Jackie Gleason was the most famous television actor of his time and he was so hilarious that reruns of his shows and movies are still popular today. At age 33, he became Chester A. Riley in the television production "The Life of Riley". At age 36, he starred in "The Jackie Gleason Show" as a series of characters who yelled a lot and murdered the English language. One of his most popular characters was Ralph Kramden, a brash, blustering, bumbling bus driver who always bullied his wife, Alice. These sketches became Gleason's most popular show, "The Honeymooners."
A prospective study of 78,500 men and women, ages 40-79, used wrist accelerometers to see whether daily step counts and measurements of intensity would predict future heart attacks or cancers. They were followed for an average of seven years, and during that period, there were 10,245 heart attacks, 664 deaths from heart attacks, 2813 cancers and 1325 deaths from cancer.
Researchers followed more than 934,000 cancer-free people for 34 years, during which more than 135,000 died from cancer. Those who drank more than two sugar-sweetened beverages per day were at increased risk for death from 20 different cancers. The data showed that sugared drinks are associated with a high rate of obesity which, by itself, is associated with increased risk for cancer and death from cancer.
In the year 2000, a C-SPAN Poll ranking all U.S. Presidents was conducted by 58 presidential historians and scholars. Harry S. Truman ranked fifth behind Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. I think that Truman and Winston Churchill were the two most influential people of the 20th century. Truman helped to prevent a third world war and to preserve the free world from communist oppression.
A respected group of researchers found that after a patient had a heart attack, taking one pill containing three heart drugs was more effective than taking similar prescribed drugs in separate pills during three years of follow-up (New Engl J of Med, August 26, 2022). The combined pill was more effective in preventing death from heart disease, another heart attack, strokes, or urgent surgery to replace heart blood vessels.
A study from Japan found that exercising in the late afternoon (4-6 PM) helps to control blood sugar, cholesterol and triglyceride levels better than exercising in the morning (9-11 AM).
After the end of World War II in 1945, the U.S. military commissioned captured German doctor Erwin Giesing and six of Hitler’s other physicians to write a detailed 225-page report of Adolf Hitler’s medical records. They showed that while he was Chancellor of the Third Reich, Hitler was addicted to cocaine, took 28 different drugs for intestinal gas, had severe lack of libido, and was given drugs that contained strychnine, a poison that most likely caused his constant pain.
A recent study on mice helps us understand how eating sugar can cause diabetes and obesity. Eating excess sugar can cause loss of protective T Helper cells (TH17 cells), to allow overgrowth of harmful bacteria that damage the linings of your gut and increase absorption of calories and fat when you don't need them. Eliminating sugar from the mice's high-fat diet protected them from developing obesity and metabolic syndrome.
More than 450 people are still dying every day from COVID-19. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) have authorized the new bivalent COVID-19 vaccines as a single booster dose at least two months after primary or booster vaccination, for anyone over 12 years of age).
On April 18, 1994, Richard Nixon suffered a massive stroke at his home in Park Ridge, New Jersey. Four days later he sank into a coma and died at age 81. Famous people from all over the world, including five U.S. presidents, attended his funeral. President Bill Clinton's eulogy talked about Nixon's accomplishments in foreign affairs and did not mention his constitutional crimes.
