[Tempting offer] New product idea

Ya, my doc once said, it wasn't such a concern how long I lived, just that he keeps me healthy while I'm living. I ended up with a couple of herniated disc 3 yrs ago. Sciatic pain, back pain, even some depression related to it. My mental state for a couple of those years was, if I can just work till I'm 60 Yrs old, I'll retire then. I still have symptoms, But it is not on my mind from when I wake up till I'm asleep, LIKE IT WAS. I've now stretched my retirement thinking to 62 yrs old :-) That's progress!! If the stock market fumbles, I might be forced to 66yrs, 10 mo. I'm starting to think, what do I want to do, when I don't need to work. I need to start them now, so I don't just set around watching tv. I have a college 2 miles from home, so if I road my bike to an interesting class, I'd kill to birds with one stone. As I student I get access to the pool. Hmm. Just thinkin. Mikek

excitement condition and quiet condition. I think engineering skill and advanced technology is really needed.

I'm 73 >:-} And mine was 100/54 at the Doctor's office this morning (in for an inflamed tendon, steroid shot). I asked about my very low BP, and the Doc said it was great, no problem! ...Jim Thompson

As an off-off-topic diversion, the following source seems to feel that our current approach of controlling cholesterol levels may not be the panacea that it is often touted as being (cue Firesign Theater's "Everything You Know Is Wrong!" ):

Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

Enjoy...

Frank McKenney

Maybe not enjoy:

Hint: Always check quackwatch and various urban legend sites before redistributing such claims. I've been fooled far too often for comfort (including this one).

Yep. That's the correct approach. Among other things, I fix computahs for two local convalescent hospitals. That's where the survivors of medical failures end up. It takes me about an hour of just walking around to recover from a seriously depressing visit. My father spent about 9 years on one due to a severe stroke. If I had a genuine goal in life, it would to stay healthy and avoid ending up in a convalescent hospital.

Retire? Whazzat? Look around this newsgroup and you'll find a substantial number of people that are well past retirement age, yet are still working. I'm 65 for example. Scrounge around your acquaintances and see how many older people are VOLUNTARILY retired. In my circle of friends, it's very very few. It's not that Obama and friends have made it difficult to retire. It's that retirement is seriously boring, tends to kill, and the wives usually don't want hubby hanging around the house anyway. One of my friends retired from Lockheed after his 2rd heart attack at about 60, and then spent the next 20 years starting and selling three companies in his garage.

I got Medicare at 65, but won't collect socialist security until 66. The problem is that if I want to receive Medicare Part B, it costs me $1200 for the extra year of coverage. After 66, it's taken out of my socialist security payments.

I think you should do the math before deciding if you want to bail out at 62 or 66. It works both ways. At age 62, the mother of a friend was chronically ill. It was assumed that she would not live much longer and would probably not make it past 66. So, they opted for early retirement. She just died at 79 years old. Early retirement was a huge financial mistake for her. You might want to estimate your life span before making the decision.

Incidentally, as long as you're gainfully employed or generating revenue, you can probably afford to risk both the principle and the interest on investments, such as investing in the stock market. However, after you retire, and end up on a fixed income, that incidentally is usually not inflation adjusted, you will find it best not to risk the principle or you may end up destitute with no means of replacing the principle.

Most of my older friends have built huge families and end up the de facto baby sitter for the grand brats.

That might work. Got to the college and look around. See any students your age? If not, ask yourself why.

Suggestion: Design some gadget that you can build at home. Start a small company. Don't get any partners or your life will be miserable. Don't grow the company beyond the time and money you're willing to put into it. That will keep you out of trouble, generate some revenue, and allow you to deduct those "business" trips to Hawaii.

(A new record. I don't think I've ever gone this far off topic.)

One fine day, Jeff Liebermann typed thus:

There is a monitor out there, Medwave makes it. It measures blood pressure using a surface pressure transducer located over the radial artery in the wrist. It works - to a degree - and is fairly accurate, but it is easily confused by motion artifacts, and the transducer is quite fragile. The biggest problem it has is the fact that the placement of the transducer is very critical - else you don't get any reading at all. It has not been commercially viable despite being on the market in one form or another for over 15 years.

Just my $.02 worth... Tom

Nifty. I hadn't seen those. Digging... Ummm... doesn't look very "portable" to me.

The Medwave domain appears to be gone: Last usable archived web page was in May 2010 which shows a very different product line from before: Looks like the stock is not dead, but is trading for $0.0011/share. Kinda looks like they're gone, but I couldn't find any news reports on their demise.

Ouch. Color me Red with Rue.

( Brief pause to bang head against wall multiple times. )

Thank you for catching that.

Frank

Yes, but it feels so good when you stop banging your head against the wall. You got me with this one as it really sounds believable. For me, it's believable because I want to believe it. The problem is that there is little or no research to backup any of the claims.

It gets worse when I do medical research online. I had three occasions to do that when major surgeries and medical tourism looked like real possibilities. The problem was that I didn't understand most of the medical terminology and found much of what I did understand to be useless because of statistical juggling, self selected samples, and creative conclusions.

Here's how it works:

- A company or organization sponsors research into something they're selling or pushing.

- The research is done by various professional research organizations (including hospitals and universities) who use research as a revenue source.

- The studies are performed with the best scientific methods and equipment that can be spent before the sponsors get irritated. Data is collected and tested for statistical validity. So far so good.

- Here's where things go awry. The sponsor is not going to look kindly on any research organization that produces a negative result for their product. If they're somewhat honest, they'll allow publication of the negative results, and then sponsor a different research organization, that is presumably less honest, until they obtain their desired results. However, that's expensive, and there's a better way.

- Nobody of any importance reads the data and the statistics. All that the media and pundits read are the conclusions and summaries. So, when the report is produced, instead of the conclusion and summary following the data, it's usually exactly what the sponsor wants to see. Anyone that's really interested can dig into the data and draw their own conclusions.

- Every few years, the research organizations get hungry and produce a "survey of existing research", which usually highlights the statistical anomalies and warped conclusions that they themselves had produced. This is not a temporary fit of a guilty conscience, but rather a solicitation for more research funding. Pay us, or we'll tell everyone how it really works. All such reports end with the tradition tag line "More research is necessary".

- Collecting data is expensive. Writing reports is not. It's common for multiple individuals to use the same raw data to produce radically different conclusions in seperate reports.

- We're not done yet. Independent pill, potion, process, and procedure pushers cannot afford to hire expensive professional research organizations. So, they do their own research and write their own reports, usually cloning the style of professional reports. Copious references and footnotes are included to give it the smell of authenticity. The problem is that the claims made in the report usually don't agree with the results found in the references and footnotes. Very few people bother to check the citations and usually assume that they must be misreading them when it looks like the authors claims are the opposite of the cited research.

- There are other research report horrors but these will suffice for now.

So, whom do you trust when reading medical research reports online? Research sponsored by universities is tolerable. US government sponsored studies tend to be adjusted for the benefit of political contributors. European studies seem to be better controlled. US industry research is totally corrupted. Anything produced by an individual, company, or group that is selling or promoting something are the worst. In the event of multiple divergent reported conclusions, the latest one is usually the most accurate.

I hope this helps.