Thursday, July 8, 2010

How am I supposed to keep up?

As a relatively average American (well maybe slightly different than average due to my medical crap), how I am supposed to keep up with all the latest medical news. This morning alone I found.

1. Glucosamine is no help for lower back pain.
2. Fish oil may help prevent breast cancer.
3. Diet cola drains calcium in women

I found these in just a couple of minutes. But this is representative of the amount of medical news found daily. Some of it is unfounded - for example the fish oil study is not yet proven and based on a single study and needs more research. We get bombarded by medical news and those of us to whom it might apply feel we have to read it and ask 'does it apply to me?'. The sheer amount news is difficult to keep up with. So we resort to the path of least resistance and start ignoring the news.

So is the sheer volume of news forcing the average American to rely on sound bites instead of reading in depth? Is the volume of news now available from so many sources causing its own demise? In this internet age, news is available all the time, from all over the world, from thousands of sources. What happened to reading the daily newspaper and watching the evening news for half and hour and being able to keep up? I have enough problems keeping up with my calendar much less all the news. I will ignore it for the rest of the day.

Today my back is protesting sleeping in air conditioned comfort. We have slept for the past two nights in the first floor room on the futon where the window AC unit is. At 430 this morning, I got up and moved up stairs to the comfortably cool bedroom with the comfy memory foam mattress topper but it is too late. This will be a bad back pain day. It will make working for 8 hours doubly enjoyable.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Where are you from?

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