Episode: 2530
Title: HPR2530: Introduction to Health
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2530/hpr2530.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 04:52:37

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This is HBR episode 2,530 entitled, Introduction to Health and in part of the series, Health and Health Care.
It is hosted by a huker and in about 12 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, this is the introduction to a series on health and taking care of yourself.
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Hello, this is a huker welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode.
What I want to do is start a discussion that I had in mind all along about health.
When I first was considering all of this, there was also a lot of stuff going on in the United States about health care policy.
As you probably know, I kind of took a small detour over into dealing with all of that.
But I want to come back to the actual health side and have maybe a few things to say or really start a discussion.
This is something everyone should be concerned with, I think.
We all have bodies, we all have issues that we need to deal with and I hope I can offer some ideas about all of this.
Right now, I am 66 years old.
As you can imagine, this means I've been dealing with my own aging.
I'm also observing my mother, who is in her 90s, who has Alzheimer's disease.
My mother in law, who is in her late 80s, who has probably not Alzheimer's but definitely dementia.
Both of them are pretty frail and it's like, okay, I would prefer not to be that way if I can help it.
Meanwhile, I've had my challenges along the way. I'll mention just a few of them.
I have type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, atrial fibrillation, and the beginning stage of macular degeneration.
I also had surgery to remove cancer in 2010, as far as I know.
I get tests every year, it was a completely successful surgery, and there have been no signs of the cancer coming back.
Now, I mention all of these things and you probably might think, okay, you're in a state of advanced collapse.
Actually, I'm in pretty good health, and the reason for that is quite simple.
I have made a decision to follow the best medical advice as well as I can, and that is working.
Well, you know, what do I mean by best medical advice?
It starts with my doctors, and trust me, by the time you're my age, 66, the word doctors is always a plural.
And they tend to keep me on a short leash with checkups and tests.
All of this is monitoring, because I do the right kinds of things, and not interventions at this point.
So, I have, in the last few weeks, you know, had some visits with my cardiologist, who basically said, yeah, you're doing great.
We're just going to, you know, have you check in from time to time.
And, you know, the next time I come in, they're going to do an echocardiogram, because of the atrial fibrillation.
I've had, you know, appointments with my eye doctor when you have diabetes, and as I mentioned, I have the beginnings of macular degeneration as well.
That means I get regular checkups there, and that's going to continue.
I also see a retina specialist, because retinopathy is one of those things that can happen.
Fortunately, so far, I'm not seeing any signs of it, because of how I take care of myself.
I also, this coming week, as I record this, I will be looking at a trip to the urologist to talk about the cancer follow-up.
And then to a pulmonary doctor at the end of the week to talk about the sleep apnea.
So, you know, welcome to my life.
But as I say, basically all of this stuff is really is monitoring, because I do what they tell me to do.
Okay. I've changed my lifestyle pretty significantly to orient it to proper nutrition, regular exercise.
And doing the things you know you should do, but often don't.
It was 10 years ago that I got rid of tobacco from my life, for instance, which would have been nice if I had done it sooner than that.
At any rate I did, and have been completely tobacco-free for 10 years now.
Now, one of the things that I do is I like to keep up on the latest information regarding health and medicine, which can involve some small effort, in large part because there is so much misinformation around.
And one of the things I want to talk about is, as we go forward, and I'm thinking of this as a series, is that, you know, we'll take a look at misinformation and how you can identify it, as well as how you identify good information.
Okay. So, where does good information come from?
I start with a simple premise. Good health and medical information comes from sound science.
Now, I know a lot of people, and some of them are my friends, who believe all kinds of new age stuff about miracle, diet supplements, organic foods, anti-GMO, crystals, and all manner of other things.
When presented with ideas like this, I simply say, show me the studies.
If the information is any good at all, there will be multiple studies from highly regarded institutions, and they will be published in reputable, peer-reviewed publications.
When I have that kind of evidence, I pay attention.
Anything else, and I may listen politely, like I would for a crazy uncle without political views, but I won't act on it.
I also do not show anything more than alert interest to a report of a new study.
The fact is that a pretty high proportion of those reports will end up being nothing to see here.
The media loves to report these things, and it is understandable because many of us love to hear about them, but there have been a number of studies showing that research results reported by one group cannot be replicated by anyone else.
This is a topic we can look at in more detail later, but the point is to never act on the first study.
So, are there good sources of medical and health information for the general audience?
Yes, there are, and here are some of the ones I like to use, and you will find links in the show notes for all of these.
First one, WebMD. This is a website. It has a lot of good information. You can subscribe, you get daily email tips. Pretty good stuff there.
John Hopkins University, which is very well regarded, says it has a site called Finding Reliable Health Information Online.
That is a place that is going to guide you to good places.
Then there is a site called Medline, evaluating health information.
This site has a lot of good information on how to judge whether the information you see is actually reliable.
Pro tip, if you read it in a Facebook post, it almost certainly is not reliable.
Also from Medline is a site understanding medical research.
This is a really awesome site for showing you how to evaluate a study or research finding.
This is really important, and something we will explore in much more detail later on.
Finally, Healthcare Triage. This is a YouTube channel, and it posts five to seven minute videos each week that address a particular topic.
They also have an audio podcast, comes out about once a month. It's about 25 minutes long, and sometimes is answering questions and other times interviewing people.
The Healthcare Triage is run by a Dr. Aaron Carroll, who is a professor of pediatrics and associate dean for research mentoring at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
He's also a columnist at the New York Times among other affiliations.
Now, this is not an exhaustive list. I'm just saying that if you start with these sources, you will definitely be on the right track.
And when you're looking for good information, remember the words of Richard Feynman.
The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
Now, I also want to bring in making a decision. This is the other half of the equation for getting better.
It's one thing to have information. It's another thing to make a decision to act on the information you find, and for some people that is the hardest part of it.
And there are definitely trade-offs involved that may be daunting to some. I plan to discuss some of the decisions I've made, and why I made them, but I have to acknowledge that some people will say to me, I could never do that.
Well, every decision has its consequences, and I made my decisions because I preferred one kind of outcome to another.
Now, in my day job, I am a project manager, and we have a saying among project managers failing to plan is planning to fail.
And I think it applies in our personal lives as well. Deciding not to take action means deciding to accept the outcomes that follow.
And I just didn't want that. My father died when he was much younger than I am now, and that was due in part to decisions he made.
I saw that that affected me and my mother and my brothers and sisters. He probably had plans for things he wanted to do in retirement, things he would do with my mother, things he would do with his family.
Well, I have things I want to do with my wonderful wife and my other family members, and I want to give myself every chance to do them.
So, I made my decision to use the best information I could find and change my lifestyle to make it happen.
So, in subsequent episodes, I am going to unpack some of this. We are going to take a look at how you evaluate medical studies, at what kinds of decisions you can make that might help you to have a better life, and what the trade-offs are, and maybe we get a little bit of a discussion going.
But for now, this is Ahuka for Hecker Public Radio. I'm going to sign off and remind everyone as I always do to support free software. Bye-bye.
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