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Back Pain: Why Yoga Might Make Me A Better Doctor

February 4th, 2011 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Tips, True Stories

Tags: Back Pain, Injury, Low Back Pain, Orthopedic Surgery, Orthopedics, Pain Medicine, Physical Medicine And Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, QL, quadratus lumborum, Yoga

I’m a physician trained in sports medicine, and a chronic back pain sufferer. I first injured my back in 2001 when lifting a heavy bag and trying to sling it onto my shoulder. The pain was so severe that I couldn’t get off the floor for three days. I eventually ended up in the ER with an “unremarkable” MRI. The cause of my pain was never explained — all I knew is that I hadn’t herniated any disks.

Years later my back pain still flares up occasionally, and I’ve never really understood how to prevent it or treat it effectively. This has been very embarrassing for me, since I’m supposed to be an expert in this field. But today I finally got some insight into the real cause of my pain — not from a physician or physical therapist, but from a yoga instructor. Read more »

Avoid Weight Gain By Using Brain Tricks To Master Portion Control

February 4th, 2011 by AnnMacDonald in Better Health Network, Health Tips

Tags: 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, Ann MacDonald, Brain Tricks, CalorieKing, Eat Less, Eat More Slowly, Food and Nutrition, Harvard Health Blog, Harvard Health Publications, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Healthy Diet, Healthy Eating, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Portion Control, Portion Inflation, Self-Control, Weight Control, Weight Management

When I was growing up, my parents had a simple rule when it came to food: “Finish everything on your plate.” We had to sit at the table until we did.

They meant well. They wanted us to understand that food should not go to waste. The problem with this advice — and I’m sure I’m not the only American who grew up with it — is that we learned early on to eat everything put in front of us when we sat down to meals. Then the size of the plates grew — and so did the amount of food we consumed.

It’s called portion inflation. Take a look at the illustration at left. It’s based on an analysis published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association which found that typical restaurant portion sizes today are two to eight times as large as those in 1955. Back then, people who consumed a typical American meal (a hamburger, French fries, and a soda) had only one portion size to pick from. Today we can choose from multiple portion sizes: reasonable, big, bigger, and ridiculous (as I’ve come to think of the sizes listed in that last column).

Portion size matters. The bigger the portion, the more calories you can consume. An example using a table of calorie information available online in the nutrition section at McDonald’s: By choosing the largest size in each category, you’ll end up consuming nearly triple the number of calories in a meal as you would if you chose the smallest portions.

Partly as a result of portion inflation, we’re eating more. Dietary surveys indicate that, on a per capita basis, Americans consumed 200 calories more per day in the 1990s than they did in the 1970s. That may not sound like a lot, but over time extra calories translate into extra pounds. Some experts calculate that people who add 150 calories a day to their diets, without increasing physical activity to burn those calories off, will gain as many as 15 pounds in a year. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*

A New Twist On Food Allergies In Kids

February 4th, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Health Tips, Research

Tags: Allergy And Immunology, Allergy Desensitization, Bamba Peanut Snack, Childhood Allergies and Geographical Regions, Children's Health, Complex Protein Breakdown, Desensitize Children to Food Allergies, Dr. Hugh Sampson, Dr. Jerome Groopman, Food Allergies, Israel, Jae Food Allergy Institute, LEAP Study, Learning Early About Peanut Allergy, Medical Science, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Pediatrics, Preventing Food Allergies In Infants, Preventive Health, Preventive Medicine, Science and Medicine, The New Yorker Magazine

The current New Yorker unfolds an engaging story on childhood food allergies. As related by Dr. Jerome Groopman, there’s a shift in how some doctors think about how these conditions  are best managed and, even better — might be prevented. The article feeds into recent discussion that medical science, and even dogma, too-often turns out to be incorrect.

Groopman interviews Dr. Hugh Sampson, director of the Jae Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York:

…“This increase in the incidence of food allergy is real,” Sampson said when we spoke recently. He cannot say what is causing the increase, but he now thinks the conventional approach to preventing food allergies is misconceived. For most of his career, he believed, like most allergists, that children are far less likely to become allergic to problematic foods if they are not exposed to them as infants. But now Sampson and other specialists believe that early exposure may actually help prevent food allergies.”

I recommend the full read if you can get it: Groopman probes potential causes of discordant food allergy rates in children of different geographic regions. I learned a number of details on how some doctors in the U.S. use protein-breakdown methods to desensitize children to food allergies, how in Israel newly-speaking infants are said to ask eagerly for Bamba, a manufactured, peanut-containing snack (which, for the record, I don’t particularly endorse), and how in some cultures parents chew their young children’s food in a manner that might that might facilitate breakdown of complex proteins by enzymes in saliva.

All interesting. Of course it’s hard to know exactly what’s true in this, and the causes of allergies are likely to vary among children. There’s a randomized LEAP study (Learning Early About Peanut Allergy) in the U.K. that may provide some hard evidence on this, one way or another.

*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*

The Link Between Oral Sex And Head And Neck Cancer

February 3rd, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips, Research

Tags: Alcohol Use, Dr. Christopher Chang, Ear Nose and Throat, Fauquier ENT, Gardasil, Head and Neck Cancer, HPV, HPV Infection, HPV Vaccine, Human Papillomavirus, New England Journal of Medicine, Number of Sex Partners, Oncology, Oral Sex, Oropharyngeal Cancer, Otolaryngology, Safe Sex, Sexual Activity, Sexual Health, Sexual History, sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually Transmitted Infections, Smokers, STDs, STIs, Tobacco Use, Tonsil and Tongue Cancer, USA Today

USA Today published a pretty accurate article regarding the rise of certain head and neck cancers with the increased popularity of oral sex and number of sexual partners.

The factor that creates this link is the human papillomavirus (HPV) which is associated with tonsil and tongue cancer. Alcohol and tobacco use is more highly linked with such oral cancers, but HPV does appear to be an independent risk factor.

A 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that younger people with head and neck cancers who tested positive for oral HPV infection were more likely to have had multiple vaginal and oral sex partners in their lifetime. Having six or more oral sex partners over a lifetime was associated with a 3.4 times higher risk for oropharyngeal cancer — cancers of the base of the tongue, back of the throat, or tonsils. Having 26 or more vaginal-sex partners tripled the risk. The association continued to increase as the number of partners in either category increased.

Of greater concern is that “French” kissing may also potentially be a mode of transmission.

The good news (if you’re a young non-smoker diagnosed with HPV-positive tumors) is that about 85 percent of non-smoking people with HPV-positive tumors survive. That number drops to 45 or 50 percent in people who smoke and are HPV-negative. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*

We’re Overdosing On Sodium: Whose Responsibility Is It?

February 2nd, 2011 by Mary Knudson in Health Tips, Opinion

Tags: AHA, American Heart Association, Cardiology, Cardiopulmonology, Dietary Guidelines, Dietary Recommendations, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Gastroenterology, Heart Disease, Heart Health, HHS, High Blood Pressure, Hypertension, Institute of Medicine, IOM, Kidney Disease, Mary Knudson, Nephrology, Patient Empowerment, Patient Involvement, Preventive Health, Salt Consumption, Sodium Intake, Stroke, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, USDA

I confess to loving Campbell’s tomato bisque soup. I mix it with 1 percent-fat milk and it’s hot and delicious and comforting, but one of the worst food choices I could make because one cup contains more sodium than I should have in a day. Knowing this, I have already relegated it to an occasional treat. But by the end of this blog post I will do more.

We are overdosing on sodium and it is killing us. We need to cut the sodium we eat daily by more than half. The guidelines keep coming. The U.S. government has handed out dietary guidelines telling Americans who are over 50, all African Americans, people with high blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease to have no more than 1,500 milligrams (mg) — or two thirds of a teaspoon — of sodium daily. That’s the majority of us — 69 percent. Five years ago the government said that this group would benefit from the lower sodium and now it made this its recommendation. The other 31 percent of the country can have up to 2,300 mg a day, say the guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Or should they? The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends that all Americans lower sodium to less than 1,500 mg a day. Excessive sodium, mostly found in salt, is bad for us because it causes high blood pressure which often leads to heart disease, stroke, and kidney disease and can also cause gastric problems. People with heart failure are taught to restrict salt because water follows salt into the blood and causes swelling of the ankles, legs, and abdomen and lung congestion that makes it difficult to breathe.

I saw one recommendation by an individual on the Internet to just drink a lot of water to flush the sodium out of your body rather than worry about eating foods that have less sodium. BAD idea, especially for people with heart problems who need to restrict fluids to help prevent fluid accumulation in their bodies. The salt will draw the water to it.

But cutting our salt consumption by half is quite a tall order for an individual consumer because Americans have been conditioned from childhood to love salt and we on average consume 3,436 mg — nearly one and a half teaspoons — a day. Sodium is pervasive in our food supply. We get most of our sodium from processed foods and restaurant and takeout food, sometime in unexpected places. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at HeartSense*