Health and Wealthness is a podcast where your hosts, Emily Weigel and Hanaa Khan discuss pressing and trending topics about health and wealth that everyone should know about. Our first four episodes focus on the opioid crisis. Both the science and healthcare sides. We then go on to talk about burnout and mental health in a conversational episode.

Healthcare is delivered in many ways across the world. Most countries use one of the four healthcare models, but the United States uses parts of the four models. This leads to issues for patients as they may not know what their insurance plans cover. Providers also have issues with health insurance in getting coverage for their patients. With both patients and providers having issues with insurances, insurance companies have not taken an action to help alleviate some of the issues that everyone faces. Providers are also faced with issues of burnout as they have a lot to do, and not enough time or energy to complete everything. This effects the quality of healthcare that is delivered to their patients as well as when a person can see a provider as there are not enough doctors and nurses to cover the case load all of the time. All in all, providers, insurance companies, and patients need to work together to help fix some of the issues with healthcare to be able to move towards a better healthcare model for all.

Our current understanding of the mitochondrial genome was revolutionized in 2015 with the discovery of short open reading frames (sORFs) that produced protein products called mitochondrial-derived peptides (MDPs). Interestingly, unlike other proteins produced by the organelle, these MDPs are not directly involved in the electron transport chain but rather serve the role of metabolic regulators. In particular, one of these peptides called MOTS-c has been shown to regulate glucose and fat metabolism in an AMPK-dependent manner. With its capacity to enter the mitochondria and impact gene expression, MOTS-c has also displayed the ability to increase aerobic exercise performance by triggering elevated synthesis of the HO-1 antioxidant. Overall these findings position MOTS-c as a promising treatment for metabolic diseases as well as a potential dietary supplement to boost ATP availability.