Lifeboat Foundation

Utilizing new mobile application technology, researchers at The University of New Mexico found that medical cannabis provides immediate symptom relief across dozens of health symptoms with relatively minimal negative side effects.

In two recent studies titled, “Patient-Reported Symptom Relief Following Medical Cannabis Consumption,” and “Effectiveness of Raw, Natural Medical Cannabis Flower for Treating Insomnia under Naturalistic Conditions” published in the journals, Frontiers in Pharmacology and Medicines, respectively, UNM Department of Psychology Associate Professor Jacob Miguel Vigil and UNM Department of Economics Assistant Professor Sarah See Stith, document that patients experienced statistically and clinically significant therapeutic benefits when they used cannabis for symptoms ranging from chronic pain to insomnia.

These studies analyzed data collected with the Releaf App, developed by co-authors Franco Brockelman, Keenan Keeling and Branden Hall and currently, the largest repository of user-entered information on the consumption and effects of cannabis use in the United States with nearly 100,000 recorded user sessions.

Continue reading “Study shows medical cannabis effective in treating a wide range of health conditions” »

On any given day, Zoubaida Salman instructs a classroom of 15-year-olds at the Sur Baher Girls School in East Jerusalem, where she has served as the science teacher and Environment and Health Coordinator for the past 22 years. One of the most important lessons comes from their backyard: water is scarce and precious in this region.

Water shortages can lead to major sanitation issues at schools, so students have to play an active role in managing it. At Sur Baher, the most significant use of water is for flushing toilets, which stop working if there is not enough water. If the water runs out, school administrators must buy it from the city. In other regions, the schools even close because of water shortages.

A team of scientists with the NASA DEVELOP program is helping address these water shortages by collaborating with a nonprofit called Water Resources Action Project(WRAP). WRAP designs and constructs rainwater harvesting systems for schools in the Middle East to capture rainfall during the five-month rainy season for use later. Selecting a geographically promising area is time-consuming and tedious work though for the small, volunteer-based team. The NASA DEVELOP team is using satellite data to help WRAP more easily identify suitable locations for the rainwater harvesting systems.

Researchers don’t know much about whether people who aren’t diabetic should avoid having glucose spikes after meals, or whether, by contrast, average glucose levels are more important — things that need to be studied, he said.

“They’re right to be asking it. I don’t have data to give guidance on how to interpret it,” Bergenstal said. “I think they’re right to say it can’t be bad if I keep my blood sugars more stable. It’s a reasonable assumption, but we don’t have the data for it.”

It’s generally accepted that non-diabetics are better able to regulate their glucose levels. A higher than normal level, meanwhile, indicates prediabetes. But a new study out of Stanford University in late July that used CGMs on 57 participants, including diabetics and non-diabetics, had a surprising finding.

Continue reading “Non-diabetics are using diabetes technology to track their blood sugar and improve their health” »

The Alzheimer’s Hypothesis

Introduction

Continue reading “The Alzheimer's Hypothesis” »

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the biggest medical challenges of our time. About 30 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and the numbers are predicted to increase to 100 million by 2050 if we do not find effective prevention or treatment strategies (1). Substantial evidence suggests that leading a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. However, the mechanisms through which exercise protects the brain and whether we could bottle these as a treatment remain controversial. On page 991 of this issue, Choi et al. (2) reveal that in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, exercise improves memory through a combination of encouraging neurogenesis in the hippocampus and increasing the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a growth factor that supports neuronal survival. Their findings suggest that agents that promote both BDNF signaling and neurogenesis might be effective in preventing or treating Alzheimer’s disease.

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More than a quarter (1.4 billion) of the world’s adult population were insufficiently active in 2016, putting them at greater risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, and some cancers, according to the first study to estimate global physical activity trends over time. The study was undertaken by researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in The Lancet Global Health journal.

Together, these estimates demonstrate that there has been little progress in improving physical activity levels between 2001 and 2016. The data show that if current trends continue, the 2025 global activity target of a 10% relative reduction in insufficient physical activity will not be met.

“Unlike other major global health risks, levels of insufficient physical activity are not falling worldwide, on average, and over a quarter of all adults are not reaching the recommended levels of physical activity for good health,” warns the study’s lead author, Dr. Regina Guthold of the WHO, Switzerland.

Continue reading “Globally, 1.4 billion adults at risk of disease from not doing enough physical activity” »

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In this Viewpoint, Geoffrey Hinton of Google’s Brain Team discusses the basics of neural networks: their underlying data structures, how they can be trained and combined to process complex health data sets, and future prospects for harnessing their unsupervised learning to clinical challenges.

The red tide that is choking Florida’s southwest coast is causing symptoms including coughs, headaches and shortness of breath, local doctors say.