Category Archives: Preventative Medicine

Researchers at Stanford University have found a way to reliably predict the age of people based on the levels of 373 proteins circulating in their blood. The team created this physiological clock by analysing blood samples from 4263 study participants aged 18 to 95.

The Stanford investigators built their blood plasmaprotein clock by looking at composite levels of proteins within groups of people instead of in individuals, and they say that the resulting formula can usually estimate a persons age to within three years. The team found that a subset of just nine or 10 proteins could form the basis of a very accurate age test, with the assistance of machine learning.

Those whose predicted age was significantly below their real age were remarkably healthy for their age. Nearly two-thirds of the proteins that the researchers found changed with age were significantly more predictive for one sex than for the other.

Overall, the researchers observed that there are three waves of changes in human plasma proteome throughout life occurring around ages 34, 60 and 78. This is because the levels of many proteins remain constant in the human body for a while and then undergo sudden shifts up or down, rather than slowly changing or remaining constant throughout life.

Identifying plasma proteins that promote or antagonise ageing could lead to more targeted and preventative therapies, the researchers suggest. In the future, they say, plasma proteome changes could be identified that predict subjects transitioning to disease. The Stanford team notes that Alzheimers disease is of particular interest because there are currently no blood-based markers for that health condition, and it can produce clinical symptom as much as 20 years after disease onset.

Alireza Delfarah from the University of Southern California, who studies specific mechanisms in ageing, agrees that the new research findings are significant. It is a big step forward in identifying plasma markers of ageing in the future, potentially we can just take plasma samples from people and do a test based on some of these proteins that have been identified, and probably need to be further validated, he says.

However, the Stanford team acknowledges that this work is still in its infancy, and that clinical applications are likely five to 10 years away.

Lizzy Ostler, an expert on the chemistry of human ageing from the University of Brighton in the UK, says the Stanford study is appropriately and rigorously designed, and offers valuable insights into age-related changes. We have known for some time that chronological and biological age are not the same thing, she says. Lifestyle and genetics alter the rate of ageing in the same way that the way you drive your car will change its condition irrespective of mileage.

Broad spectrum interventions that could slow the biological clocks of humans need to be prioritised by global licensing authorities and funders in order to ensure that the field of anti-degenerative medicine comes of age and helps people live healthy lives for longer, Ostler suggests.

More here:
Blood test picks out proteins that accurately predict age - Chemistry World

EIT Health has announced its 2020 Wild Card is open for applications for teams and individuals, inviting health innovators to submit proposals in the areas of womens health and digital therapeutics.

Now in its third year and with four start-ups already launched, the Wild Card programme seeks to support promising teams and turn their ideas into businesses. Wild Card will first create and then invest up to 2 million into two ventures.

Each year the Wild Card programme selects two challenges which represent a pressing health issue for European citizens. For 2020 the first challenge set to Europes health innovation community is Womens Health.Innovators are urged to devise cost-effective, technology-driven solutions to provide specialised care for women.

Commenting on the womens health challenge, Jorge Fernndez Garca, EIT Healthdirector of innovation said: Addressing womens healthcare is vital. A historical female underrepresentation in research has led to womens health issues being overlooked or underserved. In Europe, its estimated that women spendalmost 12 years of their life in illhealth, they are more likely to developadverse reactions to medication,and cardiovascular disease, traditionally considered as a threat to men, is the greatest mortality risk for women in Europe alongside cancer.Womens health is rich territory for Europes health innovators, we look forward to supporting breakthroughs that can make a real impact here.

The second challenge is digital therapeutics, which asks innovations toharness the power of digital solutions to prevent, manage and treat medical conditions or disease.

Commenting on the digital therapeutics challenge, Fernndez Garca, said: Were looking for innovators who can create digital therapeutic solutions that enhance the delivery and quality of care. Although its a relatively new field, its an area that holds great promise to deliver breakthroughs in therapy areas where medicine has so far struggled, as well as tackling the challenge of shifting healthcare towards a more preventative rather than reactive approach. Were looking for innovation that can show a distinct and measurable benefit for patients and healthcare systems.

The most promising applicants will attend a hackathon to build or complement their team and write their business plan. Up to six teams will then be selected to progress to a 10week Business Model Validation phase.

Entries for the 2020 Wild Card close on 9February 2020. Information onhow to apply can be found athttps://wildcard.eithealth.eu/.

Excerpt from:
EIT Health opens applications for women's health and digital therapeutics ideas - Med-Tech Innovation

Advanced technologies have caused a significant impact on the development of the healthcare industry. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in particular, have allowed for significant breakthroughs in life science and healthcare research and treatments, whether thats automating critical but repetitive tasks to free up time for clinicians, through to automatic speech recognition for faster disease diagnosis, or the ability to create synthetic controls for clinical trials.

But with 75 per cent of healthcare enterprises planning to execute an AI strategy next year, theres a far greater opportunity round the corner to further unleash its potential. Here, six experts from leading healthcare organisations including Brainomix, AiCure, HeartFlow, Cambridge Cognition, Oxford Brain Diagnostics and Zebra Medical Vision, share their views on what 2020 holds for the industry.

Brainomix - Dr Michalis Papadakis, CEO and Co-Founder of Brainomix

As highlighted earlier this year, the NHS aims to become a world leader in AI and machine learning in the next five years. In 2020, we expect to see this become more apparent in practical terms with, AI technologies becoming the predominant driving force behind imaging diagnostics.

With around 780,000 people suffering a stroke each year in Europe, and 7.4 million people living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK, it is imperative we find ways to reduce the burden on healthcare organisations and improve time to disease detection.

The number of MRI and CT scans for example is already on the rise, and AI has the ability to read scans as accurately as an expert physician. Utilising these new technologies to review scans for any disease can reduce patient wait time and ease the burden on medical staff. There will be greater recognition next year of the value of AI in augmenting human performance.

AiCure - Mario Nacinovich, Global Head, communications & marketing, AiCure

The greatest challenges in deploying AI solutions in healthcare vary widely by application. In 2020 (and beyond), it comes down to ensuring that back-end processes gain greater efficiencies. From an administrative standpoint, making it easier for AI to integrate with existing technology infrastructure will certainly help adoption. From a societal standpoint, building greater trust in AI and protecting personal healthcare data will continue to be among the omnipresent challenges.

Within the clinical trials industry specifically, we can expect to see a number of key challenges in 2020 which technology - including AI - will help address.

Once identified and recruited, one of the biggest challenges in clinical trials are keeping subjects engaged and optimised to treatment. Medication non-adherence has been shown to increase variance, lower study power, and reduce the magnitude of treatment effects. AI will play a critical role in understanding how a drug is performing in real-time and how patients are responding in clinical research including medication adherence and their behaviour.

The adoption of new technologies in 2020 and beyond have the potential to provide clinicians with improvements in overall patient engagement, outcomes, quality of life, practicality in use, and reduce clinical development time and associated costs.

HeartFlow - Charles Taylor, Founder, HeartFlow

For me, 2020 will accelerate the development of the digital healthcare industry; a hybrid sector where medicine and cutting-edge technology converge to propel patient care forward. Were starting to see more interest and investment in this fascinating field.

Its an exciting time to be leading a company like HeartFlow, which is truly bilingual in healthcare and technology. Right now, were able to use medical imaging and AI to give physicians unprecedented insight into potentially life-threatening restrictions on blood flow within the body. But weve only just scratched the surface of what integration between information technology, computers and healthcare can achieve, and the expectations are high. I look forward to seeing how these challenges are met in the year ahead.

Cambridge Cognition - Francesca Cormack PhD, Director of Research & Innovation at Cambridge Cognition

Digital biomarkers are the new frontier. The upward trajectory of digital capabilities over the last decade, combined with the widespread adoption of devices, has augmented biological markers with digital measures of disease progression.

In our field, it is now possible to use AI to enrich cognitive test scores with metrics that indicate cognitive effort i.e. the unique features of a patients voice that reveal when they are finding it particularly challenging to perform a task. Patients who are ostensibly performing within normal ranges but struggling to maintain that performance are likely suffering with the early stages of decline and could benefit from interventions that might slow or prevent further neurodegeneration.

Over the next year, we expect to see improvements in the precision of digital biomarkers for rapidly detecting neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimers disease. The ultimate goal is to integrate digital biomarkers into clinical care and improve patient outcomes.

Oxford Brain Diagnostics - Dr Steven Chance, CEO at Oxford Brain Diagnostics

Dementia remains highly complex in nature and requires extensive collaboration to succeed. Urgent action to address these challenges is needed today. By 2050, 152 million people will have the disease globally.

Unlocking new biomarkers, leveraging smarter science and deploying funds where they are needed most may give the industry a chance to defeat this terrible condition. We must re-focus our efforts and move quickly now towards examining the disease much earlier, allowing novel biomarkers to measure the progression more accurately and develop specific and targeted drug treatments for the range of dementias that exist.

National level support to develop more holistic brain health and screening programmes will demystify the brain, rationalise the fear of dementia, and ensure patients and families have the opportunity to embrace interventions in clinical trials earlier in their lives.

Zebra Medical Vision - Eyal Gura, CEO and Co-Founder, Zebra Medical Vision

With two billion people joining the middle class, a rising aging population and the growing shortage in medical experts, AI will be critical in enabling communities to provide productive and consistent health services. From medical imaging analysis to sensors and smart alerts, we are going to witness more improved and personalised care.

In 2020 we will see AI in deployment of hundreds of health networks globally and impact on millions of patient lives. AI has the power to transform patient care and empower radiologists to help with patient diagnosis. Our mission is to teach the Zebra software how to automatically interpret and formulate insights from medical images. Having a single AI solution that integrates seamlessly into existing workflows at an affordable rate, will support radiologists in delivering better patient care. Our platform allows healthcare institutions such as Intermountain Health, University of Virginia and Apollo hospitals to identify patients at risk of disease and initiate preventative treatment pathways.

Dr Michalis Papadakis, CEO and Co-Founder of Brainomix Mario Nacinovich, Global Head, communications & marketing, AiCure Charles Taylor, Founder, HeartFlow Director of Research & Innovation at Cambridge Cognition Dr Steven Chance, CEO at Oxford Brain Diagnostics Eyal Gura, CEO and Co-Founder, Zebra Medical Vision

Original post:
2020 predictions for healthcare IT from six industry experts - ITProPortal

In his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that when it comes to achieving progress, the difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones. For both the good and the bad, this sentiment rippled throughout Rights of Future Generations, the inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial. According to its curator, Adrian Lahoud, this edition is committed to radically rethinking fundamental questions about architecture, which here seems to partly involve an inquiry into what is lost when financial capital dictates design. Reflecting an ethos of adaptive reuse, the new institution, led by Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, has been set up in the Al-Qasimiyah School, a former state elementary school complex.

The site, one of the primary venues of this edition, is host to Becoming Xerophile (2019), a collaborative project between the artist duo Cooking Sections and the engineering firm AKT II, which transformed the compounds front yard into an apparatus that produces microclimates for desert fauna to flourish in. The projects title, a neologism created by combining the Greek words for dry and love, shifts away from contemporary landscape design, and its use of energy-intensive irrigation, in favour of native plant species and ancient watering methods. Xenophile adopts the sci-fi aesthetic of dusty lunar outposts by recuperating rubble from the schools renovation into inhabitable earthwork mounds and amphitheatre-like spaces that trap moisture from the air.

The exhibitions other main venue, Al Jubail Souq Fruit & Vegetable Market, hosts Priests and Programmers (2019), a series of installations ranging from films, archival documents, music, models and interactive displays that trace the history of Balis Subak rice farming heritage. This infrastructural network, active since the 9th century, spans countless rice terraces managed by priests from water temples. While the research-heavy presentations touch on many aspects of this culture, the cumulative effect is to suggest that these religious rites serve not only as metaphysical practices, but also management systems that enable sustainable farming.

Ritual technologies were also on display in the awakening ceremony that inaugurated Ngurrara Canvas II (1997), a vibrant 8 10-metre painting made by activist-artists whose ancestors traditionally occupied the region known today as Great Sandy Desert in Australia. (Ngurrara means country in the indigenous Walmadjari language.) Resembling a kind of hypnotic aerial photograph, the canvas is inundated with undulating swirls of colour forming contour-like lines that chart sacred waterholes and soaks across the desert. This iconography, an alternative system to the European cartography that aided colonization, was entered in support of an official native land title claim. Considered a tool by its makers, the canvas could be seen as a retort to considerations of art for arts sake, just as Priests and Programmers undermines the idea of ritual for rituals sake. With these considerations in mind, the curators appear to be making a necessary, if somewhat sweeping, claim for artistic and spiritual practices to be understood as a form of applied science.

The Triennials events programme also reflects this synergistic view of advocacy as both descriptive and proscriptive. A series of policy workshops assembled global leaders, including the former President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, to draft a Sharjah Charter on the Rights of Future Generations. While their positions primarily voiced concerns about climate change and the inequities of globalisation, the addition of a controversial AIDS denialist, Thabo Mbeki, cast a disconcerting pall over the whole endeavour.

As the President of South Africa, Mbekis government recommended the use of strong garlic and beetroot as a treatment for AIDS preferable to anti-retroviral drugs. Several studies, including one from the Harvard School of Public Health, claim that this policy resulted in over 330,000 premature deaths and the infection of 35,000 infants, after their mothers were unable to obtain access to preventative medicine. Mbeki secretly authored and circulated a paper stating that the scientific link between HIV and AIDS was predicated on centuries-old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans. Although Mbeki has tried to spin his words and deeds, historical scapegoats shouldnt give him license to escape accountability.

Lawrence Abu Hamdans lecture-performance Once Removed (2019), meanwhile, offered a stark contrast, imagining how the dead might give testimony. Hamdan told the story of Bassel Abi Chahine, a 31-year-old historian of the Lebanese Civil War who believes he is a reincarnated child solider from that conflict. Specious as this may sound, current advancements in epigenetic research have shown that life trauma can actually affect the gene expression of ones offspring. Likewise, culture is itself a kind of gene, passed on to future generations. While the Triennial claims to be forward-looking, it is most impactful when it reflects on the past.

The inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial continues at various locations around Sharjah, UAE, through 8 February 2020.

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The First Sharjah Architecture Triennial: Can Art Be an Applied Science? - frieze.com

For a country that has had one of the most notorious revolutions in the world, every citizen has access to quality healthcare.

Cubas health care is a basic human right entrenched into the countrys constitution with nine doctors to a 1,000 citizens, according to Telesur.

The highest recorded in Cubas history and its all thanks to the country continually improving its health sector. Whereas many health practitioners and medical training institutions pay attention to finding the cure to many ailments, Cuban doctors are trained to focus on preventative medicine.

So, they can curb the illness even before it develops. They also train doctors to prevent further complications in an already existent illness. Universal healthcare and free education make healthcare facilities readily accessible to its citizens.

There have also been new development programs such asprecisionmedicine, healthinformatization, roboticmedicine and nanomedicine.

Fidel Castro heavily invested into the health sector and today the country has a higher life expectancy compared to the United States. Life expectancy of women is 81 years and men are 77 years.

Mark Keller, a Cuba expert at the Economist Intelligence Unit said, Cuba has a really well-educated population and a surfeit of doctors.

It is no hidden knowledge that Cuban doctors are held in high regards internationally and in high demand in developing countries, especially in smaller African and Caribbean countries.

More recently, after Mozambiques cyclone Idai which killed more than 400 people and injured many citizens,Cuba sent a field hospital, with full staff and apparatus to the country. The doctors stayed for 63 days and the Cuban delegation attended to a total of 22,259 patients, according to Telesur.

Sadly, doctors do not earn much in Cuba as their economy is struggling. However, doctors are a big export and huge earner for the country. When you have a very well-educated population but also shortages of cash and goods, you want to find a way to monetize it, said Keller.

Though most of the monies made abroadgoes to the government the amount earned by the doctors on their missions ismore than they could earn if they were working in their home country.

The Caribbean island makes around $11 billion each year leasing doctors to foreign countries than it makes through tourism. There are approximately 50,000 Cuban doctors working in 67 countries around the world, notably referred to as an army of white coats by Cuban officials.

Some say its a form of PR for the totalitarian regime to send its doctors on humanitarian missions to gain favours or lets say votes from the countries in need when the time is right.

For smaller African or Caribbean countries, who cant necessarily afford to pay for the doctors, it gets them on Cubas side, Keller noted. Theyll be more lenient towards Cuba when theyre under international pressure from Europe and the United States [to oppose it].

Jose Angel Portal Miranda, head of the Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) said there were about 35,787 foreign students from 141 countries who graduated from Cuban universities, mainly from Africa and Latin America.

Of the 10,000 medical professionals who graduated from Havana, 1,535 of them are from foreign countries. No other small developing countries has achieved such a feat, Miranda added.

Cubas doctors are still very much sought-after the world over. Cubas doctors-for-export business isnt going anywhere. This is a massive program, Keller opined. Its one of the main things Cuba has to offer to the world.

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Cuba's biggest exports are doctors adjudged one of the best in the world. Here's why - Face2Face Africa

Renae Moomjian pretty much gets the same reaction from everyone she tells about her new business, NipLips.

In fact, it's the same reaction she had when her teenage daughter Helena Moomjian first told her about the concept.

"I was driving my daughter home from school, and she was reading something called 'Uncle John's Bathroom Reader'" Moomjian recalls. (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, by the way, is a trivia book). "And it was very quiet, and then all of a sudden, she said, 'Hey, Mom. Did you know your perfect lipstick color is your nipple color?'"

To which Moomjian responded. "WHAT?"

Renae Moomjian, left, and her daughter Helena started NipLips.

Intrigued, Moomjian went home and tested the theory with the lipsticks in her makeup drawer. None of them matched.

"So I was like, 'Let's take pictures and go to Walgreens' ... so we are walking around Walgreens, looking at our phones secretly and putting lipstick in our cart," Moomjian says. "It was about $110 worth of lipstick, and we went home and found our perfect match and one shade darker. And we both loved it."

Neither would have normally selected those colors.

"And I said to Helena, 'Maybe there's something to this,'" Moomjian says. That was in May 2018.

When the internet went crazy

The beauty trend seems to have taken off in spring 2017 when a segment on the talk show "The Doctors" made the connection between a person's nipple color and her ideal nude lipstick. The internet went crazy, and beauty magazines including Marie Claireand Refinery 29tried it out, with mixed results. Some people loved the lipstick shade they picked and others, not so much.

Margarita Potts GoDiva, a hair and makeup artist of more than 20 years and owner of I Do Hair and Makeup Artistry, says that the idea of using your body as a reference has been around for way longer.

"The rule of thumb has always been, nature knows best," says Potts GoDiva, who does celebrity, print, film and TV makeup. The inner cheek and upper lip are go-tos for her when color matching.

"For us in the TV world, you know if you're going with the inner cheek or upper lip or body, it's going to be a good match on camera," she says. "It makes people look fresher, youthful and more alive."

Matching to your nipple color is the same premise.

"Beauty trends come and go, but you can always come back to yourself," Potts GoDiva says, adding that it's also case-by-case. Getting too matchy-matchy can actually wash you out or make you look flat, she says. Plus, sometimes you just want to wear a bright, bold color.

There's an app for that

A few months after Moomjian and her daughter did their own experimenting, Moomjian asked 20 friends to give it a try. She wanted to know if matching your lipstick color to your nipple was actually a thing. She says 80 percent of her friends loved their exact match and all of them liked one shade darker.

The mother-daughter duo launched NipLips at the beginning of 2019to help women find a nude lipstick that flatters their skin tone.

Right now, NipLips has eight colors with Tucson-inspired names, such as Prickly Pear, Purple Agave or Burnt Adobe. Using the NipLips app, you can scan a close-up of your nipple to get matched to the closest color for you.

"Nothing is ever saved on your phone or uploaded to us," Moomjian says. "I was very clear that there could never be any invasion of someone's privacy. The only thing we save is the color."

Moomjian also owns a medical device consulting business, which is why after she and Helena took their Walgreens field trip, sneakily checking their phone photos as they shopped, she knew tech could make the process easier. Hence the color-matching app.

Eventually, NipLips hopes to customize colors specifically from your scan, but they'refundraisingfor that right now.

Ada Trinh, a makeup artist in Los Angeles, is a brand ambassador for NipLips and loves the product. As someone who has seen plenty of beauty trends come and go, Trinh says the tech part of NipLips sets it apart.

"You're not just talking about it," says Trinh, a celebrity, film, TV and print makeup artist. "They have an app that can actually show people that this is how it works."

Keeping it au naturel

Moomjian has also made a point to make NipLips a clean beauty business because that's the way she lives her life.

"Because I bring new medical technologies to the market, I deal with very sick people ..." she says. "I feel like preventative medicine is the best medicine so I live clean and I eat clean."

Moomjian says clean beauty means no synthetic or toxic ingredients. The NipLips website clarifies that products have "no parabens, phthalates, DEHP, SLS, petrolatum, talc, synthetic fragrances or colorants or silicons." So even if you're not keen to match your nipple color or use the app, the lipstick is worth checking out, at $22.50 each.

"I've used it on a couple of clients," Trinh says. "On set, I couldn't do the nipple scan ... but I could tell them about the concept ... and use the product on them without the scan."

Trinh says she has also used it on set to go from a day look to a night look just by adding another layer.

"A lot of the colors are really poppy, but the app gives you choices if you don't want to be as poppy, you can use one that's more natural," she says. "The pigment is great and buildable, or you can use it almost as a nice tint that doesn't go on too harsh."

The cosmetics are made locally, by the same lab that makes Sia Botanics, using some naturally-sourced Sonoran Desert ingredients such as prickly pear seed and jojoba oil. The next, soon-to-be-released NipLips collection a glosswill take its inspiration from the ocean. The one after that, the rainforest. The goal is to package all of it sustainably.

NipLips helps women find the right lipstick shade by matching it to their nipple color.

As the business grows, Moomjian wants to eventually support nonprofits that work in women's health issues, specifically heart disease and breast and ovarian cancers all diseases that have impacted her family. In the meantime, Moomjian says they will gift lipstick to any woman with breast cancer or a mastectomy.

Potts GoDiva adds that if you're checking your nipple color, it's also a great time to do a self breast exam.

"That, to me, is a great reason for this," she says.

A mother-daughter business

Before launching NipLips, Moomjian says she mostly wore bright reds and pinks. Helena, a student at University High School, mostly wore dramatic makeup for theater productions.

"I'm not a big makeup person," Helena, 16, says. "But putting the right lipstick on is a boost of self confidence."

The whole experience has been a ride, she adds.

"When I was younger and imagined my life in the future, I never ever would have imagined such a wild thing," Helena says with a laugh.

Although school keeps Helena busy, Moomjian says working together on the business has been one of the sweetest parts.

"We do a lot together," she says. "And to see her excitement and input along the way has been really fun, and for us to work together like this has been very special."

Try it out

Besides shopping online, you can try NipLips at upcoming markets including the Made in Tucson Market on Sunday, Dec. 1 and Cultivate on Saturday, Dec. 7. A privacy booth will allow you to use the app to find your best shade. You can also buy the lipsticks and try samples of the NipLips Desert Botanical matte collection at English Salon Spa, 27 N. Scott Ave., downtown.

"For Helena and me, it's about looking within to define your beauty and who you are and speaking from that place," Moomjian says.

More:
A Tucson business is helping women find the perfect lipstick ... by matching their nipple color - Arizona Daily Star

Personalised nutrition startup Atlas Biomed claims to be the only company in the world offering both DNA and microbiome testing kits for a holistic picture of health and now it is launching a phone app allowing people to discover what foods will best improve their gut health with the simple snap of the camera.

Sergey Musienko, bioinformatician andfounder of the UK-based firm launched in 2014, says the app differs from all other diet apps on the market as it will allow customers to genuinely learn how to modulate their microbiomes through their diet choices by teaching them about diet variety and fibre intake.

He tells NutraIngredients: Itallows the customer to take a photo of their meal and the special algorithm allows us to identify the specific ingredients in the meal and based on their latest microbiome test results the app provides a scoring system for each ingredient, showing how beneficial they are to the users microbiome composition.

The whole idea behind this is to help people gamify the process and better understand what ingredients can be harmful or beneficial to their gut bacteria.

The entrepreneur points out that research has shown that the majority of the population in Europe and the US are not eating enough fibre - a nutrient essential for a healthy microbial diversity.

He points out that therecommended daily intake is 30 grams but according to the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, UK adults are only eating around 18 grams per day.

He says people should ideally be eating at least 30 different sources of fibre each week in order to keep their microbial diversity up and the app helps people achieve this.

Believe me, its harder than you would imagine to reach this number. I think when I first checked I was getting maybe 20 on a good week.

There are a lot of apps out there that help people track their calories or their macros but this is the first to concentrate of fibre as well as some vitamins, polyphenols and sugar which also have an impact on microbiome composition.

This will help people to discover the best fibre sources for them and it will help people to diversify their diets. We really want to help people to live healthy lives for longer and as soon as you have a basic understanding its quite easy to stay on track its like learning to ride a bike!

Musienko graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology before going on to join theSilicon Valley think tank, at Singularity UniversityCaliforniain 2011,where they train entrepreneurial minds on how to apply technology into projects that can improve the lives of people around the world.

There I had a chance to meet lots of visionaries and entrepreneurs around health technology."Musienko explains, "I spoke to lots of researchers and shared ideas with them and discussed whats the future of preventative medicine. Thats when I had the idea which would lay the foundation for Atlas Biomed taking a personalised proactive approach to health care by predicting conditions and doing everything we can to prevent them.

Back then, in 2011, companies were offering affordable genomics tests but these tests were in their really early days and there was a lot of criticism that they couldnt tell you in a precise way whats likely to happen to the persons health. Of course with all these common but complex issues, like chrones disease, diabetes, obesity, lifestyle has a huge impact as well as genes.

I realised if we want to personalise healthcare or nutrition in an accurate manner it has to be a combination of different factors and thats how we came up with the concept of multiple tests a saliva test for genes and a stool sample test for the microbiome which covers changes in diet and lifestyle.

The company launched its DNA and microbiome tests commercially in Europe in 2017 and since then it has quickly expanded with sales in 17 countries across Europe as well as Canada with hopes to establish itself in the US soon.

Read the original here:
Startup 'gamifies' gut health with diet app aimed at long-term change - NutraIngredients.com

Is it just me, or have you noticed how we seem to go straight from Halloween to Christmas, almost bypassing Thanksgiving altogether? That is unfortunate because not only is Thanksgiving an important American holiday that reflects our heritage, but individuals, families and churches need one day set aside for the purpose of giving thanks to the Lord and acknowledging that all that we have is from Him.

Is the giving of thanks only on this one day enough? Certainly it is not, but it is a good place to start.

There are numerous benefits to the giving of thanks. Please allow me to mention only a few.

First, the giving of thanks to the Lord is preventative medicine for developing a critical spirit. One with a critical spirit is constantly criticizing others. He tends to see what others are doing wrong and not right, and is constantly finding fault. A person with a critical spirit can always do anything and everything better than the one he is criticizing.

Instead of finding faults in others, why not begin to thank God for them and pray for them. It is difficult to criticize someone you are thanking God for, whether it be government officials, church leaders and even family and friends.

Those that were closest to the late Billy Graham said they never heard him speak a critical word about anyone. Does that mean that Dr. Graham never observed something in others that could not be criticized? I suspect that a man who lived so long and traveled so extensively encountered those he could have criticized, but he chose to keep those observations to himself.

Another benefit of giving thanks is that of learning to be content with what we have. By the time you read this, the collection week for Operation Christmas Child will have just concluded. This ministry of Samaritans Purse collects literally millions of shoeboxes filled with small toys, school supplies, hygiene items, etc. The reports indicate that the kids who receive them are absolutely overwhelmed with joy, appreciation and thanksgiving.

Now, imagine how the average American child would react if one of these shoe boxes was all he or she received for Christmas. I suspect most would complain and be very ungrateful. And why is this? Perhaps one reason is that so many kids have been spoiled and been trained to expect lavish gifts at Christmas time. Many of them have not been raised to be thankful and thus content.

There are many reasons the Greatest Generation is considered to be such. One of those is that they were grateful for what they had. That generation, who is slowly ebbing away, lived through the Great Depression when millions were out of work, and poverty was the norm of the day from rural areas to metropolitan cities. They learned to be grateful just to have something to eat and a roof over their heads.

That generation also survived WWII. Those stateside had to deal with rationing of almost everything. And of course those called into service had to cope with the horrible conditions that go with war. Those who survived were grateful just to be alive. That generation knew how to get by on what they had and were thankful for what they had.

We all could learn a lesson from that generation about being thankful instead of complaining. Instead of complaining about not having a bigger and more up to date house, we should be thankful that we have a house period. We should appreciate the fact that we have a roof over our head, not to mention indoor plumbing and electricity. Instead of complaining that we dont have a newer and nicer car, we should give thanks for the car that we do have, and that it is paid for.

Career missionaries to foreign nations and those who have done short term mission work can testify that some of the happiest people in the world are those who have very little in the way of material possessions. I suspect they have learned the secret of contentment and to give thanks in all things.

Parents, are you teaching your children to be thankful? It starts with the small things like saying thank you, or even writing a thank you note for a gift or some act of kindness shown by another. Does your family take time to say a prayer of thanks to the Lord when you sit down to a meal, whether at home or in a restaurant?

Is one day of giving thanks a year enough? Of course not, but it is a good place to start.

For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. I Timothy 6:7-8.

Chip Warren is the past president of the Albertville Ministerial Fellowship.

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Chip Warren: One day of giving thanks isn't enough, but it's good start - Sand Mountain Reporter

Some people might not see a connection between ballet and football, but a sports medicine doctor at University Hospitals knows just how similar dancers and football players are.

In fact,Dr. James Voos, chair of UH'sorthopedics department, says treating dancers as athletes can help prevent injuries and lengthen dancers careers.

Contact athletes such as football players and our performing artists such as ballet dancers put an incredible force on their body, day in and day out, Voos said. While you may be moving more gracefully in ballet, those stresses on the body are very significant, so the ability to maintain flexibility, to put together a preventative program, is just as important in both sports.

This season is the first year the Cleveland Ballet is partnering with the sports medicine department at UH, giving the dancers more opportunities to receive preventive care. And the partnership means Voos and physical therapists are treating both the Cleveland Ballet and the Cleveland Browns.

Dancer Madison Campbell says taking care of their bodies is one of the most important things about ballet.

Our bodies are our instrument. Those are our tools. Thats the same as football players, theyre using their bodies as an instrument, as a tool, to get to where they need to be in the game, Campbell said. The amount of stress you put on your body, day in and day out, the amount of agility and stamina if thats not an athlete, I dont know what you call it.

The physical therapists working with the dancers know how to treat the artists as the athletes they are, says 16-year-old Marla Minadeo, the youngest dancer in the Cleveland Ballets history.

Im so young, but obviously if Ive been dancing professionally, like Im dancing all day, every day, my body doesnt feel young, Minadeo said. I think that if I keep on going to physical therapy, the life of my dance career will be a lot longer.

Its Minadeos first season as a professional dancer. Her mom, Gladisa Guadalupe, is the artistic director for the Cleveland Ballet. An injury sent Guadalupe into retirement as a dancer, which she thinks could have been prevented.

The career of a dancer is very short. But if you take care of your body now, in a professional environment and with professionals in the medical field that understand the wear and tear, and how to prevent it, they could have careers up to 45 and 50 [years old], why not? Guadalupe said. And thats what we want. We want to give them tools that they understand their limitations, they understand their assets, they understand how far they can go with their bodies.

Proper training and physical therapy help professional dancers like Minadeo, but treating dancers as athletes is also important information for young dancers and parents.

This is particularly close to me, having young dancers at home, Voos said.

He recommends flexibility and strength training for dancers between practices.

Audiences often dont recognize the athleticism of dance because the dancers try to hide it, said dancer Lauren Stenroos said.

Our job is to make it look easy on stage, and were not supposed to show that its difficult, she said.

Guadalupe hopes that in the future, audiences will recognize that while it takes months to rehearse for a production, but it takes decades for dancers to train their bodies for ballet.

I dont think people understand. They just see the beauty. The curtain goes up, and they just see the end product. They dont see the sweat and the hard work, she said. And thats my hope, that as much as I would like the audience to enjoy which they do enjoy the performance that they understand what this artist goes through and respect the profession.

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Is Ballet A Sport? Doctors And Dancers Think So - ideastream

Almost a third of doctors and nurses do not feel confident enough on sun safety to advise their patients on how to avoid harmful UV rays, research suggests.

A study of more than 1,500 medics in the US found just under 30 per cent do not believe they have the knowledge to keep the public sun safe.

As a result, less than half of those surveyed regularly advise their patients to wear sunscreen, sit in the shade and avoid tanning beds.

Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn most skin cancer cases come about due to UV rays from the sun or indoor tanning.

Nearly five million adults are treated for skin cancer every year in the US, the researchers wrote in the journal Preventative Medicine.

And in the UK, there were 15,970 diagnoses of melanoma, the deadliest form of the disease, between 2014 and 2016, Cancer Research UK statistics show.

There has been a recent push in the US for doctors to promote skin cancer prevention and sun safe behaviours, the researchers wrote.

The latter includes using sunscreen, wearing protective clothing, sitting in the shade and staying indoors at midday, which is when UV rays are typically at their most intense.

In 2012, the US Prevention Services Task Force (USPSTF) released its first set of recommendations on clinical counseling on skin cancer prevention.

Sunburn increases a persons risk of skin cancer.

It can happen abroad or in the UK.

To stay sun safe, experts recommend people:

Source:

The researchers, led by the behavioural scientist Dawn Holman, set out to uncover how many doctors in the US advise their patients on sun safety.

They analysed data from the online 2016 survey DocStyles.

This includes information on skin cancer prevention counseling practices for 1,506 GPs, internists, paediatricians and nurses.

Results revealed just under 30 per cent of those surveyed do not feel confident in their ability to provide advice about sun protection.

As a result, less than half (48.5 per cent) of the medics regularly advise their patients on sun safety.

And only just more than a quarter (27.4 per cent) recommend people avoid indoor tanning.

Of those who do give out advice, most only counsel patients with fair skin.

While people with pale complexions, light hair and freckles are more at risk of skin cancer, people with darker skin tones can also burn and develop the disease, the researchers warned.

The results further revealed most UV advice centres on wearing sunscreen, ditching sunbeds, avoiding the midday sun and wearing protective clothing.

However, the medics were less likely to advise patients to seek shade and check the UV index. This identifies the strength of the suns radiation at a given place on a particular day.

The researchers stress providing a range of sun safety options allows patients to find an approach that fits their preferences and activities.

The study also found the medics were more likely to give advice if they had been practicing for more than 16 years, had treated sunburn in the past 12 months or were familiar with theUSPSTF guidelines.

Barriers to counseling included a lack of time (58.1 per cent), more urgent concerns (49.1 per cent) and patient disinterest (46.3 per cent).

To overcome the time issue, future studies should look for ways of engaging other members of the medical team, such as health educators, in counseling efforts, the researchers added.

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Almost a THIRD of doctors and nurses are not 'confident enough to advise patients on sun protection' - Denton Daily