Horse sense
A new study reports that adolescents who are inpatients at opioid addiction treatment centers are more likely to be offered horseback riding therapy than given full access to a common, highly effective addiction medication called buprenorphine.
The study found just 10.6 percent of facilities offered buprenorphine initiation and continued treatment while 25 percent of all facilities surveyed offered equine therapy, an approach not ed by evidence.
“You expect that the sickest kids, the kids with the least access, are going to be the kids in these residential treatment centers,” study co-author Caroline King told STAT. “And if they can’t access ‘bupe’ there, it might be a red flag that they also really can’t access it in communities and outpatient providers.”
Get me that. Stat!
High costs aren’t the only barriers blocking people, even those with insurance, from health care. Red tape, denied claims and complexity also delay people from getting care or prevent it altogether, according to a new KFF survey.
At least half of respondents said they had trouble once or more last year with health care coverage, regardless of type, and nearly half said their problems were not resolved to their satisfaction.
Denials were less common from Medicare and Medicaid, but finding in-network providers was harder with Medicaid and marketplace coverage. Even so, most people (81 percent) gave their insurers “excellent” or “good” marks.
Other numbers:
- Two-thirds rated their own health as “fair” or “poor.”
- About three-quarters received mental health treatment in the past year.
- More than three-quarters had more than 10 provider visits in the past year.
Body of knowledge
It’s true that chewing gum is largely indigestible. It’s not true that, if swallowed, it sits for years (forever?) in your stomach. Like everything else you eat, purposefully or not, the body has a process. In this case, it involves moving indigestible materials (like fiber and gum) through the intestinal tract until they are eventually expelled.
Still, it’s not a good idea to routinely swallow gum, which in abundance may clump together to form a gut-blocking mass called a bezoar.
Counts
Doc talk
Mania of the week
Best medicine
Q: Why should regular visits to a paint store be part of any diet regimen?
A: You can get thinner there.
Observation
“The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it.”
Medical history
This week in 1999, the death of an 83-year-old man stung by a swarm of Africanized “killer” bees marked the first fatality by that cause in California. Virgil Foster was a beekeeper who, while mowing his lawn in Los Angeles County, was attacked and stung at least 50 times by the highly aggressive bees. He was not breathing when paramedics arrived, and soon went into cardiac arrest. For two weeks, he was kept alive on a respirator.
As it turned out, Foster’s three hives had been taken over by wild Africanized honeybees. Originally hybridized in Brazil in the 1950s, the killer bees had migrated north through Mexico. They were first seen in the U.S. in Texas in 1990. Before spreading into California, killer bee attacks had already caused several deaths in other states.
Ig Nobel apprised
The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that’s hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.
In 2002, the Ig Nobel Prize in physics went to Arnd Leike of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical law of exponential decay.
Heady stuff.
Sum body
Five purported anti-aging remedies from the 20th century.
1. Beer. During the Prohibition, a homebrew infused with root juices of dandelion and rhubarb was touted to remove wrinkles and add a “peachlike bloom” to female imbibers.
2. Swoboda Exercise System. Developed by Alois Swoboda, an Austrian immigrant, it primarily involved a series of pretty standard upper body exercises. Great for biceps and chest, perhaps, but Swoboda also promised his system would cure disease and restore youth.
3. Snow cure. Exactly what it sounds like: rolling in the snow naked.
4. Goat glands cure. This involved transplanting goat testicles into men and goat ovaries into women, allegedly curing almost every conceivable condition other than gullibility. A similar treatment involved monkey glands.
5. Radioactive water. The approach fell out of favor after the widely publicized death of a true believer, who suffered horrible disfigurement (loss of jaws and teeth).
Med school
Q: According to multiple studies, which day of the week are heart attacks most likely to happen?
A: Monday, and it’s maybe a little bit connected to going back to work. Research suggests the increased risk correlates to a change in the body’s circadian rhythm or natural sleep-wake cycle, i.e. not getting to sleep in.
Curtain calls
Margaret Wise Brown, the author of the iconic children’s book “Goodnight Moon,” was treated for a ruptured appendix. Post-surgery, to show nurses how well she was feeling, she kicked one foot high in the air, dislodging an undetected blood clot in her leg. The clot quickly traveled to her brain and she died during emergency surgery. Brown was 42.
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
