- The U.S. military now estimates that the cartels directly control around 30-35% of Mexican territory. Over eighty politicians or candidates for political office were killed in Mexico during the country’s 2021 midterm elections. (HT: Tyler)
- Does living around people with a college degree lengthen your life expectancy? Apparently.
- Reasons to doubt the USDA report on the prevalence of food insecurity.
- Why the Biden/Harris claim that they have legalized marijuana is mostly false.
- What explains the slowdown in Medicare spending? A major reason is pharmaceuticals.
Category: Drug Prices & Regulations
Why are So Many Americans Self-Medicating with Herbal Remedies and Dietary Supplements?
Hardly a day goes by but what I hear about health food elixirs, herbal remedies or new health biohacks that are supposed to improve your life. These often claim to make you age more slowly, reduce your stress levels or provide some nebulous health benefit like detoxing. These dietary supplements are often in the form of capsules or liquids you ingest but sometimes intended to mixed into smoothies. Plants have a lot of medicinal effects. Many medicines were originally derived and synthesized from plants. In antiquity people turned to plants because medicinal plants were their only options.
Wednesday Links
- The case for value -based drug pricing.
- The costs of mask wearing: To be exempted from a three-month mask mandate, the average person was willing to pay $525, and some (0.9%) were willing to pay over $5,000.
- Are prisons turning into de facto nursing homes?
- Are scientists trying to cure sickle cell disease through gene editing doing so by using the genomes of white Europeans?
- Health risk assessments — typically in-home reviews of enrollees’ health status – add as much as $12 billion in risk adjusted payments to Medicare Advantage plans.
Are Schools Too Worried about Teen Mental Health?
Most days my mood is good but occasionally I’m less motivated than others. My wife has moods similar to mine. Some days she has more energy than others. For that matter, my dog seems to feel better some days than others. This all sounds normal to me, but do we really need mental health intervention? Or are small day-to-day variations in mental wellbeing normal in healthy individuals? Furthermore, does ruminating on feeling a little sluggish make matters better or worse?