Healing Connections

“Everyone deserves to breathe smoke-free air regardless of where they live or work,” according to the President and CEO of the American Lung Association, Bernadette A. Toomey. The CDC estimates that in 2007 the percentage of people in the United States who still smoked was below 20 percent. France and Ireland, countries with strong smoking cultures, have successfully gone smoke-free; and it is the goal of the American Lung Association that the U.S. be smoke-free by 2010.

People in the U.S. are smoking less, with secondhand smoke definitely on the decline in America. Laws and policies banning smoking in restaurants, office buildings, apartment buildings, and all manner of public places, even the beach in some areas, have been increasing passed and enforced since the early 1990s.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested approximately 17,000 nonsmokers, aged 4 and older, comparing the years 1988 through 1994 with the years 1999 through 2004, and the conclusion they reached was that the smoking rate in the U.S. had declined, but was not yet low enough.
The study found that nearly half of the nonsmoking population of the U.S. is still being exposed to secondhand smoke. There was progress: 84 percent of the nonsmokers had tested positive for signs of nicotine in their blood during the late 1980s and early 1990s tests; that number had decreased to 46 percent by the time the tests were repeated in 1999 and 2004.

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Diarrhea and vomiting are not something anyone wants to experience, yet thousands of babies and children experience them annually in the form of the Rotavirus. New Rotavirus vaccines have recently entered the market and are helping to prevent the effects of this dreaded virus. 2006 was the first year Merck’s RotaTeq® vaccination was marketed and has reported great results. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a reduction in cases of the Rotavirus since the entrance of RotaTeq®, noting that the 2007-2008 Rotavirus season started three months later than it has for the past 15 years, and that diagnosed cases were down last year by almost three fourths. The U.S. vaccine experts are recommending adding Rotavirus vaccinations to the routine immunizations list.

Positive Rotavirus results were down 79 percent during the first year of RotaTeq®. The FDA approved GlaxoSmithKline’s product Rotarix in April of this year and now allows for a choice between the two Rotavirus vaccines. The CDC’s Advisory Committee for immunizations is currently formulating recommendations in regards to the use of both Rotavirus vaccines that seem to be equally safe and effective.

RotaTeq® is given in three oral doses and Rotarix® in two oral doses, both over a six-month period. Rotarix® and RotaTeq® have been approved for use in children ages two months to six months. The main difference between the two is in the dosages. Some of the most common side effects of the vaccinations, per the FDA, were fussiness, irritability, nausea, and cold symptoms such as fever, runny nose and cough.

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Call them stoic, call them cost-conscious, call them under- or uninsured…but almost 20 percent of the U.S. population either went without or delayed needed medical care at sometime during 2007. That figure is up from 14 percent in 2003, and if you are counting, is an additional 9.5 million Americans who didn’t get the medical care they needed in 2007.

People had numerous reasons why they had postponed or had completely forgone medical care for themselves during the year. Chief among them was out-of-pocket medical costs and deductibles they couldn’t afford to pay, followed by a list that included things like a lack of acceptable clinic hours of operation, difficulty getting to clinics during working hours, problems with doctors being overbooked that resulted in difficulty getting timely appointments, and doctors and hospitals not accepting their insurance plans.

It wasn’t just people without medical insurance that were avoiding medical visits, but both people with and without insurance that were either delaying or forgoing medical care, according to a random national phone survey. The survey was conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy group, who called 18,000 people, with a 43 percent response rate.

The study’s lead author, Peter Cunningham, noted that as health care costs increase, a larger share of cost, often in the form of higher deductibles, is being shifted to people and families, requiring them to pay more out of their own pockets. “To the extent that cost increases are passed on to individuals, continued declines in access to care are inevitable,” wrote the co-authors of the study.

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One of the most comprehensive studies on the minimum drinking age shows that laws aimed at preventing consumption of alcohol by those under 21 have significantly reduced drinking-related fatal car crashes.

Specifically, the study published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention found that laws making it illegal to possess or purchase alcohol by anyone under the age of 21 had led to an eleven percent drop in alcohol-related traffic deaths among youth; secondly, they found that states with strong laws against fake IDs reported seven percent fewer alcohol-related fatalities among drivers under the age of 21.

The study was funded by the Substance Abuse Policy Research Program (SAPRP) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The study, led by James C. Fell, M.S., of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), accounted for a variety of factors, such as improved safety features in cars, better roadways and tougher adult drunk driving laws, that are supposed to have contributed to a reduction in fatalities involving underage drivers who have consumed alcohol. Fell’s research controlled for more variables than any other previous study on the topic, accounting for regional and economic differences, improvements in roadways and vehicles, and changes that lowered the illegal blood alcohol content for driving to .08. Yet, according to Fell, the eleven percent drop in youth fatalities is a “conservative” figure.

Fell notes that his research is more sophisticated and comprehensive than previous studies that have looked at the drinking age. “There has been evidence since the 1980s that an increase in the drinking age to 21 was having an impact on traffic deaths,” Fell said. “But this is the first time we’ve been able to tease out the real effect, free of the variables that had been used to question the validity of the evidence.”

In addition to providing comprehensive evidence of the life-saving impact of minimum drinking age laws, the authors of the new study found that tougher sanctions against fake identification cards may represent the second-best legislative tool that states have in combating drunk driving deaths among young people.

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When planning an exercise routine, most people want to incorporate some type of walking, jogging, or running. The multiple benefits of such activities – cardiovascular, bone density, muscles, weight loss, and energy, to name a few – are enough to encourage most to add this physical activity to the exercise plan.

Many often wonder, however, whether it is more beneficial to walk, run, or jog on a treadmill or the roads. For the most part, the physical benefits are the same. These activities involve moving muscle and bone against the force of gravity, and using the hard surface of concrete gives a slight benefit over the treadmill. The exception is jogging which should be done on a less rigid surface like a track or a treadmill – even the actual road has a more forgiving surface than the sidewalk.

On a treadmill, you can adjust the speed, incline, and resistance to give a more intense workout. For those who want to gradually increase those levels to provide more of a challenge, the treadmill has those features. However, some people find the same challenges by altering the routes, increasing speeds, and wearing arm weights for resistance.

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