Health * Heath * Equality * The Price of Fame * Music January 25, 2008
Posted by dhconcerts in About Life, Creative Souls, Health, Music, Peace, Justice and Equality, Quoting Others, Radio, Video/YouTube.trackback
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Health
Food Poisoning Can Cause Long Health ProblemsTransplant Donor Makes Medical History (changes blood types) Erica Jong - If Men Could Get Pregnant… Am I Normal?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080121/ap_on_he_me/healthbeat_food_poisoning
TOPIC: Food poisoning can be long-term problem
By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical WriterMon Jan 21, 12:40 PM ET
It’s a dirty little secret of food poisoning: E. coli and certain other foodborne illnesses can sometimes trigger serious health problems months or years after patients survived that initial bout.
Scientists only now are unraveling a legacy that has largely gone unnoticed.
What they’ve spotted so far is troubling. In interviews with The Associated Press, they described high blood pressure, kidney damage, even full kidney failure striking 10 to 20 years later in people who survived severe E. coli infection as children, arthritis after a bout of salmonella or shigella, and a mysterious paralysis that can attack people who just had mild symptoms of campylobacter.
“Folks often assume once you’re over the acute illness, that’s it, you’re back to normal and that’s the end of it,” said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The long-term consequences are “an important but relatively poorly documented, poorly studied area of foodborne illness.”
These late effects are believed to make up a very small fraction of the nation’s 76 million annual food poisonings, although no one knows just how many people are at risk. A bigger question is what other illnesses have yet to be scientifically linked to food poisoning.
And with a rash of food recalls — including more than 30 million pounds of ground beef pulled off the market last year alone — these are questions are taking on new urgency.
“We’re drastically underestimating the burden on society that foodborne illnesses represent,” contends Donna Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group STOP, Safe Tables Our Priority.
Every week, her group hears from patients with health complaints that they suspect or have been told are related to food poisoning years earlier, like a woman who survived severe E. coli at 8 only to have her colon removed in her 20s. Or people who develop diabetes after food poisoning inflamed the pancreas. Or parents who wonder if a child’s learning problems stem from food poisoning-caused dialysis as a toddler.
“There’s nobody to refer them to for an answer,” says Rosenbaum.
So STOP this month is beginning the first national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems — people willing to share their medical histories with scientists in hopes of boosting much-needed research.
Consider Alyssa Chrobuck of Seattle, who at age 5 was hospitalized as part of the Jack-in-the-Box hamburger outbreak that 15 years ago this month made a deadly E. coli strain notorious.
She’s now a successful college student but ticks off a list of health problems unusual for a 20-year-old: High blood pressure, recurring hospitalizations for colon inflammation, a hiatal hernia, thyroid removal, endometriosis.
“I can’t eat fatty foods. I can’t eat things that are fried, never been able to eat ice cream or milkshakes,” says Chrobuck. “Would I have this many medical problems if I hadn’t had the E. coli? Definitely not. But there’s no way to tie it definitely back.”
The CDC says foodborne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. Among survivors, some long-term consequences are obvious from the outset. Some required kidney transplants. They may have scarred intestines that promise lasting digestive difficulty.
But when people appear to recover, it is difficult to prove that later problems really are a food-poisoning legacy and not some unfortunate coincidence. It may be that people prone to certain gastrointestinal conditions, for instance, also are genetically more vulnerable to germs that cause foodborne illness.
For now, some of the best evidence comes from the University of Utah, which has long tracked children with E. coli. About 10 percent of E. coli sufferers develop a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, where their kidneys and other organs fail.
Ten to 20 years after they recover, between 30 percent and half of HUS survivors will have some kidney-caused problem, says Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university’s pediatric infectious diseases chief. That includes high blood pressure caused by scarred kidneys, slowly failing kidneys, even end-stage kidney failure that requires dialysis.
“I don’t want to leave the message that everyone who had symptoms … is in trouble,” stresses Pavia.
Miserable as E. coli is, it doesn’t seem to trigger long-term problems unless it started shutting down the kidneys the first time around, he says. “People with uncomplicated diarrhea, by and large we don’t have evidence yet that they have complications.”
Other proven long-term consequences:
_About 1 in 1,000 sufferers of campylobacter, a diarrhea-causing infection spread by raw poultry, develop far more serious Guillain-Barre syndrome a month or so later. Their body attacks their nerves, causing paralysis that usually requires intensive care and a ventilator to breathe. About a third of the nation’s Guillain-Barre cases have been linked to previous campylobacter, even if the diarrhea was very mild, and they typically suffer a more severe case than patients who never had food poisoning.
While they eventually recover, “We don’t know a great deal about what happens to those people five years later. What does ‘normal’ look like?” Tauxe says.
_A small number of people develop what’s called reactive arthritis six months or longer after a bout of salmonella. It causes joint pain, eye inflammation, sometimes painful urination, and can lead to chronic arthritis. Certain strains of shigella and yersinia bacteria, far more common abroad than in the U.S., trigger this reactive arthritis, too, Tauxe says.
What about other patient complaints?
A variety of other organ problems might be triggered by HUS, that severe E. coli — because it causes blood clots all over the body that could leave a trail of damage, says Utah’s Pavia. Among his hottest questions: HUS patients often suffer pancreatitis. Does that increase risk for diabetes later in life?
But proving a connection will require tracking a lot of patients who can provide very good medical records documenting their initial foodborne illness, he cautions.
___
EDITOR’s NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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http://news.aol.com/health/story/_a/transplant-patient-makes-medical-history/20080125091509990001
TOPIC: Transplant Patient Makes Medical History
Transplant Patient Makes Medical History
Reuters
Posted: 2008-01-25 14:31:31
Filed Under: Health News, World News
CANBERRA (Jan. 25) - An Australian teenage girl has become the world’s first known transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune system of her organ donor, doctors said on Friday, calling her a “one-in-six-billion miracle.”
Demi-Lee Brennan, 15, is the first known transplant recipient to adopt the blood type and the immune system of her organ donor, to the amazement of the medical community and Brennan alike. “It’s like my second chance at life,” she said. “It’s kind of hard to believe.”
Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9 years old and her own liver failed.
“It’s like my second chance at life,” Brennan told local media, recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy grail of transplant surgery. “It’s kind of hard to believe.”
Brennan’s body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body’s immune system.
Her new liver’s blood stem cells then invaded her body’s bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.
Doctors from Sydney’s Westmead Childrens’ Hospital said they had no explanation for Brennan’s recovery, detailed in the latest edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
“There was no precedent for this having happened at any other time, so we were sort of flying by the seat of our pants,” Michael Stormon, a pediatric hepatologist, told local radio.
Stuart Dorney, the hospital’s former transplant unit head, said Brennan’s treatment could lead to breakthroughs in organ transplant treatment, because normally the immune system of recipients attacked the transplanted tissue.
“We now need to go back over everything that happened to Demi-Lee and see why, and if it can be replicated,” said Dorney.
“We think because we used a young person’s liver and Demi-Lee had low white blood cells, that could have been a reason,” he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Rejection is normally treated with a combination of drugs, although chronic rejection is irreversible.
Only seven-in-10 transplant operations in Australia are successful after a five-year period due to rejection complications.
Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Alex Richardson
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.
2008-01-25 09:15:50
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/if-men-could-get-pregnant_b_82467.html?view=print
TOPIC: If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would be a Sacrament
Posted January 21, 2008 | 10:54 AM (EST)
Read More: Abortion, Roe Vs Wade, Roe Vs Wade 35 Anniversary, Breaking Politics News
Thirty five years ago (22 January 1973) the Supreme Court decided a case titled Roe v. Wade which held that until a fetus is viable outside its mother’s body (twenty eight weeks), it is not a legal individual whose rights extend beyond the rights of its mother, that in fact the mother’s health preempts any rights the partially formed embryo has.
This case overturned a law in Texas that criminalized abortion and reverberated through the states. According to the Roe decision, laws against abortion violated a woman’s right to privacy under due process (in the Fourteenth Amendment). This decision superceded state laws restricting abortion.
Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial cases in U.S. Supreme Court history. Even before it was decided there were men and women whose stomachs turned at the idea of abortion. The issue had been argued many times before in fairly recent history. In 18th century England, mothers accused of murder were not put to death if they could prove they were “with child.” In infamous London prisons of the day there were “child-getters”–fertile men who could reliably make a woman pregnant. Some female criminals availed themselves of their services repeatedly so as not to be hanged.
In the early Soviet Union, abortion was freely available. It was later abolished because too many women were using it in place of birth control–which was hard for most women to get up until the sixties and seventies. Rich women had it, but often not the working classes. Remember Mary McCarthy’s The Group? Vassar girls had diaphragms in the thirties–but not blue collar women who relied on condoms and men who would wear them or withdraw before ejaculation. As a seventeen-year-old freshman at Barnard, I got my first diaphragm from Planned Parenthood (a college tradition). I never got pregnant accidentally because I knew that an abortion would make me terribly sad. I loved children, dogs, cats and other living things, and I understood that terminating a pregnancy would be extremely hard for me emotionally. (But then I had sophisticated New York gynecologists all my life and grew up in liberal, enlightened Manhattan with parents who were bohemians of the thirties before they surprised themselves by getting rich).
In my own Manhattan high school years, girls disappeared from New York to darkest New Jersey or Pennsylvania to seek the services of illegal abortionists and many of them were accidentally sterilized while others may have died. Rich women in New York went to Flower Fifth Avenue hospital for a “D & C.” My mother did this as late as 1960, but our housekeepers and baby nurses from Jamaica or the Deep South didn’t have that option. A safe medical abortion (my mother referred to it in whispers as an “a- b”
was expensive and hard to find. Many poor women got infected and died. In my mother’s case, as I later learned, my father was adamant about not having another baby. There were already three girls growing up and needing private schools, hand-smocked party dresses, music lessons, art lessons, ballet, figure skating, charge accounts at Saks, Best and Company and Bergdorf’s, Doubleday book stores (with their listening booths for LPS–which we quaintly called “records.”
How interesting that the thirty-fifth anniversary of Roe comes on the very day that my daughter will go home from the hospital after having had twins. She had a really tough time, and has been warned that she would be at risk if she got pregnant again. She is not yet thirty and has had, thank the goddess, three beautiful children and a lovely husband. She also has generous parents and in-laws, step-parents who adore her and can refuse her nothing. But she was still terrified by a very difficult delivery (the details of which are hers not mine to describe. Since she is a much-published novelist, I’m sure she will).
The babies, a girl and a boy, are miraculous–like all babies–bringing back to me Ordinary Miracles, a book of poems about childbirth I wrote when Molly was born. (The phrase has entered the language–or been ripped off by various ASCAPniks and jingle writers). Babies are miraculous, especially just when they just wake to the world.
They seem to come from a better place which some call ‘God,’ some call ‘Mother Nature,’ and some call human evolution, depending on your point of view. (I happen to think that evolution is every bit as numinous as ‘God’). But one thing is clear: Having them ain’t easy. And that’s long before you have to raise them.
For centuries, death in childbirth was woman’s lot. In some places, it still is. In mountainous Afghanistan where women can’t get to hospitals or there are none, in war zones, in occupied zones with barriers or curfews, in many parts of Africa, in rural India, and China, in rural America, giving birth is still no joke. Even in big cities, it can be dangerous. There is massive bleeding, the placentas don’t always detach promptly, babies are often transverse or breach, just for starters. Then there is the question of medical care.
Again, in the eighteenth-century, my favorite period in English Literature, (at the dawn of the modern era–but before Louis Pasteur), accoucheurs (the precursors of obstetricians) killed many women with the microbes they unknowingly carried from the sickbeds of other patients. There was a great political struggle between midwives, who only dealt with women, and doctors who treated everyone, because the doctors wanted their monopoly.
Many women died of infection–like Charlotte Bronte–or nearly died like Mary Shelley. Women’s health had always been a political football in the supposedly “civilized” Christian era. Many midwives (always specialists in women’s health) were burned as witches throughout modern history.
Now we know about bacteria and viruses and we are much more aware of unconscious infection, but childbirth can still be a big deal–especially for older women, very young women, the ill, the malnourished, the poor, the mothers of multiple babies. It seems to me incredible that anyone without a uterus would try to dictate what a woman should do with hers.
So I am appalled that abortion remains under attack–and that birth control in America has been impeded. We came so far with so much struggle. To give it back now is no less than an assault on women’s health.
Of course babies are precious and should be cherished. Nobody doubts that. But should a woman be forced by the law to give birth if she has health issues, a dead baby, twins or triplets, or can’t get to a hospital or must be accompanied but a male relative–who may be at war or dead or unwilling? Fundamentalist Muslims, like fundamentalist Christians would deny her that.
No wonder the late great Florynce Kennedy said: If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2008/01/25/day-lewis/
Daniel Day-Lewis offers his condolences.
Tearful Day-Lewis on Ledger’s Death
Posted Jan 25th 2008 12:08PM by Brendon H., Attending Videologist
Filed under: Celebrities Do Things
Oscar winner and current nominee Daniel Day-Lewis was on ‘Oprah’ this week to talk about his latest remarakable performance (in ‘There Will Be Blood’
when he changed the conversation to make an emotional statement about Heath Ledger’s untimely death. Apparently he had just heard the news. Well said, as always, by the thespian.
Here’s the link:
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1389981778
http://www.aolvideoblog.com/2008/01/08/britney-did-we-miss-the-signs/
TOPIC: Britney - Did we miss the signs?
Britney … Did We Miss the Signs?
Posted Jan 8th 2008 6:00AM by Meredith O., Videologist Chief of Staff
Filed under: Celebrities Do Things
We are all witness to the collapse of Britney Spears fr
om the pinnacle of All-American pop-diva to the troubled queen of tabloid train wrecks. A sober look at Britney’s music videos foreshadows the self-destructiveness that would come to consume her marriage, her children and her career. Did we miss her cries for help in ‘Everytime’, ‘Do Somethin,’ ‘Toxic,’ ‘Not a Girl’ and ‘Crazy’?
Spears’ 2003 video for ‘Everytime’ could easily be called prophetic. It shows her at odds with a violent boyfriend, hounded by frenetic paparazzi and most disturbingly — contemplating suicide in her bathtub. Ultimately, Britney is saved, after watching herself being given CPR next to a woman giving birth. A happy ending touching on the birth of her own children?
Here’s the link to the video:
… The link is in this article (linked above), and there is no link directly to that video (not that I’ve found yet). If you find a link to this video, please post it here.
http://body.aol.com/health/womens-health/questions-answered
TOPIC: Women’s Health Questions: Am I Normal?
Am I Normal?
Provided by Women’s Health
The truth behind soggy sweat glands, out-of-nowhere orgasms, and other bizarre body behavior.
We’re all for individual expression and the power of moi. But sometimes it would be nice to know–just for informational purposes, not because we’re insecure–whether anyone else experiences the same crazy stuff we do. So we surveyed WH readers about their bodies’ “special” habits, urges, and peculiarities–and then asked the experts to gauge the weirdness factor. Here’s what they said, and how you can get a handle on your own oh-so-fascinating quirks.
My hands and feet literally drip with sweat, even when I’m cold. Am I normal? About 3 percent of the population suffers from excessive sweating, or hyperhidrosis. It generally occurs in the hands, feet, underarms, face, or scalp. “The cause isn’t really clear, but 40 to 60 percent of sufferers have a family history of the problem,” says Dee Anna Glaser, M.D., a professor of dermatology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. There are several treatment options, from prescription-strength antiperspirants to site-specific Botox injections, which interrupt the chemical messages that tell the glands to sweat. If all else fails, surgery to sever the nerves that communicate with sweat glands is effective. The downside: Sweating often reappears in another spot, though hopefully a less embarrassing one.
The moment I step outdoors, I’m a magnet for mosquitoes. Am I normal? Humans produce an aromatic bouquet of hundreds of chemicals, some of which are irresistible to skeeters. But scientists have only, um, scratched the surface of what makes some people more bite-worthy than others. Drinking beer may attract them (yes, researchers studied this, though they didn’t discover why beer breath is so alluring), and having high cholesterol, another study shows, makes you a more likely target (experts theorize it’s because mosquitoes need cholesterol but can’t make it on their own). Bad news for the overly hydrated reader earlier: “We also know that people who sweat less are not as attractive to mosquitoes,” says Ulrich Bernier, Ph.D., a research chemist with the USDA and an expert on mosquito attractants and repellents. He and other scientists are working to develop compounds that actually will cloak your body’s scent, rendering you invisible to mosquitoes, whose sense of smell is much keener than their eyesight. In the meantime, to keep from scratching all through your next tropical vacation, cover up, wear repellent (such as Off! Deep Woods), and don’t fidget: Movement attracts the little buggers too.
I drool all over my pillow at night. Am I normal? Every day, your body produces a liter or more of saliva, an enzyme-rich goo that helps keep your mouth clean and digest your food. As a toddler you mastered the art of keeping saliva in your yap-trap. But during sleep, when the muscles in your body relax, your coordination lapses, leaving you more likely to dribble. (This is a particular hazard if you’re a side snoozer.) The result is a stiff little patch of drool that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “sleeping in the wet spot.” A sinus infection or allergies that cause you to breathe through your mouth instead of your nose may make the problem worse, but the easiest fix is just to sleep on your back, says Lee Akst, M.D., an otolaryngologist at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago. Go online at thecompanystore.com to find supportive pillows for back sleepers.
After I turned 30, my metabolism slowed to a crawl, or at least that was my explanation when I chunked up. Am I normal? Studies show that two things happen to women around their 30th birthdays: Their bodies start to lose muscle more dramatically (as much as half a pound per year, which has an adverse effect on your metabolism), and their physical activity wanes, thanks to greater career and family responsibilities, says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., co-author of Get Stronger, Feel Younger. The solution: strength-building exercises to help replace lost muscle tissue. Just 20 minutes twice a week can raise your resting metabolic rate by as much as 7 percent. If you can barely squeeze in time to sleep, let alone exercise, Westcott recommends three simple moves you can do at home: dumbbell squats, chest presses with dumbbells, and a bent-over row. Soon you’ll be on your way back to your pre-30 body.
I clutch my boyfriend’s hand in a death grip every time I fly. Am I normal? Your rational mind knows you’re less (56 times less!) likely to die in an airplane than you are to die in a car. But your lizard brain doesn’t buy it. All it knows is that you’re way higher than any sane person should be and are potentially out of control. No wonder your sympathetic nervous system–the one that commands your body’s flight-or-fight response-is shrieking, “Get! Out! Now!” You’re hardly alone: An estimated 25 million people in North America are afraid to fly.
Trite as it sounds, research shows that in this instance, facing your fears really does work. In 2002 researchers studied the effect of “exposure therapy” on 75 nervous fliers. Subjects were offered eight 45-minute therapy sessions in which virtual reality was used to simulate the experience of being airborne. Those who completed the treatment had much lower levels of flying anxiety afterwards, says study co-author Page Anderson, an assistant professor of psychology at Georgia State University in Atlanta. It probably took you longer than that to learn how to drive a stick shift. Check out virtuallybetter.com for exposure therapy programs in your area.
When I walk around in the morning, my joints sound like popcorn popping. Am I normal? Many people have some degree of crepitus, a crackling or grinding sound made when uneven cartilage surfaces rub against each other. It usually occurs in large joints, like the knee or shoulder. Crepitus is different from the loud snap you hear when you crack a knuckle: That’s caused by nitrogen bubbles inside the joints popping under pressure, says Raymond Rocco Monto, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon and spokesman for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. If you feel pain along with the popping (especially while climbing stairs, squatting or kneeling), see an orthopedist. It could be a sign of injury or arthritis. Yes, you heard us right: Arthritis has become more common in young athletic women who got hurt playing sports as adolescents, Dr. Monto says.
While getting a head massage at a spa, I orgasmed. Am I normal? You could just thank the goddess of Oh! and book a return trip. But since you’re wondering, it is possible for women to have what’s known as “extragenital orgasms”–orgasms without genital contact, says Beverly Whipple, Ph.D., professor emerita at Rutgers University and co-author of The Science of Orgasm. Arousing sensitive areas like the neck or breasts or even just imagining sex can get you there. “Physiologically, orgasm is a reflex, so the genital nerve pathways don’t need to be stimulated in order for it to occur,” she says. Studies have found that even women with spinal cord injuries are able to experience orgasm.
You are not alone:
It’s not that you need to stop blabbering to your puppy like she’s a toddler. All we’re saying is: You’re not the only dog whisperer.
1 in 4 women brush their teeth after every meal.
71% of young adult women feel like their bra is never the perfect fit.
99% of women talk to their pets–a lot.
25% of women have shagged only one person in their lives.
More than 50% of women would prefer an hour to themselves than 60 minutes of bliss in the bedroom.
12% of women never snack.
21% of women would forget any and all promises of faithfulness for one night with (big surprise) Matthew “No Shirt” McConaughey.
45% of women think their pets are cuter than their partners.
Based on survey results.
TOPIC: Accidental Pill Overdose Killed Ledger
Wednesday February 6 10:47 AM ET
Heath Ledger died of an accidental overdose of painkillers, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medication and other prescription drugs, the New York City medical examiner said Wednesday.
The cause of death was “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine,” spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said in a statement.
The drugs are the generic names for the painkiller OxyContin, the anti-anxiety drugs Valium and Xanax, and the sleep aids Restoril and Unisom. Hydrocodone is a widely used prescription painkiller.
Borakove wouldn’t say what concentrations of each drug were found in Ledger’s blood, or whether one drug played a greater part than another in causing his death.
“What you’re looking at here is the cumulative effects of these medications together,” she said.
The ruling comes two weeks after the 28-year-old Australian-born actor was found dead in the bed of his rented SoHo apartment. Police found bottles of six types of prescription drugs, including sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication, in his bedroom and bathroom.
Ledger was discovered by his masseuse on Jan. 22 after she arrived for an appointment that afternoon. She entered his bedroom to set up for the massage and found him unresponsive, and proceeded to call Mary-Kate Olsen three times over the next 9 minutes before dialing 911. Ledger had been dead for some time, and police say no foul play occurred.
Ledger, nominated for an Oscar for his role in “Brokeback Mountain,” had returned to New York from London days before his death, where he had been filming a $30 million Terry Gilliam film. He said in a November interview that his most recent completed roles in the Batman movie “The Dark Night” and Bob Dylan biopic “I’m Not There” had taken a toll, saying he couldn’t sleep.
“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” Ledger told The New York Times. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” He said he had taken two Ambien pills, which only gave him an hour of sleep.
Ledger’s family returned to the actor’s hometown of Perth, Australia on Tuesday to prepare for his funeral. Arrangements were private.
In a statement released through Ledger’s publicist, Ledger’s father, Kim, said Wednesday: “While no medications were taken in excess, we learned today the combination of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath’s accidental death serves as a caution to the hidden dangers of combining prescription medication, even at low dosage.”