Weekly Health News 6 Vestiphobia/Toilet injuries/Weight & Cancer

Wellnews: All the news that's fit
May 29, 2007



Medtronica
Family Patient; www.familypatient.com

When a loved one spends an extended time in a hospital, one of the burdens
that falls upon family members is keeping others apprised of what's
happening. Typically, this means lots of phone calls. This free Web site
offers an alternative: Families post patient updates, which can be public or
restricted to select viewers who have been given a password.





Body of knowledge
Roughly 30,000 Americans are injured each year by toilets.




Get me that. Stat!
The risk of contracting skin cancer is up to 250 times higher for an organ
transplant survivor than it is for others. The reason may be due to an
immune system weakened by post-transplant drugs.




Stories for the waiting room
Next time you see a physician, ask him or her to do a diabetes test the
old-fashioned way. Seventeenth-century doctors tested patients for diabetes
by tasting their urine. The amount of sugar detected was a telling sign.




Doc talk
Thrill - a vibration that a doctor or nurse can feel by touch, often used to
describe cardiac murmurs or abnormal blood flow felt through the chest wall.




Best medicine
A man goes to the doctor. The man has a strawberry growing out of his head.
The doctor says, "Here, let me give you some cream to put on that."




Need to store it? Floor it
You know the rule: Food dropped on the ground is safe to eat if you pick it
up within five seconds. Kids have been citing it for years as justification
for eating, well, anything they want to eat.

Two Connecticut College student researchers wondered if the rule would stand
up to scientific scrutiny. They took two food samples (apple slices and
Skittles candies), dropped them on the floors of the college's dining hall
and snack bar area, picked them up at different time intervals and then
analyzed the samples for microbial contamination.

Their conclusion: There's no need to rush when you drop apple slices and
Skittles on the floor - at least not at Connecticut College.

The students found no bacteria present on either sample type that remained
on the floor for five, 10 or 30 seconds. After a minute, however, apple
slices did show some bacterial presence; Skittles picked up microbes after
five minutes on the ground.

The rule, of course, does not necessarily apply to all situations. Foods
dropped in, say, a puddle of indeterminate goo are best left where they are.




Hypochondriac's guide
Normally, the tongue is covered with a layer of papillae or small bumps. A
condition called "geographic tongue" results when these bumps disappear from
areas of the tongue surface, creating smooth, red patches that give the
tongue a sort of maplike or geographic appearance.

The condition can cause discomfort (in severe cases, tongue swelling and
difficulty swallowing or breathing) and increased sensitivity to hot or
spicy foods. Most people, however, experience no other signs or symptoms
aside from the patchy appearance.

Geographic tongue, according to the Mayo Clinic, isn't triggered by an
infection or another disease. (Stress has been suggested as a possible
cause.) It's not related to mouth cancer. It occurs in healthy people and,
though persistent, seems to pose no long-term health implications.




Phobia of the week
Vestiphobia - fear of clothing




Observation
Most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by
morning.

- Lewis Thomas




Last words
"I wish I'd drunk more champagne."
- British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)




HEALTH SCREENINGS

"Addicted to Food"
8 and 11 p.m. Wednesday, Discovery Health
Weighing more than 700 pounds, R.J. lives in a home for the super obese in
Ohio. R.J.'s hometown helps him make the trip from North Carolina to his new
home up north.

"Celebrity Fit Club"
10 p.m. Wednesday, VH1
Dustin is gone ... or is he? While the rest of the cast vents and
rehabilitates on a scenic Malibu mountaintop, the cause of their angst -
Dustin Diamond - is nowhere to be found.

"FitTV's Diet Doctor: Weight Watchers"
9 p.m. Monday, June 4, FitTV
Dr. Melina Jampolis hits the road with the woman who revamped Weight
Watchers. Discover the hidden calories in fruit smoothies and coffee drinks.






TRY BURSTS OF SPEED
Instead of walking a long time at a steady pace to burn fat, try doing speed
bursts. Short explosions of energy help you burn fat while you work out and
long afterward. A University of Ontario study looked at exercisers who did
two to three minutes of high-intensity, 30-second sprints on the bike with
four minutes of easy pedaling in between. Performed three times a week, it
boosted their ability to use oxygen by 30 percent, a key factor in fat
burning.




WEIGHT LOSS AND CANCER
There's a better reason to lose weight than just fitting into your jeans.
Evidence increasingly links obesity to cancer, including lymphoma, myeloma
and tumors of the breast, colon, esophagus, gallbladder, kidney, liver and
uterus. A 2005 Harvard Medical School analysis indicates that losing 5 to 20
pounds may reduce your cancer risk by 10 percent; larger losses may provide
substantially more protection.


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