Poisons Information.

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I spend a great deal of time urging people to live a healthy lifestyle, and the imagery that one conjures up is of happy, smiling people jogging through our pristine environment. In fact, there are a lot of hidden hazards “out there” - cars, searing sunshine and stingers in the ocean, to mention just a few! But as well as physical hazards, hundreds of Australian are killed each year by poisons!!

In 2008, for instance, there were 622 registered deaths due to accidental poisoning: this represents 0.4% of all registered deaths for that year. This compares with 1330 people who died as a result of deliberate overdosing with a poison or pharmaceutical substance in the same year.

For accidental overdose, it is interesting that 140 deaths were related to exposure to narcotics and hallucinogenic substances as compared to 41 deaths directly attributed to alcohol: so who called them "Recreational Drugs"? But then the social and road trauma associated with alcohol would no doubt swell those numbers considerably.

There are a lot of very nasty toxins and chemicals out there in our environment: just check your garden shed and see for yourself. Even within our houses we have cleaning fluids, caustic detergents, medicines and so on. So here’s link to an Australian website that gives helpful tips for improving home awareness, and what to do in the case of an accidental poisoning.

It’s Child Safety Australia.

Pathogens 101

Tweet There's been a lot in the news recently about deadly infections around the world. First there was the H1N1 swine flu that threatened to turn into a pandemic: luckily it turned out to be a very mild flu-like illness, and not the long awaited "big one" predicted in the media. More recently there has been the E Coli outbreak in Germany that has killed several people and left hundreds needing dialysis for kidney failure. So what do we know about these germs - or pathogens as the experts call them?

Firstly, viruses and bacteria have been around for millions of years, and Homo Sapiens is a relative new-comer, having been on the planet for about 2 to 300 thousand years. That means that viruses and bacteria have been able to adapt to the environment for far longer than we have.

Secondly, the world is awash with viruses and bacteria, in the oceans, on land and carried by almost everything that crawls and walks. The great thing is that most of them do us no harm: in fact we humans have more bacterial cells in and on us, than those cells that make up the human body. Many of them live in the gut and help with digestion: others live on the skin and provide a sort of germ "ground cover" to help protect us from those germs that might cause us harm. One of the problems with the careless use of antibiotics is that these friendly bacteria get killed by antibiotics too, leaving the ground open for those bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic, and leading to more serious disease.

Thirdly, viruses are totaly different germs to bacteria and need a completely different approach to control. Bacteria are single celled organisms that have DNA within them, and are very similar to human cells. Viruses are more akin to chemicals, having no cellular structure, and need to enter a human cell and hijack the "production line" of that cell to produce more virus particles. Antibiotics do not work against viruses, and should never be offered or used for viral infections. Vaccines are far better at controlling viruses.

By understanding how these germs operate, strategies can be developed to help fight them: and currently, vaccination programs world-wide have probably saved more lives than all the antibiotics used in the last 70 years.

We are still a long way from getting the upper hand in the war against these virulent pathogens, as they are constantly changing and learning from other pathogens, to defeat the body's immune system. Knowing the difference between a virus and a bacteria may help more people understand that antibiotics are not a panacea for "infections" and may well lead to the terrifying situation that we breed out all the antibiotic sensitive bacteria and leave the field open to the resistant ones.

Inducing labour: DIY is not much help!

Tweet A normal healthy pregnancy lasts for 40 weeks: agreed? And the last few weeks seem to go on for months, and so the temptation to "hurry things up" has probably popped into most Mums heads at some point as they struggle around the Supermarket feeling like a beached whale. And according to a study in this months issue of the Journal "Birth", just over 50% of Mums attending a US hospital have tried to do just that.

Jonathan Schaffir, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study, gave his Mums-to -be a list of of methods gathered from women 10 years previously, and which they thought might be successful, and asked them to tick which ones they might have tried.102 out of the 201 ticked a box, but they also ticked the box that said that they hadn't told their treating Doctor that they had tried something! Another interesting finding was that the majority of women got their information mainly from family and friends, and occasionally from the internet: but rarely from their Doctor.

Here's the list of suggested methods that they tried: walking, exercise, sexual intercourse, nipple stimulation, masturbation, use of laxatives, use of enemas, ingestion of spicy food, ingestion of herbal preparations, acupuncture and starvation.

Of all those, only nipple stimulation may have a basis in fact, but even if it did work, the resultant contractions can be irregular and painful and lead to more problems than positive outcomes. The reason none of these "home remedies" work, is that it is thought that the unborn baby is in charge of when labour starts! The theory goes that the babe releases a hormone that initiates the onset of labour which is then maintained by the mother's release of the hormone Oxytocin - which is also associated with nipple stimulation and lactaction.

The conclusion is that home remedies to initiate labour are still "out there", they probably don't work anyway and no-one's telling the Doctor about it! Answer:

1. For medical "things", talk to the people who have most experience, and that's probably not your mother-in-law, but your Obstetrician who has delivered thousands more babies than your much loved relation!
2. Doctors need to be empathetic towards their pregnant patients, especially in the last few weeks, and offer as much support as they can. In the end, it's in their best interests too, as the last thing they want to do is to deliver a baby to a mother who has recently swallowed a healthy swig of Castor Oil!

I wonder whether many Aussie women have tried to bring on labour with a home remedy?

Bring on Bali

Tweet The favourite daughter is going to Bali with her family on Saturday, so there is a tornado of activity with packing, last minute preparations and dealing with those unexpected hiccoughs, before heading to the land of palm trees and plaited hair!

So what preparations should families take before heading off to exotic, and not so exotic holiday destinations?

Probably the most important things to pack are sunblock,  tropical strength insect repellent and dressings for minor grazes and cuts that inevitably occur just when you thought you didn't need them! If you are intending to go to areas or countries where hygiene standards are not as stringent as here in Oz, then be prepared for a dose of the "trots". Most cases of gastroenteritis are self limiting, but it's pretty miserable to have to endure for 24 to 48 hours whilst the world falls out of your bottom!! Good personal hygiene is essential, and make sure that what you eat is well cooked: and look out for those salads and eggs/chicken that might not be cooked all the way through. The key to surviving Gastro is to keep hydrated: you can get sachets of dry powder containing all the salts that the body is losing down the toilet: you just add the powder to bottled water so that you replace not only the fluids that you lose, but also the salts, that if not replaced, leave you feeling washed out.

But in many areas of the world there are exotic diseases that require vaccination: this raises the problem of how many shots, and when to have them and what are the side effects. I always go to the CDC in the US which always has comprehensive and up to date advice for travel to all parts of the world. So here's a link to the CDC:

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/

I'll also add it to the "tool bar" on the right for future reference, check it out, especially for all those who intend to travel abroad. Unfortunately it's too late for the favourite daughter, but I have assured her that I am prepared to do a home visit if she needs it!!

Is watching TV killing you?

Tweet Scientists just love statistics! Unfortunately they can often be "massaged" into giving you the sort of answer you were looking for in the first place, but that's not what Anders Grontved, M.P.H., M.Sc., of the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, and Frank B. Hu, M.D., Ph.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston have done.

They didn't do the research themselves and come up with a conclusion, they reviewed the work of others by searching the medical literature for relevant studies from 1970 to March 2011 and found 8 studies that fitted their criteria. What they found provided some fascinating trends about why watching TV may be bad for our health.

If you watch TV for 2 hours per day there is a 20% increased risk for Type II Diabetes and a 15% increased risk for fatal or non fatal heart attacks. And the more TV you watch, the greater the risk.

Put into context for Perth (rounding out our population at 1 million for ease of mathematics) that equates to 380 fatal heart attacks and 1,760 new cases of Type II Diabetes per year.

Now I don't think for a moment that there are some deadly rays coming out of the TV screens around the world, but watching TV for extended periods of time - in the US the average viewing time is reported to be 5 hours, and it's probably fairly close to that in Australia - means you are inactive and probably eating and drinking (or being tempted to eat and drink) snacks and drinks that you don't need.  Other studies have shown that those with sedentary jobs such as drivers also have increased risk for these diseases, so the problem appears to be linked to inactivity and poor diet choices.

TV and home entertainment are entrenched in our modern way of life, but is there a better, healthier way of living with them? Do we need to watch as much TV as we do?

As a point of interest, I was just reading an article on how the brain records those powerful, emotional and sometimes scary experiences that happen during our lives, and how it is that we can remember them far more easily than the usual day to day events. Whilst reading the article I discovered that we produce about 100 new neurons each day and about 50% of them will die if we don't "use" them: and the way to hold onto them is to use your brain to perform "complex" tasks - learning a new language, reading books, learning new dance steps, exercising and so on.This means being actively involved in the process, not sitting back and watching others perform them.

Of all the time you have spent in front of the "Box", how much of it do you remember? How would you cope if you lost the use of your TV (computer games) for a week? How can we reorganize our leisure time? Everyone will have a different answer, we just need to take time and think about it.

Mood disorders and the "Four Humours"

Tweet There's a lot of black ink being spilled in the press today with regards to Prof Patrick McGorry"s Early Psychosis Intervention Centres -EPIC - being described by a US expert as a "vast untried public health experiment". I suppose that it may have something to do with the cost, $222 million to expand the scheme, but call me a softie for supporting any initiative that helps those struggling with mood disorders/psychiatric conditions, but I think that every effort must be made and every initiative tried, to lessen these black dog diseases.

It's not that we're dealing with something new: I was listening to a discussion the other day about a book written 500 years ago by an English Vicar called Richard Burton, entitled "The Anatomy of Melancholy". At that time all health problems were thought to be due to a disorder of one of the four "Humours" - Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic and Melancholic. In fact the word Melancholic comes from two Latin words that mean Black Bile, and was thought to affect the brain; and the whole Humour theory dates back to the time of Hippocrates a couple of thousand years ago. In other words mental disorders have been talked about and discussed for centuries, and is not just a disease of our times.

I mention all of this because there is no simple solution. Yes we do have some medications, and the researchers are constantly looking to better understand the mysteries of the mind but there is no quick fix anywhere on the horizon. I suspect that because mood disorders have been such a constant companion of society ever since we stopped dragging our knuckles along the floor, that we've come to see it as an inevitable part of life. Thanks to people like Patrick McGorry and others, the light is now well and truly being shone on a dreadful burden that so many have to endure, and at last something is actually being tried!

Broccoli and advances in cancer research

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The young bride is a great cook, and for many years we have eaten lots of fish, fresh vegetables and occasional red meat: she also loves broccoli which, as a child, I used to detest. Now I have two good reasons to enjoy my cruciferous veggies: one is because she makes it taste so delicious and the other is because of the increasing evidence to show that it helps reduce the risk of some cancers.

 In 2008 a couple of American researchers reported evidence that eating raw cruciferous veggies – broccoli and cauliflower fall into this group – lowered the risk of developing lung cancer in smokers and former smokers: and the range of risk reduction was fairly significant ranging from a 20 to 55%. Despite that impressive figures however, the researchers stated that the evidence was still not strong enough to make a Public Health recommendation.

Now scientists have uncovered one of the chemicals in broccoli that plays a part in this preventative puzzle. Sulphoraphane, a phytochemical found in high quantities in cruciferous vegetables has for the first time been shown to selectively target and kill cancer cells whilst leaving normal cancer cells healthy and unaffected. However,  "Just because a phytochemical or nutrient is found in food doesn't always mean its safe, and a lot can also depend on the form or levels consumed," said Emily Ho, a principal investigator in the Linus Pauling Institute. "But this does appear to be a phytochemical that can selectively kill cancer cells, and that's always what you look for in cancer therapies." In fact Sulphoraphane is already in clinical trails in the management of both breast and prostate cancer.

So get out the recipe book and start adding broccoli creations to your diet, and just to give you a kick-start, here’s one from Marg Johnson!

Serves four:

Broccoli, Anchovies and chilli Tagliatelle

1 head broccoli – cut into small florets

44g dried tagliatelle

salt

¼ cup olive oil (best quality)

4 anchovy fillets, roughly chopped

1 to 2 red chillies – chopped

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley roughly chopped

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Simmer the florets until they are just tender. Drain them and keep to one side. Cook the pasta in salted water until just tender. Meanwhile, warm the olive oil and add the anchovies. Allow them to melt into the il and then add the chilli, pepper and the broccoli. When all is hot, add the drained pasta and mix all together. Then remove from the heat and fold through most of the parsley and cheese. Serve topped with the rest of both.