A Word a Day Keeps a Dim Mind at Bay

Paula Dean?!?!

2012-01-18T05:46:00.000-08:00

Cooking star Paula Dean has told the world that she has been fighting diabetes for the past 3 years. Having seen her cooking show it is not a shock that she has type 2 diabetes. But what made me upset and confused is how she told the interviewer that she did not blame her cooking style on her disease. She states she has been cooking that way for years.

From a medical stand that is exactly how one develops type 2 diabetes, you just don't have 1 super bad meal and the BOOM, you have type 2 diabetes. It develops over time from a long history of poor eating habits. I think she needs more basic information before she becomes a spokes person for this issue.

Honestly in Nursing

2012-01-16T23:51:00.000-08:00

This post is about what happens behind the scenes while taking care of patients

1. When we see you (the patient) laughing and talking to family and friends and then state you are 10/10 pain, we (nurses) don't believe you. We will still medicate you with pain medication, but we are documenting your outward appearance, and recommend to the MD's to discontinue the hard narcotics.

2. We are the ones that make sure the MD's don't make mistakes that kill you. So if some time goes by after the doctor talks to you about starting a medication it is the nurses that make sure it is in your best interest. So that is one reason why you may not get your medications right on time.

3. We cant write medication orders but we do... As a night nurse when we need a medication for XYZ problem, we have to call the MD for a order. But this doctor is not functioning at maximum capacity when being woken up at 3am with a complicated problem. So it is a unwritten understanding that we basically tell the MD what orders we want and why and 99% of the time he/she will say that's fine.

4. We do laugh at you behind your back.....Sorry but we have a job that can be very emotionally draining and humor is a cooping mechanism. We will treat you with the utmost respect and dignity while with you, but sometimes you (the patient) say or do something that is really funny. And we share these stories with other nurse, to escape from the very sad stories we sometimes have to deal with. So your funny situation or phrase is keeping us healthy....So thank you :)

More to come. :)

Back to Blogging

2012-01-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

Hello again everyone, It has been a while since I last posted... Sorry for the delay

So in terms of what I have been doing with my time, I have completed my BSN in Nursing. I am now a fully qualified nurse. Also I am working at the top hospital in a major city as a Neuro/Tele nurse. That means I deal mostly with problems with the brain and heart.

In terms of the path of my blog, I will still be posting interesting medical and non-medical words to sharpen your mind, but I will also be posting some of my nursing stories adventures, with names changed to insure confidentiality.

I hope you enjoy....... :)

You know your a Nurse when...

2010-10-30T11:21:00.001-07:00

ODE TO A NURSE.

You believe that every patient needs TLC: Temazepam, Lorazepam and Clonazepam.

You would like to meet the inventor of the nurse buzzer system- some night- in a dark alley.

You believe not all patient's are annoying- some are unconscious.

Your sense of humour gets more warped each year.

Your kids get their presents in TED stockings and hospital pillowcases, and their presents are secured with micropore tape.

You know the phone number of every late night food delivery place by heart.

Almost everything can seem funny- eventually.

When asked by the doctor what colour the patient's diarrhoea is, you show them your shoes. If it missed your shoes, you use the well known "poo curry colour scale"- ranging from chicken korma to spinach vindaloo.

You can identify different causes of diarrhoea by the smell of it.

Everytime you walk you make a jingling noise because of all the keys, scissors and clamps in your pocket.

You can tell the pharmacist more about the medication they are dispensing than they know.

You use bladder lavage bags to drip water onto your plants when you're on holiday.

You refuse to watch Casualty because it's too much like the real thing and it triggers flashbacks. Or your family refuses to let you watch Casualty because you spend the whole time correcting everyone and pointing out upside down x-rays.

You avoid answering the phone on your day off in case anyone from the hospital is trying to call and beg you to work.

You've been telling stories about work in a restaurant and made someone at another table throw up.

You notice that you are using even more 4 letter words than you did before you started nursing.

You've seriously considered catheterising your children before a long car journey.

Everytime someone asks you for a pen, you can find at least 4 of them on you. Most of them have the names of laxatives on them.

You don't get excited about blood- unless it's your own.

You live by the motto "To be right is only half the battle. To convince the doctor is more difficult".

You've blasted your christmas turkey with a 50ml syringe.

You've told a confused patient that your name was that of your co-worker- and to shout it if they need help.

Eating crisps out of a clean sick bowl is perfectly normal.

Your bladder can expand to the size of a water tank.

When checking the level of a patient's orientation, you aren't sure of the day yourself. Or, if nightshift, the month.

You find yourself checking out other customers veins in supermarket queues.

You can sleep soundly at the hospital cafeteria table on your dinner break and are not embarrassed when you wake up.

You avoid un-healthy looking people in the shopping centre for fear that they will drop dead near you and you'll have to do CPR on your day off.

You throw a farewell buffet for a co-worker and use a bed sheet for a table-cloth and bed pans to hold the nacho's.

You often stay awake for 24+ hours at a time when you work nights and realise you don't need alcohol or drugs to hallucinate- just lack of sleep.

You pull over in a lay-by after working nights because you are too tired to drive home and wake up to someone knocking on your window thinking you've had a stroke because you're passed out in your car and are drooling.

Your finger has gone into places you never thought possible.

You've seen more penis' than any prostitute.

You've sworn to have "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" tattooed on your chest. Soon!!

If you are not a nurse and have been sent this by a friend who is, it's just to help you understand our mindset and questionable mental state!!

Did you hear about the nurse who died and went straight to hell?? It took her 2 weeks to realise she wasn't at work!!

Bromoderma

2010-10-30T11:16:00.001-07:00

Bromoderma: A skin eruption brought on by chronic exposure to bromine. Essentially an allergic reaction to bromine. There are diverse sources of bromine exposure including brominated vegetable oil, a commonly used emulsifier and flavor carrier in food products. Bromoderma is a form of bromism

Focal gigantism

2009-07-07T11:14:00.001-07:00

Focal gigantism: 1. The excessive growth of a specific body part such as a hand or foot, as with increased blood supply to that part. 2. The excessive growth of a combination of particular body parts, as is characteristic of a congenital malformation syndrome called the Wiedemann-Beckwith syndrome.

Focal gigantism may occur before or after the bones fuse. If it occurs afterwards, it causes disfigurement, as in acromegaly. Surgery for mass reduction may sometimes improve function.

Dengue shock syndrome

2009-06-24T11:49:00.001-07:00

Dengue shock syndrome: A syndrome due to the dengue virus that tends to affect children under 10, causing abdominal pain, hemorrhage (bleeding) and circulatory collapse (shock). Known also as dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), it starts abruptly with high continuous fever and headache plus respiratory and intestinal symptoms with sore throat, cough, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Shock occurs after 2 to 6 days with sudden collapse, cool clammy extremities, weak thready pulse, and blueness around the mouth (circumoral cyanosis). There is bleeding with easy bruising, blood spots in the skin (petechiae), spitting up blood (hematemesis), blood in the stool (melena), bleeding gums and nosebleeds (epistaxis). Pneumonia and heart inflammation (myocarditis) may be present. The mortality is appreciable ranging from 6 to 30%. Most deaths occur in children. Infants under a year of age are especially at risk of death. It is also called Philippine or Southeast Asian hemorrhagic fever.

Cervical dysplasia

2009-06-03T12:17:00.001-07:00

Cervical dysplasia: Changes from normal in the cells lining the cervix of the uterus. Cervical dysplasia involves a sequence of cellular changes from mild to severe that are not yet cancerous but constitute the prelude to cervical cancer.

The diagnosis of cervical dysplasia is made from the PAP smear. As a rule, cervical dysplasia is found in no more than 5% of PAP smears. The incidence peaks in women 25 to 35 years of age. Risk factors include multiple sexual partners, the early onset of sexual activity (before age 18), early childbearing (before age 16) and a history of an STD (a sexually transmitted disease such as chlamydia, genital warts gonorrhea, genital herpes, and HIV). In a woman with HIV, the speed of changes in cervical dysplasia is accelerated.

The treatment depends on the degree of dysplasia. It may include cryotherapy (freezing the area) and conization (removal of a cone of tissue from the cervix). The aim is to prevent full-fledged cervical cancer.

Leucovorin

2009-04-17T12:27:00.001-07:00

Leucovorin: Folinic acid, the active form of folic acid in the body. Used as an antidote to protect normal cells from high doses of the anticancer drug methotrexate and to increase the antitumor effects of fluorouracil (5-FU) and tegafur-uracil. Also used to prevent or treat anemia due to folic acid deficiency. Also known as citrovorum factor and Wellcovorin.

Familial adenomatous polyposis

2009-04-06T15:27:00.001-07:00

nFamilial adenomatous polyposis: Abbreviated FAP. A syndrome characterized by the formation of thousands of polyps in the colon and rectum with colorectal cancer the inevitable consequence. Polyps can also occur in the stomach, duodenum and the terminal ileum.

The polyps most often begin to form at puberty. And colon cancer usually occurs 10 to 15 years thereafter. The average age of diagnosis of familial polyposis is 25 years of age, with cancers developing at age 20 to 30. However, cancers may arise anywhere from late childhood to the sixties.

The syndrome is an autosomal dominant disorder with high penetrance and highly variable expressivity. A person with the disease thus has a 50% chance of passing the gene on to each of their children. Most people who receive the gene almost always manifest the disease although the expression of the disease can vary markedly from person to person.

The gene that is mutated in this disorder, symbolized APC for adenomatous polyposis coli, has been characterized and its protein identified. A variety of mutations in the APC gene have also been identified. The APC gene maps to chromosome 5 in region 5q21-q22.

Gardner syndrome (with polyps of the colon, extra bowel tumors, especially osteomas, and a rather characteristic abnormality of the retina of the eye) is now known not to be a wholly different disease but rather to be a variant of FAP, caused by a mutation in the APC gene.

Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) has also been called multiple polyposis of the colon, hereditary polyposis coli, familial multiple polyposis, familial polyposis of the colon (FPC) and adenomatous polyposis coli. The designation familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) is most often used today, based in part on the appreciation that the polyps are not confined to the colon.

Boomeritis

2009-04-02T10:51:00.001-07:00

Boomeritis: Injuries to older amateur athletes, especially those who are part of the Baby Boom, born when there was a marked rise in the birthrate following the end of World War II in 1945. As the Baby Boom generation began to turn 40 and 50, there was a veritable explosion of bone and joint aches, pains, injuries, and ailments -- boomeritis. The term was coined by Dr. Nicholas A DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1999.

To avoid boomeritis, measures include balancing fitness routines, cross-training to alleviate stress by not using the same muscles repeatedly, and preparing oneself properly for a sporting event.

Von Willebrand disease

2009-03-31T08:16:00.001-07:00

Von Willebrand disease: An inherited bleeding disorder in which a clotting protein called von Willebrand factor is deficient or defective. Von Willebrand factor is made by cells lining the wall of blood vessels. When vessels are damaged, platelets normally clump at the site of the injury. Von Willebrand factor acts as glue to help the platelets clump. Von Willebrand factor is also a carrier of clotting factor VIII, another protein that helps the blood to clot.

Von Willebrand disease is the most common inherited bleeding disorder. It occurs in about 1 in every 100 to 1,000 people. There are three major types of von Willebrand disease:

Type 1 -- the mildest and most common form of the disease. There is a low level of von Willebrand factor. Levels of factor VIII may also be lower than normal.
Type 2 -- a mild-to-moderate form of the disease. Von Willebrand factor does not work as it should. Type 2 is divided into types 2A, 2B, and 2C.
Type 3: -- the most severe form of the disease and very rare. Von Willebrand factor is absent and factor VIII is low.

All three types of von Willebrand disease affect both males and females. Types 1 and Type 2A and 2B are inherited in an autosomal dominant manner while Type 2C and Type 3 are inherited in an autosomal recessive manner.

The symptoms of Types 1 and 2 are mild-to-moderate bleeding including easy bruising, nosebleeds, bleeding from the gums after a dental procedure, heavy menstrual bleeding in women, blood in the stool and urine, and excessive bleeding after a cut or other accident or after surgery. Heavy menstrual bleeding is the most common symptom in women and can lead to iron deficiency anemia. Patients with Type 3 disease bleed into soft tissues and joints and have severe bleeding episodes for no apparent reason.

Von Willebrand disease is usually mild and often does not require treatment. Treatment may only be needed after a surgery, tooth extraction, or an accident. For those who need treatment, one or more of the following may be used: medication to increase the production of the von Willebrand factor; medication to prevent breakdown of clots; medication to control heavy menstrual bleeding in women; and injection of clotting factor concentrates (containing von Willebrand factor and factor VIII). Specific treatments for von Willebrand disease include:

Desmopressin (DDAVP) -- a synthetic hormone usually given by injection or nasal spray. It works by making the body produce more von Willebrand factor, which also increases the level of factor VIII activity. DDAVP is effective in treating most patients with Type 1 disease and some with Type 2a disease.
Replacement therapy -- the injection of a concentrate of von Willebrand factor and factor VIII.
Oral contraceptives -- can help women who have heavy menstrual bleeding. The hormones in the pills can increase von Willebrand factor and factor VIII activity.
Antifibrinolytic drugs -- to prevent the breakdown of clotting factors in the blood. They are used mostly to stop bleeding following minor surgery, tooth extraction, or an injury.
Fibrin glue -- medicine placed directly on a wound to stop the bleeding.

The disease is named for the Finnish internist Erik Adolf von Willebrand (1870-1949). In 1925 von Willebrand saw as a 5-year-old patient from the Åland Islands in the Sea of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden. Four of her siblings had died from bleeding at an early age and both her mother and father came from families with histories of bleeding. Von Willebrand went to the Åland Islands and found 23 of 66 family members had bleeding problems. In his report of the family in 1926, Willebrand concluded that this was an unknown form of hemophilia. He called it pseudohemophilia. It is also known as vascular hemophilia. Other synonyms include angiohemophilia, constitutional thrombopathy, Minot-Von Willebrand disease, and Willebrand-Juergens disease.

Palliation

2009-03-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

Palliation: To palliate a disease is to treat it partially and insofar as possible, but not cure it completely. Palliation cloaks a disease.

To take a case, a 91-year-old man was found to have a tumor in his lung. He did not have chest surgery because of his age and the general rule that cancer moves more slowly with age. Instead, he had radiotherapy of the tumor: palliation, to slow the progression of local disease, as opposed to a cure.

The Latin "pallium" referred to a type of cloak in ancient Greece and Rome and, later, to a white woolen band with pendants in front and back worn by the pope or an archbishop as a symbol of full episcopal authority. Pallium was modified to form "palliate," an adjective meaning "cloaked" or "concealed" and a verb meaning "to cloak," "to cloth," or "to shelter." Today "palliation" implies the disguising or concealing of badness or evil and suggests the alleviation of the vile effects of wickedness or illness.

Five Ways to Lower Your Stress

2009-03-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

Feeling frazzled? Here are five ways to help you lower your stress. These come from MSNBC and biochemist Shawn Talbott, author of The Cortisol Connection.

1.The first stress-buster: Music. Mellow tunes can have a calming effect on your brain, especially if you’re highly stressed. In one study, patients who got colonoscopies while listening to music had 66% less of the stress hormone cortisol in their bloodstream than those who were scoped in a quiet room. Another study found that listening to music helped people wind down faster at bedtime, and fall asleep quicker than watching TV.

2.Hit the sack early – or take a nap. When you get six hours of sleep instead of the recommended eight hours, your body pumps out 50% more stress hormones all day. Getting a full night’s sleep – or taking a catnap – can bring your cortisol levels right back to normal.

3.Also, drink black tea. The polyphenols and flavonoids in black tea help your body shake off stress more quickly. In a study in England, when volunteers were exposed to stress, the stress hormones of black tea drinkers returned to normal within an hour. However, those who drank fake tea took four hours to get back to normal.

4.Another way to de-stress: Chew gum. Just moving the muscles in your jaw instantly defuses tension. Studies show that gum-chewers are more alert and pump out 15% fewer stress hormones than their gum-deprived counterparts. Why? The act of chewing increases blood flow to your brain, and boosts neural activity in the areas tied to energy and focus.

5.One final way to de-stress: Hang out with a funny friend. According to researchers at Loma Linda University, simply anticipating laughter is enough to cut your stress hormone levels nearly in half. If your favorite Tina Fey clone can’t meet you for coffee, you can get almost the same stress-melting effect by popping in a DVD of a funny movie, or your favorite stand-up comic.

Craniosynostosis

2009-03-06T10:08:00.001-08:00

Craniosynostosis: Premature fusion of the cranial sutures (the fibrous joints between the bones of the skull) in an infant, preventing normal growth of the baby's head. Craniosynostosis involving some but not all of the sutures causes an abnormally shaped skull. Premature closure of all of the sutures results in microcephaly (an abnormally small head) which arrests the normal growth and development of the baby's brain and may result in developmental delay and mental retardation. Early detection of the condition is therefore of great importance. Treatment is surgery designed to keep the sutures open.

Craniosynostosis can occur as an isolated abnormality or as part of a syndrome. A number of craniosynostosis syndromes are now known to be due to mutations in the FGFR genes (FGFR = fibroblast growth factor receptor). The FGFR-related craniosynostosis syndromes include established entities (the Apert, Crouzon, and Pfeiffer syndromes) and several newer entities (the Beare-Stevenson, Muenke, and Jackson-Weiss syndromes). All are inherited in an autosomal dominant manner. Affected individuals have a 50% chance of passing the mutant gene to each child. Prenatal testing is available.

Ketoacidosis

2009-03-03T07:59:00.001-08:00

Ketoacidosis: A feature of uncontrolled diabetes mellitus characterized by a combination of ketosis and acidosis. Ketosis is the accumulation of substances called ketone bodies in the blood. Acidosis is increased acidity of the blood.

Symptoms of ketoacidosis include slow, deep breathing with a fruity odor to the breath; confusion; frequent urination (polyuria); poor appetite; and eventually loss of consciousness.

The treatment of ketoacidosis is a matter of urgency and is usually done in a hospital. It may require the administration of intravenous fluids, insulin, and glucose, and the institution of changes in the person's diet.

See also diabetes mellitus and ketone bodies.

Strabismus

2009-02-26T10:48:00.001-08:00

Strabismus: A condition in which the visual axes of the eyes are not parallel and the eyes appear to be looking in different directions. In divergent strabismus, or exotropia, the visual axes diverge. If the visual axes converge, it is called convergent strabismus or esotropia. The danger with strabismus is that the brain cones may come to rely more on one eye than the other and that part of the brain circuitry connected to the less-favored eye fails to develop properly, leading to amblyopia (blindness) in that eye.

The classic treatment for mild-to-moderate strabismus has long been an eyepatch, covering the stronger eye with a patch, forcing the weaker eye to do enough work to catch up. However, eyedrops can work as well as an eyepatch in correcting moderate lazy eye and preventing the development of amblyopia (blindness). Atropine eyedrops are instilled daily in the stronger (dominant) eye. The atropine works by blurring rather than blocking vision in the stronger eye.

Severe strabismus may require surgery. The surgery is designed to increase or decrease the tension of the small muscles outside the eye. (These muscles are called the extraocular eye muscles. The six extraocular eye muscles move the eye in all directions.) When strabismus surgery is needed, the sooner it is done, the better the chance of the child achieving normal binocular vision.

Adults sometimes also need strabismus surgery. This can be done in a standard manner, as in children. Or adjustable suture surgery may be done because scarring from old eye surgery, inflammation from eye muscle disease, or neurological eye weakness makes it difficult to gauge how much tension to take up or let out to straighten the eyes. With adjustable suture surgery, it is possible to adjust the tension of the muscles after the surgery.

Strabismus is also called cast, heterotropia, manifest deviation and squint. The term "strabismus" comes from the Greek "strabismos" = a squinting.

One Alcoholic Drink Per Day Increases Women's Cancer Risk

2009-02-24T15:22:00.001-08:00

Don't women don't have enough to worry about? The economy is a mess. Global warming might leave their children with a wrecked planet. So, what now? Well, that little guilty pleasure -- a glass of wine at the end of the day -- might not to be such a good idea after all.

A new study involving nearly 1.3 million middle-aged British women -- the largest ever to examine whether alcohol increases a woman's risk of cancer -- found that just one glass of chardonnay, a single beer or any other type of alcoholic drink per day poses a danger.

"That's the take-home message," said Naomi E. Allen of the University of Oxford, who led the study being published March 4 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "If you are regularly drinking even one drink per day, that's increasing your risk for cancer."

Understandably, the study might leave many women scratching their heads -- and perhaps needing a drink more than ever -- given all the talk about red wine being something akin to a fountain of youth.

"I thought drinking wine was good for you," said Mirella Romansini, 27, of Chevy Chase, outside Paul's liquor store in Northwest Washington. "Now they are saying it increases your risk for cancer? Yes, I would say I'm surprised."

Romansini is hardly alone. At least half of U.S. women drink sometimes, and even the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the government's official bible on what we should be putting into our mouths, say alcohol can have "beneficial" effects, allowing women up to one drink a day (men get two, of course).

Confused? It turns out the guidelines were never intended to recommend that anyone drink for their health. Yes, it's true that studies have indicated that moderate drinking might cut the risk of heart disease and other ailments. And researchers have identified a substance in red wine (remember resveratrol?) that could offer a host of benefits.

But officials have long worried about sending the wrong message, giving people who should never drink -- young people, pregnant women, those prone to alcoholism -- permission to abuse alcohol. As a result, they have long tried to walk a fine line between acknowledging the possible benefits of alcohol without encouraging people to start drinking or to abuse it. The guidelines were intended to set an upper limit on what might be safe, not a recommended daily dose.

"It's a level of consumption that is generally has been found in scientific studies to be associated with a relatively low risk of harms," said Robert D. Brewer of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But low risk does not mean no risk."

In fact, many previous studies have found that alcohol appears to increase the risk of breast cancer, and that heavy drinking could make men and women prone to other cancers as well. The new study is a large-scale attempt to explore all cancer risks posed by more typical drinking levels and a spectrum of alcoholic beverages.

Allen and her colleagues analyzed data collected by the Million Women Study, which has been gathering detailed information from 1.28 million women ages 50 to 64 since 1996. The researchers examined how much alcohol they reported consuming when they volunteered for the study and again three years later, and examined whether there was any link with the 68,775 cancers they developed over an average of next seven years.

Even among women who consumed as little as 10 grams of alcohol a day on average -- the equivalent of about one drink -- the risk for cancer of the breast, liver and rectum was elevated, the researchers found. Among women who also smoked, the risk of mouth and throat cancer also increased.

Based on the findings, the researchers estimated that about 5 percent of all cancers diagnosed in women each year in the United States is due to low to moderate alcohol consumption. Most are breast cancers, with drinking accounting for 11 percent of cases -- about 20,000 extra cases each year -- the researchers estimated.

In any group of 1,000 U.S. women up to age 75 who consumed an average of one drink a day, the researchers calculated there would be 15 extra cancers; two drinks per day would result in 30 extra cancers and so forth.

The risk appeared the same regardless of whether women drank wine, beer or any other type of alcohol. Allen noted that even less than one drink per day might increase the risk.

"There doesn't seem to be a threshold at which alcohol consumption is safe," she said.

Several researchers noted that the findings were essentially consistent with previous studies, and despite its size the study does have shortcomings. The researchers could not, for example, distinguish between women who drank only one or two drinks every day and those who drank seven drinks all at once. Some researchers worried the findings would unnecessarily frighten women and deprive them of the possible health benefits of an occasional drink.

"We can't use this to scare people away from alcohol," said Eric Rimm of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Allen plans to do another analysis of data from the study to try to determine whether the net risks from cancer outweigh any heart benefits. But others were doubtful.

"Among women, the major cause of death by far during the middle age years is cancer," Michael S. Lauer and Paul Sorlie of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute noted in a editorial accompanying the study. "For this large group, the only reasonable recommendation we can make is there is no clear evidence that alcohol has medical benefits."

As it turns out, the federal government is rewriting its dietary guidelines, including the part about alcohol consumption, and will consider the new study in that process.

"No one study is ever sufficient to make a recommendation," said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who is chairing the committee revising the guidelines. "But it will be added to the body of literature that will be reviewed."

In the meantime, several experts said women should consult with their doctors about whether they should drink.

"It really comes down to a personal decision based on their own history and risk factors," Rimm said. "But it shouldn't be based only on health. Some people drink for cultural reasons, some people drink for religious reasons. I personally think it enhances the flavor of meals, and some people think the company you're with."

Brill-Zinsser disease

2009-02-21T11:51:00.001-08:00

Brill-Zinsser disease: Recrudescence of epidemic typhus years after the initial attack. The agent that causes epidemic typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii) remains viable for many years and then when host defenses are down, it is reactivated causing recurrent typhus. The disease is named for the physician Nathan Brill and the great bacteriologist Hans Zinsser.

A Prenatal Link to Alzheimer's

2009-02-19T10:47:00.000-08:00

New research at Genentech Inc. is challenging conventional thinking about Alzheimer's disease, providing a provocative theory about its cause and suggesting potential new targets for therapies to treat it.

The researchers propose that a normal process in which excess nerve cells and nerve fibers are pruned from the brain during prenatal development is somehow reactivated in the adult brain and "hijacked" to cause the death of such cells in Alzheimer's patients.

The dominant view of Alzheimer's disease today is that it is caused by deposits called beta amyloid that accumulate in the brain because of bad luck or other unknown reasons, degrading and destroying nerve cells and robbing victims of their memory.

The new findings offer evidence that "Alzheimer's is not just bad luck, but rather it is the activation of a pathway that is there for development purposes," says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, executive vice president, research drug discovery, at Genentech. "It suggests a different way of looking at Alzheimer's disease."

The report, being published Thursday in the journal Nature, is based on laboratory and mouse experiments, and further study is needed to validate the hypothesis.

Genentech, a South San Francisco, Calif., biotech company, says it has identified potential drug candidates based on the findings, but even if they prove promising, it would take several years for any potential treatment to be developed.

Woman tampered with baby food

2009-02-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

A woman was caught injecting foul-smelling liquid into baby food in a Florida supermarket, authorities said Wednesday.

50-year-old Shirley Ybarra was spotted Tuesday night by Publix employees adding a black liquid that smelled like ammonia to the baby food and juice containers, the local sheriff's department said.

Sheriff's deputies said Ybarra told the employees she was mixing food for her son — but her son is 21.

Deputies said it didn't appear that she had tampered with baby food in any other stores and that the public is not at risk.

The woman was taken for a mental evaluation, then to jail and charged with poisoning food or water. She's also accused of violating her probation on a charge of aggravated battery after a stabbing in 2006.

Cancer Survivors Struggle to Find Jobs

2009-02-18T08:05:00.001-08:00

Lori Siegel did not even wait for her hair to grow back. Still feeling the effects of radiation treatments, she sent her résumé to potential employers, bought a new suit and a wig that does not look like a wig, and started going on job interviews.

But so far there have been no offers, and she is convinced that the nine-month gap in her work history gives her away. “It’s like I’m hiding something awful because I got sick,” said Ms. Siegel, 51, who lives on Long Island and is recovering from breast cancer. “I don’t want to bring it up, but I don’t want to lie.”

For Ms. Siegel and many other cancer survivors, money is tight and going back to work a financial necessity. But one of the first big analyses to examine employment rates among American and European cancer survivors has found that they are at significantly higher risk for joblessness than healthy counterparts.

The report, appearing Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is an analysis of previously published studies. After accounting for variations in data among those studies, it concluded that cancer survivors in the United States and Europe were 37 percent more likely to be unemployed than healthy peers. In the United States, where it is particularly critical for survivors to hold on to jobs, because they provide health insurance, cancer patients may be at even greater risk of unemployment than patients in Europe, the study suggested.

“This issue is so important to patients, because they often regard returning to work as indicative of complete recovery,” said the study’s chief author, Angela G.E.M. de Boer of the Coronel Institute of Occupational Health, in Amsterdam. “Employment is associated with a higher quality of life, and encouraging survivors to return to work also benefits aging societies economically.”

Although the study did not explore the reasons for high unemployment, Dr. de Boer speculated that disability played a leading role. Many survivors, she said, may simply be unable to return to work.

She urged businesses and other employers to adopt policies more accommodating to cancer survivors, like additional breaks and flexibility in work hours and tasks.

Nancy Redwine, a 49-year-old cancer survivor in Santa Cruz, Calif., said she had to quit her job at a local newspaper a few years ago after being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. “I was just really sick,” she said. “I had a really stressful job, and I just couldn’t do it. I was totally overwhelmed, and I didn’t know how much longer I had to live.”

She lived on credit cards for several years and eventually had to declare bankruptcy, she said.

“Cancer used to be a disease that occurred after you retired, because that’s when you were diagnosed,” said Cathy J. Bradley, a health economist at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center who has studied employment among cancer patients. “Now patients are getting that diagnosis early on, which is a good thing. . . .But I don’t think they or their employers are prepared for the tradeoff, which is that someone may be out of work for a long time.”

The new study is one of several recent reports focusing on the financial burdens of cancer. A report earlier this month by the American Cancer Society and the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that even privately insured patients struggle to pay for cancer care and often end up in debt, declaring bankruptcy, and foregoing or postponing needed treatment. They may face steep out-of-pocket costs because of annual caps on benefits and co-pays from frequent doctors’ visits. And if patients have to stop working, they often have to make a steep monthly payment for extended coverage, which can easily cost $1,000 a month, at the same time their income is reduced.

“You think you’re okay when you have insurance, but then when you get something like cancer, you discover there are a lot of holes in your insurance,” said Christie Schmidt, senior director of policy with the American Cancer Society and a co-author of the report.

For example, an insurance policy may cover up to ten radiation treatments over the course of a year, Ms. Schmidt noted, while the course of therapy for breast cancer may involve seven weeks of treatment.

Why Your Vitamins Aren't Working

2009-02-17T16:59:00.000-08:00

With promises to boost health and prevent chronic diseases, supplements can seem like an over the counter cure-all. Consumers more than buy into that notion: Vitamins accounted for roughly one-third of the $23.7 billion spent on supplements in 2007, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.

While a handful of studies have demonstrated a strong link between certain supplements and positive health outcomes, there's still limited clinical evidence to support the notion that they are critical to excellent health. In fact, much of that $23.7 billion could have been a waste of money, according to recent research.

In a study released last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers found that multivitamin use in post-menopausal women neither increased nor decreased risk of cardiovascular diseases or common cancers. And last fall, a major study of almost 35,000 men found no link between vitamin E and selenium supplements and prostate cancer prevention.

Dr. Marian L. Neuhouser, the lead author of the multivitamin study and an associate member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, says that while fruits, vegetables and whole grains have been linked to good health and prevention of cancer and cardiovascular disease, that doesn't mean vitamins extracted from those food groups will have the same effect.

Scientists still aren't sure why studies of supplement use don't always mirror what we know to be true about dietary vitamin intake--that it's essential to good health. One reason is that it's very difficult to separate cause from effect. Healthier people tend to take vitamins, but that's not enough proof to establish a definitive link between supplements and optimal health.

"Each consumer needs to decide their own health practices," says Neuhouser. But "they're missing a lot if they think [vitamin] substitution will do the trick."

What the Body Needs
The body requires 13 vitamins and 15 minerals to function properly. Among the necessary vitamins are B6, which maintains brain function; biotin, which is essential for metabolism; and A, which is critical to the maintenance of healthy teeth and bones.

A deficiency in any of these 13 vitamins--which is rare in the U.S.--can cause a range of health problems, including depression, anemia and diminished immunity. An average eater who fills his or her plate mostly with fruits, vegetables and whole grains should meet the daily recommended intake of vitamins, says Dr. John W. Erdman Jr., a professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Even skipping leafy greens one day or apples and bananas the next won't adversely affect your health--provided this doesn't become a chronic habit. (Children, pregnant or lactating women and the elderly, however, can be more vulnerable to vitamin deficiencies.)

Despite the fact that a balanced diet provides the right amount of vitamins and minerals, millions of Americans consider supplements as an insurance policy against poor eating choices, chronic disease and chance. At least half of all Americans purchase supplements, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade association that represents industry suppliers and manufacturers.

Do Vitamins Work at All?
Unfortunately, there isn't a clear-cut answer as to whether vitamins help one's health. Dr. Andrew Shao, the association's vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs, admits that the science of vitamin use can be confusing at times.

"No one study is the final word," he says, referring to Dr. Neuhouser's results. "It's always evolving, and the results in one trial don't erase the evidence." Some research has demonstrated benefits, according to Shao, including a 2003 study that linked multivitamins to reduced heart attack risk and a 1998 study that linked multivitamins to reduced colon-cancer risk.

Still, several academic reviews, including a major National Institutes of Health conference in 2006, have yet to identify convincing evidence for widespread supplement use--except for in a few cases. Vitamin K, which is essential for coagulation, is routinely given to newborn infants to avoid bleeding problems. Pregnant women receive doses of folic acid and other important vitamins for fetal development.

Dr. Neuhouser also suspects that missing bioactives--compounds like anti-oxidants and isoflavonoids that are thought to act synergistically with vitamins and minerals in food--might be the culprit. Researchers are currently trying to understand what role these compounds play in making naturally occurring vitamins powerfully effective.

The bottom line, says Dr. Patsy Brannon, a professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University, is that consumers should add vitamins and minerals to their diet with fruits, vegetables and whole grains. She doesn't oppose supplement use, but says consumers should avoid self-prescribing and familiarize themselves with when a dose becomes toxic.

Vitamin use, Brannon says, shouldn't exceed 100% of the recommended daily intake, which is determined by the Department of Agriculture.

"It's always an interesting issue," Brannon says of counseling people on whether to take supplements. "You can choose a multivitamin with just 100% of the daily allowance, but you'll be getting those nutrients anyway."

Hospitals cut one source of MRSA

2009-02-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

While rates of drug-resistant staph infections appear to be on the rise in society in general, hospitals are making progress at curbing at least one source of infection in some of their sickest patients, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday.

Rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, known as MRSA, caused by tubes used to give drugs and fluids to intensive-care patients fell nearly 50 percent between 1997 and 2007, Dr. Deron Burton of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

Drug-resistant bacteria are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, marked by the rise of superbugs such as MRSA. Many experts believe poor hospital practices are to blame.

Burton and colleagues studied hospital data on blood infections caused by tubes inserted into veins known as central line catheters. They looked at data for both adult and pediatric intensive care units between 1997 and 2007.

They found 1,684 intensive care units reported a total of 33,587 blood infections caused central line catheters during the study period.

Of those, 2,498, or about 7 percent, were drug-resistant strains of MRSA, and 1,590, or 4.7 percent, were staph infections that were susceptible to antibiotics, they reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

They said while the overall percentage of infections caused by MRSA increased, the actual number of MRSA cases fell by half during the study period, with steady declines in the infection rate reported from 2001 through 2007.

Burton and colleagues suspect hospitals are following CDC-recommended prevention guidelines, which may have contributed to the improvements.

Dr. Michael Climo of the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia, said in a commentary the report shows that substantial progress is being made in reducing hospital-acquired infections.

"Despite this progress, most ICUs are far from the goal of zero infections and many have not implemented suggested prevention strategies," Climo wrote.

MRSA previously had been a major concern only in hospitals, attacking patients who are already weakened by disease. But recent outbreaks in schools and other public places have raised concerns.

The CDC estimates that 94,000 Americans get serious, invasive MRSA infections each year and nearly 19,000 die.

Donate blood during American Heart Month

2009-02-17T09:42:00.001-08:00

By giving blood through the American Red Cross in the next few weeks, eligible donors can help save the lives of up to three people during American Heart Month.

The winter months can be a challenging time for the blood supply since blood donations can decline week-to-week and day-to-day as poor weather conditions can make it hard to travel to donate. Those up-again, down-again donations can contribute to blood shortages, particularly of high demand blood types like Type O-negative.

To schedule an appointment, call 800-GIVE-LIFE (800-448-3543) or visit givelife.org for information. If you are at least 17 years old, weigh a minimum of 110 pounds and are in good general health, you may be eligible to donate blood. All donors need to present positive identification.