The value of ice

These days there are very few people who are without a mobile phone, and whatever the pros, cons, and potential risks to health, there is no denying they are invaluable in an emergency. But are you making the most of it? It is apparently standard procedure for paramedics at the scene of an accident to look for your mobile phone to get a contact number in the case of an emergency.

Like most of us, you probably have quite a few numbers in there so how do they know who to call first? This is where ICE – ‘In Case of Emergency’ – comes in. It is spreading worldwide, and has the double benefit of helping the emergency services and giving you and your nearest and dearest peace of mind. The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always a mobile phone on the patient, but scrolling through the names took time and it wasn’t always clear who to call.

All you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during any emergency under the name ‘ICE’ (In Case Of Emergency). You can of course have several, and label them ICE 1, ICE 2 and so on in case the first number isn’t reachable. A very simple idea, but one well worth passing on.

Germs – Don’t spread them about!

I know you are amazingly conscientious about washing your hands, especially when you have a cold. BUT … scientists in the Virology Department of the University of Virginia, have found that cold sufferers can leave active germs around the house on surfaces they have touched – like door or fridge handles, and even the TV remote – and they can live for two days or longer. This confirms previous research they carried out two years ago, when they showed that germs survived in hotel rooms a day after guests left, waiting to be picked up by the next person checking in. You may avoid shaking the hand of a person with a cold, or kissing them on the cheek, but you never think about the everyday places in the home where these germs can lurk. Antibacterial wipes are one answer, or just wait on the invalid hand and foot and never let them near the remote.

Health insurance says ‘no’ to mistakes

We take out insurance to protect ourselves against what might happen in the case of house, home, or health insurance and against what will happen in the case of life insurance. Now there is a new twist that is hitting hard in the USA, and as we seem to follow their lead in most things I thought I would give you a heads-up on this one. Medicare is the federally-funded medical plan for Americans age 65 and over that covers medical expenses such as doctor’s visits, hospital stays, drugs and other treatment – similar to the NHS, but here comes a major difference. They have just announced that they will no longer pay to correct medical errors. So, for instance if during your operation the surgeon amputates the wrong toe then the hospital itself will have to pay for corrective treatment, not Medicare. And quite right too, you might think, but in the UK this would mean that it was coming out of your hospital’s budget from the NHS which would mean less money for initial treatments. Now, we don’t want to reward bad work, but if the US trend is followed here – and the private insurers have quickly followed suit there – then the next part of Medicare’s announcement will impact us as consumers as well.

Medicare will not provide any insurance cover for what they are calling “reasonably preventable” conditions. They have listed 10 of these, including post-operative infections from select procedures,bed sores, injuries resulting from falls, and incompatible blood transfusions. In other words ‘mistakes’ that happen in hospitals every day. It is making hospitals performance oriented, which as we have seen with patient and operation targets does not always work in the way it was intended. Medicare’s Payment Advisory Commission also recently recommended that hospitals with high readmission rates had their payments reduced. So if you live in a chronically unhealthy area, or one with a high number of elderly people they are being asked to treat the same number of people for less money – and how will that impact patient care?

Men have a biological clock too

I don’t know chaps, can’t you let us have anything for ourselves? We would willingly pass on giving birth, at least 50% of the time, but you haven’t lined up for that one yet. What you now are laying claim to is having the same sort of biological clock that we thought was exclusive to women. Despite news stories of men fathering children at the age of 80 and upwards, the average man’s fertility does not go on forever.

Although men constantly produce sperm every 90 days for as long as they live, the actual potency of those sperm has been brought into question. We have seen numerous stories about man’s declining levels of fertility where young men today produce a quarter of the sperm their grandfathers did, and have assumed that it was just environmental factors causing greater delays in men being able to get their partners pregnant. In cases referred to fertility clinics, the ratio is now 50/50 for men and women in assessing where the medical problem lies. Now a French study has found that a father’s age could have as much of an impact on the rate of pregnancy and miscarriage as a mother’s age – obviously Charlie Chaplin was an exception.

Generally, in fertility studies, the older either potential parent is then the chances of conception are reduced, and sadly the rate of miscarriage is increased. Statistically, if the man is younger than 25, around 92% will get their partner pregnant in under a year. However, adding just 10 years to the mix certainly alters the statistics, as the number taking under a year then drops to 85%. It’s not just the increased time it can take to create a viable pregnancy. The older a man is, then the greater the risk to the child of Downs syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Also, fathers over 55 seem to have a greater potential for fathering children with psychological problems with around 37% of them having children who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder at some point in life.

It seems that for men, as for women, the biological clock ticks loudest between 30 and 35 and delaying starting a family may have sound financial reasons – but not necessarily the best health ones.

Purple tomatoes

I mentioned the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for children with Asthma, and one of the main ingredients of that are tomatoes. However, not content with letting mother nature get on with it, scientists have grown genetically-engineered purple tomatoes in an attempt to promote healthy food. I wasn’t aware tomatoes were not already a healthy food, but you know these scientists, they can’t let a good thing alone.

The research was done at the John Innes Centre, a biotechnology institute in Norwich – and presumably grown in their own compost. They took two genes from the snapdragon flower (Antirrhinum majus) which gave them anthocyanin, the purple pigment that makes blackberries almost black. Anthocyanins can protect against certain cancers, heart and degenerative diseases, and may delay the development of inflammation, obesity and diabetes.

I may be wrong, but I think I grew purple tomatoes in my greenhouse around ten years ago – just for the colour as it turned out because the taste wasn’t that great. They were more black than purple and if anyone remembers them do let me know the variety and I will pass it on to the John Innes Centre to save them wasting any more time – and compost.

News on the food front – Green Tea

First I own up to the fact I am a big fan of green tea, partly for the taste but mostly for the whole range of health benefits it brings. However, I have to concede it’s not to everyone’s taste though I may have come across a way to overcome that. Hambleden Herbs is a wholly organic company that has been around for 25 years and they have developed a range of green teas in combination with other natural ingredients that might make it more palatable if you haven’t managed to crack the green tea barrier. These really are superior teas with all organic and natural ingredients – no synthetic ‘flavours’ to be found here. If the sound of Lemon Grass and Ginger, Green Tea and Jasmine, or Green Tea and Ginger tickle your taste buds, I am afraid you might have to search them out as they don’t sell in many stores, so your best bet is probably their website at www.Hambledenherbs.com

Mediteranean diet reduces kids asthma risk by 78%

With 1 in 11 children currently receiving treatment for asthma it is now a very common condition – but that doesn’t make it any the less worrying. We have dealt with asthma before, but some news in this week might help make life easier for some of those children, and their parents. For those who are unsure about asthma in young children, the symptoms to look out for are:

* A cough at night
* A cold that doesn’t go away
* A whistling sound when breathing out

That last symptom is particularly relevant in the UK as we apparently have the highest prevalence of severe wheeze in children aged 13-14 years than anywhere else in the world.

Now the medical journal Allergy is suggesting a way parents can be more in control of the condition through some simple dietary changes. I have talked about the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet for heart health in adults, but now it seems it could also relieve asthma symptoms in children. In Crete, where the Mediterranean diet is the norm, an estimated 80% of the children there eat fresh fruit at least twice a day and almost that same number also have fresh vegetables twice daily as well. (Sadly the research doesn’t tell us how they get them to eat so much without a fistfight) So why is it important? Well very few children in Crete have asthma or hay fever and the researchers from the University of Porto in Portugal concluded that their best asthma-fighting foods were oranges, apples, tomatoes and grapes.

Adults on the same type of diet, who had asthma, were found to have fewer attacks and flare-ups. However, if they also included nuts in their diet at least three times a week then that produced less wheezing. A likely explanation for this is that nuts contain a lot of magnesium which helps boost your lung power.

AVOID THIS: There was however one substance that the researchers found that would double the risk of children getting asthma and allergic rhinitis – margarine. This finding confirms what an Australian study found over 7 years ago when they first warned that the polyunsaturated fats found in many margarines can double a child’s chances of having asthma.

If you want more information, please visit www.asthma.org.uk

Exercise lowers post menopausal breast cancer risk

Breast cancer is a serious concern for women, and anything we can do to minimise that risk has got to be good news – especially when it’s natural, and free. An eleven year follow up study from the National Cancer Institute in the USA on over 23,000 women, appears to suggests that women who reported the highest levels of physical activity had an almost 20% lower risk of breast cancer compared with women who exercised the least. Two pointers here: the activity has to be vigorous or it appears to have no influence on reducing the risk, and the benefits were seen only in women who were fairly slim. As postmenopausal women have a tendency to put on weight, it seems as though combining exercise with a sensible diet might also be in order.

The survey defined vigorous activity to include scrubbing floors, chopping wood, and running or fast jogging. Though obviously not at the same time – how many women in the States still chop wood? They also defined non-vigorous exercise as activities including washing clothes, lawn mowing, and walking. They obviously have much more powerful lawn powers in the US that do all the work for you, rather than the old push-me pull-you mowers of my childhood which no one could define as non-vigorous as the aching back and arms afterwards would testify.

The message is clear; if you want to avoid post-menopausal breast cancer – especially if you have any history of it in your family – you could start by walking briskly to the nearest salsa class and then jogging home.

BUT!!!!!!!

If you are thinking of taking up running the marathon – as many do to help breast cancer charities – then please approach with caution and do it under professional supervision. Why? Well, there is now accumulating evidence from recent studies that pushing your body to run 26.2 miles can cause at least minor injury to your heart.

Dr Arthur Siege is director of internal medicine at Harvard’s McLean Hospital in, Massachusetts – and he has run 20 marathons. He is the ideal man to study the subject and he has published many studies on the health consequences of marathons. His main conclusions that you might want to think about before you strap on the running shoes are that the physical effects of running a marathon include changes in your immune system and kidney function, but obviously your muscles take the worst punishment. The further you run then your muscles stiffen and this can result in injury-signalling enzymes leaking through the heart membrane, and that is consistent with significant stress on the heart.

More help for naturally beautiful hair

Last week’s article on how to help with thinning and problem hair certainly provoked some interest, and no matter what the state of your hair you owe it to yourself to use the best, preferably natural and organic, products you can find. The reason for this is simple; to maintain really healthy hair you want products with no harsh chemicals and totally paraben-free. One of the benefits of my ‘other’ job as a ghostwriter is that I get to learn a lot of stuff about areas I am not that familiar with and I am currently working with a client who is trying out lots of different organic hair care products and sends them to me for my comments. Nice job, and like all things some are great and some are not so great, but one thing is clear – if you care about your hair then treat it to the sort of natural ingredients that will most nourish it and not deplete it of its natural oils.

I was very impressed with a new range by US hairdresser John Masters, whose Organics Hair Reconstructor was listed as one of top 10 products beauty editors could not live without. It apparently works miracles on healing dry hair and split ends and as long ago as 2004, he was awarded the coveted Soil Association Award for Best Organic Product Line in Europe. Oh, and if you want your dog’s hair to look as wonderful as your own, he also produces Eucalyptus & Tea tree Dogpoo shampoo – originally for his own dog – and it is said to ward off ticks and fleas with added essential oils of neem and citronella, and formulated to be the correct pH for a dog’s coat. Remember, it’s for the dog, not you. There are a number of good organic ranges around if you want to experiement so have a look at these websites, and don’t be surprised if it tempts you into the alternative shampoo market with natural ingredients like Apple, Lemon, Almond, Orange, Mango & Rose! Useful sites to visit include:

www.johnmasters.co.uk
www.simply-nature.co.uk
www.GreenPeople.co.uk
www.natural-and-organic-toiletries.co.uk

Benefits of Tai Chi for arthritic knees

Well anyone who is a regular reader, or has heard me speak, knows I am a great fan of Tai Chi for so many reasons. It is a traditional Chinese martial art that combines meditation with slow, gentle movements, deep breathing, and relaxation and any age or fitness can undertake it – just think of those elderly people you see doing it in the public parks in China. You can do it at home in 10 minutes, get a video to teach you or – best option of all is to find a qualified teacher and join a group. You will improve your fitness, helps build bone strength, lower your blood pressure, reduce stress levels and cultivate calm centredness. All good things, and now there is another one to add to the list – it can help if you have arthritic knees.

The American College of Rheumatology has just reported on a study done in Boston which found that patients with osteoarthritis of the knee benefited more from Tai Chi than from the traditional stretching exercises that such patients are usually given. Osteoarthritis sufferers experience interlinked pain, muscle weakness, and structural damage and where Tai Chi really scored was that it improved pain scores THREE times better than stretching. Researchers also concluded that the meditation, deep breathing, and relaxation involved may also benefit patients and it is recommended by the Arthritis Foundation. Personal recommendation is the best way to find a good teacher, so ask around your local area, health stores and alternative health centres can be good sources. The Tai Chi Union For Great Britain can offer you a register of practitioners throughout the country at www.taichiunion.com or in Scotland you could contact the East Winds School of T’ai Chi Chu’an at www.eastwinds.co.uk. If you are looking in the London area then I can personally recommend Jon Wallwork as a wonderful teacher and he can be contacted by email at [email protected]

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