How to talk to your doctor

You go in, and he's rushed, and you're confused, and you forget to ask the question you came in with. I've finished an exam without knowing the diagnosis and had to ask.

The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has created a website to help.

Patients talking to the doctor about a proposed surgery, for example, are prompted to ask how long it will take to recover. The site offers tips on what to do before, during and after medical visits, such as calling the doctor if there are any side effects. The site includes an interactive "Question Builder."

Here are some typical questions to ask at a checkup.

• What is my diagnosis?
• What are my treatment options? What are the benefits of each option? What are the side effects?
• Will I need a test? What is the test for? What will the results tell me?
• What will the medicine you are prescribing do? How do I take it? Are there any side effects?
• Why do I need surgery? Are there other ways to treat my condition? How often do you perform this surgery?
• Do I need to change my daily routine?

Read more in The Wall Street Journal here.

Let the games begin

Online gamers have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV. Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

Foldit, developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, is a video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.

To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks. Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). 

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release. "The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

Hey kids, next time your parents get crazy about you playing video games ...

Have a bowl of cereal for dinner

Dinner's ready!

Bill Phillips, the editor of MensHealth.com, likes a bowl of cereal with bananas for dinner. It wouldn't be bad for the rest of us either. Here's why.

Eat a bowl of 100 percent B12-boosted cereal and milk every morning and you'll be covered for B12, he writes, and that vitamin is essential if you don't want to lose brain matter as you age. Acid-blocking drugs may be depriving you of as much B12 as you need.

The banana offers potassium -- without this essential mineral, your heart couldn't beat, your muscles wouldn't contract, and your brain couldn't comprehend this sentence. Why? Potassium helps your cells use glucose for energy. A banana offers 400 mg of the 4,700 mgs a young man needs each day.

The milk offers iodine, and you probably don't get what you need from salt. However, iodine can also be found in a nearly sodium-free source: milk. Animal feed is fortified with the element, meaning it travels from cows to your cereal bowl. Not a milk lover? Eat at least one serving of eggs or yogurt a day; both are good sources of iodine.

Good news for your mice

Will live longer than you.

Keep them on that little treadmill.

Researchers have found one more reason to exercise: working out triggers influential stem cells to become bone instead of fat, improving overall health by boosting the body's capacity to make blood. The body's mesenchymal stem cells are most likely to become fat or bone, depending on which path they follow. Aerobic exercise triggers those cells to become bone more often than fat. In sedentary mice, the same stem cells were more likely to become fat, impairing blood production in the marrow cavities of bones.

I didn't know I had mesenchymal stem cells. Maybe that explains that annoying itch.

"The interesting thing was that a modest exercise program was able to significantly increase blood cells in the marrow and in circulation," says one of the researchers. "What we're suggesting is that exercise is a potent stimulus -- enough of a stimulus to actually trigger a switch in these mesenchymal stem cells."

Can someone hand me the remote?

Miracles and wonders: new ears, new hearts

Vincent, call your office.

Yes, there's good news out there: breakthroughs in the world of medicine:

People in need of surgery to repair or reconstruct damaged cartilage could soon find help in an unlikely place -- their ears. Stem cells from human ears have successfully been grown into chunks of cartilage that could replace the synthetic materials currently used in surgery.

Stem cell researchers are trying to grow spare parts for the human heart that may be ready for tests on people within five years. Scientists have already made basic heart muscle from stem cells, but the team wants to refine it so it can replace any part damaged in heart attacks, and to recreate the natural pacemaker, where the heartbeat originates.

In a bit of high-tech recycling, researchers have developed an innovative way to identify already-approved drugs that may work against diseases they weren't designed to combat. The scientists have also demonstrated how a couple of such repurposed drugs may have benefits in treating two conditions, inflammatory bowel disease and lung cancer. The researchers found that topiramate, a drug used in epilepsy, might work on inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Another hit suggested that cimetidine, an ulcer drug, might be effective in lung cancer. They then tested the two generic drugs in small studies using animal models of the diseases. In the bowel-disease study, the drug reduced symptoms, and in the lung-cancer paper, the drug was found to slow tumor growth.

Researchers have found a protein normally involved in blood pressure regulation in a surprising place: tucked within the little "power plants" of cells, the mitochondria. The quantity of this protein appears to decrease with age, but treating older mice with the blood pressure medication losartan can increase protein numbers to youthful levels, decreasing both blood pressure and cellular energy usage. The researchers say these findings may lead to new treatments for mitochondrial–specific, age-related diseases, such as diabetes, hearing loss, frailty and Parkinson's disease.

A biomedical engineer has developed a lab-on-a-chip that can perform complex laboratory assays, and do so with such simplicity that these tests can be carried out in the most remote regions of the world. It requires only a tiny finger prick of blood, effective even for a newborn, and gives results in less than 15 minutes. This technology significantly reduces the time between testing and treating. New low-cost diagnostics like the mChip could revolutionize medical care around the world.

Roughly the time you spend watching TV commercials

Less than 15 minutes.

A study of more then 400,000 Taiwanese concludes that just 15 minutes of light exercise a day will extend your pathetic life by three years.

Your risk of dying decreases four percent for each additional 15 minutes of exercise a day.

Light exercise includes: falling out of bed, reaching for the remote, putting on your socks ... wait, I just made that up.

"Exercising at very light levels reduced deaths from any cause by 14 percent," said study senior author Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Epidemiology. "The benefits of exercise appear to be significant even without reaching the recommended 150 minutes per week based on results of previous research."

So if you don't want to die, get out there and do something.

Tat tech: skin-deep electronics

This is just weird.

It may soon be possible to wear your computer or mobile phone under your sleeve, with the invention of an ultra-thin and flexible electronic circuit that can be stuck to the skin like a temporary tattoo, The Independent reports.

The devices, which are almost invisible, can perform just as well as more conventional electronic machines but without the need for wires or bulky power supplies, scientists said. The circuit is about the size of a postage stamp, is thinner than a human hair and sticks to the skin by natural electrostatic forces rather than glue.

Try not to scratch.

What can you do with this thing?

A simple stick-on circuit can monitor a person's heart rate and muscle movements as well as conventional medical monitors, but with the benefit of being weightless and almost completely undetectable. Scientists said it may also be possible to build a circuit for detecting throat movements around the larynx in order to transmit the information wirelessly as a way of recording a person's speech, even if they are not making any discernible sounds.

Tests have already shown that such a system can be used to control a voice-activated computer game, and one suggestion is that a stick-on voicebox circuit could be used in covert police operations where it might be too dangerous to speak into a radio transmitter.

This could give a whole new meaning to a hickey