May 31st, 2011 by admin in Health Tips, Research
Tags: Fat, Friends Make You Fat, Health, Healthy Eating, Internal Medicine, Monkey Do, Monkey See, Obesity, Peer Pressure, Psychology, Relationships, Social Norms, Weight Gain, Weight Loss
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One of the big health news stories of 2007 was a study showing that your friends influence the size of your waist (and the rest of your body). Like any study, it raised as many questions as it answered, including why this happens. A new study from Arizona State University looked into that question by testing three pathways by which friends might influence one another’s body size:
- Collaboration. Over time, you might start to share the ideas of the people close to you after talking with them about what the proper body size is. Then you might choose your food and exercise habits in order to reach that body size, whether that means eating more food to look like your plus-sized friends, or less food to look like your thin ones.
- Peer pressure. You feel bullied into trying to look like your friends and family members. They make you feel bad about your body, so you go about eating and exercising to look like them.
- Monkey see, monkey do. You change your habits to mirror those of your friends without necessarily thinking or talking about an ideal body weight. Alexandra Brewis Slade, PhD, one of the Arizona State researchers, gave an example of this pathway that most of us can relate to: You’re at a restaurant with friends and the waiter brings over the dessert menu. Everyone else decides not to order anything, so you pass, too, even though you were dying for a piece of chocolate mousse cake.
All three of these pathways are based on the idea that loved ones share social norms, the implicit cultural beliefs that make some things okay, others not. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
May 30th, 2011 by Mark Crislip, M.D. in Health Tips
Tags: Bacteria, Brucella, Dairy, Dangers, Giardia, Infectious Disease, Listeria, Mycobacterium bovis, Norovirus, Nutrition, Pasteurization, Raw Milk, Salmonella, Science and Medicine, Shigella, Yersinia
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It is hard to get infected. The immune system is robust and has a multitude of interlinking defenses that are extremely efficient in beating off most pathogens. Most of the time.
Fortunately, it is a minority of microbes that have evolved to be virulent in humans. Bacteremia is common with our own microbiome. When you brush or floss, bacteria leak into the blood stream:
We identified oral bacterial species in blood cultures following single-tooth extraction and tooth brushing. Sequence analysis of 16S rRNA genes identified 98 different bacterial species recovered from 151 bacteremic subjects. Of interest, 48 of the isolates represented 19 novel species of Prevotella, Fusobacterium, Streptococcus, Actinomyces, Capnocytophaga, Selenomonas, and Veillonella.
but with a good immune system, low virulence bacteria and no place to go, unfortunately the bacteria rarely cause infections.
Even heroin users rarely get infection. Heroin is a rich melange of bacteria and, on occasion, yeasts (I hate to say contaminated, since avoiding microbes is hardly a worry of heroin manufacturers), and the water used for injection is rarely sterile, yet infections are relatively rare despite the filth in which many heroin users exist.
I used to be somewhat fatalistic about hospital acquired infections. However, as the institutions in which I have worked have proven, almost all infections in the hospital are preventable if the institutions aggressively pursue high standards of care.
There are many systems in place in society to prevent infections: flush toilets, good nutrition, public health, vaccines, antibiotics, good hygiene, and an understanding of disease epidemiology, and I suspect people forget there are bugs out there that are pathogenic, just waiting to sicken and kill us. At least a couple of times a year I see patients come into the hospital, previously healthy, who rapidly die of acute infections. But for most people, most of the time, it takes a lot of effort to get an infection.
From my perspective we are Charlie Chaplain on skates , mostly unaware of the infections that awaits us if we do something silly, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
May 28th, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips, Research
Tags: Allergy, Anaphylaxis, Contrast, Contrast Agents, Contrast Dyes, CT, Iodine, Myth, Myth Buster, Radiology, Risk, Seafood
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It is a prevalent belief out in the medical (and lay public) community that patients with iodine or seafood allergy can not receive contrast when undergoing certain radiological tests like CT or MRI scans. The concern is that contrast contains minute amounts of free iodide and as such, IV administration of this material puts the patient at risk of a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction.
Contrast is often given in these tests as it traces out bloodflow enabling the physician to see organ and mass architecture much more clearly allowing for improved accuracy in seeing anything abnormal.
Well… rest assured that patients with iodine and seafood allergy CAN receive contrast without any significant increased risk of an allergic reaction as compared to other allergies.
In a large study encompassing 112,003 patients, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
May 28th, 2011 by GarySchwitzer in Health Tips
Tags: Antibiotics, Back Pain, Bone Scans, EKGs, MRI, Pap Smears, Primary Care, Quality of Care, Scott Hensley, Screening Tests, Sinusitis, Unnecessary
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On the NPR Shots blog, Scott Hensley writes, “Quality Prescription For Primary Care Doctors: Do Less,” about an article in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Excerpt:
“A group of docs who want to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of primary care tinkered with some Top 5 lists for of dos and don’ts for pediatricians, family doctors and internists.
After testing them a bit, they published online by the Archives of Internal Medicine. Most of the advice falls in the category of less is more.
So what should family doctors not be doing? The Top 5 list for them goes like this:
1. No MRI or other imaging tests for low back pain, unless it has persisted longer than six weeks or there are red flags, such as neurological problems.
2. No antibiotics for mild to moderate sinusitis, unless it has lasted a week or longer. Or the condition worsens after first getting better.
3. No annual electrocardiograms for low-risk patients without cardiac symptoms.
4. No Pap tests in patients under 21, or women who’ve had hysterectomies for non-malignant disease.
5. No bone scans for women under 65 or men under 70, unless they have specific risk factors.”
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
May 27th, 2011 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Health Tips, Opinion
Tags: Blogs, Doctors, E-Patients, Empowered Patient, Facebook, Health Communications, Health Education, Healthcare Professionals, Hospital Care, Medical Social Networking, Nurses, Participatory Medicine, Patient Engagement, Social Media, Social Networking, Society of Participatory Medicine, Twitter
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Social networking allows doctors, nurses and other health professionals to deeply connect and engage with the community and their colleagues.
“We are standing at the precipice of a new online revolution in health care. As more and more health experts embrace the Internet and increase their social media activity, health information seekers will undoubtedly benefit in profound ways.” [Source: Mashable]
Dynamic health and medical professionals engaged in social networking, using Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and YouTube are on the front-line of new modern medicine.
Today’s modern medicine is all about the patient. Participating, partnering and developing a professional relationship is paramount.
While many health consumers are searching the web for support, reassurance and specific health news and information; doctors and nurses continue to question the value of the internet for patients.
Social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs are not a waste of time for health professionals because it offers value.
Social networking sites and blogs are a powerful and phenomenal platform to educate patients, raise awareness of health issues and it offers a forum to collaborate and connect. It gives a voice to patients and it allows for the conversation to get started with their doctors and other health care professionals.
Doctors, nurses and other health professionals can help validate what is important for patients.
3 reasons why social networking is not a waste of time Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
