ICU patients and Vitamin D deficiency-new NEJM study

New New England Journal of Medicine article on relation between outcomes in critial care units and Vit D status at entry. "Vitamin D Deficiency in Critically Ill Patients,".
Correlation or Causation? Very sick patients in ICUs do worse when they are vitamin D deficient. But is Vit D deficiency a cause of bad outcomes or a marker of worse illness? That is the question at this point. Would that we had an NIH that would fund large-scale controlled trials Vitamin D supplementation as preventive and therapy. But, Vit D is cheap and a commodity, so there's no commercial interest to push for studies or to fund them.
In the meantime, knowing your Vit D status and supplementing to get it up into the mid-range of normal -- say, shoot for 50 -- cannot hurt.

How to contact your Congressman or Senator

We're all getting a little more skeptical and a little more active in wanting our citizen voices heard. (I know that I am since the junta composed of Paulson/Bernanke/Summers/Geithner started "tinkering" with the system they allowed to break.) So, here are directions for contacting your Senator or Rep on whatever issue. It'll be here on my blog, easily found by clicking the label "Citizen Portals" whenever you need it.
To find out who your congressman is, and to write him/her, go to: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
To contact your Senator, go to the US Senate Home Page, and plug in your state's name in the upper right hand corner

Follow the Swine Flu Map in almost real time

One of my favorite bird flu sites, from Recombinomics, is posting a very up to date google map showing where the outbreaks are occurring worldwide. Here is the Recombinomics Swine Flu Map for today. Also, Dr. Niman, CEO of Recombinomics, has a good on-line press conference, (esp. see 18 minutes-19 minutes for who's really at risk-- the healthy young adults-- mainly because of their robust immune systems.)
And, remember your 2000 IU of D3 today! Vit D IS A HORMONE THAT ACTS AS AN IMMUNE MODULATOR. See my post of 2 days ago for info on flu and Vit D.

Mortgage Bankruptcy Cram-down bill coming up for Senate Vote

Making primary residence mortgages subject to Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a proposal that's been hanging around since 2007, so says Credit Slips, an interesting blogger page on credits and bankruptcies. It's called "Cram-down" cause bankruptcy judges can force the lenders to take lower payments while the homeowner stays in the house. I believe this is on balance a good proposal -- mainly because it will scare lenders in the future from writing ridiculous mortgages for people who obviously couldn't afford them. It might also allow some (perhaps undeserving, but otherwise homeless) borrowers to stay in their houses and avoid foreclosure. So, I say go for it. They'll still be bankrupt and that's not pretty. But they won't be trashing the neighborhood on the way out.
Credit Slips says that the Congress House of Reps passed a bill in March, and now the Senate is poised to vote on it. Read the Credit Slips article, "Mortgage Modification Vote in the Senate" , which urges us to contact our senators about the vote. As a resident of the Socialist state of Maryland, I don't have to do that.. my Senators are on the leftist side of everything, even when I'm not. But, your voice might matter. If you vote in Nebraska (Ben Nelson, Dem), or Montana (John Tester, Dem), or if you give money to democratic senatorial committees (I don't...just mentioning it), or if you live in a state with a Republican senator, you should let them know what you're thinking.
To contact your Senator, go to the US Senate Home Page, and plug in your state's name in the upper right hand corner. Then let your senator know what you think about the mortgage cram-down provision. Most important, ask your senator to explain to you just what his/her position is on this issue. Even if he/she's against it, it would be good to ask him/her to tell you why. And, it's fun. Watch them squirm.

Swine flu -- time to up your Vitamin D dose

We're at the end of a long winter and cold spring, so our vitamin D stores are probably low. Now, along comes that "worrisome" (to quote CDC) swine flu out of Mexico. See University of Minnesota's CIDRAP for daily updates on current status. It won't be long -- another week at most -- before we find out just how virulent that influenza virus is. And it won't take long to spread, given all the wonders of globalization. So, now is the time to douse yourself with sunlight EVERY DAY for at least 15 minutes (assuming you can be in shorts and sleeveless), and if that isn't available to you, to take D3 supplements. I'm no doctor, but some are recommending 1000 IU or 2000 IU a day. The Vitamin D Council's John Cannell, MD wrote a very readable article about the evidence relating influenza to Vitamin D deficiency in 2006. It gives some guidance on dosage, both as a daily preventive, and as a supportive approach to limiting flu symptoms. Over the short run (several months), these doses are generally agreed to be benign.
For a recent update on the link between Vitamin D and colds and flu, see Scientific American's latest article, "Vitamin D deficiency linked to more colds and flu," summarizing the study recently announced by the Massachusetts General Hospital, and highlighted in my Jan 25 post on the subject.

What we taxpayers now own -- Our Bailout dollars at work

ProPublica, the new web-based investigative journalism site, has posted a list of bailout recipients. It's fun to know how well diversified we are within the financial sector. Will it help when we call up Citimortgage, or SunTrust to refinance our mortgage to mention, ahem, that we are, you know, a major shareholder?

Obama team's Financial Disclosure forms -at your disposal

Propublica.org is a great web-based news reporting organization, designed to pick up on investigative reporting where the print papers are dropping the ball (due to lack of funds.) It's free, it's interesting. It would be good to have this on your desktop. In the meantime, I'll tag (i.e., label -- see the list of labels in the left column) it as another one of those "Citizen Portals" posts of mine, so you can always find this reference to it easily.
Today's entry of note is a link to the Obama team's Financial Disclosure forms. These are always fun, in the tradition of a financial voyeur.

Accountants change reporting rules - stock market soars!

Here's a modest proposal from another accounting professor, Edward Ketz, for fixing the economic slump. It's in keeping with what the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) just did. Tell it like it isn't, and investors will swoon with excitement. Thanks to Paretta for this entry into the hall of fame for stimulus ideas.
Prof. Paretta's latest words of wisdom? Cash flows don't lie. Follow the cash flows. I'm trying to do that, but gosh, it's hard to know what all those "debt vehicles" are which gave Verizon lots & lots of cash in 2008. (Won't they have to pay it back some day?) Please, Paretta, help!

Two great websites for flexing our citizenship muscles

One of my hopes for this blog is that it'll be a repository for good directions on how to make our voices heard about public issues -- no more are we to be sheep to the slaughter! To that end, here are two sites we should keep in mind.

• Check out the salaries and financial disclosure forms of members of congress & senior staff on the hill at http://legistorm.com/. You'll be surprised by what these folks own and what & who they owe. Warning, however.. my registration didn't work, so either the site rejected me (truly a worthy site), or it crashed due to too much interest after it was written up this a.m. in Washington Post, or it was shut down by nefarious forces who did not want this public information made easily available to the public. Try it in a few days. One worry -- the site builder may charge for access in the future. Too bad. What a great resource. (I had to fill out these forms when I worked at OTA and CBO. It was one reason I never invested in health care companies, or even in health care mutual funds, and sold some stock I inherited of health care co's as if they were hot potatoes. So, disclosure helped keep me uncorrupted by financial interest. Thank you, disclosure.) Update as of Friday p.m. - I got into the site, but couldn't have fun looking up the salaries of my former CBO co-workers because CBO doesn't seem to be included! Way to go, CBO.
• Become a member of IRS's Taxpayer Advocacy Panel & tell them how they can improve IRS service. You'll have to be squeaky clean when it comes to your own taxes and subject yourself to an FBI criminal background check...well, hey, that means there's plenty of room on the panel for new members. It could be fun for the right "active retiree" who predates the marijuana generation.