Tired on Thanksgiving Dont blame turkey
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:21:47 GMTBy DANIELA FLORES, Associated Press Writer
TRENTON, N.J. - Feel sleepy after a big Thanksgiving meal? Contrary to popular thinking, it's not the turkey's fault.
While there is an amino acid in turkey that induces sleepiness, experts say it's much more likely the reason you're tired after having Thanksgiving dinner is a combination of simple factors: you ate and drank too much and didn't sleep enough.
So don't blame the turkey.
"The poor turkeys have enough problems on Thanksgiving," said Dr. Carol Ash of Somerset Medical Center's Sleep for Life Center in Hillsborough, N.J.
The reason turkey gets blamed for making people sleepy is because it contains tryptophan, an amino acid that produces the brain chemical serotonin, which promotes calm and sleepiness. But as part of a big dinner, the tryptophan has a hard time reaching the brain.
Even if it did, "you'd have to ingest quite a number of turkeys" for it to have an effect, she said.
If the tiredness has anything to do with dinner, Ash said, it would be because of carbohydrates, which studies show are more likely to make people sleepy. And even that would only be a small factor, she said.
There's the travel, working longer days to get things done and lack of sleep, along with the carbs and alcohol, she said.
Overeating also contributes to feeling tired at Thanksgiving, said Joan Salge Blake, a registered dietitian and nutrition professor at Boston University.
"You're just eating a whole heck of a lot of foods and are stuffed," said Salge Blake.
On top of that, she added, you're "often just sitting around afterward, watching football."
Exercise rates are up CDC study says
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:45:13 GMTBy MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer
ATLANTA - More U.S. adults are getting physical — or at least that's what they're telling researchers.
A national telephone survey found the percentage of women who report regular physical activity rose to about 47 percent in 2005, up from 43 percent in 2001.
The percentage of men reporting regular exertion rose to about 50 percent, from 48 percent.
The small but significant increases are considered good news, but also seem a little perplexing: U.S. obesity rates are not declining, and there are indicators that some weight-related conditions — such as heart disease — are getting worse in some adults.
Recent increases in physical activity may not yet be affecting some health indicators, said Teresa Moore, an associate professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina.
Or perhaps some people are exercising more but not taking other important steps, added Moore, who was not involved in the research.
"You could be out raking leaves, but if you're eating a high-fat, poor-quality diet, you may still be aggravating the problem," she said.
The survey was done by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is being published this week in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a CDC publication.
The researchers drew their data from surveys in 2001 and 2005 of noninstitutionalized adults who had landline telephones. About 205,000 people answered questions in the 2001 survey, and 356,000 in 2005.
People in the survey were asked about their physical activity in a usual week in their non-working hours. One question asked about moderate activities such as brisk walking or gardening. Another asked about vigorous activities such as running or heavy yard work.
Respondents were considered physically active if they had at least 30 minutes of moderate activity five or more days a week, or 20 minutes of vigorous activity three or more days a week.
Along racial lines, reported activity rates were highest among whites and lowest among blacks.
As for education level, college graduates exercised the most, and people without a high school education were the least active, the researchers found.
Other studies haven't shown overall exercise rates as high as 50 percent, said Julie Schwartz, a dietitian and fitness expert at Atlanta's Emory Healthcare hospital system.
The new report differed from another recent government survey that found leisure-time physical activity decreased in men and remained static for women from 2000 to 2005.
People often do not accurately recall how much physical activity they actually did, Moore said.
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On the Net:
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
Docs find errors in own medical charts
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:15:46 GMTBy ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
LOS ANGELES - The recent chatter on a popular social networking site dealt with a problem often overlooked in medicine: mistakes in patients' medical charts.
The twist was the patients were doctors irked to discover gaffes in their own records and sloppy note-taking among their fellow physicians.
The frank dialogue on a doctors-only Web forum opened a window into a little discussed topic among physicians who find themselves on the other end of the stethoscope.
Take Dr. Richard Botney who swapped experiences with fellow doctors. Several years ago, Botney visited a specialist to check out a bothersome lump in his cheek. He took some medicine and the problem went away.
Out of curiosity, Botney thumbed through his chart and was surprised to find a note from the doctor saying he had a stroke.
"I never even had the symptoms of a stroke. No visual changes, no weakness, no numbness, nothing," Botney, an anesthesiologist at Oregon Health & Science University, said in a telephone interview from Portland.
Medical chart blunders are not uncommon. Sometimes, the mistakes can be harmless, but others such as an inaccurate diagnosis or a wrong medication could have serious consequences.
Errors can creep into medical charts in various ways. Doctors are often under time pressure and may find themselves taking shortcuts or not fully listening to a patient's problems. Others rely on their memory to update their patients' files at the end of the day. Other mistakes can arise from illegible handwriting or coding problems.
"There is an implicit trust," said Gerald Kominski, associate director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "Most of us want to believe our doctors are hearing what we're saying and are accurately reporting that in our medical histories."
Dr. Jerome Groopman, author of "How Doctors Think," said the onus is on doctors to check the accuracy of records with first-time patients even if it takes several visits.
"You need to force yourself as a doctor to pause and to look meticulously at the record — to think, to question and to verify," said Groopman, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The online doctor's Web site, Sermo, tackled the issue of medical chart accuracy this summer.
Posting under screen names, one physician with multiple sclerosis wrote about having trouble getting an insurance company to pay for a drug after the chart incorrectly noted a diagnosis of "multiple brain tumors." Another who took over a practice had to overhaul the charting system after finding errors in the old records. A third who had had several operations was shocked to see results of physicals and other tests in the medical charts that were never performed.
The American Medical Association, which represents doctors and medical students, doesn't have a specific project aimed at improving medical charting, but it's always looking at ways to better patient care, said Dr. Robert Wah, a board trustee.
A possible fix is to go paperless. But electronic medical records are expensive and sometimes different systems don't talk to one another. Only about 10 percent of doctors nationwide use some sort of electronic system.
While electronic records can cut down on medication and transcription errors, it's not a panacea.
"You still need someone who's listening to the patient and deciding what needs to go in the records," said Dr. David Blumenthal, director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In the meantime, health experts recommend that patients periodically check their medical records as they would their credit report, especially if they have a chronic condition. Patients have the right to get a copy of their medical records under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA
Botney, the 52-year-old doctor whose records said he had a stroke, still doesn't know how the error occurred. He flagged the mistake to his specialist, but hasn't taken further action since the error hasn't affected his insurance or disability coverage.
Despite his experience, Botney said he is impressed with his current doctor, who took an hour to review his chart during the first visit.
In his own job, Botney said he takes copious notes in visits with patients and then reads them back.
"They expect that what they tell the doctor is what's going to be charted," he said.
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On the Net:
Guide to medical records rights: http://ihcrp.georgetown.edu/privacy/records.html
Pedometers may encourage weight loss
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:03:56 GMTBy CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO - A $20 fitness gadget stood up to multiple research studies, helping people walk an additional mile each day — but only if they logged their steps. Those who did lowered their blood pressure and lost a few pounds, an analysis found.
Pedometers, also called step counters, clip to a belt or waistband and count the steps the wearer takes during the day. They range in price from $5 to $60, with simple yet reliable models costing around $20.
The analysis found that increasing physical activity depended on setting a goal and keeping a diary of the number of steps walked each day, said co-author Dr. Dena Bravata of Stanford University. Her report appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Every night, you write down how many steps you walked that day," she said. "By flipping back through your diary, you're able to see patterns: 'On the two days a week I took the stairs, I increased my steps.'"
Bravata, a practicing internist, wanted to recommend pedometers to her patients. But she "really wanted to know if these little gizmos that now are increasingly popular worked."
She and her colleagues analyzed 20 studies from the United States and Canada and half a dozen from Japan, Europe and Australia. The average age of participants was 49, and 85 percent were female because some studies targeted women. The total number of volunteers overall was more than 2,700.
The research showed that pedometer users increased their physical activity by about 27 percent, walking about one mile more a day than they did before they started their step-counting routines. Most of the studies established a baseline by asking these walkers not to change their usual activity while wearing a sealed pedometer, that is, one where they couldn't see the number of steps, for three to seven days.
On average, the volunteers lost a few pounds. And their blood pressure dropped enough to lower their risk for stroke and heart disease, Bravata said.
Keeping a step diary was key; those who didn't do that showed no significant increase in walking. Pedometer users who didn't have a step goal also failed to increase their physical activity.
A Japanese fitness movement sets a goal of 10,000 steps, but more modest goals also worked to increase activity, Bravata said.
It's still unclear whether the effects are long-lasting, she said. The studies followed patients, on average, 18 weeks.
There were lasting effects for Marcy Ross, 54, an encyclopedia editor from Great Barrington, Mass. She has clocked more than 3 million steps since putting on a pedometer 2 1/2 years ago and has lost "five to 10 extra pounds."
"It's the best thing I ever did," Ross said. Recording her steps on the Web site of the non-profit group America on the Move inspires her to walk instead of drive when doing errands and to get up to talk to a co-worker rather than send an e-mail.
Dr. David Bassett Jr. of the University of Tennessee praised the analysis for pulling together what's known about pedometers and fitness. Bassett has done pedometer research, but was not involved in the new analysis.
"This puts us on firmer ground in saying what we know about the use of pedometers in changing behavior," Bassett said.
The analysis was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging.
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On the Net:
JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org
America on the Move: http://americaonthemove.org
Thousands protest over ant aphrodisiac scheme
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:58:26 GMTBy Chris Buckley
BEIJING - Thousands of people in northeastern China have protested on the streets and surrounded government offices demanding help recovering money from a get-rich-quick scheme to raise ants to make an aphrodisiac tonic.
Hundreds of anti-riot troops and police in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, were deployed to stop protesters reaching the provincial government and Communist Party headquarters, residents said on Wednesday.
The irate investors from across Liaoning, a rustbelt province striving to attract investment, have demonstrated in Shenyang since Monday and sporadic clashes with police have broken out, they said.
Several thousand protesters gathered near the provincial government offices on Wednesday, a resident told Reuters by telephone.
The investors -- many of them laid-off workers or farmers -- put their savings into Shenyang's Yilishen Group for a scheme in which they raised ants to provide ingredients for a health tonic promising an aphrodisiac boost.
For every 10,000 yuan they paid the company as &;deposit,&; investors were promised a dividend of 3,250 yuan.
The tonic was promoted on television by Zhao Benshan, the country's best-known comic who specializes in playing innocent bumpkins with a northeastern twang.
But since October, the group has twice delayed payment of dividends, fuelling investor fears that it was on the brink of bankruptcy or that the government might have frozen its funds.
&;We strongly demand the government offer a way out for Yilishen!&; read a banner held by protesters as they marched along a Shenyang street. A photo of the banner was posted on Internet and blog sites.
China has seen rising protests from farmers and disgruntled workers as inequality and corruption stoke popular resentment
The unusual origin of this latest uproar was a reminder that even as China's economy booms, there are pitfalls that can spark discontent from citizens eager for a share of wealth.
Chinese media have said the scheme collected more than 10 billion yuan from hundreds of thousands of Liaoning residents.
USELESS RUSE?
Some local reports have said the ants were a useless ruse for an illegal scam, but the group has survived several probes in the past eight years and investors had previously received their dividends on time, protesters said.
As they looked for reassurance, panicked investors have turned their ire on the government.
&;If Yilishen goes bankrupt, the government will be the chief culprit,&; said a message that appeared briefly on domestic Chinese Web sites before it was removed. &;The government will be drinking our blood.&;
A Shenyang resident told Reuters that about 1,000 people had collected in front of the company's head office on Wednesday. Repeated calls to the office by Reuters went unanswered.
Investors said the group's good relations with the government and its commercials on state television had convinced them Yilishen was legitimate.
&;It has been out there for eight years and the government has given the company and the manager so many honors. We thought there mustn't be any problem,&; investor Li Dechun told Reuters.
He said he had poured more than 200,000 yuan into the scheme.
A spokesman for the Liaoning provincial government said officials had been talking to the protesters, and the company's failure to pay dividends was not due to any government action.
&;Most of the investors are from the lower class of society. Some have threatened to take more radical actions, such as blocking trains at the railway station,&; a local resident surnamed Cong told Reuters.
Online discussions about the protests and the ant scheme were quickly removed from Web sites, as were recent news reports about Yilishen. The Group's Web site was also shut, announcing &;service unavailable.&;
Lack of toilets is fatal global association says
Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:42:35 GMTBy Jack Kim
SEOUL - Lack of proper toilet facilities and sanitation kills almost two million people a year, most of them children, the World Toilet Association said at its first meeting on Thursday.
&;It is regrettable that the matter of defecation is not given as much attention as food or housing,&; Sim Jae-duck, the association's South Korean head, told the meeting at its recently opened lavatory-shaped headquarters south of Seoul.
Sim, a lawmaker nicknamed &;Mr. Toilet,&; said some 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, with potentially fatal consequences.
About 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases that are mainly blamed on inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, the World Health Organisation's regional director for the Western Pacific, Shigeru Omi, told the meeting.
The majority of these deaths occur in Asia and 90 percent of the fatalities are children under the age of five, he added.
&;Just imagine the number of children whose lives could be saved through simple low-cost interventions in sanitation and hygiene,&; Omi told the meeting.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the &;Year of Sanitation&; and is calling for a renewed effort to improve sanitation and hygiene facilities, especially in developing countries.
Several charities also marked World Toilet Day on Monday by launching international campaigns for more hygiene awareness and investments in toilet facilities.
The Seoul meeting, which brought together public health officials from around the world and U.N. agencies, aims to raise funds for sanitation in developing countries.
&;The funding needed is not overwhelmingly large, but the return is immense,&; said Vanessa Tobin of U.N. children's agency UNICEF. &;Political support is extremely important. Advocacy for this issue is a high priority.&;
According to the United Nations, spending $10 billion a year could halve the proportion of people without basic toilet facilities by 2015, and Tobin said this investment would net an estimated $84 billion in savings from improved public health and better living conditions.
In some cultures, the solution requires very little water, as is the case in sub-Saharan Africa where ash on top of a pit is often all that is needed, she said.
&;It is very important to remember most people who don't have access are poor people living in rural areas,&; Tobin added.
Happy in old age study shows antiblues drug prolongs life
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:14:25 GMTPARIS - A commonly-prescribed antidepressant increases the lifespan of worms to the human equivalent of a centenarian, scientists looking for chemicals that prolong longevity reported Wednesday.
What determines lifespan remains poorly understood, but a spate of recent research has begun to unlock mechanisms that could one day adds years and extra pep to the human endgame.
In humans, the antidepressant mianserin prevents the neurotransmitter serotonin from being reabsorbed once it has been released by nerve cells in the brain, thus extending its impact.
Decreased levels of serotonin, a naturally occurring chemical that creates a feeling of well-being, have been linked in many studies to depression.
Linda Buck, a researcher at the Howard Hughes Institute in Seattle, Washington, and two colleagues screened 88,000 chemicals to see which might enhance the lifespan of Caenorhabiditis elegans, a short-lived worm commonly used in experiments on longevity.
In the experiments, a chemical virtually identical to the drug mianserin extended the lives of worms by 30 percent, according to the study.
Three other compounds that also act on serotonin also had a similar effect: mirtazapine, methiothepin and cyproheptadine.
The antidepressant notably blocked uptake of another neurotransmitter, octopamine, which has a role in releasing fat from fat cells.
This links to previous studies showing that lab animals which were kept on a low-calorie diet live longer, said Buck, who won the 2004 Nobel for medicine for research on the human olfactory system.
The findings are not proof that antidepressants can extend life in humans. Rather, they shed light on some of the molecular pathways in the ageing process, say the authors.
&;Lifespan can be extended by blocking certain types of neurotransmission implicated in food sensing in the adult animal,&; Buck said.
Thailand may get cancer drug free from Novartis minister
Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:23:13 GMTBANGKOK - Thailand could get a cancer medicine from Norvatis for free if it slows its drive for generic versions of patented drugs, the country's health minister said Wednesday.
Thailand is at the forefront of an international battle with pharmaceutical companies over so-called compulsory licenses, which temporarily suspend patent protections.
The government has already issued compulsory licenses to get copycat versions of a heart drug and two key AIDS medicines. In September, it announced that it would also seek generic versions of four cancer drugs.
During talks with Novartis over its cancer-fighting Imatinib, Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla said the company had offered to provide the drug for free if Thailand halts its drive to expand its generic drug programme.
If a deal were reached, the government could provide unlimited amounts of the drug through its universal health care scheme, he said.
Imatinib currently costs as much as 100,000 baht per patient per month.
&;Novartis proposed to us to give free Imatinib without condition and limit in amount and time. We are in the final process of discussion,&; Mongkol told a seminar on compulsory licensing in Bangkok.
He said talks with two other drugmakers on cheaper prices for cancer drugs were also making progress.
&;If this is successful, there will be no need for the government to implement more CL&; on other drugs, he added.
Thailand has so far imposed compulsory licenses for the blockbuster heart drug Plavix and the AIDS medicines Kaletra and Efavirenz.
It has already begun importing cheaper versions from India, a major source of generic drugs.
Mongkol refused to rule out the possibility that the country would seek generic versions of other drugs in extraordinary circumstances.
&;I won't say that we will do it again or not. We will do more CL only exceptional basis,&; he told reporters.
He also said that the government was considering legal action against Abbott, which withdrew an advanced version of Kaletra from the Thai market after the compulsory license was issued.
Thailand has a law that bars pharmaceutical companies from limiting access to their drugs if the medicine is available in other countries.
&;The commerce ministry has been under negotiations with Abbott and considering a chance for legal action against the company,&; he said.
