December 1st, 2011 by ErikDavis in Opinion, Research
No Comments »
I have skeptical confession to make. I was once a panacea-seeking antioxidant-taker. As background, I’m a marathon runner and occasional triathlete. Several years ago, I was training for an Ironman triathlon, and banking 20+ hours of intense exercise per week. That may sound absurd to many (it does to me, now that I have kids) but that kind of training is necessary for the long races. So what did this pharmacist-wannabe-triathlete with access to discount vitamins do? He stocked up on the fancy bottles of multivitamins, the “endurance” version, of course — with extra antioxidants. Why did I supplement? I wanted to maximize my workouts, speed recovery, and minimize downtime and the risk of injury. Oxidation sounds bad — like a rusting car. Anti-oxidants sounded like the ultimate in preventative medicine. My workouts may have been more extreme, but the practice of supplementing if you exercise is common among athletes.
As it turns out, not only were the antioxidants likely ineffective, they may have compromised some of the gains I was seeking with all that training. That I didn’t evaluate the evidence at the time was my critical-thinking blind spot. Over the the past several years, more data on antioxidants and exercise have emerged. A recent review article, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North*
November 21st, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips
No Comments »
No matter how sick my grandmother got or what her doctors said, she refused to go to the hospital because she thought it was a dangerous place. To some degree, she was right. Although hospitals can be places of healing, hospital stays can have serious downsides, too.
One that has been getting a lot of attention lately is the development of delirium in people who are hospitalized. Delirium is a sudden change in mental status characterized by confusion, disorientation, altered states of consciousness (from hyperalert to unrousable), an inability to focus, and sometimes hallucinations. It’s the most common complication of hospitalization among older people.
We wrote about treating and preventing hospital delirium earlier this year in the Harvard Women’s Health Watch. In the New York Times “The New Old Age” blog, author Susan Seliger vividly describes her 85-year-old mother’s rapid descent into hospital delirium, and tips for preventing it.
Although delirium often recedes, it may have long-lasting aftereffects. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
November 14th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips
No Comments »
I was hiking in the woods recently with a group of women friends when something caught my attention. It wasn’t an interesting bird or plant, but the surprising number of “pit stops” my friends needed to make.
Their frequent detours into the bushes struck me because I had just finished working on Better Bladder and Bowel Control, the latest Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School. According to the report, incontinence is the unintended loss of urine or feces that is significant enough to make it difficult to do ordinary activities without frequent trips to the restroom. In the United States, about 32 million men and women have some degree of incontinence. For women, incontinence is a common but rarely discussed result of childbirth and aging—that could explain the pit stops of my hiking friends, who were all mid-life mothers. For men, incontinence is most often a side effect of treatment for prostate disorders.
Many things can go wrong with the complex system that allows us to control urination. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
November 13th, 2011 by Toni Brayer, M.D. in Research
No Comments »
Remember the 1991 Gulf War between the United States and Iraq (aka: “Operation Desert Storm”)? A new study has been published in the American Journal of Epidemiology that assessed the health status of 5,469 deployed Gulf War veterans compared to 3,353 non deployed veterans. At 10 year follow up, the deployed veterans were more likely to report persistent poor health. The measures were functional impairment, limitation of activities, repeated clinic visits, recurrent hospitalization, perception of health as fair or poor, chronic fatigue syndrome illness and post-traumatic stress disorder.
From 1995 to 2005, the health of these veterans worsened in comparison to the veterans who did not deploy to the Persian Gulf. A study done in the United Kingdom that compared Gulf War veterans to UN peacekeepers who served in Bosnia and other non-deployed Gulf War soldiers found Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
November 13th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Opinion, Research
No Comments »
There was a very controversial presentation made at a recent meeting of heart doctors in Canada. I’ve been stewing about what to say about it for a week.
The title speaks to its inflammation:
Fat, unfit, unmotivated: Cardiologist, heal thyself
The presenter that made the stir, pediatric cardiologist, and IronPerson, Dr. Brian McCrindle (Toronto) argued that overweight, unfit doctors are doing their patients a disservice. His bottom line: cardiologists are acting like the rest of Western society. They are not living a healthy lifestyle.
He made three major points. (in-depth coverage can be viewed here, on TheHeart.org)
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
I have skeptical confession to make. I was once a panacea-seeking antioxidant-taker. As background, I’m a marathon runner and occasional triathlete. Several years ago, I was training for an Ironman triathlon, and banking 20+ hours of intense exercise per week. That may sound absurd to many (it does to me, now that I have kids) but that kind of training is necessary for the long races. So what did this pharmacist-wannabe-triathlete with access to discount vitamins do? He stocked up on the fancy bottles of multivitamins, the “endurance” version, of course — with extra antioxidants. Why did I supplement? I wanted to maximize my workouts, speed recovery, and minimize downtime and the risk of injury. Oxidation sounds bad — like a rusting car. Anti-oxidants sounded like the ultimate in preventative medicine. My workouts may have been more extreme, but the practice of supplementing if you exercise is common among athletes.
