Yes, we all know that exercise is good for us. But the ubiquitous “they” don’t usually tell us specifically why. Now they’re starting to be able to do that. First, they’ve recently discovered that excess fat (especially in the abdominal area) can lead to chronic inflammation throughout the system.

In a test done with a small group of healthy volunteers (20-45) they subjected their blood samples both before and after exercise with an infectious agent and then analyzed the blood for a substance called “tumor necrosis factor” (TNF). Sounds kind of like a monster in a sci-fi thriller, doesn’t it? Anyway, the levels of this little TNF monster were significantly lower after exercise than before–and TNF is considered the first step in the inflammation process.

So if you’re one of the many who’ve said, “Oh, so what about exercise,” maybe being able to name a specific and icky-sounding culprit will help you fight your urge to consistently choose the couch over the aerobic crunch.

The FDA has decided to fast track a medical device that will help prevent limb amputation for U.S. soldiers

“The device works by connecting the ends of a severed blood vessel, providing a bridge or shunt around the damaged area and restoring blood flow to the injured limb. It can be implanted on the battlefield and other remote areas to bypass damaged blood vessels and temporarily maintain blood flow to the injured limb until the patient can be transported to a surgical facility.”

Why are they rushing this through? Because official numbers are that 6% of the 14,120 soldiers injured in Iraq between March 2003 and August 2005 — equivalent to 28 soldiers per month – had arm or leg amputations (from the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies in Washington. So with this new Scottish-made (Japanese parent company) “Temporary Limb Salvage Shunt” they’ll try to save an arm or leg on one or two soldiers a week. Five hundred-plus soldiers have already lost limbs.

Calcium supplements aren’t just for menopausal women anymore. Turns out that even a very short course–as little as 8 weeks–of calcium (combined with Vitamin D) can make a big difference in the frequency of stress fractures in female military recruits. The study indicates that women who undertake the rigors of military training risk debilitating stress fractures far more often then males–as many as 21% of all female recruits. Those who exercised regularly were less prone, while those who smoked were more so. The chronic disability and pain that result from these injuries cost the government dearly in terms of lost investment when recruits are discharged from training.

Researchers hope there may be application for other areas of endeavor such as athletics. And though there doesn’t appear to be a specific indicator, the hope is that this easy, inexpensive supplementation would extend protection to male as well as female athletes.

It doesn’t have to cost you fat fees to get your medical/educational book published. All you have to do is, first, have a manuscript that’s worth reading. Then submit it to MedRounds Publications, Inc. They provide editing and graphic design and distribute your book for you through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and a ton of retail outlets. I understand that the company even does some promotion for you–an unusual benefit. And the royalties paid here are much better than you’ll get from a traditional publisher–plus you get major Internet presence for the book in addition to the hard copies.

This service was founded by a physician/neuroscientist/ophthalmologist Andrew Doan, who believes it’s critically important to have “open-access publications,… to serve academic communities, be an advocate for authors, and support philanthropy.” Andrew has this to say:

Why did I start a publishing company? Academic authors get ripped off by publishers. Also, publishers tend to make books out-of-print and do not offer educational texts for the world to use. Knowledge empowers people to grow and improve their situation.

And he doesn’t stop there–he’s also invented a service that lets non-profits, schools and others raise money by inviting their constituents to search and shop through Google as usual–just use the special search page that the software, MyFundRazor.org, generates.

Not a bad day’s work after fulfilling your duties as a physician, Andrew.

It saves time and eliminates some of the major trauma to the patient (like cutting the breastbone and stopping the heart). One doctor hails keyhole heart valve surgery as the biggest development since angioplasty. The first such operation in the UK is to be performed soon, though the procedure’s already been done in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Canada.

Who wouldn’t rather put up with the pain and discomfort of having something jammed up your groin artery than deal with your entire chest being cut open? Speaking as someone who knows a candidate for valve replacement, I sure hope the U.S. decides to test this procedure soon–and finds it effective.

Well, fat is good in at least some small way. Scientists have recently discovered that a protein called adiponectin that’s produced by fat cells plays a heretofore unrecognized role in helping us stay healthy: it helps your body clear itself of the billion-cells-a-day that die off as part of your body’s natural cleansing routine.

Imagine that? Our own body processes can cause inflammation if they don’t operate efficiently–just the way your immune system goes haywire in an allergic reaction. This discovery may help scientists understand a lot more about autoimmune diseases as well as conditions like diabetes and heart disease that are believed to be connected with poor clearance of dead cells.

It’s good to know that fat isn’t all bad. Of course, now this will undoubtedly lead up to even more precise prescriptions of how much is too much. I’m sure we all can’t wait.

The case of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s need for brain surgery has brought heightened focus to the advisability of using strong blood thinners. Treating people who’ve had a stroke with powerful blood thinning medications such as warfarin seems to increase the risk of brain hemorrhaging. And this bleeding in the brain, known as a type of hemorrhagic stroke and caused by a blood vessel bursting, is much more lethal than the more common ischemic stroke (a blood vessel gets blocked by something like a blood clot). Fatalities are 50% and higher.

Just points to our growing need to continually test our “proven” remedies. As medical interventions grow ever more sophisticated and surgeons go where no one has dared tread before, we must carefully monitor the followup treatments for levels of true effectiveness. One of the most recent class of drugs to fall victim to “let’s do it like we’ve always done it” syndrome is those for lowering cholesterol. New guidelines say our cholesterol should be so low that almost everyone in the world (well, at least in the U.S.) “should” be on cholesterol-lowering drugs. A Framingham study reported in JAMA notes that, even though at younger ages lower cholesterol does seem to relate to longevity, cholesterol levels for people over 50 seem to have lost any demonstrable link to mortality.

Upshot: be extra careful what you claim about drugs. As research and testing also grow more sophisticated, yesterday’s claims can come back to bite you big-time.

Cloned cows, goats, pigs. Would you want to eat meat or milk from them? Most people have said no in polls, but a big step towards getting those products on the market came this week when the FDA reported they consider clones safe to eat.

Two notable items in this Washington Post story are 1) the FDA is proposing to create a publicly accessible database in which all research findings will be immediately published as investigation continues (some cloning companies don’t like this idea much–which is a bit scary), and 2) cloning isn’t a totally weird and unnatural a process. It’s described this way:

“To make a clone, scientists take a single skin cell from an animal [presumably a cow in this case] they want to replicate. They fuse it with a cow egg that has had its DNA removed, resulting in the creation of an embryo that can be transferred to the womb of a surrogate mother animal. The resulting newborn is a twin of the animal that donated the initial cell.”

So the clone is created from living tissue and grows inside a regular, live mom–not nearly as freaky as, in my ignorance, I thought the method was.

More-than-average problems with miscarriages, birth defects, and other problems happen, just as they do with in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination. The FDA says it can’t find any significant differences in molecular composition in the cloned animals. Okay, then the question that must be addressed is do these animals seem to experience life in the same way that ordinary members of their species do? That’s a tough question to answer, but it’s a critical one because we all know that once humans can do something successfully with animals, messing with the same thing in humans is not far behind.

I think they eventually ought to try cloning a dog to see if that wonderful creature gives all the same joy, compassion and love to human beings as many dogs do today. If you have any doubts, check out programs like Reading with Rover and H.A.L.T. (Humans and Animals Learning Together). If the dog clone works, we can know more surely that a cloned creature may have the soul of its species.

In what turns out to be a rather confusing study, Nature magazine reports that people who are obese have many more microbe types in their intestines that are very efficient at extracting energy from food than thin people do. They also found that another microbe type that’s less efficient increases as a person diets and is higher in thin people.

Lest you get too excited, as I started to, thinking okay, yeah, this means my fat is genetically determined, they’re not willing to go that far yet. But they see some suspicious stuff when they take these gut flora from obese mice and implant them into normal mice–those normal guys put on a lot more fat than could be expected just from that one change. They’re going to keep studying, because it’s not clear yet which comes first–does the change in flora bring on the weight loss or vice versa? But there’s hope that one day we might be able to take a couple of spoonfuls of something that will use our natural body composition to make us less susceptible to gaining weight and/or more likely to be able to lose it when we try.

Like the discovery that there may be a genetic factor involved in alcoholism, further studies could mean that those who struggle with their weight may be able to feel less sense of shame. More here: Gut Bacteria May Determine Dieting Efficiency.

AIDS is not arrested by any means. In many countries it’s spreading without restraint where the poor have sex without protection and women are regularly raped. A first iteration has just been developed of a “molecular condom.” It’s a liquid designed to used daily by a woman and will turn itself on whenever sperm is introduced into her cervix and deliver a dose of anti-HIV drugs–a “microbicide.”

This research will lead the way towards empowering women to take responsibility for preventing harm and unwanted pregnancies for themselves. It’s not there yet, unfortunately. They’re talking 10 years before a usable version comes out. But research is at least looking in the right directions. Now all we have to do is keep finding the money to support these kinds of initiatives–and start educating more men to take responsibility, too.