Stephen C Schimpff's Blog Posts Tagged 'medicine' (8)

Nanotechnology is making fast advances in medicine. I have written about it before here and in "The Future of Medicine - Megatrends in Healthcare." A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. New science and technology based on the nanometer refers to the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules to build machines on a scale of nanometers or to create materials and structures from the bottom up with novel properties.…

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A cure for spinal cord injury? Diabetes? Macular degeneration?  Hope or just hype?

There are now some clinical trials using embryonic stem cells to treat serious diseases for which no other good therapy is currently available. But this is just the beginning of a major medical megatrend that will blossom forth in the coming years.

Embryonic stem cells are present after a fertilized egg divides for two or three days. They have the seemingly miraculous ability to turn into…

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Imagine a man with a recent severe heart attack who has the muscle repaired with stem cells or a child with a severe bladder defect repaired with stem cells grown on a biodegradable scaffold. Sounds like science fiction but these are actual clinical studies in progress today.

Stem cell therapies promise to be one of those scientific breakthroughs that will have an enormous impact on health care in the future. Stem cells will bring us closer to the goal of personalized medicine,…

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New cells to replace those destroyed in diabetes type 1, cells to help heal a heart attack, cells to cure leukemia – this is the promise of stem cells. Some of this is happening now; more will be available in a few years.

Stem cells will usher in the era of regenerative medicine, allowing the creation of cells, tissues and organs to treat or cure diseases and injuries. This will be a fundamental alteration in our approach to medical care and a transformational medical megatrend. And…

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Stress is with us all the time. Issues at work or at home, getting a traffic ticket, the grocery store out of your favorite yogurt. Life has stresses. We can go to the doctor and ask for a pill or we can learn to deal with our stresses effectively without much medication. 

Acute stress is normal and can even be lifesaving – seeing a truck barreling down the road at us. But when stress is chronic it becomes a major cause of ill health. 

Chronic stress builds up when the demands…

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Does old age necessarily mean declining health and cognition or can one age gracefully with a high quality of life? 

This was another topic discussed at the recent Health and Wellness conference organized by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine.  Steven Gambert, MD, Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Director of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center described preventive aging. Here…

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Is it possible that health care can become more effective, more personalized, more attuned to real health and wellness in a manner that truly benefits you the customer? 

At the recent health and wellness conference celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine there was a panel discussion moderated by Center director Brian Berman, MD on the topic of health care of the future. Here are some excerpts from the comments made by…

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As we watch the reform movement in Washington, we see and hear so many misconceptions. A current one relates to mammography. A few weeks ago guidelines were published in the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine stating, in effect, that women between ages 50 and 75 with no history of breast cancer in their family and normal mammograms to date could probably switch from annual to biannual exams. And women between ages 40 and 50 probably did not need to get mammograms as had been previously… Continue