Diabetes Category Archives — Page 2 of 9 — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

July 22, 2020

VA hospital care under fire again after aide pleads to killing seven patients in West Virginia

She was a 46-year-old Army veteran hired by the Louis A. Johnson Medical Center in 2015 with no certification or license to care for patients. Reta Mays worked in the middle of the night, tending to elderly, onetime service personnel, sitting bedside and monitoring their vitals, including their blood sugar levels. Mays went room to room, largely unnoticed for three years on Ward 3A.

But as unexplained deaths mounted on the surgical unit between 2017 and 2018, the bespectacled mother of three — who had served in the Army National Guard and had deployed to Iraq and Kuwait — shifted from being a nurse’s aide to becoming a murder suspect.

She now has confirmed in court that she injected multiple doses of insulin in at least seven patients in the rural Veterans Affairs hospital a few hours away from the nation’s capital, causing the frail victims’ blood glucose levels to plunge in fatal fashion.

June 17, 2020

With viral risks, a new chance to weigh in on obesity, diet and exercise

by Patrick A. Malone

Health and nutrition experts may get a rare and unexpected chance in the Covid-19 pandemic time to see whether Americans have experienced even a minor reset in their maintaining a more healthful diet, increased exercise, and maybe even reduction in weight gain and its associated problems.

To be sure, these have been times of high stress, and much popular discussion has focused on people’s “Quarantine 15,” the excess pounds packed on in recent days due to worry, couch sitting, and the availability of food in the close confines of the homes to which so many of us have been confined.

And many restaurants, notably fast food vendors, offered high-fat, high-calorie takeaway for weeks now, even as they make plans to re-open.

May 27, 2020

Health disparities, laid bare by the virus, lead to loss of both lives and limbs.

by Patrick A. Malone

Although the Covid-19 pandemic may be opening more and more Americans’ eyes to the harsh effects of the country’s economic and racial inequities, the stark damage from the nation’s health disparities can be plain to see — in truly disheartening ways.

Lizzie Presser, a reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site ProPublica, deserves high praise for her distressing article on “The Black Amputation Epidemic.” As she wrote recently from deep in the poverty, neglect, and racial discrimination of the Mississippi Delta:

“[W]ithin months, the new coronavirus would sweep the United States, killing tens of thousands of people, a disproportionately high number of them black and diabetic. They were at a disadvantage, put at risk by an array of factors, from unequal health care access to racist biases to cuts in public health funding. These elements have long driven disparities, particularly across the South. One of the clearest ways to see them is by tracking who suffers diabetic amputations, which are, by one measure, the most preventable surgery in the country.

January 24, 2020

While policy makers engage in food fights, kids are getting fed dubious eats

by Patrick A. Malone

Will grownups in the room step up soon and stop the nonsense? Or should consumers, especially parents and those who want to eat in healthful ways, just expect a perpetual food fight about what’s good and reasonable for Americans, especially our kids, to eat?

When it comes to breakfasts and lunches served to 30 million youngsters at 99,000 schools, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, long a standard-setter on dietary matters, has put itself in a head-scratching position.

That’s because the agency backed away from strict nutritional standards, saying it will relax the amounts of fruits and vegetables that schools provide kids under the agency’s Food and Nutrition Service guidelines. Instead, institutions would be permitted to sling more burgers, fries, and pizza, likely increasing youngsters’ consumption of high calories, saturated fats, and sodium.

January 10, 2020

Need simple, clear, and direct ideas to be healthier? Heed these 48 words

by Patrick A. Malone

Bravo, brevity. Four dozen words is all it takes for a doctor and noted writer on diet and obesity to offer plenty of sound advice on how to get and stay healthy.

Here are the suggestions from Yoni Freedhoff, associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, founder and medical director of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Institute, blogger at Weighty Matters, and author of “The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work:”

“Don’t smoke. Get vaccinated. Avoid trans fats. Replace saturated fats with unsaturated if you can. Cook from whole ingredients — and minimize restaurant meals. Minimize ultra-processed foods. Cultivate relationships. Nurture sleep. Drink alcohol at most moderately. Exercise as often as you can enjoy. Drink only the calories you love.”

December 4, 2019

As life expectancy and fertility rates decline, health politics more key than ever

by Patrick A. Malone

Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Indiana — if you’re obsessed with national politics, these states might register in your mind as key partisan battlegrounds. But if you’re focused on Americans’ health and well-being, these states — along with New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia — may be causes for different and considerable concern: the nation’s plummeting life expectancy.

These states are flashing warning signs, racking up the greatest relative increases in death rates among young and middle-aged adults (New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, and Ohio).

Excess deaths among Americans in their prime, that is individuals in the 25 to 64 age group who would live longer if mortality rates improved, also were highly concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana, experts say.

November 6, 2019

Heart failure deaths spike as nation ages and diabetes and obesity abound

by Patrick A. Malone

Although many Americans fret that old age will afflict them with cognitive impairment, from Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, it may be that their hearts will give way first.

Experts have expressed growing concern about increasing issues with rises in heart disease, especially in the elderly, and a new study appearing in the online medical journal “JAMA Cardiology” provides explanation why these fears are well-founded: After a period of decline, deaths due to heart failure are spiking.

As the Wall Street Journal reported: “The death rate from the chronic, debilitating condition [of heart failure] rose 20.7% between 2011 and 2017 and is likely to keep climbing sharply.”

November 1, 2019

Too many spoons full of sugar going down in kids’ drinks

by Patrick A. Malone

Grownups shouldn’t be surprised that child obesity is a major and rising concern for 1 in 5 of the nation’s young, putting their short- and long-term health at serious peril: That’s because Big Sugar and major food makers persist in a costly, relentless barrage on kids and adults for unhealthful products, notably sweet drinks that hook children into hard-to-break habits for a lifetime.

Although pediatricians and nutrition experts keep warning that babies and tots, especially, should get much lower amounts of sugar in various forms in their daily diet, almost “two-thirds of the $2.2 billion in beverages marketed to children contained added sweeteners, according to a report released last week by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut,” the New York Times reported.

Rudd researchers found that just three food industry titans sprinkled $21 million in advertising for sugary liquids.

October 25, 2019

Lawmakers order schools to give teens more time for California dreaming

by Patrick A. Malone

If millions of young folks in the nation’s largest state seem even sunnier than before, that may be because they are getting a wee bit more needed shut eye: California has become the first state in the nation to order public schools to roll back their start times, so middle school classes generally won’t start before 8 in the morning and high school teaching doesn’t start until after 8:30 a.m.

The rule — pushed by experts and resisted by parents juggling already hectic and conflicting family schedules — will be phased in over three years. It also will be accompanied by yet more research on how teens doze and how sleep can best benefit their rapidly growing minds and bodies.

California’s later start to teens’ schools got a boost from groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Medical Assn., and the California State Parent Teacher Assn. They cited a growing body of research, including by organizations like the RAND Corporation, tying more sleep from later start times to adolescents’ better school performance and health.

September 27, 2019

A toast to clear and simple advice: Parents, it’s just milk and water for the kids

by Patrick A. Malone

Milk and water — it’s that simple. That’s the latest and official recommendation for what children 5 and younger mostly should drink.

For parents, if any doubt persists, that advice comes from leading health authorities, including Healthy Eating Research, a nutrition advocacy group funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The group developed the kids’ drink guidelines with the backing of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Heart Association, and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.

The experts cautioned grown-ups about giving children sugary drinks, including, in a sure-to-be-contested suggestion, recommending a hard cap on fruit juices: for 100% juice, less than a cup a day.