DEKALB, Georgia — A recent study concluded that about 10 percent of Americans have not been getting appropriate amounts of sleep in the past month; the figure adds up to about 50-70 million people. Surveys done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (DCD) revealed that the amount of sleep for people varies by age, and younger people are getting the least amount of sleep among the tested age groups. With subjects coming from Delaware, Hawaii, New York and Rhode Island, 13.3 percent of people between ages 18 and 34 reported that they were not getting the appropriate amounts of sleep. The figure showed higher than the 7.3 percent for adults over the age of 55. ‘It’s important to better understand how sleep impacts people’s overall health and the need to take steps to improve the sufficiency of their sleep,’ UPI quoted lead author Lela R. McKnight-Eily. Other findings from the study revealed, however, that the proper amount of sleep, which is about 7-9 hours for adults, is obtained by people upon retirement. Details from the study confirmed that an entire month of adequate sleep was most likely had by those who have stopped working, […]
WASHINGTON — More than half of U.S. doctors now favor switching to a national health care plan and fewer than a third oppose the idea, according to a survey published on Monday. The survey suggests that opinions have changed substantially since the last survey in 2002 and as the country debates serious changes to the health care system. Of more than 2,000 doctors surveyed, 59 percent said they support legislation to establish a national health insurance program, while 32 percent said they opposed it, researchers reported in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The 2002 survey found that 49 percent of physicians supported national health insurance and 40 percent opposed it. ‘Many claim to speak for physicians and represent their views. We asked doctors directly and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most doctors support national health insurance,’ said Dr. Aaron Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine, who led the study. ‘As doctors, we find that our patients suffer because of increasing deductibles, co-payments, and restrictions on patient care,’ said Dr. Ronald Ackermann, who worked on the study with Carroll. ‘More and more, physicians are turning to national health insurance as a solution […]
I’m going to re-post the segment I posted yesterday, from Charlie Rose’s fifth anniversary Iraq show, because I want to encourage as many people as possible to watch it. If I could recommend one article or segment for Americans to read or watch regarding the current Iraq debate, it would be this interview — the entire interview — with Sinan Antoon and Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi professor and journalist, respectively, currently living in the U.S.: The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media’s discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation — views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts — ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: ‘virtually never.’ Rose was as adversarial and argumentative — angry, even — as he ever gets with anyone, because he plainly did not anticipate, and did not like, that he was being exposed to such hostility towards our Freedom-spreading, Liberty-loving Liberation of the grateful, lucky (dead and displaced) Iraqi people. To […]
NEW YORK — Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world’s richest country faces economic crisis We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families. Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s. The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs […]
From Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, the great thinkers have for millennia argued over what is known in philosophy as the ‘mind-body problem,’ the relationship between spirit and flesh. Dualism tends to win the day: The mind and the body, while linked, are separate. They exist independently, perhaps mingling but not merging. The debate lives on these days in less abstract form in the United States: How much of a difference should it make to health care - and health insurance - if a condition is physical or mental? Decades of culture change and recent scientific studies have blurred the line between these types of disorders. Now a critical moment has been reached in a 15-year debate in statehouses and in Congress over whether treatment for problems like depression, addiction and schizophrenia should get the same coverage by insurance companies as, say, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. This month, the House passed a bill that would require insurance companies to provide mental health insurance parity. It was the first time it has approved a proposal so substantial. The bill would ban insurance companies from setting lower limits on treatment for mental health problems than on treatment […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
