StemCell Therapy

Gabriel Leung, Chair Professor of Public Health Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, speaks about the extent of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak in China during an news conference in Hong Kong Tuesday, Jan. 21.

TYRONE SIU/Reuters

The late-night post to social media from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in the midst of a viral outbreak looked like a rare sign of transparency in a country where authorities routinely cover up damaging information in the name of preserving social order.

Fifteen medical workers had been infected by a new SARS-like coronavirus, the medical commission wrote shortly before midnight Monday, a revelation that showed the virus had demonstrated the ability to leap between humans, raising the stakes for authorities in China and abroad as they seek to prevent a pandemic.

On Tuesday, as state media said the number of deaths has risen to six and confirmed cases to 291, authorities took more dramatic measures, instituting health inspection points at numerous entrance and exit points to Wuhan, including random checks of drivers on highways. Cases have now been confirmed in 16 Chinese provinces, according to a new online government real-time monitor.

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But perhaps the most remarkable development was the emergence of new calls for official honesty, including from a powerful Communist Party organ, as the Wuhan virus provided some an unusual opening to criticize past practice and demand a greater respect for the interests of everyday Chinese people a reflection of the democratizing influence that can still occasionally be wielded by the power of social media, even in a country with the worlds most sophisticated censorship regime.

Seventeen years ago, Chinese leadership used its control over information to conceal the true spread of SARS, before it became a global epidemic, killing nearly 800. Journalist Karl Taro Greenfield traced the first Chinese headline about SARS to a small city newspaper, Heyuan Daily, that on Jan. 3, 2003, reported: There is no epidemic in Heyuan. There is no need for people to panic.

But the genetically-related Wuhan virus, also known as 2019-nCoV, is spreading in a very different China and the appearance of more official transparency response suggests that even inside the countrys heavily-constrained Internet environment, the ubiquity of social media has forced change upon a leadership that is grappling with its imperfect ability to shape the information people consume.

Self deception will only make the epidemic worse, and turn a controllable natural disaster into a man-made disaster for which we will pay a huge price, the powerful Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, a high-ranking Communist Party organization, wrote in a commentary published on its Weibo account and republished by numerous state press outlets Tuesday. It took unusually direct aim at the SARS response, saying the concealment of information at the time greatly hurt the government's integrity and social stability.

People are not living in a vacuum, they will not be kept in the dark forever. Depriving them of their right to know the truth will only give rumours a place to rage, the commission wrote.

Even more terrible than a viral infection is an infection of panic, it wrote. As for the Wuhan virus, it is more likely to be killed only when exposed to sunlight.

There remain signs that Chinese authorities are once again not disclosing full information. Scholars at Imperial College London used epidemiological computer modelling to estimate that the number of people infected is many times what is now the official report. Authorities in China have issued deeply conflicting statements 24 hours before others acknowledged person-to-person transmission of the virus, the head of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the risk of such transmission was low. Patricia Shen, a Wuhan woman with close relatives who work in medicine in Wuhan, told The Globe and Mail: the situation is worse than in some early news reports.

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Yet there were also signs of the opposite: authorities updated statistics on deaths and infections within hours on Monday, with additional information released Tuesday including an acknowledgment that officials are monitoring 922 people for signs of infection, a figure closer to the Imperial College London estimate.

China alerted the World Health Organization on Dec. 31 and made public the genetic profile of the virus, enabling other countries to develop fast identification tests. Local authorities have also taken a light hand at intervening in a surprisingly robust conversation online, where people published photos of crowded hospitals and their own accounts of being turned away for treatment raising questions about how accurately officials had been able to grasp the scope of the problem.

Critical keywords like Wuhan, virus, and pandemic remained openly searchable Tuesday.

The signs of action did little to quell public skepticism, a sign of discontent and distrust that, despite signs of official transparency, yet another Chinese health coverup is underway.

So the government finally admits that the virus is transmittable. Cant believe it has taken us such a long time to get facts. Why is telling truth so difficult? wrote one of the top commenters on the Wuhan Municipal Health Commissions post about medical worker infections on Chinas Twitter-like Weibo service. For government officials, suppressing rumours and stopping their spread is much more important than curbing the virus. Thats the fact of things in China, wrote another. Looks like all of the lessons we learned over the past 17 years have been wasted. They are still trying to control the public opinion, wrote a third, in a reference to SARS.

Panicked buyers emptied national supplies of inexpensive antiviral masks on Jingdong, one of Chinas biggest online retailers. Fears hit stock markets, too, with airlines and travel companies retreating while drugmakers rose on anxiety that China is hurtling into a health emergency. An office worker in Wuhan, 28, described empty streets, bed shortages at hospitals and a sense of personal fear: he had himself developed a cough. The Globe and Mail is not identifying him because he worries he could be among those placed in isolation.

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The Chinese government has a long history of minimizing the seriousness and hiding facts around public safety, said Zhang Lifan, a Chinese historian and Communist Party critic. And the public is fed up with dishonesty and lies, he said.

But, he said, the Chinese public now possesses powers it could never before muster particularly online.

The only difference between the Wuhan virus and SARS is that this time it was people within China, within the infected zone, that first came out to tell the public what was going on, Mr. Zhang said. Thats a result of developments in Internet and telecommunication. In the past we had no choice but to listen to what officials tried to convince us to believe in, but now we have more choices.

Chinese authorities maintain the ability to delete large volumes of commentary they consider unacceptable. Mockery of President Xi Jinping has, in the past, led to blanket bans on the use of Winnie the Pooh whose portly figure has been likened to the Chinese leader and even the letter n, a reference to mathematical uncertainty that circulated when Mr. Xi stripped away term limits.

But the loose hand on critical commentary Tuesday suggested a recognition that there were risks, too, in suppressing the conversation.

They know what a tinder box theyre presiding over, said Scott Savitt, an author and former China correspondent who remains a keen observer of the country. Although much smaller in scale, it reminded him of the more open environment for political discussion ahead of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, amid fear that an overly-harsh response might cause more social instability, Mr. Savitt said.

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At the same time, the rise of social media, even in crippled form in China, has placed powerful tools of mass communication in the hands of hundreds of millions. Even information shut out by state media can slip and circulate widely on WeChat and Weibo including the British estimates that the virus had spread far more broadly than publicly acknowledged.

Local governments now find it basically impossible to completely hide things, said King-wa Fu, a scholar at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at The University of Hong Kong. Thats really a major difference between 2003 and now.

Rising wealth has also created new forms of individual empowerment: more than 100 million people in China have now achieved U.S. middle-class standards of income. Many have equivalent expectations for government performance.

Its not clear to what degree, however, those pressures will create new forms of response. Official attempts to control the message remain: On Tuesday, at least one correspondent reported being told by a Wuhan hotel that foreign journalists were not welcome.

And an outpouring of popular rage, particularly during a Spring Festival season that is meant to be an annual moment of goodwill, will almost certainly provoke a harsh response, said Prof. Fu.

If more and more people express anger online, they will control it, he said. Just wait and see a few more days.

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But for the moment, at least, the Chinese government is under tremendous pressure, he said, to disclose more information, both from foreign governments determined to block the virus and from within.

On Tuesday, Hu Xijin, the provocative editor of the national tabloid Global Times, publicly criticized Wuhan officials for being slow to disclose information, likening it to squeezing out toothpaste.

The practice of delaying the release of important updates needs to be completely changed, he wrote on his Weibo account.

In the era of mass democracy on the internet people have their own ability to exercise independent judgment. People do not need or we can say that they are even against the idea that their lives need to be arranged. They see themselves as having equal right to know the truth, as government officials do, on affairs that involve their interests, and they want to decide how to respond independently.

-with reporting from Alexandra Li

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Chinese officials confirm new deaths and medical-worker infections from coronavirus - The Globe and Mail

Many valuable initiatives are outlined in the ambitiousmandate letterfrom Justin Trudeau to his newly appointed health minister, Patty Hajdu. These include important responsibilities relating to effective, affordable medicines. While these plans have the potential to benefit all Canadians, a pharmaceutical policy viewed primarily through the current governments signature middle-class lens risks short-sightedly perpetuating serious existing issues.

These potential shortcomings are readily illustrated by a decidedly un-middle-class disease: tuberculosis. Thearchetypal disease of poverty, tuberculosis is generally found where the basic social determinants of health, from proper housing to adequate nutrition, are not. Vulnerable populations who already find themselves outside the remit of the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity are doubly failed when the Minister of Healths mandate for pharmaceutical policy overlooks them as well.

Take the mandates long-overdue inclusion of national universal pharmacareand implementing a national formulary and a rare disease drug strategy. Drugs that will eventually appear on the national formulary are presumably going to be drugs that are actually approved for sale in Canada. Yet approval isnt simply a matter of meeting certain standards for safety and efficacy. In the case of tuberculosis, many medicines considered the global standard of care, including the majority of medicines used to treat the more serious condition of drug-resistant tuberculosis, remain unavailable in Canada. This is in part because the process relies upon drug companies being willing to go to the effort of applying for approval in a country where there are too few cases of TB to make drugs profitable, regardless of whether the drugs are vital for patients and public health.

Virtually all of these missing medicines can be found on the World Health OrganizationsModel List of Essential Medicines, which outlines drugs every health system should have. Many countries, in keeping with WHO guidance, have created their own tailored essential medicines lists. Canada has not. The establishment of a Canadian list, as a prelude to a broader national formulary, was recommended in the recentFinal Reportof the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare. Hopefully its omission from the mandate letter does not mean this idea has been abandoned. Engaging directly with the WHO list when drawing up the Canadian list, as recommended in the report, would draw much-needed attention to important medicines absent from Canada, many of them for conditions like TB that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable Canadians.

Unfortunately, when the mandate letter highlights a rare disease drug strategy, it is not talking about ensuring access to globally recognized treatments for diseases that are uncommon in Canada even as they remain a public health scourge elsewhere. What, then, makes a disease rare? Health Canada has used a definition of a rare disease as one affectingfewer than 5 in 10,000Canadians. The annual rate of tuberculosis is about5 per 100,000; drug-resistant TB accounts for less than 10 percent of this total. However, rare disease in practice is used in relation to chronic genetic disorders like cystinosis and cystic fibrosis. These, not TB, are the diseases encountered in the heart-wrenching news stories we have all read about families advocating fiercely for treatment for a child or other family member requiring a sometimes unapproved, almost invariably expensive medicine.

In practice, TB and rare genetic disorders can face similar treatment barriers. Research into new treatments is underfunded in both cases. Similarly, in both instances, drug companies have been reluctant to take the steps necessary to enter the Canadian market. In turn, medical practitioners and their patients face similarbarrierswhen navigating bureaucratic mechanisms, such as theSpecial Access Programme, to access drugs not officially available in Canada.

However, these shared barriers have not been effectively recognized as such in reforming pharmaceutical policy.Progresson improving access to drugs for rare diseases, including bringing more rare disease drugs to the Canadian market and shouldering at least some of their often exorbitant costs, is a real success story for effective advocacy with a middle-class face. By contrast, ensuring proper tuberculosis treatment has not received similar attention, even though for too many Canadian communities, particularlyin the North, TB is in reality an all too common disease.

A better approach to pharmaceutical policy would involve taking steps to ensure that any drugs forming the global standard of care for any condition are available in Canada. Instead, federal action to provide access to otherwise unavailable TB drugs has been through temporary stopgap measures rather than structural reforms. One such drug, rifapentine, has been widely accessed by the majority of provinces and territories over the past few years under theAccess to Drugs in Exceptional Circumstancesmechanism, which has permitted temporary bulk importation in response to what has ended up being officially listed as the tuberculosis crisis. That rifapentine is nevertheless still not officially available in Canada has even drawninternational attentionto the inadequacies of Canadas system.

Similarly, even those tuberculosis drugs that are officially available in Canada are not always available in practice.Like many other drugsfor a wide range of conditions, tuberculosis drugs have been prone to recent shortages. Of particular concern, over the past year Canada hasfaced shortagesof both rifampin and ethambutol, two cornerstones of tuberculosis treatment. It is thus welcome news that another key element of the Ministers mandate is to ensure that Canadians have access to the medicines they need by taking actionto address drug shortages.

Such action, which should be undertaken promptly, must include seriously examining options like stockpiling and alternative sourcing; in another sign of policy incoherence, even though Canada has been a majorfunder of the Global Drug Facilityto ensure access to essential medicines for tuberculosis in low- and middle-income countries, it does not draw upon the mechanism itself for drugs in shortage, let alone drugs not otherwise available in Canada, even though all countries areencouraged to do so. Furthermore, the response must reflect the fact that not all shortages are created equal; while structural reforms are necessary, drugs for conditions like TB that have serious public health consequences and that do not have effective, accessible substitutes must be prioritized.

Ironically, tuberculosis also offers a stark reminder for a third component of the Ministers mandate, to address the serious and growing public health threat of antimicrobial resistance. Drug-resistant tuberculosis exists only because insufficient attention was paid to tuberculosis treatment in the first place; prioritizing its prevention (through ensuring an uninterrupted supply of basic tuberculosis drugs) and treatment (through removing barriers to patient access to drugs for treating drug-resistant TB) is an essential component of successfully addressing the public health threat of antimicrobial resistance.

Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in Canada at thetime of Confederation; better living standards and access to effective medicines drove its precipitous decline over the next century. Unfortunately, attention from policy-makers has similarly declined. That rates of this curable disease in Canada have remained relativelysteady since the 1980s, and that numerous drugs for theworlds top infectious killerare in shortage or simply not officially available here, underscore the fact that pharmaceutical policy that fails to identify the particular needs of those outside the middle class can be at best a middling success.

Adam R. Houston isa PhD student at the University of Ottawa. Ryan Cooper is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. Richard Long is a professor of pulmonary medicine in the Facult yof Medicine and Dentistry.

This opinion-editorial orginally appeared Jan. 14 in Policy Options.

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COMMENTARY || Pharmaceutical policy excludes the most vulnerable - Folio - University of Alberta

19 January 2020 11min read

But ethical and economic challenges could limit the benefits medtech brings to healthcare.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2019 was awarded to three men for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2018 was given to two men for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 went to a trio for developing cool microscope technology that revolutionises biochemistry by allowing researchers to study three-dimensional structures of biomolecules in their search for a cure for the Zika and other viruses. One of the three chemistry winners of 2017, Joachim Frank of the US, said at the time that he thought the chance of winning a Nobel Prize was minuscule because there are so many innovations and discoveries happening.

Frank is still right about that. Technological leaps in medicine dubbed medtech are accelerating as researchers find better ways to treat more diseases, in more ways, for more people. Advances are occurring in biotechnology, immunotherapy, surgery, and foetal and neonatal care to name just some areas. Artificial-intelligence software trained on data from digitalised health records and devices can spot problems faster and more reliably than can humans. HCA Healthcare, the largest for-profit hospital operator in the US, for instance, now uses algorithms trained on 31 million cases to detect the sepsis infection that kills about 270,000 people a year in the US.

More medtech advances are certain. Money is pouring into research and development overseen by regulators and doctors to ensure benefits outweigh risks. Common sights soon might be robot physicians, remote surgery and mini 3D-printed organs. Bacteria genetically reprogrammed to destroy tumours in mice could one day work on humans. Genome scans and gene therapies could become routine.

For all this promise, however, medtech comes with two certain and one likely drawback. The first definite disadvantage is that medtech is raising ethical issues that could stop the deployment of key advances. The two most sensitive are the gene-editing of foetuses (superbabies) that could alter human experience and protecting the privacy of patient data, an issue highlighted in November when it emerged that US healthcare provider Ascension had secretly handed over the records of tens of millions of patients to data crunchers at Google. Medtechs other certain shortcoming is the cost. Many advancements might never become mainstream because they could prove too expensive for governments burdened with budget deficits and heavy debt loads that are already facing rising healthcare costs as their populations age.

Medtechs contentious disadvantage is doctors are finding that self-monitoring via devices, which often detects harmless abnormalities and fuels hypochondria, is leading to unwarranted anxiety, incorrect diagnoses and unneeded treatments. All up, medtechs value to society will be tied to the extent to which these disadvantages limit the spread of its unquestionable benefits.

Many of medtechs ethical issues could be resolved, to be sure, but that wont be easy. Some medtech advancements, especially those based on AI, are economical. Medtech needs to be assessed with the perspective that there is much it is not solving. Medtech advances, for example, arent enough to avert the recent decline in life expectancy in western countries due to heart attacks tied to obesity. Medtech pharmaceutically does little for autoimmune diseases such as arthritis that afflict one in four US adults though it is improving joint-replacement surgery. Researchers are yet to find a cure for infections made drug-resistant due to the overuse of antimicrobial drugs that the World Health Organisation says could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. Nothing medtech has come up with is usurping MRI scans and X-rays.

Be these as they may, medtech advancements are ushering in treatments that produce better outcomes for patients. Only time will tell how much ethical, economic and other possible drawbacks limit mainstream access to medtechs benefits.

The biotech era

Eras become known for their medical advancements. From the 1920s to the 1950s, for example, the key medical leaps were vaccines and antibiotics. Later epochs might regard todays advances to be centred on cell and gene therapy, robotic surgery and perhaps AI.

Hope for cures from gene therapy, an area of research that emerged from the late 1980s, accelerated in the early 2000s when the human genome was sequenced. And treatments are underway now and more are likely. Biopolymers (nucleic acid) are injected into cells to treat inherited eye diseases and immune deficiencies while researchers are studying how gene therapy could treat cancer, heart disease and diabetes. A stellar example of gene therapy improving lives is that a Novartis subsidiary has developed a one-time gene-based treatment (Zolgensma) that is a curing treatment for children born with spinal muscular atrophy (who without this advance constantly need treatment over their short lives). The problem is one dose costs US$2.1 million.

Aside from the costs, gene therapy comes with other challenges too. The finicky nature of genes has made progress slow. Other hindrances are rejection, side effects such as cancer, and the risk that other genes might be delivered to a cell. Some treatments are so risky authorities have halted them. Some breakthroughs have proved false a recent study debunks that a certain gene causes depression. That the ethical issues surrounding gene therapy are unresolved became an urgent issue in 2018 when two Chinese babies were born with modified genes.

Inventions to assist surgeons have proved faster to everyday use (and less problematic). Robots have aided orthopaedic surgeons since the mid-1980s and now help with general, transplant, urological and other procedures. One measure of their widespread use is that Intuitive, the US-based maker of the 1999-launched da Vinci surgical system, counts that tens of thousands of surgeons have conducted more than six million procedures in at least 66 countries using its equipment. The benefits of robotic-assisted surgery are less invasive, more precise and safer procedures due to fewer and tinier incisions (microsurgery) and reduced human error.

While less-invasive surgery shortens hospital stays and robotic surgerys lower margins of error reduce the need and costs of further treatment, robotic-assisted procedures are expensive. Assuming cost issues can be overcome, technology will expand its role in surgery and robots could use AI more extensively to help surgeons make more decisions.

AIs use in healthcare goes well beyond surgery too. AI programs including chatboxes are diagnosing heart disease and cancer, identifying retinal damage, analysing suicide risk, streamlining drug-development processes, proposing remedies for multiple sclerosis, even helping the dumb speak. AI s promise is more timely, economical, convenient and streamlined treatments.

AIs usual drawbacks apply, however. Personal data needs privacy protection, which can impede research. Data can be dodgy and data-training algorithms can be flawed and biased, which could lead to misdiagnosis. AI is vulnerable to hacking, whereby malicious tweaks lead to errors. AIs deployment often runs ahead of peer review and ethical considerations.

A neurotic world?

One medtech achievement is to elevate the practitioner Doctor Me. The term (sometimes stated as Doctor You) is for when people use devices and self-testing to monitor their health or genetic risks.

Self-monitoring comes with many advantages. It can save lives. The unwell can gain comfort if their vital signs are normal. The data collected can help everyones health and allow people to find others with similar issues, which could provide clues for treatments and moral support.

The problem, however, is that Doctor Me has ushered in the nocebo effect, essentially a form of hypochondria. The nocebo effect occurs when patients think they are experiencing a side effect to a greater degree than possible or when people fret they are suffering from an ailment that a test showed they are at risk of say people self-tested as prone to Alzheimers imagine they have the affliction when they forget something.

A Stanford study of 2018 found the nocebo effect is ripe in self-testing genetics, a flagship area of medtech that is not foolproof. The expression could become ubiquitous soon because more people are testing their disposition to Alzheimers, cancer and obesity by 2017, already one in 25 in the US knew their genetic data. If the nocebo effect becomes widespread, authorities may need to limit self-testing.

While future Nobel Prizes await those making medtech advances, perhaps others lie ahead for those who find ways to resolve medtechs ethical, economic and hypochondriac challenges.

Published by Michael Collins, Investment Specialist, Magellan Group

The rest is here:
Technology is reshaping modern medicine - TheBull.com.au

The world is in the midst of a global superbug crisis. Antibiotic resistance has been found in numerous common bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, gonorrhoea and salmonellosis, making them difficult if not impossible to treat. Were on the cusp of a post-antibiotic era, where there are fewer treatment options for such antibiotic-resistant strains. Given estimates that antibiotic resistance will cause 10 million deaths a year by 2050, finding new methods for treating harmful infections is essential.

Strange as it might sound, viruses might be one possible alternative to antibiotics for treating bacterial infections. Bacteriophages (also known as phages) are viruses that infect bacteria.

Theyre estimated to be the most abundant organisms on Earth, with probably more than 1031 bacteriophages on the planet. They can survive in many environments, including deep sea trenches and the human gut. While phages are efficient killers of bacteria, they dont infect human cells and are harmless to humans.

Although phage therapy was used in the 1930s, it has since become a forgotten cure in the west. Although the treatment became commonplace in the former Soviet Union, it wasnt adopted by western countries largely because of the discovery of antibiotics, which became widespread after World War II.

Bacteriophages are effective against bacteria because theyre able to attach themselves to the cell if they recognise specific molecules called receptors. This is the first step in the infection process. After attaching to the bacterial cell, the phage then injects its DNA inside the bacteria.

This causes one of two things to happen. After being injected with the phages DNA, the virus will take over the bacterial cells replication mechanism and start producing more phages. This process is known as a lytic infection. This disintegrates the cell, allowing the newly produced viruses to leave the host cell to infect other bacterial cells.

But sometimes, the phage DNA gets incorporated into the bacterial hosts chromosome instead, becoming a prophage. It usually remains dormant but environmental factors, such as UV radiation or the presence of certain chemicals such as those found in sunscreen, can cause the phage to wake up, start a lytic infection, take over the host cell and destroy it.

Lytic bacteriophages are preferred for treatment because they dont integrate into the bacterial hosts chromosome. But its not always possible to develop lytic bacteriophages that can be used against all types of bacteria. As each type of phage is only able to infect specific types of bacteria, they cant infect a bacterial cell unless the bacteriophage can find specific receptors on the bacterial cell surface.

However, engineering techniques can remove the bacteriophages ability to integrate into the hosts genome, making them useful for treatment. Engineered phages have even successfully treated a drug-resistant Mycobacterium abscessus infection in a 15-year-old girl.

The reason bacteriophages are so effective against bacteria is because theyre only able to infect specific species. Antibiotics instead target a wide range of bacteria, including friendly bacteria not causing the infection.

But this also means that a single phage wont kill all strains of a disease-causing bacteria. And because bacteria are constantly evolving, they can develop mechanisms that prevent phage infection. For example, if the bacterial cell has evolved and changed its surface receptors, the bacteriophage wont be able to attach itself and kill the bacteria.

As part of this evolutionary process, bacteria can rapidly become resistant to a single bacteriophage. But because there are many types of bacteriophages, we can use a phage cocktail containing a combination of different bacteriophages to target a broader range of bacterial strains within a species. This decreases the chances a bacteria becomes resistant to all phages used in treatment. Bacteriophages can also be engineered to infect more strains of bacteria.

However, the presence of what are known as CRISPR systems might complicate the possibility of using bacteriophages in treatment. CRISPR is a bacterias natural defence system that allows it to become immune to genetic material, such as phages, through infection, vaccination or the transfer of antibodies. Bacteria may be resistant to bacteriophages if they have previously encountered similar types and developed immunity.

But bacteriophages have also developed anti-CRISPR proteins that can neutralise the host bacterias CRISPR systems. This means a phage can still be effective, despite the presence of the bacterial CRISPR system. Not all bacteriophages have genes that neutralise anti-CRISPR proteins. But with the ability to engineer phage genomes, these could be incorporated into phages that are to be used for treatment in the future.

Read more: Soviet-era treatment could be the new weapon in the war against antibiotic resistance

Although phage therapy isnt routinely used in western medicine, phage cocktails are available treatments in Russia and Georgia. Phage therapy is also a common part of medical care in Georgia, especially in paediatric, surgical care and burns hospital settings. Phages are used on their own or in combination with antibiotics and their use hasnt been linked to any adverse effects.

With antibiotic-resistant infections becoming more common, bacteriophages offer the ability to treat such infections. But for bacteriophages to become commonplace in treating bacterial infections, there needs to be continued research into phage biology to better understand how they interact with bacteria. Finding effective treatments for bacterial infections other than antibiotics is the first step in fighting further instances of antibiotic resistance.

Read more:
Antibiotic resistance: scientists are reengineering viruses to cure bacterial infections - The Conversation Africa

Question: You have helped me out in the past so I thought Id get your opinion on this. On a recent show, a doctor was talking about which foods to eat and which to avoid. He said that you should be eating nuts, but dont eat cashews, as they are not a nut, but rather a seed, and contain high levels of lectin. I always thought that cashews were a tree nut just like walnuts, etc. Can you shed some light on this for me?

Answer: In this case, Im afraid my opinion would not be worth much. I needed the expertise of horticulturist, Pat Regan, who humbly describes himself as a friend who spends a lot of time pondering plant parts and identification.

Pat explains that the names we commonly use often distort the scientific terms for plant parts. Fruit and vegetable are typically considered the worst abused but nut probably comes in first place, he says.

All true nuts are seeds, but not all seeds are nuts, says Pat.

Kind of like all trees are plants but not all plants are trees?

Absolutely.

So a nut is a type of seed. Got it.

Botanically, he continues, a nut is a dry fruit with one seed and a thick hard shell. Think of acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts or hickory nuts. On the other hand, cashews come from a fleshy fruit, not a hard shell. They are more like plums, apricots, cherries and olives.

Cashews, says the Integrative Medicine Department at UC Davis, are technically not a nut. Although they grow on trees, they are really seeds that grow from a strange-looking fruit called a cashew apple.

Incidentally, Pat continues, peanuts (a legume), walnuts, almonds and pecans are not true (botanical) nuts, either. Nor are pine nuts, pistachio nuts and Brazil nuts, and yet most would call me a nut for saying so.

As for lectins, these are proteins that occur naturally in most raw plants, including cashews. The good news is that cooking destroys the activity of these proteins one reason why cashews are always sold roasted or steamed.

The other reason is that raw cashews are enclosed in a shell that contains a resin called urushiol, the same rash-causing substance found in poison ivy. Heat inactivates urushiol another reason cashews are always sold shelled and roasted or steamed.

One last word about nuts in general, including the not true nuts. They are a good source of protein, micronutrients, healthful fats and disease-fighting antioxidants. And according to the Micronutrient Information Center at Oregon State University, consuming a variety of nuts on a regular basis is associated with a lower risk for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

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Quinn on Nutrition: Nuts that are not nuts - TribLIVE

ELLSWORTH, Maine (WABI) - Keeping your body moving and your mind in a good mood can be harder to do in the winter.

But the Ellsworth Public Library wants to help you out.

The library will be hosting four free exercise classes to help people active this winter. The classes will be on Saturdays at 1 p.m.

Tai Chi with Nina Zeldin is set for January 25. Essentrics Apprentice Class with Wendy Lessard, LMT will be February 15. Yoga with Machelle LaHaye wis scheduled for February 22. Pilates with Charlotte Clews will be March 28.

Because of the popularity, an additional class time may be added, too.

This programming is made possible through a grant from the National Library of Medicine in conjunction with Healthy Acadia. Space is limited and registration is required. All materials for the classes will be provided.

To sign up, call the library at 667-6363 or visit http://www.ellsworthlibrary.net.

The library and Acadia Integrative Medicine are also partnering to present "Stay Happy this Winter" Thursday, January 23 at 6 p.m.

Dr. Christy Seed will share information about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and different ways to treat it. The talk will focus on the benefits of light therapy and the importance of Vitamin D and exercise during the winter months. A brief Q&A will follow.

The library now offers two light therapy lamps for patrons to check out and one lamp for library use. Recommended usage is 20-30 minutes per day. Always consult your physician before starting a light therapy program. You can call the library for more information.

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Ellsworth Public Library wants to help people be active, happy in winter - WABI

Hossein Derakhshankhah, 1, 2,* Samira Jafari, 1, 2,* Sajad Sarvari, 3 Ebrahim Barzegari, 4 Faezeh Moakedi, 5 Milad Ghorbani, 6 Behrang Shiri Varnamkhasti, 1 Mehdi Jaymand, 7 Zhila Izadi, 1, 8 Lobat Tayebi 9

1Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Health Institute, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran; 2Zistmavad Pharmed Co., Tehran, Iran; 3Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Science, School of Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA; 4Medical Biology Research Center, Health Technology Institute, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran; 5Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA; 6Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran; 7Nano Drug Delivery Research Center, Health Technology Institute, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran; 8Department of Regenerative Medicine, Cell Science Research Center, Royan Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Technology, ACECR, Tehran, Iran; 9Marquette University School of Dentistry, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Zhila Izadi; Lobat Tayebi Email izadi_zh@razi.tums.ac.ir; lobat.tayebi@marquette.edu

Abstract: The advent of porous materials, in particular zeolitic nanoparticles, has opened up unprecedented putative research avenues in nanomedicine. Zeolites with intracrystal mesopores are low framework density aluminosilicates possessing a regular porous structure along with intricate channels. Their unique physiochemical as well as physiological parameters necessitate a comprehensive overview on their classifications, fabrication platforms, cellular/macromolecular interactions, and eventually their prospective biomedical applications through illustrating the challenges and opportunities in different integrative medical and pharmaceutical fields. More particularly, an update on recent advances in zeolite-accommodated drug delivery and the prevalent challenges regarding these molecular sieves is to be presented. In conclusion, strategies to accelerate the translation of these porous materials from bench to bedside along with common overlooked physiological and pharmacological factors of zeolite nanoparticles are discussed and debated. Furthermore, for zeolite nanoparticles, it is a matter of crucial importance, in terms of biosafety and nanotoxicology, to appreciate the zeolite-bio interface once the zeolite nanoparticles are exposed to the bio-macromolecules in biological media. We specifically shed light on interactions of zeolite nanoparticles with fibrinogen and amyloid beta which had been comprehensively investigated in our recent reports. Given the significance of zeolite nanoparticles interactions with serum or interstitial proteins conferring them new biological identity, the preliminary approaches for deeper understanding of administration, distribution, metabolism and excretion of zeolite nanoparticles are elucidated.

Keywords: zeolite, mesoporous, nanostructure, biosafety, biomedical applications

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

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Biomedical Applications of Zeolitic Nanoparticles, with an Emphasis on | IJN - Dove Medical Press

New DelhiThe medical community from India, Asia Pacific and the USA joined the speakers here in New Delhi on Sunday at a two-day conference and workshop over fundamental doctrines of anti-aging.

As many as 300 doctors, including world renowned clinicians and researchers in the field of integrative medicine, participated in the conference to sensitise people on the importance of intermittent fasting and long life.

American Academy of Antiaging Medicine (A4M) with Smart Group conducted Indias first anti aging International conference.

Speaking at the event, Dr. B K Modi,Founder-Chairman, Smart Group said, There is an uncanny similarity between ancient Indian science fundamentals of Anti Aging, it is my earnest wish that India leads this global anti aging era.

I am very glad that doctors in India are taking a keen interest in preventive health. I wish more people discover the benefits of preventive health, and can lead happy & healthy lives, beyond 100, he added.

Dr Modi also announced to create wellness cities in New Delhi and Modipur and Rampur Aby 2025.

A host of converging technologies like artificial intelligence, Robotics, Virtual Reality, Digital Biology, sensors, will clash into 3D printing, blockchain, quantum computing and global gigabyte networks in the near future and it will completely change the dynamics of the healthcare industry and how it will be delivered, said Preeti Malhotra, Chairman, Smart Bharat & Chairman, Organising Committee Smart A4M India Conference.

Preventive healthcare has a profound effect on human longevity, awareness and mental wellbeing. I am very happy that we have been able to bring A4M to India to initiate this conversation, much needed in a country like ours, she noted. (IANS)

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Preventive Health Care is Key to Long Life: Experts at India's First Anti-Aging Conference - India New England

Deepak Chopra, Special to SFGate

By Deepak Chopra, MD

The recent reckless skirmish between the U.S. and Iran held a deep irony. Neither side wanted to go to war, and yet neither side could talk to each other except in terms of war. Language and action go together. If you are stuck in the metaphor of war, with its winners and losers, revenge, enmities that last for generations, and the macho image of the warrior, you can never end war even though you want to.

There is no clean end to war once you are in a war mentality. Winners in one war become losers the next, and combat runs into a quagmire in which it is obvious that neither side will be able to claim victory, war thinking keeps stubbornly drilling home the same metaphor of war. As history teaches us from World War I to Vietnam and now Afghanistan, wars are at once pointless, relentless, and endless. War heroes on one side are war criminals on the other.

There is a way to end war, and one sees signs of the solution appearing wherever people realize that we share the same goal, to achieve a prosperous, healthy, sustainable planet. War doesnt serve this shared goal, and the question is how long it will take for a positive global purpose to overshadow the metaphor of war that is embedded in nationalism, tribalism, racial and ethnic divides, and the other fellow travelers of war. All of these divisions are mind-made. They exist because we constructed them, and the secret is that whatever you made you can unmake.

In the face of so much blood and death, it seems strange to root war in a misguided concept. What William Blake called our mind-forgd manacles are a form of self-imprisonment. Change your concepts, and only then will the manacles fall off. Here are some of the replacements for the whole concept of war.

These ideas work in any negotiation, whether between nations or in a family. When we lack these ideas, we cannot turn them into coping mechanisms. War is the worst of all coping mechanisms, yet in many cases conflict is the first response we make when we feel resistance, obstacles, and pushback.

When people dont know how to cope, nations dont either. The basis of peace is peace consciousness in individuals. Even though you and I cant change how nations interact, we have the choice to be units of peace consciousness and to put the ideas listed above into daily practice. The survival of the planet depends on as many people hearing the call in the shortest possible time.

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. He is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego. Chopra is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book and national bestseller, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential (Harmony Books), unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.

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10 Ways to Resolve All Conflicts and End War - SFGate

The event, which this year returns to Singapores Hilton hotel from July 7-9, will feature speakers from the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, National University of Singapore and Mahidol University / The Food Science and Technology Association of Thailand (FoSTAT),

There will also be sessions revealing the latest insights from the Malaysian Dietary Supplements Association (MADSA), Food Industry Asia and Mercer.

Delegate registration is now open, with an earlybird 20% discount offer.

The event takes place as the number of older persons in the region is expected to more than double from 600 million today to nearly 1.3 billion by 2050.

Organised by the publishers of FoodNavigator-Asia.com and NutraIngredients-Asia.com, the event brings together brands, suppliers, regulators and market experts to assess how the industry can meet the food and nutrition needs of older consumers of today and tomorrow.

Editor-in-Chief of both titles, and Regional Head of APAC at publisher William Reed, Gary Scattergood, said:Crucially, the event comes from the perspective that healthy ageing begins from conception. It assesses innovative food and nutrition solutions across all age spans, which will ultimately help people enjoy a healthy, as well as longer, older age.

Confirmed speakers include:

John Hellmann, Vice President, Government Affairs, Asia Pacific, Herbalife

Dr Yong Shan May, Principal Scientist, Bioefficacy and Bioactive Discovery, Brands Suntory

Dr Sam Henderson, Chief Scientific Officer, Cerecin

Dr Lesley Braun, Director, Blackmores Institute

Tana Limpayaraya, CEO, Amado Group (Thailand)

Dr. Mario Chin, Co-founder & CSO, Avant Meats

Associate Prof Satoshi Fukumitsu, Innovation center manager, NIPPN

Assistant Professor Anadi Nitithamyong Mahidol University / FoSTAT

Dr Jung Eun Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of Food Science and Technology, National University of Singapore

Dr. Ram Vishwakarma, Director, Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine Jammu

EE Fern Wong, Board Member, Malaysian Dietary Supplements Association

Godelieve van Dooren, Partner, Mercer

Some of the key themes for the 2020 event will include:

Snacking for seniors:How the worlds leading FMCG brands can create options that aid Healthy Ageing

Reformulation and fortification:Expert insights on how to tackle the ticking economic and social timebomb of obesity and diabetes through reformulation strategies

Innovation for infants:How the latest research and product innovation is helping infants make the best start in life leading to tangible health outcomes in later life

Functional foods focus:The regions leading functional foods pioneers will share their healthy ageing strategies and experience in our dedicated showcase

Protein potential:The latest research around intake levels, product innovation and muscle health.

Indigenous insights:Research is booming in areas such at TCM, Ayurveda and Maori/Aboriginal botanicals and how they can be used for food and nutrition innovation. Well be hearing from an expert panel

Retail revolution:The regions leading retailers will share their views on how they can meet the needs of senior consumers, both online and offline.

Medical and clinical case studies:Well be hearing about the key advances being made in the area of foods for hospital patients as well as clinical nutrition solutions.

Markets and policy:Regulatory experts, decision makers, economists and trends analysts will be sharing the latest date into the economic, social and policy impacts of ageing.

To find out more, and view our highlights video from the 2019 event, please visit theevent website.

If you are from a major finished product brand and would like to discuss speaking opportunities, email gary.scattergood@wrbm.com

And to find out about our comprehensive partnership and sponsorship opportunities, email sueann.peh@wrbm .com and tim.evans@wrbm.com

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Healthy Ageing APAC Summit 2020: Academic and industry experts from Singapore, India, Thailand and Malaysia join the bill - FoodNavigator-Asia.com

Try to have your meals at the same time every day, Luke Coutinho suggests

Every Monday comes with an opportunity to work towards improving your health and fitness goals. Taking care of your health, weight is fitness is important because of many reasons. It makes you look and feel good. It is important to keep you disease-free. And more importantly, staying fit and healthy can also make you happy. In one of his recent videos on Facebook, lifestyle coach Luke Coutinho shares 6 tips that can follow this week for better physical, mental and emotional health.

Within the next five days, you need to follow these lifestyle changes every day and it can help in improving your health.

Try to get an early dinner, preferably by sunset. Luke suggests that you should have your dinner by 6.30-7 pm in case sunset happens around that time. Try to keep a gap of 2 hours between your dinner and bed time. Having early dinner is one practice that can help you sleep better, improve your sleep quality, reduce your weight, appetite, cravings to sugar, caffeine and much more.

This week try to eat dinners early, preferably by sunsetPhoto Credit: iStock

For the next 5 days, try to eat your breakfast, lunch, dinner and the other mid meals at the same time. Achieving this goal can control cravings effectively.

Organise your day in a way that you sleep at the same time every day and also wake up at the same time. Starting today, sleep at the same time every day and wake up at the same time. Doing this can reduce the lethargy and fatigue

Aim for exercising regularly this week. Aim for an hour, half hour or even 15 minutes if you can this week. Regular exercise is the most effective way to achieve good health, lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. It can help in getting your heart rate up, regularise your blood pressure, and much more.

Every morning when you wake up, just spend 5 to 10 minutes in doing what you love. It should be something that calms you down and motivates you to go ahead with the day on a positive note. It can either be meditation, or making a to-do list for the day, prayer, music, yoga or anything else that you would like to start your day with.

Have a morning ritual that calms you down and helps you start your day on a refreshing notePhoto Credit: iStock

Restricting use of social media is important for your own mental peace. It can help you get some me-time and also reduce your screen time which strains both your eyes and brain. Organise your day in a way that by the time you reach home, you are completely off social media.

These small yet highly effective lifestyle changes can do a lot in terms of improving your health, physically and mentally.

(Luke Coutinho, Holistic Lifestyle Coach - Integrative Medicine)

Disclaimer: This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. NDTV does not claim responsibility for this information.

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#MondayMotivation: This Week, Try To Make These 6 Lifestyle Changes For Better Health And Weight Loss - NDTV News

Therapies like yoga, meditation, mindfulness and sound healing programmes can help us manage work-realted stress, which often translates to ill health and low productivity levels.

Increasing job uncertainty, grueling work hours and an abject lack of work-life balance often translates to heavy stress in our professional lives. Rapidly changing nature of jobs, 24/7 connectivity and the resultant pressure of constant deadlines have turned Indian workplaces into pressure cookers where thousands of young professionals struggle to maintain mental balance. Rates of burnout or exhaustion syndrome are high among bright professionals who fail to reach their full potential because stress gets the better of them on their way to success. A survey by insurance company Cigna TTK found that a whopping 89% of people were suffering from stress, with work and finances being the primary causes of stress.

Interestingly, a number of corporate organisations have realised the negative impact stress is having on their employee productivity, and holistic wellness programmes have gained much traction. However, it is important to educate people at individual levels as well to learn to cope with stress on a daily basis. While we cannot change the stressors, we encounter every day, we can most certainly change the way our mind deals with them.

A number of alternative therapies can help individuals achieve better mental health and wellness. These therapies can be adopted as a way of lives as coping mechanisms for the mind. A study published in the BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine journal concluded that yoga, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy were very effective in promoting overall mental health and preventing burnout due to work-related stress among participants.

Lets take a look at some alternative therapies that can help you cope with professional stress:

Mindfulness:

Mindfulnessis a psychological process through which one tries to maintain complete awareness of the present moment. It trains the mind to prevent distractions of the future or past musings. Achieving a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, acts, sensations as well as the environment plays a very impactful role in reducing stress. When you are bathing, you are focusing completely on the act of water interacting with your body; when you are eating, you are doing it so mindfully that all your thoughts are focused on your movement from the plate to the palate and beyond. A study published in theJAMA Internal Medicinereview found that a mindfulness-based programme helped reduce anxiety symptoms in people with generalised anxiety disorder. Another study published in the journalBiological Psychiatry found significant changes to the brain on scans after just three days of mindfulness meditation on 35 unemployed people experiencing major stress of a job search.

Mindfulness works by inducing a sense of calmness and improving focus. Mindfulness is even associated with lower levels of inflammation markers.

Yoga:

Yoga and meditation are widely known to induce benefits for mental health including stress management. Yoga combines the physical and mental disciplines to help achieve a peaceful alignment between the body and mind. When combined with meditation, yoga relaxes and soothes the nerves, aligns the mind towards a calm centre and helps an individual become more mindful of the present. Approach has significant benefits for stress and anxiety. Yoga doesnt just help in stress management, it also helps curtail the negative impact of stress on the body and reduces risk factors for chronic diseases, such as heart disease and high blood pressure. Yoga modulates the stress response systems by training the mind to perceive stress and anxiety differently.

Sound Healing:

Sound healing or music therapy is another highly under-utilised therapy that has significant benefits on stress and anxiety healing. It can effectively be termed as vibrational medicine with the use of music, singing, and sound tools that release vibrations to better the mental, emotional and physical state of a person. Sound healing creates a shift in our brainwave state by using entrainment; a bio-musicological sense that refers to the synchronisation (e.g. foot tapping) of humans to an external perceived rhythm such as music and dance. Entrainment creates a stable frequency in the brain. This allows for the mind to go from the normal beta state (normal waking consciousness) to the alpha state (relaxed consciousness). Quite similar to meditation which regulates the breath, sound healing influences the shift in the brain through its frequency.

Sound healing particularly helps in reducing anxiety, stress, and sleep disorders. A study published in the Journal of Evidence-based Integrative Medicine examined the impact of sound meditation, specifically Tibetan singing bowl meditation, on mood, anxiety, pain, and spiritual well-being. It found participants experienced a significant reduction in tension and feeling of spiritual well-being also significantly increased through sound healing.

The author is the director, Poddar Wellness Ltd and managing trustee, Poddar Foundation

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Alternative therapies to cope with workplace stress - The Sunday Guardian

In the next several years, FinTech, AI, and data-driven technologies will converge into a single ... [+] advanced technology

Over the past 100 years the financial industry has largely excluded people in retirement. Even today tech entrepreneurs are ignoring financial inclusion for people over 60, who make up the wealthiest part of the financial system, and instead, are developing new financial products designed for younger people. The most valuable and capable client demographic in terms of purchasing power are the citizens of the 7th Continent which is made up of 1 billion people over 60. The global spending power of this demographic is expected to be $15 trillion this year. Who will serve this market? Longevity Banks and FinTech 2.0 services will attract people 60+ who want to optimize their wealthspan.

In the last 10 years investment in the FinTech industry has exceeded $350 billion dollars. During the same period a similar amount of funding was invested in other industries such as AI, healthcare, and aerospace.There have been a number of breakthroughs in these other areas but not in FinTech. The amount of money invested in FinTech has not yielded significant results compared to other domains. FinTech received more investment but accomplished less with it and FinTech stalled.However, recent advances in the development of practical AI tools are enabling new FinTech solutions.

The 7th Continent - 1 billion people in retirement

Progressive governments and businesses understand that whole populations are living much longer than in previous generations and realize that we are going to need institutions that are organized in a different way. For example, traditional banks werent designed to serve large numbers of clients living a long, long time. Today, banks have a small number of clients who are over 90 and they are outliers. In the next decade that demographic will increase dramatically.

In the next few years, age-friendly FinTech companies and Longevity Banks will develop new financial products designed for clients who are planning to live extra long lives and want to remain high functioning and financially stable throughout. Clients of Longevity Banks will have more time to accumulate wealth, will have a longer investment horizon, and will benefit from compounding. Financial services innovators have an opportunity to enhance the financial lives of a billion people by designing new solutions and adapting existing products and services. New products that provide a comprehensive view of investments, taxes, insurance, and regulation without unneeded complexity will appeal to citizens of the 7th Continent.

Rising hubs for the new financial industry.

The Intersection of Longevity and Finance

This map shows the location of major preventive medicine and financial hubs. London and Singapore are distinguished as being hubs for both the financial industry and the preventive medicine industry. As such they have extremely strong potential to become global leaders in Longevity and Finance. When these industries intersect, novel financial systems will be developed that will treat Longevity as a dividend and will play an integral role in the Longevity Economy. The most advanced FinTech 2.0 technology adjusted for Longevity is emerging in London and tools for FinTech 2.0 are already in development there.

The Longevity AI Consortium at Kings College London is developing sophisticated methods for translating advanced AI for Longevity solutions including novel applications of life data for insurance companies, pension funds, healthcare companies, and government bodies. This year theConsortium is planning to expand to Switzerland, Israel, Singapore, and the US. Progressive investment banks, pension funds, and insurance companies are developing new business models, and are using AI to improve the quality of the analytics used to formulate them. In the near future, the synergy between innovative AI and wealth management will lead to the creation of new financial institutions optimized for the aging population and age-friendly Longevity Banks will make banking easier and safer for seniors.

Longevity Valley

These developments will result in the emergence of a Longevity Valley with the highest concentration of robust preventive medicine, HealthTech, Longevity FinTech, and AgeTech. The most likely place for the first Longevity Valley is Switzerland because Switzerland is extremely stable in terms of financial, social, and political frameworks. Switzerland was also recently recognized by the United Nations as the most AgeTech friendly country. The Longevity Valley will attract people who prioritize maximizing their healthspan and wealthspan. The first Longevity Bank is also expected to emerge in Switzerland since the pillars needed for the success of such a bank are present there. These pillars include a progressive RegTech environment, sufficient FinTech development, a MedTech ecosystem, and a significant number of individuals 60+ who fit the client profile.

In the near future, FinTech, AI, and data-driven technologies will converge into a single advanced technology. Next generation financial companies will use engineering methods with integrated systems to treat business, finance and technology as a single unit with complementary parts. The resulting FinTech 2.0 will offer unprecedented potential for growth and disruption.Humans have always desired health, wealth, and longevity, but usually had to settle for one or two. For the first time people are planning for a very different future with the possibility of living to 100 and beyond and being healthy and financially stable the whole time.

Click here to preview a new book that I co-authored with my colleague Dmitry Kaminskiy Longevity Industry 1.0 - Defining the Biggest and Most Complex Industry in Human History. Dmitry Kaminskiy and I serve on the advsiory board of the Longevity AI Consortium at Kings College London.

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AI Will Give Rise To FinTech 2.0 And Longevity Banks - Forbes

KEY POINTS

It has been long-established that exercising frequently can do wonders for your health, including boosting life expectancy. The National Health Service stated that regular exercise lowers your risk of dying early by up to 30%.

Many studies have proven that those who exercise regularly are at a lower risk of developing a host of chronic ailments. These researches have also shown how performing physical activities can improve your mood, energy, self-esteem, and sleep quality. With many types of exercises, however, which is considered the best one to improve life expectancy?

The Best Exercise For Longevity

In research where more than 40,000 men between 20 and 90 years old participated, researchers monitored their activities for 32 years. At the end of the study, researchers found that swimmers are at a 50% lower risk of dying young compared to walkers or runners. swimming best exercise longevity Photo: 12019 - Pixabay

Steven Blair, the lead researcher and a University of South Carolina professor of exercise science, expressed surprise at the result. He had expected to see both runners and swimmers enjoying lower risk of dying. It turned out that swimmers enjoy a considerably lower death rate compared to runners.

The Reason

Researchers established that while swimming is extremely aerobic, it does not cause much strain on the lower joints compared to walking or running. This is why swimming provides your health with more benefits than the other two types of exercises.

The lead researchers also found that regular swimmers enjoy higher cardiorespiratory fitness compared to walkers and people who lead sedentary lives.Blair concluded that swimming provides you with a healthful alternative, as compared to traditional exercise modes, for improving your cardiorespiratory fitness. It is also the best way to maintain overall health and provides the most benefits for patients who have chronic ailments.

He also said that swimming is a great alternative exercise for those who are unable to engage in physical activities like running or other forms of physical endeavors. The findings of the research were published in the International Journal of Aquatic Education and Research.

Dr. I-Min Lee of the Harvard Medical School agrees, saying swimming is the perfect workout. The professor of medicine explained that swimming is best for arthritic patients because it is essentially a weight-bearing exercise.

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Walking, Running Or Swimming: Which Exercise Is The Best For Longevity? - International Business Times

Fashionespecially denimis like the stock market, says JeffRudes, the visionary co-founder of J Brand and the majority owner of powerhouse ready to wear brand LAgence.

Thats why you can always rely on customer demand coming back to refined, classic, and purist design principles. Such design principles have always been hallmarks of Rudes labels. J Brandfor instancebecame the universal gold standard in high fashion due to its classic dark blue denim jeans.

While trends and outliers have their moments, there will always be demand for a baseline of a high quality, clean and refined aesthetic. This baseline, after all, is what enables the market to reset itself and provides customers a reliable anchor to attach themselves to.

And since the market will always come back to this foundation,Rudes LAgence is now perfectly positioned to be a long-term market force in Fashion and write its own Chapter of Fashion History.

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The Longevity Of Classic Design In Fashion: Why Jeff Rudes' Brands Are Built To Last - vmagazine.com

Baton Rouge, LA, Jan. 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- If youre looking to start 2020 with a leap towards a healthier lifestyle, a heart-healthy diet is one of the best places to start. Heart healthy diets can go a long way toward protecting and preserving your bodys most important muscle. They also tend to have an obviously, positive impact on the rest of the body and mind. A focus on heart healthy eating is one way to promote longevity, youthfulness and weight control in your own life. Currently, a few popular heart healthy options stand out the most according to telemedicine weight loss leader, Diet Demand.

TheDASHDiet. According to Dr. Burns - Diet Demands Medical Director, DASH was created as a way to lower blood pressure based on the theory of sodium causing hypertension. It stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and works for a percentage of the population who are hypertensive. For these sodium sensitive individuals (maybe only 25% of the population), this method can provide some benefit. It also helps to restore some mineral imbalances that contribute to high blood pressure. However, Dr. Burns believes that there is more to improving heart health, Avoiding processed foods are sound, however the guidelines on specific macronutrient intake are missing. Also, weight management should be a key aspect of heart healthy dieting. Being that DASH was created for hypertension, the primary purpose of this diet is not weight management. As far as weight loss is concerned, only lower calorie versions of DASH would trigger weight loss, but that would apply to them doing any lower calorie diet. Additionally, for people who are following lower carb diets for weight loss, the sodium requirement actually goes up, along with the other electrolytes of potassium and magnesium due to the effect of the kidneys wasting electrolytes more rapidly while the body goes into ketosis. Believe it or not, the daily sodium requirement is actually higher on a lower carb diet than a high carb diet.

The Mediterranean diet is also touted for its heart-healthy benefits. Unlike the DASH diet whose primary purpose is the reduction of salt, Mediterranean style eating is more heavily focused on the incorporation of heart-healthy omega3s and fats such as olive oil, fatty fish and avocados. Since whole foods are implemented, sodium reduction is somewhat a part of this diet since processed foods are minimized. Diet Demand, a nationally recognized virtual weight loss program incorporates heart-healthy strategies in its customized diet and weight loss coaching methods. Its Jumpstart Diet, focuses is on balanced nutrition and initial calorie reductions between 800-1200 calories to help patients at risk for heart disease with quick weight loss.

Diet Demand provides certified weight loss doctors and coaches available by phone 24/7 to help with meal planning, grocery shopping, dining out and more. Theres nothing better than having personalized help via certified weight loss professionals who can review your plan and help you along the way.

A better solution. Most diets have a one-size-fits-all strategy, so its assumed that what works for some people will work for you as well. Unfortunately, many factors can determine how well a specific diet works for you. Diet Demand takes a personalized approach by gathering information on your individual body macros in order to develop a diet that is specific to your needs. Due to the success of this customized model, Diet Demand clients have a 94 percent success rate.

See what Diet Demand can do for you by easily and effortlessly visiting http://www.dietdemand.com/ to complete an initial comprehensive, yet simple, health questionnaire and schedule an immediate personal, no-cost consultation. DietDemands physicians all received specialized training in nutritional science and fast weight loss. DietDemand reviews each patients health history to create a personalized diet plan geared for fast weight loss, or that addresses life-long issues causing weight loss to slow down or stop. Nutritionists work personally with each patient and use their own algorithm to craft meal and snack plans that are compatible with each patients age, gender, activity level, food preferences, nutritional needs and medical conditions. They combine these state-of-the-art diet plans with pure, prescription diet products that enable their patients to resist the temptation to reach for sugary snacks, eliminate fatigue and curb the appetite. Over 97% of DietDemand patients report incredible weight loss results with the majority losing 20 or more pounds per month.

Story continues

At DietDemand, all patients gain unlimited access to the best minds in the business. Their staff of doctors, nurses, nutritionists and coaches are available six days per week to answer questions, offer suggestions, address concerns and lend their professional guidance and support. Because of this, more and more people are turning to DietDemand for their weight management needs. Diet plans are tailored to be specific to the needs of those of any age, gender, shape or size and for those who are struggling to lose that final 10-20 pounds to those who must lose 100 pounds or more. Call today to request a private, confidential, no-cost online consultation.

About the Company:

DietDemand is the nation's leader in medical, weight loss offering a full line of prescription medication, doctor, nurse and nutritional coaching support. For over a decade, DietDemand has produced a sophisticated, doctor designed weight loss program that addresses each individual specific health need to promote fast, safe and long-term weight loss.

DietDemand Providing Care Across The USA

Headquarters:

Escondido, CA

(888) 786-9568

info@dietdemand.com

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Diet DemandDietDemand888-786-9568info@dietdemand.com

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Diet Demand Touts Benefits of Heart Healthy Diets for Longevity and Weight Loss - Yahoo Finance

However, these studies also face the issue of replicability, and causal associations are difficult to draw. For instance, earlier this month, a study led by Jason Chen, Ph.D., of the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Portland, was published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. They found that, counterintuitively, among veterans, loneliness was associated with lower depression severity. This has prompted study authors to more closely examine the role of social support interventions.

"We are currently looking at interventions that are not only relevant to veterans just at our hospital but also in other settings," Chen said. "In addition, our study team is interested in emphasizing the potential for loneliness interventions for our more rural, isolated populations in Oregon and beyond."

Reza Ghomi, M.D., is a Seattle-based neuropsychiatrist who sees firsthand how social support alone can have a dramatic impact on emotional well-being.

"Social isolation has dramatic effects not only on mental health such as increasing risks for depression and anxiety, but now we are seeing it can increase risk for cognitive impairment and ultimately dementia," Ghomi said. "Building community does the reverse and promotes a sense of well-being and satisfaction including improvement in cognitive abilities."

When it comes to the medical community, at a time when burnout was just named as one of the biggest challenges in health care by a Lancet report, finding supporting environments remains key among health care providers. Dana Correil, M.D., an internist and co-founder of SoMeDocs ("social media doctors"), points to the benefits of her "moai" being centered around a shared interest in advocacy and health care communication.

"For doctors, social media can be a space for connection, a powerful tool to mitigate the loneliness epidemic," Correil said. "It allows us to exchange ideas, find camaraderie and perspective for issues challenging our profession today and provides us with opportunities to make actual change."

And the opportunity for doctors to connect offline have flourished: everything from storytelling workshops like the Nocturnists, narrative medicine programs to Schwartz rounds help build community around shared vulnerability.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. But, as the science suggests, the health and well-being of all of us may benefit from having our own village, or moai: at home, work, and everywhere in between.

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Could This Type Of Community Boost Longevity & Eradicate Loneliness? - mindbodygreen.com

KEY POINTS

For many years, the human race has been on a quest for ways to improve longevity. Through scientific studies, researchers were able to point out unhealthy practices that you should get rid of to enjoy a longer life. Some of these include quitting smoking as the habit increases your risk of developing several serious ailments like cancer. Although avoiding known unhealthy lifestyle practices play a vital role in achieving longevity, there is a connection between enjoying simple past-times and longevity.

Own a Dog

A new study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes reveals that owning a dog has been associated with living a longer life. It also showed that those who own dogs also have better cardiovascular activities. Those who live alone and have had bouts with a heart attack and stroke are advised to indulge in such activity. dog ownership longevity lifestpan Photo: MabelAmber - Pixabay

The outcome in the published study was based on two other studies, which showed that dog ownership was associated with a reduction in the factors that play a role in cardiac arrest and other heart-related events.

As a result, since cardiac arrest and cardiovascular events are reduced, the mortality rate associated with these diseases is likewise reduced. Although these studies do not necessarily prove that dog ownership is linked to lower mortality rates, the results clearly suggest this.

Other Benefits Of Dog Ownership

According to previous studies, by owning a dog, social isolation is alleviated. It also helps improve physical activity and also helps in lowering blood pressure. They also found that this is very much evident among dog owners as compared to those who dont own one.

The study looked into the data that was provided by the Swedish National Patient Register. Swedish residents aged between 40 to 85 years old became part of the study. They were the ones who experienced a stroke or a heart attack.

Out of these residents, it was found that those who owned a dog were said to have a lower risk of death thereafter. The possible reasons pointed out include decreased loneliness and depression. They also had better socialization because of their dogs. Furthermore, it was found that by owning a dog, they are better motivated to keep themselves active and physically fit.

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Live Longer And Healthier By Regularly Doing This Simple Activity - International Business Times

Gauging the benefits of NMN, or any supplement, medicine, or treatment regimen can be a bit tricky if done without the benefit of scientific methods and testing standards.

Treatments, and human perception itself, can be influenced by several factors. If we make changes to our diet or lifestyle routine while using a particular herb or vitamin, for example, was it the supplement that produced the perceived effects, or was it those salads?

Perhaps it was just our own mind, convinced that the supplement would produce a particular benefit. This mental ability to influence a treatment regimens outcome is called the placebo effect. The placebo effect can account for a large portion of any treatments success or failure, which is why many research studies are designed to minimize it.

Another dynamic at play to consider is a persons perception and evaluation of a particular treatment, called anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence, while not considered reliable by scientists, is nonetheless a common feature of day-to-day health care. If your doctor prescribes a medicine or supplement, and then later asks, What happened?, he or she is asking for anecdotal evidence

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NMN Benefits - The Path of Longevity - ProHealth

CHICAGO, Jan. 20, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Gene Therapy Marketby Vectors [Non-viral (Oligonucleotides), Viral (Retroviral (Gammaretroviral, Lentiviral), Adeno-associated], Indication (Cancer, Neurological Diseases), Delivery Method (In Vivo, Ex Vivo), Region - Global Forecast to 2024", published by MarketsandMarkets, is projected to reach USD 13.0 billion by 2024 from USD 3.8 billion in 2019, at a CAGR of 27.8% from 2019 to 2024.

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The high incidence of cancer and other target diseases, availability of reimbursement, and the launch of new products are the major factors driving the growth of the market.

The non-viral vectors segment accounted for the largest share of the market, by vector, in 2018

The Gene Therapy Market, by vector, has been segmented into viral and non-viral vectors. Non-viral vectors accounted for the largest share of the market in 2018. This is mainly attributed to the high market penetration of oligonucleotide-based non-viral vector gene therapies.

Browsein-depth TOC on "Gene Therapy Market" 127 - Tables25 - Figures 129 - Pages

The demand for gene therapies for the treatment of cancer is expected to grow at a high rate

Based on indication, the market is segmented into neurological diseases, cancer, hepatological diseases, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and other indications. The neurological diseases segment accounted for the largest share of the market in 2018. However, the cancer segment is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period owing to the increasing incidence of cancer and the rising demand for CAR T-cell therapies.

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North America is the largest regional market for gene therapy products

The global Gene Therapy Market is segmented into North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World. In 2018, North America accounted for the largest share of the market, followed by Europe. Moreover, the North American market is estimated to register the highest growth rate during the forecast period. Factors such as the rising prevalence of chronic diseases, high healthcare expenditure, presence of advanced healthcare infrastructure, favorable reimbursement scenario, and the presence of major market players in the region are driving market growth in North America.

The prominent players operating in the Gene Therapy Market include Biogen (US), Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (US), Gilead Sciences, Inc. (US), Novartis AG (Switzerland), Amgen, Inc. (US), Spark Therapeutics, Inc. (US), MolMed S.p.A. (Itlay), Orchard Therapeutics plc. (UK), Sibiono GeneTech Co. Ltd. (China), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (US), Human Stem Cells Institute (Russia), AnGes, Inc. (Japan), Dynavax Technologies (US), Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Ireland), and Akcea Therapeutics (US).

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Regenerative Medicine Marketby Type [Cell-Based Immunotherapy & Cell Therapy (Allogeneic & Autologous Products), Tissue Engineering, Gene Therapy], Applications (Wounds & Dermal, Musculoskeletal, Oncology), Region - Global Forecast to 2024

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Viral Vector Manufacturing Marketby Type (Retrovirus, Gammaretrovirus, AAV), Disease (Cancer, Infectious Disease, Genetic Disorders), Application (Gene Therapy, Vaccinology), End User (Biotech companies, Research Institutes) - Global Forecast to 2023

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Gene Therapy Market Worth $13.0 Billion by 2024 - Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets - Yahoo Finance