Now that we’re almost a third of the way through the year (!) I’m checking my progress on my health-related goals:

Maintain weight at 135 pounds. Check. I have not been above 137.5 since the start of the year. Continuing to use Lose It! as a check on myself (it automatically cuts your calorie count once you enter a weight above your goal weight, even if it’s only by half a pound) has kept me from slipping.

Beat my personal record Read more

…”Head Like a Hole”?

Specifically, as I read this excellent Wall Street Journal op-ed, I thought of the lines, “Bow down before the one you serve. You’re going to get what you deserve.”

Big Pharma bowed down to the government, hoping that by playing nice with the bullies, they would get huge profits out of a sweeping healthcare bill that would force more Americans to carry insurance, thus turning more Americans into consumers Read more

Florida dermatologist Dr. Leslie Baumann, who was the lead investigator on clinical trials of Dysport, an antiwrinkle treatment that was approved by the FDA last April, has received a warning from that agency for remarks she made to the media about the drug before it was approved. Pharmaceutical companies are not permitted to promote the use of a drug before the FDA approves it (and they are not allowed to promote it for uses other than those approved Read more

I’m swamped at work, but just wanted to point out the new Brendan Fraser/Harrison Ford movie, Extraordinary Measures. (Warning: somewhat spoilerish.)

I had a mixed reaction to the film, which is about a father of three children, two of whom have a life-threatening and degenerative disease, who teams with a maverick scientist to look for a treatment that could save his kids’ lives. But the mixed reaction was not because the film was half Read more

Scott Brown, soon to be senator of the bluest of blue states. Bless you, Massachusetts voters!

It’s not a total victory. Here’s why:
I didn’t know until today that Brown voted for RomneyCare in Massachusetts. This guy doesn’t want to be the forty-first vote for the sake of defending individual rights in medicine. He wants to be the forty-first vote so that he can block the Democrats from being able to take credit for any action, and Read more

“Let’s remove all doubt,” she says. “We will have health care one way or another.”

You mean, you’ll have it regardless of whether or not the American people want socialized medicine, and regardless of whether it’s right?

Mrs. Pelosi and her power-lusting ilk need to be stopped. As much as I’d love to see Scott Brown win today’s election, it won’t be enough. Even if he wins and the Democrats don’t get away with their slimy plan Read more

My husband has asthma. It’s a chronic condition. He’s had it since he was a child, and he takes two different inhaled daily medications for it. Barring some extraordinary development that has yet to occur, neither his asthma nor the medications he takes for it are going to change.

Nobody in government seems to have figured out that conditions like this exist, though. Both of my husband’s medications can only be obtained by prescription. Read more

Although I managed to get through the holidays without gaining weight, I’ve slipped a little bit off the wagon in early January. As a result, I started this week closer to 140 pounds than 135. Not a huge increase, but the way five pounds turns into ten and then into twenty is by not paying attention. So I’ve been following a 1500-calorie-per-day diet (plus more on days that I work out) this week.

I went into this week thinking, “I hate Read more

Not satisfied with having violated rights and gotten a trans fat ban and calorie count posting mandates in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg is now talking about getting New Yorkers to cut their sodium intake by “encouraging” food manufacturers to reduce the amount of salt in their products. He claims he won’t legislate salt reductions, but a) that’s only because they’d be nearly impossible to enforce (what food manufacturer is going to come up with salt-free Read more

Even as the pharmaceutical industry has been colluding with Washington in hopes of having healthcare “reform” be favorable to its bottom line, Congress has been investigating the industry’s pricing practices — and politicians don’t like what they see. They’re upset that certain drugs — those that are sold to smaller numbers of patients than, say, a blockbuster like Lipitor, but that are no less important to the patients who need them — have had Read more