Deal on Health Bill:‘We Have Enough Votes’ Says House G.O.P. Leader

From left, Republican Representatives Fred Upton of Michigan; Michael C. Burgess of Texas; Greg Walden of Oregon and Billy Long of Missouri spoke to reporters after discussing health care legislation with President Trump at the White House on Wednesday. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times


WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders planned to hold a showdown vote Thursday on their bill to repeal and replace large portions of the Affordable Care Act after adding $8 billion to the measure to help cover insurance costs for people with pre-existing conditions.

“We have enough votes,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, said Wednesday night. “It’ll pass.”

A breakthrough came earlier Wednesday thanks to an amendment proposed by Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, with the support of Representative Billy Long of Missouri, to add the money to the bill. The two Republican lawmakers had come out against the health care legislation, warning that it did not do enough to protect the sick, but they threw their support behind it on Wednesday.

President Trump blessed Mr. Upton’s proposal at a White House meeting with the two lawmakers as he pressed hard for a vote that could at least ensure House approval of the bill, which embodies one of his central campaign promises. The vote Thursday will carry enormous potential consequences  for millions of patients, for Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda and for Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who has failed twice in recent weeks to bring the bill to the House floor.

When going through a breakup? The placebo effect might ease your pain

Many of us have experienced the breakdown of a romantic relationship. Whether it was with your high school sweetheart or your spouse of 25 years, there is no denying the emotional pain that comes with a breakup.

"Breaking up with a partner is one of the most emotionally negative experiences a person can have, and it can be an important trigger for developing psychological problems," says first study author Leonie Koban, a postdoctoral research associate for the University of Colorado Boulder (UC Boulder).

oban notes that the pain of a relationship breakup can increase the risk of developing depression by as much as 20 times in the subsequent 12 months.

Between Work And Commitments! How Much Exercise Do I Really Need?

(CNN)Between work commitments, family responsibilities, and the stress of everyday life, we have legitimate reasons to fall short of our fitness goals. That's why, for many, the pre-goal should be maximizing the efficiency of your workout regimen.

Two and half hours a week of moderate intensity exercise is what is recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association. Ideally, this means 30 minutes, five times per week, of activities such as jogging, ballroom dancing, biking or swimming. Moderate intensity means you're working in the intermediate zone. If you're able to hold a conversation with the person next to you while doing that activity, you're in the zone.

If you don't have time for five workouts per week, recent evidence in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that cramming 150 minutes into the weekend, the so-called "weekend warrior" model, transfers similar health benefits to spreading out fitness across the week. The only risk here is overuse injury, such as a case of Achilles tendinitis from running 10 miles on a Saturday after not doing any exercise all week.

Recent Study: Have kids, live longer ?

A new research study finds that people who have had at least one child are more likely to live a bit longer than people who are childless. Some of the news coverage I’ve seen on this story might be making more of this than it should:

Sophie Marat, a transgender woman, has taken voice lessons so she can sound more feminine

                Sophie Marat, a transgender woman, has taken voice lessons so she can sound more feminine. Credit Caitlin Ochs for The New York Times

According to Nytimes news. In her 30s, Sophie Marat, now 42, used to record herself reading poetry aloud, then play it back to hear if she sounded like a woman. Ms. Marat, who is transgender, had spent years trying to remake her voice in private by speaking in a higher pitch but ultimately felt that her efforts were hopeless.

“I was feeling like changing my voice to match my gender identity was almost impossible,” she said. “It was terrible.”

Ms. Marat’s transition from male to female has been a gradual evolution. She had come out to friends and family back home in Mexico, then began to wear skirts to work as a software engineer in Manhattan. Still, her confidence would falter with everyday tasks like ordering takeout. “It was really painful to speak on the phone,” she said, “because they would reply, ‘O.K., sir.’”

That was before she started her weekly sessions with a voice therapist at New York University’s speech-language-hearing clinic, one of a growing number of programs that cater to transgender clients seeking to retrain their voices.

Just as some transgender women and men choose to take hormones or have surgery, or choose neither, some seek to feminize or masculinize their voices. Many say they want a voice that matches their appearance or that the change allows them to escape unwanted attention. There’s also a growing recognition among health professionals who have transgender patients that altering one’s voice can improve quality of life and reduce distress.

I just couldn’t believe it: Utah man initially denied lung transplant over pot use dies after complications, family says

A Utah man who was initially denied a lung transplant after a hospital found traces of marijuana in his system died on Saturday, in the Pennsylvania hospital that agreed to accept his case. Riley Hancey, 20, was recovering from a double lung transplant at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania when he suffered fatal complications, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Hancey’s difficulties began in December, when he was admitted to the University of Utah Hospital after contracting pneumonia. He was placed on life support two weeks later, but ultimately denied transplant eligibility after tests revealed traces of marijuana in his system, The Tribune reported. His father, Mark Hancey, said his son smoked marijuana with friends over Thanksgiving, but was not a habitual marijuana smoker.

Do You Know What Thyroid Disease Looks Like? VIEW

The American Thyroid Association (ATA) documents how an average of 20 million Americans will develop some form of thyroid condition. That’s no small number! If left untreated, thyroid disease can affect cardiovascular wellbeing, pregnancy, and bone health. There are two thyroid conditions – Hyper and hypothyroidism. Hyperthyroidism leads to excess production of T3 and T4 thyroid hormones, whereas hypothyroidism results in underproduction of hormones. Understanding thyroid health is essential for disease control and prevention. Do you know the signs and symptoms of thyroid disease?

What Hyperthyroidism Looks Like

Questions: Are people ready to embrace artificial intelligence and robotics in healthcare

The population of the UK is the least willing among 12 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to consider using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics as alternatives to traditional healthcare channels. That’s the finding of research that PwC commissioned to look into global variations in attitudes to healthcare technologies.  So does that mean for the UK these technologies are likely to be a non-starter? Far from it. Nearly four out of ten (39%) people surveyed in the UK said that they would be willing to engage with AI and robotics for their healthcare. And extrapolating those findings to the wider population indicates a significant potential market.

What the survey also tells us is that the younger the demographic group, the more likely they are to see new health technologies in a positive light. Well over half of 18 to 24 year olds would be willing to engage with AI and robotics to take care of some of their health. And if even only a proportion started to use more services that could start to realize big savings. Those could, in turn, make a serious contribution to addressing the challenges facing the health system in the UK.

Its Fresh, Simple, And Quick: 7 Stress Hacks You Can Use in the Next 5 Minutes

When you get stressed by a deadline, a bad driver, or a tax bill, your brain and body go into “fight-or-flight.”  Your heart beats faster, you breathe more rapidly, and your muscles tense up.  Because the stress response is rapid, you need to find stress relief strategies that you can engage quickly.  There’s no time to have a long conversation with yourself.  Luckily, science is helping us find new, simple and quick ways to de-stress that rely on recognizing the brain’s stress response (or worry and rumination response) and activating different brain networks to calm things down.

1. Recognize when you begin to feel stressed

When you get stressed a part of your brain called the amygdala hijacks the brain into a state of readiness for fighting or fleeing (called the fight or flight  response). This is because the stressors our ancestors faced were more acute and physical (like a prowling lion). When you start to go into "fight-or-flight," your breathing gets more shallow, your heart beats faster, and your muscles get tense. This response is generally quite rapid and caused my surges of adrenalin and cortisol  coursing through your body. If you practice watching for the first signs of stress (like your shoulders tensing), you can catch the response early in the process before your brain is completely hijacked.

2. Take a few slow, rhythmic breaths with long exhales

Slow rhythmic breathing activates the vagus nerve - a large nerve that travels throughout the body and links your brain with your heart, lungs, gut and other major organs. The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows down the “fight or flight response and takes the body back into a relaxed state known as “rest and digest.”  Blood flows from your hands and feet back to your inner organs, since your brain assumes you no longer have to run or fight. To practice slow rhythmic breathing, breathe in for a count of 5, rest for a count of 2, then breathe out through either your nose or mouth for a count of 6. if this is too difficult, you can begin with a 4-2-4 rhythm and then work up to 5-2-6.

A NEED TO PROTECT: He Observed The Earth From Space. Now He’s Trying To Protect It From The Ground.

 Leland Melvin hasn’t been to space since the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency, but he’s sure glad to be back on Earth now.

The former NASA astronaut joined thousands Saturday on the National Mall for “the March for Science,” a mass protest against an array of President Donald Trump’s policies that critics say attack or dismiss critical scientific evidence.

“I’ve seen the planet from the vantage point of space,” Melvin, 53, told The Huffington Post, ducking into a tent to avoid the chilly drizzle outside. “It’s a beautiful planet, but there are a lot of things that are going on and, without the data, without the science, we’re going to decimate our planet.”

According to Washingtonpost Why People Are Marching For Science: ‘There is no Planet B’

Thousands of people gathered in the rain Saturday on the soggy grounds of the Washington Monument to turn Earth Day into an homage to science. After four hours of speeches and musical performances, they marched down Constitution Avenue to the foot of Capitol Hill, chanting “Build labs, not walls!” and “Hey, Trump, have you heard, you can’t silence every nerd!”

The March for Science began as a notion batted around online on Reddit after the Women’s March on Washington, which was held Jan. 21, the day after President Trump’s inauguration. The idea snowballed after it was endorsed by numerous mainstream science organizations, which vowed that it would not be a partisan event. It eventually became a global phenomenon, held in more than 600 cities on six continents  and cheered on by scientists on a seventh, Antarctica.

Read The Shocking Story of a The Remarkable Recovery of a Woman With Advanced Colon Cancer

The remarkable recovery of a woman with advanced colon cancer, after treatment with cells from her own immune system, may lead to new options for thousands of other patients with colon or pancreatic cancer, researchers are reporting.

Her treatment was the first to successfully target a common cancer mutation that scientists have tried to attack for decades. Until now, that mutation has been bulletproof, so resistant to every attempt at treatment that scientists have described it as “undruggable.”

An article about the case, from a team led by Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, was published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The patient, Celine Ryan, 50, an engineer, database programmer and the mother of five, has an unusual genetic makeup that allowed the treatment to work. She is now cancer-free, though not considered cured.

Continue reading the main story below

Teen Brains Are More Vulnerable to Fentanyl and Opioid Addiction - ‘These drugs are killing our kids’

Cameron Shaver died of an overdose                                                      Photo supplied by Sandi Shaver

According to news.nationalpost.  At 23, Cameron Shaver seemed to be on track for success with a landscaping business, a new car, and he was thinking about heading back to school to take culinary arts.

The jack-of-all-trades from Winnipeg was an inspiration to his friends. He’d come a long way from his earlier teen years, when he had struggled with drug addiction. Back then, it was ecstasy.

Cameron had been clean for years when, last September, his mother Sandi received the phone call that no mother should get. Cameron had died of a fentanyl overdose.

Recent Study: Second Cancers Deadlier for Younger People

(HealthDay News) When a second cancer strikes, it tends to be far more deadly in the young, a new study reveals.

The findings may help explain the poor outcomes of younger cancer patients overall, the researchers added.

The researchers also found that survival odds for nearly all types of cancer are better for an initial cancer than for a second, unrelated cancer. That difference is greatest among patients younger than 40, the study authors said.

"Although the increased incidence of second cancers is well known among cancer survivors, less is known about outcomes of these cancers or the influence of age," said study author Theresa Keegan.

Keegan is a cancer epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The researchers analyzed 1992-2008 data on more than 1 million cancer patients of all ages in the United States. They then looked for second cancers, meaning a new cancer, not a recurrence.

They found that the five-year survival rate for children and young adults was 80 percent after a first cancer. However, it dropped to 47 percent for children and 60 percent for young adults in cases of second cancers, Keegan and her colleagues said in a university news release.

Researchers Report: ‘Mind-blowing’ Discovery Could Revolutionise Our Understanding of How Brain Works

                             The implications, if this interpretation is correct, are massive'
               The human brain could be organised in a subtly different way than previously thought Alamy

A study of people born with one hand suggests neuroscientists may have fundamentally misunderstood the way the brain is organised, a scientist has claimed.

Dr Tamar Makin, of University College London, said the new theory – if proved correct – would have “massive implications”, adding it was “mind-blowing” to think that scientists could have been mistaken for so long.

An international team of researchers from the UK, Israel, Canada and Switzerland used an MRI scanner to monitor the brains of people who were born with one hand as they performed everyday tasks like handling money or wrapping a present.

More From Obama Health Care: House Republicans float new ObamaCare replacement plan

According to fox news.. The House Republicans are shopping around a new ObamaCare replacement plan, amid pressure to deliver a legislative win as President Trump nears the end of his first 100 days.

“We have a good chance of getting it soon. I’d like to say next week, but I believe we will get it” eventually, Trump said Thursday at a White House press conference.

“We’re very close,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said a day earlier at an event in London.

Fox News is told they hope to have revised legislative text in the coming days, and lawmakers are set to discuss the proposal on a conference call this weekend. But it’s unclear when such a plan could hit the House floor or what level of support it might have – Congress is currently on recess, and lawmakers won’t return until next week.

Try It: Look Years Younger in 5 Minutes

LOS ANGELES (HH) You've probably heard about the new video that has women (especially those over 40) jumping for joy.

After all, it's already one of the most talked-about items on elite beauty blogs and social media pages. But, unless you’ve seen it for yourself, you may be wondering what all the buzz is about.

So here are 3 things you need to know before watching:

1. What You're Going to See: The presentation  which surfaced online last month  reveals a newly-discovered "trick" that can make any face look dramatically younger in about 5 minutes.

And the clincher? It’s something you can do in the privacy of your own bathroom. However, it’s important to follow the instructions very carefully.

Thank God: Florida mom returns home after Oklahoma surgeon removes 'inoperable' brain tumor

A 27-year-old Florida mother has returned home to her 2-year-old daughter and Air Force husband with "so much hope" after being told less than three months ago that she had about a year to live due to an “inoperable” brain tumor. Stephanie, whose last name has not been disclosed, started blogging about her medical battle shortly after receiving a stage 4 gliobastoma diagnosis.

On Feb. 18, she shared with followers on her blog that she had been experiencing painful headaches that would last a few minutes and then fade away. In January, they stopped fading.

“He pulled up my scans and then we saw it,” Stephanie blogged in February. “Right smack dab in the middle of my brain. A lesion. That’s what he first told us it was. A lesion doesn’t sound so bad. That sounds repairable. But he handed me my paper to leave and it said tumor. I have a brain tumor.”

Health Talk: Fight against neglected tropical diseases needs Big Pharma push: WHO

Progress has been made in tackling diseases that blind, disable and disfigure millions of poor in tropical areas each year, but drug companies need to step up donations of medicines, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

One billion people, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, are still treated each year for at least one of 18 neglected tropical diseases known as NTDs, it said.

Dengue, onchocerciasis (river blindness), and sleeping sickness are among those carried by mosquitoes or flies that are spreading from rural areas to urban slums, the WHO warned.

"There is no group of diseases that is so intimately linked to poverty," Dr. Dirk Engels, director of WHO's department of control of neglected tropic diseases, told a news briefing.

FINDINGS: Bacteriophages, natural drugs to combat superbugs

Viruses that specifically kill bacteria, called bacteriophages, might one day help solve the growing problem of bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotic treatment. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center have determined that phages can effectively reduce bacterial levels and improve the health of mice that are infected with deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacterial 'superbugs.' The study appears in Scientific Reports.

"Our research team set out to determine whether phages can be effective at killing a large group of bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics and cause deadly diseases in people," said corresponding author Dr. Anthony Maresso, associate professor of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor. "We are running out of available options to treat patients who have these deadly bacterial infections; we need new ideas."