Obesity
Cultural Custom-Fitting to Combat Obesity
Countless campaigns have been launched to steer schoolchildren toward healthy habits, and yet rates of childhood obesity and diabetes continue to soar. Celebrity endorsements, catchy catchphrases, and food pyramid redesigns have struggled to combat the allure of fast food and television in the battle for child health in the United States. But with childhood obesity […]
Sleep and the Male Sex Life
By Dianna Douglas More research practically begging people to get a good night’s sleep has come out of the sleep labs at the University of Chicago. Eve Van Cauter and Rachel Leproult have discovered that a week of inadequate sleep means less testosterone in young men. A lot less. In the study, ten healthy young […]
Drinks That Give Kids Wings…and Problems
It’s a challenge to watch TV for any length of time these days without coming across a commercial for drinks like Gatorade and Red Bull, beverages usually marketed with adrenalized advertisements featuring athletes and daredevil feats. Though these commercials always feature adults, the tone and pacing is clearly aimed at a younger audience more susceptible […]
The Stressful Truth Hidden Inside a Reverse Disparity
Over the year-long discussion of health disparities in the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics seminar series, the health gaps presented between American whites and blacks have been predominantly a one-way street. On nearly every health measure – from infant mortality to diabetes to cardiovascular disease – higher rates are observed for African-Americans. But there’s […]
Linkage 5/20: Predicting Cardiac Arrest & Scolding McDonalds
A Magic 8-Ball for Cardiac Arrest Cardiac arrest is one of the most common ways that people die, and hospitals need to be constantly vigilant about the threat of heart stoppage in their patients. So physicians have long sought to develop a way of predicting who is most at risk for cardiac arrest when checked […]
Small Screen, Big Quality Improvement
By Dianna Douglas The benefits of measuring body mass index (BMI) are clear: a physician who knows a patient’s BMI is more likely to counsel her on lifestyle changes, and people are more likely to try diet and exercise on a doctor’s advice. But in the often-rushed environment of the clinic, even the quick calculations […]
Linkage 3/25: Giant Bunnies, Religious Obesity, and Kin Selection Kerfuffle
Just in time for Easter, a team of scientists digging on a Spanish island have discovered the fossils of a prehistoric rabbit of unusual size: 26 pounds, more than six times the size of today’s bunnies. Called Nuralagus rex – the “king of the hares” – the big guy definitely did not hop when it […]
Disparities Across the Ocean and Next Door
Like the rest of campus, the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics seminar series is on spring break, resuming in early April with a talk from provocative economist Richard Epstein. So now’s a good chance to get caught up on the previous quarter’s seminars, covering topics under the umbrella of health disparities from the biological […]
Mapping Out the Starting Point
When health disparities in urban populations are discussed at the University of Chicago Medical Center, it’s not an abstract, far-away concept. Only a few blocks west and south of the hospital campus are some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago, where nearly every health statistic one finds is shocking. Pick any measure – diabetes, heart […]
A SMAHC-down on Poor Sleep
“If sleep does not serve an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process ever made.” – Allan Rechtschaffen. We spend approximately one-third of our lives asleep, and yet there is still much to learn about why. Modern sleep research only began less than a century ago, when Nathaniel Kleitman founded […]
