A couple of highlights from around the web that made it into our feeds this week.
This Is Your Body on Sugar
This interactive article explores how added sugars impact every system—from your teeth to your heart. Frequent blood sugar spikes can stress your pancreas, contribute to Type 2 diabetes, and even alter your brain’s reward system, fueling cravings. Meanwhile, your liver turns excess sugar into fat, increasing the risk of liver disease, obesity, and cardiovascular issues. The piece also offers practical advice: limit added sugars to 10 percent of daily calories and beware of hidden sources in everyday foods. (From nytimes.com)
Health Care's Colossus - A Series
A six-part series where each part is important and relevant to our collective experience receiving medical care in the United States. It uncovers how UnitedHealth Group, the largest U.S. healthcare company, uses its vast physician network to drive profits and influence the industry. Through months of investigative reporting, reporters reveal questionable practices—from pressuring doctors with financial incentives to inflating patient costs, all while lawmakers push for regulatory curbs. A must-read. (From statnews.com)
- Part 1: How UnitedHealth harnesses its physician empire to squeeze profits out of patients
- Part 2: How UnitedHealth turned a questionable artery-screening program into a gold mine
- Part 3: UnitedHealth pledged a hands-off approach after buying a Connecticut medical group. Then it upended how doctors practice
- Part 4: Inside UnitedHealth’s strategy to pressure physicians: $10,000 bonuses and a doctor leaderboard
- Part 5: UnitedHealth pays its own physician groups considerably more than others, driving up consumer costs and its profits
- Part 6: Lawmakers call for curbs on UnitedHealth’s growing empire
Closing it out with a beautiful poem from the New Yorker:
Pregnancy on Street-Cleaning Day
By Laura Kolbe
When I thought myself most honest
I was merely moving
aside from the relevant surface
and not getting down
to the nature of things.
Me in my rattletrap
baring the black road
so the sweeper truck touches
its gray skirts there and departs
with ratty nibbled leaf.
Then I would roll my vehicle back
to the lip of stone fringed above
what’s happening in the street.
Little changed.
I mean to announce the coming of a child.
Not a god, not more particular
than all particulars,
but I get lost in simple repetitions
and forget to speak
with my whole heart.
I was what’s known
as a good girl, completing the exercises,
claws trimmed, a zip on my coat.
O diagnosis!
I see myself now in those forgotten unbeloved
presidents of the nineteenth century
gaunt even when they were fat—
zones of flesh who lied
a bit, bluffed, bought items
not quite for sale, came down
with wintry infections and warred
on small islands.
Who chose a tiny corner
of a big borrowed house as the one place
to slake their muzzles in
foreign stamps, say, or Latin, or theatrical
women.
There is nothing to pity
them for, and yet, watching my white breath
lather and shave
these brick edifices,
I am dumbstruck by all those of us
who evade true grandeur and the crimson
calypso of feeling,
unwrite our own parts
faster than the couriers
can lay sheaves of script at our feet,
slide our phones in and out of pockets—
silvered oars sculling up and down—
as though by dint
of our small motions
the great river would stay down
and be stroked and not enter us.
Also, check out:
- What We’re Reading: 09/27/24
- What We’re Reading: 08/30/24
- “Dr. AI” Video Series: Can ChatGPT Step Up to The Medical Challenge?
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