Penny wise, pound foolish

That saying arose when a pound was a unit of money, a pound of sterling silver, in fact.

Study says that long waits for health care cost billions.

Conducted for the Canadian Medical Association by the Centre for Spatial Economics, the study measured the impact of the absence of both patients and their caregivers from the work force, as well as the increased costs of extra appointments, tests and medication required when patients languish in a queue.

When those factors were totalled, the authors concluded that it cost the economy $14.8-billion in 2007 to have patients wait longer than medically recommended for four procedures: joint replacements, cataract surgery, coronary bypasses and MRI scans. And that, in turn, cut federal and provincial revenues by $4.4-billion, the study says.

Only four procedures were examined in the study. Imagine what the total cost for all procedures might be!

Road of Iron: marathons save lives

People who die of heart attacks while running marathons always get publicity because of the irony of their fate. However, LotStreetWiz over at Road of Iron notes a new study that shows simply clsing the roads for marathons saves more lives that would be lost in car crashes during the same time period in the same cities.

Teaching about risk

SmartRisk is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to reducing harm to young people. They specialize in tested and effective messages to change behaviour and reduce risk. For fifteen years, they have been doing the research, fine-tuning the messages, and expanding the programme. What they have found is that the message must be adjusted to the audience. A high school has as many as fifteen different demographic groups, which have different worldviews and interests and which interpret messages differently. They also acknowledge that the people ordering or evaluating the messages are not the intended audience.

For example, in an attempt to discourage smoking, non-smokers like to see pictures of diseased lungs; but those pictures are likely to make smokers puff away defiantly and actually smoke more.


Another difficulty is that treatment or rescue is visible and dramatic, while prevention is invisible and boring. But it can be much more effective. I hope that this programme will expand and prosper.

You need vigorous exercise for health

The studies that showed that three short sessions of exercise gave 60% as much benefit as one long session were touted as showing that brief, mild exercise was just as good. (Similarly, studies showing that Vitamin C reduced colds by 40% were considered not significant.) Now, a study published in Preventive Medicine emphasizes that for major health benefits, a fair amount of vigorous exericise is needed.

Traditionally, adults were encouraged to take part in 20 to 60 minutes of vigorous exercise three or more times a week. In 1990, research showed around 90% of British adults believed vigorous exercise was important in maintaining and improving health and fitness. Since 1995 the Department of Health has instead promoted 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times a week, which can be achieved through everyday activities such as walking, housework or gardening. The research team believes this shift in attitudes is threatening the nation’s health and is calling for evidence-based guidelines.

I think that the jury is still out on this. A study in NEJM of 73,000 women showed that walking and vigorous exercise had similar benefits. That's a big study. The study in Preventive Medicine mentioned above had about 1300 participants if I recall correctly.

After all, it may have been running that made us human.

Calgary health services are overwhelmed

Average wait times have jumped to 13 hours. And that's in the only province that has so much oil income that it doesn't feel the need to charge retail sales tax. This is partly the fault of centrist planning, and also of trimming services. The hospitals are 98% percent full. They can keep up with a slow, steady trickle of emergencies. But emergencies don't come in a trickle: they're unpredictable, stochastic. A report calls for some changes.

Ultrasound may heal damaged lungs

The energy from ultrasound might be used to heal small tears in lung tissue. Such injuries are caused by crushing or puncture wounds, which can be caused by car accidents. A study, "Hemostasis and Sealing of Air Leaks in the Lung Using High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound," is published in the June 2007 issue of Trauma. In experiments of pigs' lungs, focused energy from ultrasound heated the blood cells and helped them to seal 95% of incisions in two minutes.

Some damage from smoking is lifelong

A detailed genetic study shows that about 600 genes in the lung tissue are altered when we smoke, and about one-third eventually recover. The other two-thirds, I guess, account for the higher incidence of lung cancer in ex-smokers. Here's a link to an article: "Some smoking damage is lifelong," from the Edmonton Journal,

Take Vitamin D to prevent cancer

A study in the U.S. suggests that taking a Vitamin D supplement can cut your risk of developing cancer by 60%. The Canadian Cancer Society recommends vitamin D after

...a flurry of research suggesting the low-cost vitamin confers a high degree of protection against a wide variety of cancers. There are also striking study results suggesting that people who develop the disease often have low blood levels of vitamin D.

The recommendation:

The society says whites should take supplements containing 1,000 international units a day during fall and winter, the six months of the year when sunlight falling on Canada isn't strong enough for skin to fulfill its vitamin D role. Those with dark skin, who don't go outside frequently or wear full body clothing for cultural or religious reasons, such as veiled women, should take 1,000 IU year-round.

E. coli outbreak in bagged spinach

Tara Smith gives her usual balanced and informative opinion on the recent outbreak of E. coli infection spread by pre-washed spinach.

"Portion distortion" brings weight gain

The other day I was gazing at some little tiny glasses in my dad's cupboard. What on earth would we ever use those for? With a little shock, I realized that they were the standard size for a restaurant serving of fresh juice thirty years ago: 4 ounces (130 ml).

The 6-ounce bottles of soft drinks are quaint and curious now, when a "small" serving is 32 ounces and a "Big Gulp" is 72. A Starbucks "short" coffee is 8 ounces, their medium or "tall" is 12, their large or "grande" is 16, and their extra large is 20. That's not bad for black coffee, but with milk, sugar, and whipped cream a single drink can easily supply 600 (kilo)calories.

A little bag of potato chips has nutritional information per serving. Somewhere the label also mentions that a bag is two servings!

When I was growing up a pound of pasta served four. Now we think it serves two.

A recent study shows that students asked to dish up servings of food give themselves 30 – 40% more than students of 20 years ago. Watch a movie filmed during or after World War II. Notice how slender everyone is? We are not only prosperous and off rations. We're also spoiled by restaurants that can charge more for a larger serving and earn more per customer without changing their labour or other overhead. Food for thought, indeed!

Hands up everyone who knows that a bagel is three servings of starch? That six soda crackers are one serving? Food manufacturers depend on us thoughtlessly eating tiny candies one after another without noticing how they add up. In their view it's war—war for the limited space in your stomach. The only way to fight it is by becoming aware and by learning what builds health and what doesn't.

Obesity growing in the United States

The Trust for America’s Health, a public-health pressure group, has published its annual report on obesity in the United States, and it’s not good news—but who would have expected good news? (And while Canadians are generally less obese than Americans, I expect our numbers are showing the same trend.)

The AP article linked to in the post heading quotes a physician from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but once again I’m left wondering why.

The TfAH press release can be found here; and the report itself (~2.07 MB) here.

(Tip of the hat to the WSJ.com Health Edition.)

“My kids aren’t fat!”

The Canadian Medical Association (i.e., the physicians’ trade association) has got a ton of media coverage (here, here, & here) for the press release linked in the title.

That 26% (a quarter!) of Canadian kids are obese—not just overweight, but obese—is old news, but it never ceases to amaze me. The CMA release reveals, however, that only 9% of parents think their kids are fat.

monado and I spent a pleasant couple of days with our granddaughter at Blue Mountain Resort on Lake Huron, and I was continually surprised at how big the other visitors, and especially their children, were.

92% of Canadian parents (according to the CMA’s survey) support mandatory physical activity in school, but I’m not so certain that’s The Solution. In late middle age I’m very active, but I loathed phys.ed. in school, and that personal perspective makes me skeptical about bringing back mandatory phys.ed.

Frankly, I have no if-I-were-king solution. Each age cohort is chunkier than the one before: twenty-year-olds today are fatter than twenty-year-olds ten years ago, who were fatter than twenty-year-olds ten years before. The physics is simple: our energy budgets have grown ’way out of whack; we take in more calories than we expend. But I find it’s hard to believe it’s McDonald’s or HFCS or the lack of mandatory phys.ed. And it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

Carotid artery stenting is good for patients over 80

I don't have the link right now, but a propos of my Dad's being in hospital, I'd like to mention a bit of medical research showing that stenting of partially blocked carotid arteries is not too invasive for patients more than 80 years old. In fact, they show good recovery and improved blood flow.

Rise of obesity in the U.S.

"Obesity Discussion" sent a link to the Obesity Discussion site. It seems to be quite a young site but it could be interesting. As I was browsing the message forum I found a link to this map showing the rise in the incidence of obesity in the U.S. It's not as scary as world population, which looks like an algae bloom, but... why does obesity arise in geographical swaths? Does it follow prosperity? Food for thought!

Legal drugs - use with moderation

Legal drugs cause more emergency visits to hospital in the U.S. than does cocaine. Of course, people with cocaine habits might just curl up in a corner and wait to recover while people with health insurance might hie them off to the hospital for nausea or vertigo.

Read the article.

Bone mass is increased by NFATc1 protein

Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (which seems to have a finger in every pie) have discovered a way to cause "massive increases" in the bone mass of mice.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers at Stanford University have found that they can increase bone mass in mice by tweaking the shape of a regulatory protein.

HHMI investigator Gerald Crabtree and HHMI predoctoral fellow Monte Winslow report that slightly increasing the activity of a protein called NFATc1 causes massive bone accumulation, suggesting that NFATc1 or other proteins that regulate its activity will make good targets for drugs to treat osteoporosis. They report their findings in a study published in the June 6, 2006, issue of Developmental Cell.

Are those "massive increases" going to the right places? I picture former osteoporosis sufferers stomping around like The Incredible Hulk and having their organs fill up with calcium. As much as I hope that medical research enables me to have strong, healthy bones throughout old age, I also hope that the researchers tread cautiously.

Nicotine hooks children with first puff

There's a reason that cigarette companies advertise around schools in spite of their guidelines not to. Get 'em young and you've got 'em for life. Recent research shows that children who try a single cigarette at age 11 are twice as likely to be smoking by the time they are 14, regardless of other factors.
—from the U.S. Discovery Channel Web site

"Rhythm Method" may kill more embryos

Science blog reports that the rhythm method of birth control depends partly on the fact that embryos conceived on the fringes of the fertile period are more likely to die. The British Medical Journal reports on an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics. They quote Professor Bowens, who calculates that for each pregnancy under the rhythm method, two or three embryos have been conceived and died. More effective methods, such as barriers and spermicides, do not allow conception in the first place.