mid-90s so I could learn about things, I was gratified to see that actually aging was pretty well understood.
Scientists love to say that aging is not well understood because the purpose of scientists is to find things, out so they have to constantly tell people that nothing is understood, but it's actually bullshit. The fact is, aging is pretty well understood, and the best of it is that not only can we enumerate the various types of damage the body does to itself throughout our lives, we can also categorize them, classify them into a variable number of categories
So I just talked about seven categories of damage, and my claim that underpins everything that we do is that this classification is exhaustive. We know how people age; we understand the mechanics of it. There is no eighth category that were overlooking. More importantly, for each category there is a generic approach to fixing it, to actually performing the maintenance approach that I'm describing, repairing the damage.
Can you give me an example of one of these categories and what the approach to fixing it looks like?
One example is cell loss. Cell loss simply means cells dying and not being automatically replaced by the division of other cells, so that happens progressively in a few tissues in the body and it definitely drives certain aspects of aging. Let's take Parkinson's disease. That's driven by the progressive loss of a particular type of neuron, the dopaminergic neuron, in a particular part of the brain.
And what's the generic fix for cell loss? Obviously it's stem cell therapy. That's what we do. We preprogram cells in the laboratory into a state where you can inject them into the body and they will divide and differentiate to replace themselves that the body is not replacing on its own. And stem cell therapy for Parkinson's disease is looking very promising right now.
Is it best to think of aging as a kind of engineering problem that can be reversed or stalled?
Absolutely. It's a part of technology. The whole of medicine is a branch of technology. It's a way of manipulating what would otherwise happen, so this is just one part of medicine.
But you're not trying to solve the problem of death or even aging, really. Its more about undoing the damage associated with aging.
Certainly the goal is to undo the damage that accumulates during life, and whether you call that solving aging is up to you.
What would you say is your most promising line of research right now?
The great news is that we have this divide-and-conquer strategy that allows us to split the problem into seven subproblems and address each of them individually. That means we're constantly making progress on all of them. We pursue them all in parallel. We actually don't pursue stem cell therapy very much, simply because so many other people are doing it and basically everything really important is being done by somebody else, so it's not a good use of our money.
We're a very small organization. We only have $4 million a year to spend, so we're spread very thin. We're certainly making progress. Over the past year we've published really quite high-profile papers relating to a number of main research programs, so there's no really one thing that stands out.
What do you say to those who see this as a quixotic quest for immortality, just the latest example of humanity trying to transcend its condition?
Sympathy, mainly. I understand it takes a certain amount of guts to aim high, to actually try to do things that nobody can do, that nobody's done before. Especially things that people have been trying to do for a long time. I understand most people don't have that kind of courage, and I don't hate them for that. I pity them.
Of course, the problem is that they do get in my way, because I need to bring money in the door and actually get all this done. Luckily, there are some people out there who do have courage and money, and so we're making progress.
Ultimately, the fact is aging has been the number one problem of humanity since the dawn of time, and it is something that, until I came along, we have not had any coherent idea how to address, which means the only option available to us has been to find some way to put it out of our minds and find a way to get on with our miserably short lives and make the best of it, rather than being perpetually preoccupied with this ghastly thing that's going to happen to us in the relatively distant future. That makes perfect sense. I don't object to that.
The problem is that suddenly we are in a different world where we are in striking distance of actually implementing a coherent plan that will really work, and now that defeatism, that fatalism, that resignation, has become a huge part of the problem, because once you've made your peace with some terrible thing you know, it's very hard to reengage.
Are there any ethical questions or reservations that give you pause at all?
Not at all. Once one comes to the realization that this is just medicine, then one can address the entire universe of potential so-called ethical objections in one gut. Are you in favor of medicine or not? In order to have any so-called ethical objection to the work we do, the position that one has to take is the position that medicine for the elderly is only a good thing so long as it doesn't work very well, and thats a position no one wants to take.
Ive no doubt youve been asked this question before, but I think its too important to gloss over. You talk enthusiastically about transitioning to a post-aging world, but there are many people who worry about what it means to increase the humans time on earth. We dont necessarily have an overpopulation problem, but we certainly have an inequality problem, and we seem to need more resources than we have. If 90 percent of people die from aging now, and suddenly people are living for 200 or 300 years, how will we be able to sustain this kind of growth?
First of all, thank you for prefacing the question with the thought that I've probably heard this question a lot, because of course I have. But you'd be astonished at how many people have presented this question to me starting with, "Have you ever thought of the possibility that..." as if they genuinely had a new idea.
But yes, overpopulation is the single biggest concern that people raise, and I have basically three levels of answers to these questions. First, the answer is specific to the individual question. So in the case of overpopulation, essentially I point to the fact that fertility rates are already plummeting in many areas. And people often forget: Overpopulation is not a matter of how many people there are on the planet but rather the difference between the number of people on the planet and the number of people that can be on the planet with an acceptable level of environmental impact, and that second number is of course not a constant; it's something that is determined by other technologies.
So as we move forward with renewable energy and other things like desalinization to reduce the amount of pollution the average person commits, we are increasing the carrying capacity of the planet, and the amount of increase that we can expect over the next, say, 20 years in that regard far exceeds what we could expect in terms of the trajectory of rise in population resulting from the elimination of death from aging. So that's my main answer.
The second level of answer is at the level of sense of proportion. Technology happens or doesn't happen, whatever the case may be, and maybe the worst-case scenario is that we will end up with a worse overpopulation problem than what we have today.
What does that actually mean? It means we're faced with a choice in a post-aging world, in a world where the technology exists a choice between either, on the one hand, using these technologies and having more people and having fewer kids than we would like or, on the other hand, letting stuff go on the way it is today, which involves not using technology that will keep people healthy in old age and therefore alive.
Ask yourself, which of those two things would you choose? Would you choose to have your mother get Alzheimer's disease or to have fewer kids? It's a pretty easy choice, and people just don't do this.
The third level is perhaps the strongest of all, which is that it's about who has the right to choose. Essentially if we say, Oh, dear, overpopulation, let's not go there. Let's not develop these technologies, then what we are doing as of today is we are delaying the arrival of our technology. Of course it will happen eventually. The question is how soon? That depends on how hard we try.
If we know that, then what we're doing is we're delaying the arrival of the technology and thus condemning a whole cohort of people of humanity of the future to the same kind of death and disease and misery that we have today in old age, when in fact we might have relieved that suffering had we developed the therapies in time.
I dont want to be responsible for condemning a vast number of people to death. I dont want to be in that position. I think theres a strong argument that we should get on developing these technologies has quickly as we can.
I take your points there, but those questions are far easier to answer in theory than they are to solve in practice. For instance, we cant simply decide that people will have fewer children without potentially dangerous levels of state coercion. The politics of this is complicated at best, dystopian at worst.
In any event, let me at least raise one more concern. What is your sense of the cost and the accessibility of these therapies should they become available? People concerned with bioengineering, for example, worry that technologies like this, if they arent equally distributed, will produce inequalities of the sort weve never seen before and cant sustain.
Its a valid concern. It needs to be addressed, but luckily, like the overpopulation one, it's a really easy one to address. Today what we see with high-tech medicine is that it is even in countries with a single-payer system it's pretty much limited by the pay because there's only so much resources available.
But part of the problem now is that our current therapies for elderly people dont work well. It postpones the ill health of old age by a very small amount if we're lucky, and then people get sick anyway, and we spend all the money that we would have spent in absence of the medicine just keeping the person alive for a little longer in a miserable state.
Now compare that with the situation where the medicine actually does work, where the person actually stays healthy. Yes, they live a lot longer, and sure enough, it may be that we have to supply these therapies multiple times because they are inherently periodic therapies, so we could be talking about a substantial amount of money. But the thing is these people would be healthy, so we would not be spending the money on the medicine for the sick people that we have today.
Plus, on top of that, there would be massive indirect savings. The kids of the elderly would be more productive because they wouldn't have to spend time looking after their sick parents. The elderly themselves would still be in an able-bodied state and able to actually contribute wealth to society rather than just consuming wealth.
Of course, there are lots and lots of big uncertainties in these kinds of calculations, but there is absolutely no way to do such a calculation that does not come to the absolutely clear conclusion that the medicines would pay for themselves many times over, really quickly.
So what that means, from the point of view of government setting aside the fact that it would be politically impossible not to support this is that it would be suicidal from a purely mercenary economic point of view not to do this. The country will go bankrupt because other countries will be making sure their workforce is able-bodied. The world will be frontloading their investments to ensure that everybody who is old enough to need them will get these therapies.
When will the therapies youre developing be ready for human experimentation?
That will happen incrementally over the next 20 years. Each component of the SENS panel will have standalone value in addressing one or another disease of old age, and some of them are already in clinical trials. Some of them are a lot harder, and the full benefit will only be seen when we can combine them all, which is a long way out.
How confident are you that someone alive today will not die of aging?
It's looking very good. Of course this is primary technology, so we can only speculate. It's very speculative what the time frame is going to be, but I think we have a 50-50 chance of getting to work on longevity escape velocity, the point where we are postponing the problem of aging faster than time is passing and people are staying one step ahead of the problem. I think we have a 50-50 chance of reaching that point within 20 years of now, subject only to improved funding on the early-stage research that's happening at the moment.
Escape velocity is an interesting analogy. The idea is to keep filling up the biological gas tank before it runs out, staying a step ahead of the aging process?
Right. The point is that these are rejuvenation therapies, which means they are therapies that genuinely turn back the clock. They put the body into a state that is analogous or similar to how it was at an earlier [stage] rather than just stopping or slowing down the clock. Every time you do this, you buy time, but the problem gets harder because the types of damage that the therapy reverses will catch up, and those imperfections just need to be progressively partially eliminated. The idea, then, is that you asymptotically approach the 100 percent repair situation but you never need to get there. You just need to keep the overall level of damage below a certain tolerable threshold.
For more about de Grey's work, visit the SENS website.
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Scientists are waging a war against human aging. But what happens next? - Vox
Brooklyn Berry has seen and done many things in her three seasons on the West Forsyth girls soccer team.
Berry, however, is limited in what she can see. The Titans talented junior forward has been blind in her left eye since eighth grade.
I tore half my retina, but the half that I tore is the half that we dont use. So I never knew it, Berry said. One day I couldnt see anything. I started losing vision, so I went to the doctor, and they told me that I had torn the half that I didnt use. And they told me it had been torn for months or years.
They told me that couldnt tell how long or what caused it because it had been so long.
Despite playing a majority of the time on the right side of the field, the lack of vision has not slowed her down.
She broke one of Alison Prices records on Tuesday and is on pace to break another. Berry broke the single-season school record of 43 goals, which was held by Price, a rising senior at Louisville, on Tuesday at Reynolds. She scored three times and now has 44 for the season.
Berry, who has verbally committed to UNC Wilmington, now has 104 career goals, 10 short of tying Prices all-time record of 114 at West Forsyth.
The cause of the injury to Berrys eye was never figured out.
Ive had so many concussions, so they told me it could really be anything, Berry said. And they told me it was just a matter of time until the rest of it (retina) fell off. So I had to get retina surgery.
The doctors inserted a new lens, but it didnt take.
I had surgery, and I had to wear an eye patch. I could only sleep on my left side. There were a bunch of things I was supposed to do. The lens shifted after, like, two days, and I went blind again, Berry said.
Some people, the lens just doesnt take. Your body just rejects it. My body just didnt take it right.
Coach Scott Bilton knew of Berrys blindness before she came to West Forsyth.
Its just been such a driving force for her, Bilton said. Shes compensated for that with the way that shell position her body so that shes able to see everything she needs to and things of that nature.
Adjusting to being able to see in just one eye has been difficult.
The first season, I had to play on the left side. Its been three or four years, so its still kind of hard, Berry said. I sometimes run into people and I dont really notice it. Ill be running and therell be somebody on my left side, and I cant really tell.
A lot of people on my team, they forget. Ive definitely gotten used to it a lot better than I used to.
Berry is not immune to injuries breaking her elbow her freshman year, pulling both hamstrings last season, and she is currently playing with a stress fracture in her foot.
In his 10th season coaching the Titans, Bilton has never seen anything like this.
Its definitely different, I guess, Bilton said. And its, obviously, something thats shocking to do what shes able to do. Shes had broken bones, just a bunch of stuff. Shes just found a way to be successful.
The Titans just clinched their seventh straight Central Piedmont 4-A conference championship and have won eight of the last 10. Before the Reynolds game, they were 18-1-1 and 10-0 with just a 4-1 loss to Cornelius Hough on April 21.
Berry has been there for the past three championships, scoring 27 goals her freshman season and 33 last season.
If the Titans make a deep run in the NCHSAA Class 4-A tournament, which starts next week, she could threaten Prices school scoring record this season. The team reached the state semifinals last season, losing 1-0 to Charlotte Providence.
The all-time state record, according to the NCHSAA, is 217 set bet Carolyn Lindsay of Hope Mills South View from 2000-03. It is possible for Berry to reach the top 15 on the list next season. Elizabeth Spencer, who played at Wilson Fike from 1996-99, has 152 goals.
The Forsyth County record set by Leigh Murray, who played at East Forsyth 1986-89, is 169 goals.
Berry said she hasnt spoken to Price about the record.
Shes a competitor, first and foremost, Bilton said of Berry. And competitors, when they set a goal, thats something that they want to go for.
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Field of vision: Despite blindness in left eye, West Forsyth's Berry is ... - Winston-Salem Journal
In a significant public health victory, Mexico has succeeded in eliminating a disease which is the leading cause of blindness worldwide, reportsNBC News.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) announced last weekthat Mexico is the first country in the Americas to eliminate trachoma as a public health issue. The disease, caused by a microorganism, affects the eye and repeated infections can lead to scarring and even loss of vision.
It primarily affects young children, and can be spread by personal contact or by flies that have been in contact with the discharge from the eyes or nose of an infected person.
This is a historic moment for public health in Mexico and the Americas, said Carissa F. Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), WHO regional office for the Americas. Eliminating a disease is not achieved every day.
(Photo: Google)
Trachoma primarily affects poor and isolated populations in 41 countries; in the Americas, the disease is still prevalent in Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia.
Mexico has become the third country, after Oman and Morocco, to receive WHO validation for eliminating the disease.
In Mexico, trachoma affected over 146,000 people. The country ramped up its actions in 2004 with the creation of the Trachoma Prevention and Control Program of the Ministry of Health of Chiapas and the strengthening of the WHO SAFE strategy. The Trachoma Brigades focused on cleanliness, antibiotics, environmental improvement and surgery for the advanced stage of the disease.
The programs slogan was With water, soap and cleanliness you can prevent trachoma. Teachers at schools would also meet with parents regularly to promote better hygiene.
The international criteria for the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem includes prevalence of less than 5 percent in children aged 1 to 9, and less than one case of trachomatous trichiasis (inverted eyelashes) per 1,000 inhabitants.
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Mexico eliminates infectious disease which is leading cause of ... - The Yucatan Times
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Cell-free biotech will make for better products - The Economist
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - May 04, 2017) - Planda Biotechnology (PLPL) announced last week that its highly bioavailable Phytofare Catechin Complex would be the active ingredient in Capital Brand's reformulated and soon-to-be released SuperFood Fat Burning Boost, which is used with the well-known brand NutriBullet. This week we learned that thanks to a deal with Coyne Healthcare -- Planda's signature brand Phytofare will make its way to the U.S. and Europe as the star ingredient in Coyne Healthcare's product Origine 8.
Coyne Healthcare placed an order for 1.2 million of Planda's Origine 8 capsules, which is a product that not only uses the highly bioavailable green tea extract, Phytofare Catechin Complex, but further enhances the bioavailability of the extract by using an advanced liposome technology developed and clinically validated to improve the delivery of nutritional substances.
Origine 8 is a product that entraps all 8 of the catechins of the tea plant, and according to Planda, it is the only catechin-based capsule on the market backed by human clinical studies that prove it has superior bioavailability.
Coyne Healthcare has already been selling Planda's unique product in South Africa, but it now expects to launch Origine 8 this month in both the U.S. and Europe. The good news for Planda is that Coyne Healthcare has forecasted sales of 10.6 million Origine 8 capsules in 2017, and Coyne expects sales to further increase to 24 million Origine 8 capsules in 2018.
Coyne makes its products (http://coynehealthcare.co.za/#products) available through pharmacies, health food stores and medical practitioners, so for both NutriBullet and Coyne Healthcare to bring Planda's signature brand to the U.S., investors will have a great opportunity to physically see their investment up close and personal.
Sales at Planda and the recognition that the company is gaining globally, is clearly a response to the efforts made by the new COO, Callum Cottrell-Duffield, well before now. He led the company's sales and marketing team in its effort to grow the brand and expand the company's footprint worldwide after Planda's signature product was available for mass production and ready to market on a much broader scale last year. His work to increase sales and marketing throughout Africa, the United States, Europe, Asia and South America by telling the Planda story, is starting to pay off now in 2017.
And, with brands like NutriBullet and Coyne Healthcare, who both use and market only the highest quality ingredients in their products, advertising the Phytofare name, it shouldn't take long for Planda to grow quite an impressive sales footprint worldwide.
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Plandai Biotechnology Expanding Footprint of Phytofare into U.S. with Continued Sales - Yahoo Finance
Post Analyst | Puma Biotechnology, Inc. (PBYI) held by 19 SEC 13F Filers | Post ... Post Analyst Puma Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ:PBYI) reached 87.69% versus a 1-year low price of $19.74. The stock was last seen -5% lower, reaching at $37.05 on May ... NJ State Employees Deferred Compensation Plan Has $341000 Position in Puma Biotechnology Inc (PBYI) Puma Biotechnology Inc (PBYI) Receives Buy Rating from Stifel ... Puma Biotechnology's (PBYI) Outperform Rating Reaffirmed at ... |
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Puma Biotechnology, Inc. (PBYI) held by 19 SEC 13F Filers | Post ... - Post Analyst
The well-known TED Talks is a clearinghouse of big thinkers and big ideas, and quite a few of them have focused on agriculture and food production over the years.
Engineering Drought Resistance Jill Farrant, a Professor of molecular and cell biology at University of Cape Town, South Africa, is studying how ancient DNA can be turned on to help important food crops fight off drought. She and colleagues have been studying resurrection plants to achieve this goal. Resurrection plants are those that can undergo extreme drought without water for months or even years. Then when the next rain comes along within 12 to 48 hours the plants green up and start growing again.
Farrants How We Can Make Plants Survive Without Water TED Talk featured her research into how resurrection plants work and if those special characteristics could be transferred into other plants, especially food crops.
Robot Swarms Vijay Kumar, Dean of the University of Pennsylvanias School of Engineering and Applied Science, wowed his TED Talk audience with his presentation titled The Future of Flying Robots. His lab is developing autonomous flying robots that use onboard sensors, cameras, and laser scanners to map the environment it is in and avoid obstacles while navigating.
All agriculture-related TED Talks can be found at ted.com/topics/agriculture.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:TED Talks Take on Agriculture Innovation
For more background on the Genetic Literacy Project, read GLP on Wikipedia
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Popular TED Talks explore future of agricultural innovation, biotechnology - Genetic Literacy Project
Barron's | Northeast Financial Consultants Inc Sells 650 Shares of iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (IBB) The Cerbat Gem iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index logo Northeast Financial Consultants Inc cut its stake in shares of iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (NASDAQ:IBB) by 48.1% during the first quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and ... iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (IBB) Shares Bought by Beaumont Financial Partners LLC iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (IBB) Upgraded to Buy at Vetr Inc. iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (IBB) Stake Maintained by Barrett Asset Management LLC |
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Northeast Financial Consultants Inc Sells 650 Shares of iShares NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (IBB) - The Cerbat Gem
News & Observer | Cary teen doesn't let arthritis hold her back News & Observer If Maia Tsalik is supposed to make you feel sorry for her, she is not doing a very good job. As one of the ambassadors for the upcoming Walk for the Cure, the 13-year-old Cary resident is charged with helping to raise awareness about arthritis. Maia ... |
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Cary teen doesn't let arthritis hold her back - News & Observer
WEDNESDAY, May 3, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- A new study finds that people with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis who haven't done well on other treatments may find relief with Xeljanz (tofacitinib), a drug currently used to treat arthritis.
Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease. It affects about 700,000 Americans, according to the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation (CCF).
The illness causes inflammation, irritation, swelling and sores on the lining of the large intestine. Symptoms include diarrhea with blood or pus and abdominal discomfort, according to CCF.
"There is still a substantial unmet need for new treatments for patients with ulcerative colitis," said study lead author Dr. William Sandborn. He is professor of medicine and chief of the division of gastroenterology at the University of California, San Diego.
Xeljanz targets certain proteins involved in the body's inflammatory and immune responses that other so-called biologic drugs don't, the researchers said.
"Treatment with oral tofacitinib is potentially a new treatment option for patients with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, pending review by the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]," Sandborn said.
The study was funded by Pfizer, Inc., the maker of Xeljanz. Sandborn said he has received research grants from the company and served as a consultant for Pfizer.
Whether Xeljanz should be used as a first treatment is still not clear, said Dr. Arun Swaminath, director of the inflammatory bowel disease program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
Because Xeljanz comes as a pill, it could have an advantage for patients, Swaminath said. But so far it has only been tried with patients who have not responded to other treatments, he said.
"How it is used in the real world may be different than how it was used in these studies," Swaminath said. "I am not going out on a limb and say this should be the first choice, because we don't have enough data to say that's the way it should be positioned."
The researchers randomly assigned more than 1,700 people with ulcerative colitis to one of three phase 3 trials.
The first two trials looked at more than 1,100 patients with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis who had failed with conventional treatment or treatment with newer "tumor necrosis factor antagonist" drugs, such as Remicade (infliximab). They received Xeljanz or a placebo twice a day for eight weeks.
In the third trial, nearly 600 patients who responded to Xeljanz were assigned to a maintenance dose (one group with 5 milligrams [mg] and another group with 10 mg) of the drug, or placebo for a year.
In the first trial, nearly 19 percent of the patients taking Xeljanz experienced a remission of their condition in eight weeks. That compared to just 8 percent of patients receiving placebo.
In the second trial, almost 17 percent of those taking Xeljanz had a remission, compared with nearly 4 percent of those taking placebo, the researchers found.
In the third trial, more than 34 percent of patients taking 5 mg of Xeljanz had disease remission after one year. Forty percent of those taking a 10-mg dose of the drug had remission at a year. Only 11 percent of patients on placebo saw a remission.
However, in all of the trials, more patients taking Xeljanz suffered from infections, such as shingles, than those receiving placebo, researchers found.
In addition, five patients taking Xeljanz developed nonmelanoma skin cancer, compared with one patient receiving placebo. Five patients taking the drug experienced heart problems compared with no one on the placebo.
Also, compared with placebo, Xeljanz was associated with an increase in levels of cholesterol.
The report was published May 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Sonia Friedman is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She's also the author of an editorial accompanying the study.
"Tofacitinib is a promising new class of medical therapy that has efficacy in ulcerative colitis. It is an oral, small-molecule drug that is different from current biologic therapies, such as infliximab [Remicade], adalimumab [Humira], golimumab [Simponi] and vedolizumab [Entyvio]," Friedman said.
An advantage of Xeljanz is that it is a pill. Other biologic drugs are given by infusion or injection. In addition, patients cannot develop antibodies to Xeljanz as they can with other biologic drugs, Friedman said.
"Tofacitinib may be used in the future as rescue therapy from failure of biologics," she said. "Only future studies will determine whether it can be used as initial therapy for ulcerative colitis and what patients it would help the most."
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Arthritis Drug Shows Promise for Ulcerative Colitis - Lincoln Journal Star
By Staff.
Researchers are editing stem cells in an effort to fight arthritis with the goal of possibly creating a vaccine that targets inflammation in joints.
Theyve been successful in rewiring mouse stem cells to fight inflammation caused by arthritis and other chronic conditions. These stem cells, known as SMART (Stem cells Modified for Autonomous Regenerative Therapy), develop into cartilage cells that produce anti-inflammatory drug that may replace arthritic cartilage and protect joints from additional damage.
Our goal is to package the rewired stem cells as a vaccine for arthritis, which would deliver an anti-inflammatory drug to an arthritic joint but only when it is needed, said Farshid Guilak, PhD, the papers senior author and a professor of orthopedic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine. To do this, we needed to create a smart cell.
Many current drugs used to treat arthritis like Enbrel, Humira and Remicade, attack an inflammation-promoting molecule called tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha). These drugs are given systemically rather than targeted to joints, which can lead to various unwanted side effects.
We want to use our gene-editing technology as a way to deliver targeted therapy in response to localized inflammation in a joint, as opposed to current drug therapies that can interfere with the inflammatory response through the entire body, Guilak added. If this strategy proves to be successful, the engineered cells only would block inflammation when inflammatory signals are released, such as during an arthritic flare in that joint.
The researchers also encoded the stem/cartilage cells with genes that made the cells light up when responding to inflammation, so the scientists could tell when the cells were responding. Recently, Guilaks team has begun testing the engineered stem cells in mouse models of rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.
If the work can be replicated in animals and then developed into a clinical therapy, the engineered cells or cartilage grown from stem cells would respond to inflammation by releasing a biologic drug the TNF-alpha inhibitor that would protect the synthetic cartilage cells that Guilaks team created and the natural cartilage cells in specific joints.
When these cells see TNF-alpha, they rapidly activate a therapy that reduces inflammation, Guilak explained. We believe this strategy also may work for other systems that depend on a feedback loop. In diabetes, for example, its possible we could make stem cells that would sense glucose and turn on insulin in response. We are using pluripotent stem cells, so we can make them into any cell type we can remove or insert genes that have the potential to treat many types of disorders.
The ability to build living tissues from smart stem cells that precisely respond to their environment opens up exciting possibilities for investigation in regenerative medicine, said Jonathan Brunger, PhD, the papers first author and a postdoctoral fellow in cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco.
The research was published in the journalStem Cell Reports.
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Can An Arthritis Vaccine Be In Our Future? - National Pain Report
Whether your adult mesenchymal stem cells come from bone marrow or from fat probably does not make a difference in terms of clinical results. Although some centers claim that bone marrow derived cells are superior to fat derived cells, there is no evidence to substantiate that. Recent studies show that fat derived cells make bone tissue much better than the bone marrow derived cells. Some studies are showing different outcomes but it is important to realize that these studies are all done in petri dishes and may not relate to living organism. Also, it is important that one is not mislead in some marketing materials by the word bone in bone marrow, possibly implying that since this is an orthopedic source it must be better for treating orthopedic conditions such as cartilage regeneration. In fact, the bone marrow is part of the reticulo-endothelial system (makes blood cells) and just happens to be found in the center of bone. The truth is, both bone marrow derived and stromal (from fat) derived stem cells are both effective for regenerative therapy and both have the potential to differentiate into mature functional cartilage. However, stem cells from fat are 100 to 1000 times more plentiful and this makes same day procedures (allowed in the US) much more effective with fat derived cells. The higher numbers of cells in fat leads to better clinical outcomes. Also, the quality of bone marrow declines with age and it has less numbers of cells and less healthy cells compared to the fat. The diminution in quantity and quality of bone marrow cells related to age and chronic illness is well documented. Last but not least, the ease of removing fat from under the skin using a mini-liposuction under local anesthetic is much less invasive and MUCH LESS painful than undergoing bone marrow aspiration to obtain bone marrow cells.
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Bone Marrow vs. Fat Derived Stem Cells Continued : Stem ...
US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) is a biotechnology company that was formerly known as Bioheart, Inc. US Stem Cell, headquartered in Sunrise, FL, seeks to discover, develop, and commercialize autologous cell therapies for the treatment of chronic and acute heart damage. The companys current drug candidates include MyoCell, MyoCell SDF-1, and AdipoCell. On April 13, 2017 US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) announced that it had received a commitment to invest up to $5,000,000 from private equity firm General American Capital Partners LLC (GACP) in exchange for up to 63,873,275 shares of common stock.
MyoCell is being developed by US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) as a treatment to improve cardiac function months or years after a patient has experienced heart damage due to a heart attack. The treatment involves the removal of a small amount of muscle from the patients thigh. Muscle stem cells, called myoblasts, are isolated and expanded utilizing a proprietary cell-culturing process. These cells are then injected directly into the hearts scar tissue through an endoventricular needle-injection catheter by a surgeon. The stem cells then populate the area of scar tissue to, hopefully, improve cardiac function. The peer-reviewed American Heart Journal published the results of clinical trial Marvel-1. According to the article, when compared with a placebo, myoblast therapy was associated with sustained (six months) improvements in six-minute walk distance of >90 meters, a clinically meaningful improvement.
US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) is also developing MyoCell SDF-1. This treatment has recently received approval from the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin human clinical trials. MyoCell SDF-1 is being developed as an improvement to the MyoCell treatment. In preclinical studies, MyoCell SDF-1 provided a 54% improvement of heart function compared to 27% for the original MyoCell composition, while the placebo control treated animals declined by 10%. The preclinical studies also demonstrated that this product candidate can enhance blood vessel formation in damaged hearts.
Lastly, US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) is also developing its AdipoCell treatment. Adipose (fat) tissue is readily available and has been shown to be rich in microvascular, myogenic and angiogenic cells. In collaboration with the Regenerative Medicine Institute in Tijuana, Mexico, congestive heart failure patients are being treated in a Phase I/II trial at Hospital Angeles Tijuana. Reportedly, these patients have demonstrated, on average, an absolute improvement of 13% in ejection fraction and an increase of 100 meters in their six-minute walk distance. US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) has recently applied to the FDA to begin trials using adipose derived stem cells or AdipoCell in patients with chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy. The therapy involves the use of stem cells derived from the patients own fat (adipose tissue) obtained using liposuction. Transplantation of AdipoCell is accomplished through endocardial implantations with an injection catheter.
I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 96 hours. All information, or data, is provided with no guarantees of accuracy.
About the author: Steve Clark is a 23-year Wall St professional with stints in M&A, risk management, and algorithm trading.
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US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS:USRM) Receives Institutional Fund ... - StockNewsUnion
MADISON (WKOW) -- Everywhere you turn, people are constantly looking at a screen.
Most of my day is consistent of somehow being on an electronic device, said Sydney McCourt.
Whether its a computer, tablet or cell phone, according to doctors, our daily usage could negatively affect our eye health.
Most of us spend at least 7 hours a day on a computer. That results in headaches, eye strain, even dry eyes for many individuals, said Dr. Timothy Wilson.
Doctor Wilson is an optometrist at Isthmus Eye Care. He says Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) is something that affects countless Americans.
Many times they just dont understand why these things are taking place, said Wilson. They never link their day to day life with much screen time and symptoms.
Sydney McCourt is a sophomore at UW Madison. As the semester comes to an end, shes spending more and more time in front of a screen.
Usually my eyes will grow tires, blurry vision after looking at the screen for a while, said McCourt. If youre in a dark place looking at a bright screen, that can cause some tension in your eyes.
According to theWisconsin Optometric Association(WOA), fifty-eight percent of American adults report experiencing eye strain or vision problems as a direct result of using technology, including; computers, tablets, smartphones and other digital devices.
My eyes get really dry, so by the end of the day which is around 4:00 p.m. from classes I have to go home and take out my contacts and put on glasses, said Adam Schmidt, UW Madison Junior.
To avoid Computer Vision Syndrome, WOA members recommend practicing the 20-20-20 rule when using digital devices for an extended period of time. Users should take a 20 second break during every 20 minutes of device use and look 20 feet away.
The biggest thing with Computer Vision Syndrome is peoples quality of life, said Dr. David Nelson. At the end of the day, they come home and are to tired to participate in events with their families.
As the current president of the WOA, Dr. David Nelson says people blink 75 percent less when sitting in front of a computer screen because they become so engrossed with what theyre doing that they forget to blink.
Keeping a little bottle of artificial tears next to the computer and putting some eye drops into your eyes before they get dry and irritated is important, said Dr. Nelson.
The WOA recommends the following guidelines to prevent or reduce vision and eye health problems associated with CVS: Computer screens should be about 4-5 inches below eye level as measured from the center of the screen and held 20-28 inches away from the eyes. The most efficient viewing angle on a computer screen is slightly downward about 15 degrees.
If possible, windows or other light sources should not be directly visible when sitting in front of the monitor. If this occurs, turn the desk or computer to prevent glare on the screen. Reduce the amount of lighting in the room to match that of the computer screen.
Both Dr. Nelson and Dr. Wilson say their seeing issues related to Computer Vision Syndrome across all age spectrums.
"Considering the dependence on computers, this is something that is going to continue, but there is help," said Dr. Wilson.
There are specialty glasses that block and filter some of the blue light that comes from computer screens. If you think you suffer from dry eyes, doctors can test the quality of your tears to find out if you have Dry Eye Syndrome and if its linked to Computer Vision Syndrome.
When it comes to really seeing whats going on with your eyes, there is no substitute for a comprehensive, yearly eye exam by a licensed eye doctor.
"Comprehensive, yearly eye exams preserve vision and constitute the only way to accurately assess eye health, diagnose an eye disorder or disease, and determine if you need corrective lenses says Dr. Nelson.
Click here to locate a nearby doctor of optometry.
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