Hi! Greetings from Breckenridge, Colorado. At 10,000 feet, I am told it is the highest resort town in North America. The Rocky Mountain scenery is breathtaking. But there’s a problem for about one in four of us who visit here, especially people like me who live at sea level. We can get hit with high altitude sickness and a few days ago, I was one of the unlucky ones.
What happens is your body isn’t used to the thin air and your blood has difficulty getting enough oxygen to your body. It usually happens at altitudes over 8,500 feet. You get an ongoing headache, you feel tired, you have insomnia (I was sleepless for two nights!), you could have nausea and certainly fatigue. Drinking lots of water and passing up alcohol can help, but even then some people have problems.
When I finally saw a family doctor – Doctor P.J. – he told me it’s genetic. Some people have trouble “acclimatizing” and others don’t, but there’s no easy way to know who will be affected before you make the climb. Now that I know I have difficulty I will take a prescription medicine (Diamox) ahead of coming up here again.
Media channels are a-twitter with the news that zinc can beat the common cold. CBS News, the LA Times, the Huffington Post, and hundreds of others are treating a quiet research report as big news that will have a life-changing effect. After reading the report and doing a little digging into the dark side of zinc, I’m not rushing out to stock up on zinc lozenges or syrup.
The latest hubbub about zinc was sparked by a report from the Cochrane Collaboration. This global network of scientists, patients, and others evaluates the evidence on hundreds of different treatments. In the latest review, on zinc for the common cold, researchers Meenu Singh and Rashmi R. Das pooled the results of 13 studies that tested zinc for treating colds. By their analysis, taking zinc within 24 hours of first noticing the signs of a cold could shorten the cold by one day. They also found that taking zinc made colds a bit less severe.
Sounds good so far. But instead of saying, “Hey, take zinc if you have a cold,” the researchers concluded like this:
“People taking zinc lozenges (not syrup or tablet form) are more likely to experience adverse events, including bad taste and nausea. As there are no studies in participants in whom common cold symptoms might be troublesome (for example, those with underlying chronic illness, immunodeficiency, asthma, etc.), the use of zinc currently cannot be recommended for them. Given the variability in the populations studied (no studies from low- or middle-income countries), dose, formulation and duration of zinc used in the included studies, more research is needed to address these variabilities and determine the optimal duration of treatment as well as the dosage and formulations of zinc that will produce clinical benefits without increasing adverse effects[bold is mine], before making a general recommendation for zinc in treatment of the common cold.”
My mother was very proud of the fact that none of her four children ever became sick from her cooking. While it’s true she may have erred on the side of overcooking the turkey, being spared food poisoning is yet another in the long list of gifts from my mom.
Every year, about 76 million Americans develop illness from food, more than 325,000 are hospitalized, and about 5,000 die. The most common cause is contamination with bacteria such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, Shigella, and E. coli — though other organisms such as viruses and protozoa can also be culprits. As summer begins, I thought it would be a good time to review some basic tips about food safety. Read more »
I can’t read for any length of time in a moving vehicle — it makes me nauseous. This is because in order for the body to determine where it is at all times, the brain combines visual information, touch information, inner ear information, and internal expectations to judge its position in space.
Under most circumstances, the senses and expectations agree. When they disagree, there is conflict, and motion sickness can occur. In my case with reading in a car, my eyes that are fixed on the written page tell my brain that I am still. However, as the car goes over bumps and accelerates or decelerates, my inner ear disagrees resulting in my brain activating the nausea center and causing motion sickness.
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So how would one go about figuring out the best medication for dizziness due to motion-sickness leading to nausea and even vomiting?
