Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The idea for this week’s recipes began during a week and a half I spent in Boston and New York in early September, when I kept noticing that pickled peaches were on many restaurant menus. Chefs were throwing them into salads and using the sweet and sour peaches to accompany meat and fish. I came back to Los Angeles and went right to the farmers’ market, intent on storing some of that summer bounty myself.

I then looked at the New York City Greenmarket website to see if the fruits and vegetables I wanted to pickle would still be available at the end of September in the Northeast. I was in luck; according to the site, peaches are available through September, and beans, corn and squash through October. I also wanted to make a pickle with green tomatoes, because this is the time of year when the last of your summer tomato crop may be on the vine, but it won’t necessarily ripen. When I went to my own farmers’ market in Los Angeles one grower had a huge supply of green tomatoes, right next to his ripe red ones. I bought a few pounds and made a cross between a relish and a pickle (the tomatoes and onions are sliced but the other ingredients are chopped).

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Dallas Ebola Patient Was Initially Sent Home Despite High Fever, Records Show

Medical records unveiled Friday of the Liberian man who died of the Ebola virus have raised new questions about the treatment he received when he first came to at a Dallas emergency room.

The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, had a high fever – his temperature was 103 degrees – during his initial visit to the emergency room of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sept. 25, according to 1,400 pages of medical records that Mr. Duncan’s family provided to The Associated Press.

Despite the fever, the hospital sent Mr. Duncan home, even after learning that he had recently arrived from West Africa. Mr. Duncan returned to the emergency room on Sept. 28, and was immediately hospitalized. He died of Ebola on Wednesday – the only person to die from the disease in the United States.

The Unhealthy Politics of Ebola

What’s more dangerous – flying on an airplane or driving to the airport? In general, auto accidents are a far greater threat than plane crashes, but we tend to devote more attention to dramatic or novel risks like threats to aviation safety.

The same principle applies to the Ebola virus. Although the outbreak is a substantial threat in West Africa, a region plagued by weak government and failing public health systems, the risk to Americans is currently minimal. By contrast, the seasonal flu kills thousands of people every year but receives relatively little attention.

That hasn’t stopped politicians from exploiting those fears. As Jeremy Peters of The New York Times reported Thursday, elected officials like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and candidates such as Scott Brown, who is running for Senate in New Hampshire, are hyping the threat from the disease and using it to attack President Obama and Democratic candidates. The news media raised similar issues this week in questioning Senator Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat who used Ebola to attack his opponent in a misleading ad released in late August.

Lawsuit Against U.N. on the Spread of Cholera Epidemic in Haiti Advances

A federal judge in New York has agreed to hear oral arguments in a lawsuit filed against the United Nations by advocates for Haitian victims of the deadly cholera epidemic that first appeared on the island four years ago. The lawsuit, filed last year, argues that United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti were responsible for introducing the disease through sewage contamination from their barracks after the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010.

Men Dominate List of Doctors Receiving Largest Payments From Drug Companies

Few women are on the list of doctors paid the most money by drug and medical device companies last year, according to a ProPublica analysis of new data released by the federal government.

More than 90 percent of the 300 doctors who collected the most money for speaking and consulting are men, based on information from the new government database, called Open Payments. By comparison, men accounted for about 68 percent of active physicians in the United States in 2012, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (pdf).

What we found adds to a growing body of evidence that male and female doctors are paid differently and may in fact practice medicine differently, though the reasons for the discrepancy are not completely clear. It’s possible that men are more willing to accept payments from drug companies than women. It’s possible that drug companies are more likely to make offers to male doctors. Or it’s possible that male doctors are simply much more likely to be in the senior positions or medical specialties that appeal to drug companies.

Medicaid, Often Criticized, Is Quite Popular With Its Customers

Low-income people in three Southern states were recently asked whether they preferred Medicaid or private insurance. Guess which one they picked?

A study published in the journal Health Affairs found that poor residents of Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas, when asked to compare Medicaid with private coverage, said that Medicaid offered better “quality of health care” and made them better able to “afford the health care” they needed.

Medicaid, the federal-state program for poor and disabled Americans, is a frequent political target, often described as substandard because of its restricted list of doctors and the red tape – sometimes even worse than no insurance at all.

But repeated surveys show that the program is quite popular among the people who use it. A 2011 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (pdf) found that 86 percent of people who had received Medicaid benefits described the experience as somewhat or very positive. A slightly more recent Kaiser survey (pdf) showed that 69 percent of Americans earning less than $40,000 a year rated the program important to them or their families.

When Gluten Sensitivity Isn’t Celiac Disease

Those who say they react to gluten, a protein in wheat and other grains, report symptoms like abdominal pain; bloating; gas; diarrhea; headache; fatigue; joint pain; foggy mind; numbness in the legs, arms or fingers; and balance problems after eating a gluten-rich food.

I suspected at first that the gluten-free craze was an attempt by some to find a physical explanation for emotional problems, similar to the “epidemic” of hypoglycemia in decades past. But a growing body of research indicates that many may be suffering a real condition called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, or NCGS.

It is not celiac disease, a far less common autoimmune condition that can destroy the small intestine. Indeed, no one has conclusively identified a physical explanation for gluten sensitivity and its array of symptoms.

Recent studies have strongly suggested that many, and possibly most, people who react badly to gluten may have a more challenging problem: sensitivity to a long list of foods containing certain carbohydrates.

Patients with diseased leg arteries who quit smoking live longer

People with clogged arteries in their legs can extend their lives – and save their limbs – if they quit smoking cigarettes, new research shows.

In so-called “peripheral artery disease,” blood from the heart can’t reach the legs because the arteries are clogged. The result can be painful cramps while walking or climbing stairs, leg numbness or weakness, coldness in the lower leg or foot – and in the worst cases, amputation.

The authors of the new study expected that people with peripheral artery disease, or PAD, who stopped smoking would do better in the long run – but they didn’t expect the benefit to be as large as it was.

Mental health problems still a workplace stigma

Survey finds 40% have experienced problems and not told their employer – but if you have concerns you may have protection

Are you feeling stressed, anxious or depressed, and keeping this from your employer? If so, you are not alone.

A survey from Friends Life found that 40% of 2,000 respondents from a cross-section of industries had experienced these kinds of mental health problems and had not told their employer. Over half of those surveyed said they thought that if they were open about a mental health issue it would damage their career prospects.

The research suggested that younger workers are feeling the strain more than their older counterparts. Almost two-thirds of 18-24 year olds said they had experienced stress, anxiety or depression in the last year, with the numbers gradually decreasing among older age groups. As for the causes of stress, you may not be surprised to hear that the most common answer in the survey was an “excessive workload”, followed by “frustration with poor management and working hours”.

Arthritis pain, lost sleep may lead to depression, disability

Having sleep problems in addition to osteoarthritis may lead to greater disability over time, according to a new study.

“If your pain is keeping you awake today, you’re at risk of functional decline in the future,” said lead author Patricia A. Parmelee of the Center for Mental Health and Aging at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

But these are very preliminary results, she added, noting that her team is among the first to examine how pain, sleep and mental health symptoms interact over time.

Almost 15 percent of U.S. adults over age 35 have some form of osteoarthritis, joint pain due to wear and tear on cartilage, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previous studies have found that having arthritis increases the likelihood of sleep problems as well.

Love of coffee at least partly genetic: study

Need that cup of joe to get going in the morning? Or avoid it because java tends to make you strung out? Either way, the reasons may be written in your genes.

A new analysis of tens of thousands of human genomes identified six new genetic variants associated with habitual coffee drinking that may help explain why individuals respond differently to coffee.

“Like previous genetic analyses of smoking and alcohol consumption, this research serves as an example of how genetics can influence some types of habitual behavior,” senior author Daniel Chasman, associate professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a statement.

What you eat might depend on who you’re eating with

Dining with an overweight person may cause people to eat more unhealthy food, according to a study in the journal Appetite.

College students were more likely to serve themselves more pasta and less salad when a fellow diner was wearing an overweight prosthesis, or “fat suit,” in the study conducted at Cornell University in New York.

When eating with an overweight person, people not only ate “a larger amount of unhealthy food, but they ate a smaller amount of healthy food,” said Mitsuru Shimizu, assistant professor of psychology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, in an email.

50 things to do when you’re 50

For his 50th birthday, one woman set her husband 50 mini-challenges – not sky-diving or running a marathon, but everyday adventures designed to get more out of life. The experiment isn’t over yet, but the results are already astonishing

My husband’s 50th birthday was approaching and I was searching for an appropriately “big” and memorable present. He wasn’t a material kind of guy, I knew that, and I although I could think of lots of experiences he’d enjoy – a trip to see The Book of Mormon, a meal at the Fat Duck – they felt too short-lived. A few hours of guffawing or gorging and that would be it.

Then, one morning, I woke up all fizzy-brained with an idea emerging: I could give him a box of 50 mini-challenges – written down and presented enticingly – to open and do, one by one, over the year. Each one would be nothing much in itself (after all, it worked out at roughly one a week and he was busy enough). But together they would be designed to help him to try new things, seize more pleasure, connect (or reconnect) with people, appreciate the little things, get round do doing things he’d always wanted to do, go out of his comfort zone – or just do something playful and random for the sake of it. Yep, I’d drip-feed him tiny experiences and adventures to make his year as a 50-year-old really pack a punch. I guess, on some level, it was also an anti-fossilising programme for the middle-aged, to stop him slipping into a pipe-and-slippers rut.