The Emerging Healthcare Crisis

More and more, people who have serious medical problems and who need hospitalization or surgery,
or conservative care, are finding themselves without any means of paying for it. As this number grows, we will find ourselves, as a nation, in a deeper crisis.

Given the large amounts of money currently being wasted in Iraq, and in other government projects, it is a simple and clear SHAME that we do not have a national health insurance plan.

This republic (and we ARE a republic by definition, not a democracy) has a legal duty, per the constitution, to provide for the general welfare.

The government is NOT living up to that responsibility.

We NEED a national healthcare plan NOW. Millions of people without access to necessary healthcare, is NOT the mark of a great nation, nor of a prosperous nation.

Continuing Education Seminar in Galveston

We are in Galveston this week at a continuing education seminar. The weather is beautiful, and the temperature is a big relief from the 105 degree heat in Longview.
The picture is a view from the hotel room.

We will be closed on 19, 20, and 21 July to attend seminar.

We will be closed on Wednesday, 19, 20,21 of July as we are going out of town to a seminar.

For any patients who need to reschedule, please call 903-753-5400 on Monday or Tuesday to reschedule your visit.

Thank you.

UCLA Study Finds Same Genes Act Differently in Males and Females; Discovery May Explain Gender Gap in Disease Risk, Drug Response

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=7177
Scientists may have revealed the origin of the battle of the sexes—in our genes.
UCLA researchers report in a new study that thousands of genes behave differently in the same organs of males and females—something never detected to this degree. The study, published in the August issue of the journal Genome Research, sheds light on why the same disease often strikes males and females differently, and why the genders may respond differently to the same drug.

"We previously had no good understanding of why the sexes vary in their relationship to different diseases," said Xia Yang, Ph.D., first author of the study and postdoctoral fellow in cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Our study discovered a genetic disparity that may explain why males and females diverge in terms of disease risk, rate and severity."

"This research holds important implications for understanding disorders such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, and identifies targets for the development of gender-specific therapies," said Jake Lusis, Ph.D., co-investigator and UCLA professor of human genetics.
The UCLA team examined brain, liver, fat and muscle tissue from mice, with the goal of finding genetic clues related to mental illnesses, diabetes, obesity and atherosclerosis. Humans and mice share 99 percent of their genes.

The scientists focused on gene expression—the process by which a gene's DNA sequence is converted into cellular proteins. With the help of genomic-research company Rosetta Inpharmatics, the team scrutinized more than 23,000 genes to measure their expression level in male and female tissue.

What they found surprised them. While the function of each gene was the same in both sexes, the scientists found a direct correlation between gender and the amount of gene expressed.
"We saw striking and measurable differences in more than half of the genes' expression patterns between males and females," said Dr. Thomas Drake, co-investigator and UCLA professor of pathology. "We didn't expect that. No one has previously demonstrated this genetic gender gap at such high levels."

UCLA is the first to uncover a gender difference in gene expression in fat and muscle tissue. Earlier studies have identified roughly 1,000 sex-biased genes in the liver, and other research has found a combined total of 60 gender-influenced genes in the brain—about one-tenth of what the UCLA team discovered in these organs.

Even within the same organ, researchers identified scores of genes that varied in expression levels between the sexes. Gender consistently influenced the expression levels of thousands of genes in the liver, fat and muscle tissue. This effect was slightly more limited in the brain, where hundreds—not thousands—of genes showed different expression patterns.

"Males and females share the same genetic code, but our findings imply that gender regulates how quickly the body can convert DNA to proteins," Yang said. "This suggests that gender influences how disease develops."

The gender differences in gene expression also varied by tissue. Affected genes were typically those most involved in the organ's function, suggesting that gender influences the more important genes with specialized roles, not the rank-and-file.

In the liver, for example, the expression of genes involved in drug metabolism differed among men and women. The findings imply that male and female livers function the same but work at different rates.

"Our findings in the liver may explain why men and women respond differently to the same drug," Lusis said. "Studies show that aspirin is more effective at preventing heart attack in men than women. One gender may metabolize the drug faster, leaving too little of the medication in the system to produce an effect."

"At the genetic level, the only difference between the genders is the sex chromosomes," Drake said. "Out of the more than 30,000 genes that make up the human genome, the X and Y chromosomes account for less than 2 percent of the body's genes. But when we looked at the gene expression in these four tissues, more than half of the genes differed significantly between the sexes. The differences were not related to reproductive systems—they were visible across the board and related to primary functions of a wide variety of organs."

The UCLA findings support the importance of gender-specific clinical trials. Most medication dosages for women have been based on clinical trials primarily conducted on men.

"This research represents a significant step forward in deepening our understanding of gender-based differences in medicine," said Dr. Janet Pregler, director of the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center. The center's executive advisory board, a group of businesswomen interested in advancing women's health, helped fund the study.

"Many of the genes we identified relate to processes that influence common diseases," Yang said. "This is crucial, because once we understand the gender gap in these disease mechanisms, we can create new strategies for designing and testing new sex-specific drugs."

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; and the UCLA National Center for Excellence in Women's Health also supported the study. Co-authors included Susanna Wang, Leslie Ingram-Drake and Arthur Arnold, all from UCLA, and Eric Schadt of Rosetta Inpharmatics, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc.

Tips on Paperwork, Forms, and Insurance

Tips on Paperwork, Forms, and Insurance
by Tammy Baker, General Manager, BAKER CHIROPRACTIC,PA
1420 McCann Road, Longview Texas 75601

Paperwork is a necessary part of healthcare these days. It may be a pain to fill out, but believe it or not, each page is necessary, and helps us help you.

If you are a new patient, please bring in all documentation and paperwork that you have at home that relates to your condition or problem.

This is especially true for workers compensation (work comp) cases. If you have the outcomes of benefit review conferences, contested claims hearings, designated doctor visits, required medical exams, MRI exams, EMG reports, etc., we really need this information during the consultation or initial examination, so please bring all these papers with you.

Before you visit, try to make a written list of all the symtoms you are having, and the questions you wanted to ask.

Also, make notes about things like your date of accident or injury, or how the problem started and how long you have had it. This will help speed up filling out the paperwork, and will help job your memory when Dr. Baker takes your history.

A little preparation for your visit not only speeds things along, but helps us have access to the kind of information and documentation we need.

If you have had examinations or MRIs done or other tests, try to go by and pick up a copy of these to bring with you.

These may be time consuming, but in the end, it will help your visit go smoother, be quicker, and help Dr. Baker to help you more.

~Tammy Baker, General Manager

Location of BAKER CHIROPRACTIC,PA

As we are enjoying greater number of new patients coming to our office, I wanted to include some graphics of our location.

We are located on McCann Road, a major road in Longview, at 1420 McCann Road, in the middle of the Brookwood Shopping Village. The Shopping Village has a sign out front that looks like this (left).

Our office looks like this in front :

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

BAKER CHIROPRACTIC,PA celebrates nine months in practice in Longview . Baker Chiropractic, PA , on July 3rd, 2006, celebrated nine months in practice in Longview Texas.

We opened our doors on October 3rd , 2005 and have had a wonderful time ever since then. Dr. John Raymond Baker, general manager Tammy Bennett-Baker, Manager Amy Tidwell, Therapy assistant Erin Threadgill, and Insurance Manager, Nikki Henderson, want to extend our thanks to Longview, and the many, many patients that have welcomed us, and shown their confidence in us as healthcare providers.

We will be closed on the 4th of July to celebrate the holidays with our families, but will be open again on the 5th of July.Have a safe and happy 4th of July and thank you to all our patients.

~Dr. John Raymond Baker, Tammy Baker, Amy Tidwell, Erin Threadgill, and Nikki Henderson

New Drug for Treatment of Macular Degeneration- Lucentis

Drug stopped vision loss in clinical trialsFDA approves Lucentis treatmentBy Jennifer L. Boenjboen@news-sentinel.comThe first drug showing promise of reducing vision loss caused by macular degeneration, which affects 1.7 million Americans 50 or older, was approved Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Lucentis, made by Genentech, was found in clinical trials to stabilize vision in 95 percent of patients. What is most promising, said Fort Wayne retinal surgeon Dr. Gohar Salam, is that 25 percent of patients treated regularly with Lucentis improved their vision by three additional lines on the standard eye exam chart.

“It’s still not a cure, but it’s a significant step forward,” Salam said.Macular degeneration’s symptoms hit Anneliese Remington, 80, of Fort Wayne quickly. “In March, my great-grandson was ice skating at McMillen Park. When he was done, I tried to get down the bleachers and I could hardly see,” she recalled.

At home she looked at a printed grid on the refrigerator, given to her by her ophthalmologist. The normally straight lines appeared wavy, a key sign of macular degeneration.“It was so scary,” she said. Her ophthalmologist referred her to Salam, who diagnosed an advanced form of the disease called wet macular degeneration.

Remington’s first treatment, photodynamic therapy, was ineffective, so Salam suggested an experimental treatment, an earlier form of the just-approved drug. “In three to four weeks, I noticed marked improvement,” Remington said. “My right eye is still not as good as the left, but I can see much better and I feel safer behind the wheel.”Macular degeneration, the most common cause of legal blindness in people over 60, according to the National Institutes of Health, is a progressive disease of the center part, or macula, of the retina of the eye. A person 65 or older today has a one-in-four chance of developing the disease. During the 2000 Census, 25,615 people 65 and older lived in Fort Wayne. As America grays, the disease portends a health and social crisis in the making – by 2020, 6 million Americans could be blind from some form of eye disease.

Macular degeneration causes loss of central vision, making facial recognition, reading and watching movies and television difficult or impossible. Salam describes the retina as the “wallpaper” on the inside of the back of the eye. The light-sensitive retina converts light and images into nerve impulses that travel up the optic nerve to the brain. The brain’s interpretation of the images is how we see.

People with age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, may not notice the subtle hallmark vision changes: vertical objects or lines may be a little off kilter, appearing bent; areas of gray appear in the center when focusing on an object. Peripheral vision remains, so someone with advanced disease may be considered legally blind yet retain a small ring of vision.

Lucentis is a first-line cousin to a cancer drug called Avastin, also made by Genentech.“Researchers knew Avastin kills new blood vessels in cancer,” Salam said. Abnormal growth of blood vessels is a complication of advanced macular degeneration. Genentech changed the molecule size of Avastin so it could better penetrate the retina when injected into the eye.Salam, who participated in clinical trials for Avastin while waiting for Lucentis to be approved by the FDA, offered it to patients such as Remington in whom other treatments failed.
Although no treatment exists as yet for advanced, or wet, AMD, drugs such as Lucentis, and its forerunner Macugen, can delay progression of vision loss by AMD. Made by Pfizer, Macugen was FDA-approved in December 2004, and has shown improvement in stabilizing the disease in 70 percent of cases; Lucentis’ rate is 95 percent.

Remington may need additional treatments with Lucentis. For best results, injections every four weeks are prescribed. But Remington, whose condition stabilized after just one injection, may be given Macugen, which is injected every six weeks, or put on a regimen combining both treatments, Salam said.

“It is the scariest thing to lose one’s eyesight,” Remington said, adding that she is glad she agreed to use the drug at a time when it was still in the experimental stage. Possible side effects from Lucentis include eye redness and irritation, with less common side effects of cataracts, infection, retinal tears and detachment. In clinical trials, 4.2 percent to 4.6 percent of patients given Lucentis for two years suffered a stroke or heart attack, compared to 3 percent patients in the control group.Nevertheless, “These are good breakthroughs,” Salam said. But early detection is still the cornerstone of keeping AMD from robbing vision.For people who have had routine vision exams during adulthood, beginning at age 55 they should undergo annual exams involving dilation of the eyes by an optometrist or ophthalmologist: “The earlier people come, the better the outcome,” Salam said.Disease symptoms

The most common form of age-related macular degeneration of the eye is dry AMD (see graphic). One reason the disease may go unnoticed is that it may develop in only one eye, although that is less common. In 10 percent of people with dry AMD, a form called wet AMD develops. Normally straight lines becoming wavy is a symptom of this most severe and
advanced form of AMD.

Damage to the macula occurs rapidly, and vision loss is greater than in dry AMD. While there is no definite cause, the most significant risk factors for AMD are age and smoking, said Fort Wayne retinal surgeon Dr. Gohar Salam. Other factors include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and family history of the disease. Women are at greater risk than men, and obesity may also increase risk.

KEYWORDS FOR THIS POST : AVASTIN, MACULAR DEGENERATION, LEGAL,BLINDNESS, DRY TYPE, WET TYPE, IMPROVEMENT, SIGHT, VISION, VISUAL,SAVE YOUR VISION