The Oasis

Take 2 CDs and call me in the morning!

A new research study, reported in the May issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, finds that music helped to ease chronic, non-malignant, ongoing pain in adults who had been suffering for a least six months.

Researchers already knew that music helps with the pain patients sometimes experience when undergoing various diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, as well as helping acute pain and also cancer pain. But music's effects on chronic pain, particularly its effects on feelings of power, depression, and disability in adults with chronic pain had not been studied. One interesting finding from this study was that it didn't seem to matter what kind of music was used. All kinds, from vocal, jazz, piano, orchestra or harp, won kudos for effectiveness.

Plus, here's a treatment that has no bad side effects and is safe and easy to use. If you live with chronic pain, soothing music may help to increase your feelings of power and help with depression of disability. Now that's news we can live with!

Sleeping Beauty

You've probably heard that most Americans are sleep deprived. No wonder, given our hectic schedules and busy lives. Come on, admit it. You're probably yawning just reading this! So what else is new?

Well, if you are a woman, especially if you fall into the 40 to 65 year old age range, you might want to pay close attention.

A new study which was presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference, looked at some 68,000 women, analyzing their answers to questions about sleep and weight over sixteen years.

The bottom line?

Women who get five hours or less of sleep per night were 32% more likely to experience a major weight gain (defined as gaining 33 pounds or more) and 15% more likely to become obese over the study period. Women who got six hours of sleep a night were also at risk for weight gain, facing a 15% liklihood of expriencing a major weight gain.

The researches were surprised to find that a woman's sleep pattern had a much bigger influence on her long term weight than either her eating or exercise habits.

Your next action step? Make getting at least 7 hours plus of sleep a night a priority in your life. Adequate sleep is not a luxury item, but is mandatory in terms of assuring your long term health. Seven hours or more of sleep a night means less chance of heart disease and diabetes as well.

Turns out that grandmother was right when she told you to get your beauty rest!

Mmmmmm mmmm good!"

The Campbell's Soup Company, that icon of childhood comfort food, has posted a six percent increase in its third quarter sales.

The main reason behind this profit explosion?

Wellness.

Now you may ask, just what does wellness have to do with people buying more soup?

The folks at Campbells are jumping on the wellness train. They have successfully reformulated many of their soups, transforming them from high sodium foods into lower sodium offerings. In many cases, they are also offering lower fat versions of many of their classics. That, along with rearranging the soup aisle to make their soups easier to locate, is what's behind the increase in sales.

Now I just happen to have a can of Campbell's Tomato in my pantry. There is a label on the back that states the soup has two times more lycopene than a fresh tomato. Ok, that sounds like a good thing. Let's see what else is in this can.

Ingredients: tomato puree, high fructose corn syrup, wheat flour, salt and spice extract.

There go the alarm bells...the second ingredient is highly glycemic high fructose corn syrup. So even though Campbell's Tomato gets high marks for no fat, high in lycopene and no artificial flavors or colors, the high fructose corn syrup (which gives the soup its sweetness and adds to the total carbohydrate content) makes me question the company's true comittment to wellness.

Maybe I'll experiment with an alternative recipe, one that's still just as convenient (or almost) and report on my results in a later post.

It's All in Your Head...Not!

The early signs of dementia (including Alzehimer's) have long been thought to be such things as a failing memory and other signals that the brain is not functioning as well as it used to.

But now, an intriguing new study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine, finds that it's a decline in physical capabilities that can signal the onset of later dementia, sometimes by as much as six years. These bodily declines include slowing of one's gait, reduced strength in handgrip and poor balance.

But what good is knowing you are going to develop dementia if you can't do anything about it? Turns out, that there is something you can do. Previous studies show that even moderate exercise can delay the onset of dementia for many older adults. And it's the frailest of these folks that seem to benefit the most. Walking, even for 15 minutes a day, has found to be helpful.

So has exercising the mind, with such activities as crossword puzzles, reading and playing bridge.

More evidence that the mind and body are inextricably linked. How could we have ever thought otherwise?

Botox for the Blues?

You have probably heard an expression like "Put on a happy face!" or other sayings to that effect. The theory is this: when you smile, you activate the brain areas that are associated with good feelings. So, even when you are feeling blue, simply smiling is supposed to make you feel better.

Now there is evidence, even though it's preliminary, that backs up that notion.

Eric Finzi, M.D., Ph.D., conducted a small pilot study in which he injected Botox into the faces of 10 women who had been suffering from long-standing depression...depression which had not responded to convential treatment. Botox, which is used by facial plastic surgeons to erase frown lines, prevented the study subjects from frowning.

9 out of the 10 study participants no longer met the clinical standards for depression after only two months.

Dr. Finzi's study results have been roundly criticized by many of his professional colleagues, both in medicine and psychiatry. They contend that, among other reasons, (1) the number of subjects was much too small to make generalizations about the effect of Botox on all patients with depression, (2) the results could have been due, not to the Botox, but to the placebo effect and (3) the improvement in the study participants was entirely based on self-report.

As flawed as the initial study may have been, I think a larger study is warranted. The idea that the facial frown muscles are feeding back into the depression centers of the brain is quite intriguing. The treatment of resistant depression with Botox injections, if it is indeed proven to work, would certainly be a lot safer that risking the side effects of medication or other more noxious treatments.

Meanwhile, Dr. Finzi has applied for a patent for this treatment for depression.

Keep on smiling!

(Dr. Finzi's study was published in the May issue of Dermatologic Surgery.)

See Ya Later, Alligator...

So what's going on with the spate of fatal alligator attacks in Florida?

Officials cite various reasons, including the time of year, pressures to find a mate and the possibility that these particular reptiles were simply more aggressive than others.

But some biologists think that it's not the gators that are the problem. The real culprit is...

us.

Yes, you read it right. Us people. The same ones who continue to drain every square acre of wetland available for homes and malls and churches and shopping centers.

The Everglades National Park, once a teeming watery wilderness, is now just one seventh of its former size. The Everglades, known as the River of Grass, was once part of a five million acre plus watershed that covered more than one-third of the state of Florida.

Most people today accept the idea, once radical, that we humans are part of the Earth. We cannot continue to erode the Earth's habitats and expect that we will not reap the consequences.

Gator attacks in Florida, cougar attacks in the American West, Black bears scavenging in backyard trash cans in upstate New York...

and on a larger scale, Hurricaine Katrina.

What is good for the Earth is naturally good for us. Why is that such a radical idea to some?

See ya later, alligator...

Outer Banks

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend a wonderfully relaxing week on Hatteras Island, one of the chain of narrow barrier islands just off the coast of North Carolina, known collectively as the Outer Banks. As we headed by car over the long causeway that separates the Banks from the mainland, the wind picked up, pushing the usually calm water of the Sound into frothy whitecaps.

We reached the islands and headed south toward Hatteras. The wind was really blowing now, and I was astounded to see the sand from the famous dunes blowing in long ghostly streamers across the islands' one main road, similar to the way snow obscures the highways during winter storms in rural upstate New York.

The waters of the sound, choppy and unsettled, were visible to our left and as we drove along, we were occasionally gifted with the sight of the ocean, raging on our right just beyond the drifting dunes. Suddenly, I realized how narrow this spit of land called the Outer Banks truly is...and how small and insignificant my person was in the face of this magnificent show of nature.

The storm raged for another day and then abated, leaving an idyllic week of sunny, blue sky beach weather in its wake. Later in the week, when the winds had really calmed down, we took the 40 minute ferry ride to Okracoke Island, composed mostly of wild and starkly beautiful National Park Service Lands, to see my friend Ruth Fordon, who runs a marvelous retreat center aptly named Island Path, with Ken DeBarth, who is a physician assistant. After a wonderful lunch with Ruth at the Flying Melon Cafe, where we were treated to some of Ruth's beautiful photographs that she uses to illustrate her calendars and notecards, we explored Okracoke's tiny village, including a charming lighthouse, then rode the ferry back to Hatteras.

The rest of the week remained calm and we walked down to the beach on the evening of our departure to take one last look at the beautiful ocean, the same body of water that is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, with some 1500 known shipwrecks at silent rest off the Banks' coast. The sun was just going down and the horizon melted into the water, everything a misty blue, the calling seagulls wheeling overhead in the ocean breeze. Suddenly a pod of dolphins appeared just off shore, cavorting in the waves, leaping and playing with what must have surely been the pure joy of life. We watched them swim and they finally headed north, disappearing from sight.

All in all, a perfect week. The storm, the crashing waves and blowing sand. The blue sky beach days. The ferry ride to Okracoke. Visitors from the deep. Precious time with dear friends and family.

Life just doesn't get any better than that.

Just when you thought dietary news couldn't get much worse, here's another food zinger.

The public has known for a fairly long time that foods high in saturated fat (red meat, full fat dairy products and so forth) increases our LDL (aka "bad' cholesterol) levels and raises our risk of developing heart disease. Some of those folks who have never had to worry about their cholesterol levels have not paid much attention to their daily intake of saturated fats. Some surveys suggest that on average, Americans consume about 12% of daily calories from saturated fat. The newest dietary guidelines suggest a maximum of 10% (or 20 grams a day) for the average adult.

But now, new studies suggest that saturated fats are worse that we originally thought. Not only do they contribute to bad cholesterol, but they have been found to interfere with the function of insulin, which could possibly lead to diabetes, and to raise the risk of cancer, ovarian problems in women and other detrimental health effects.

The average adult in the U.S. needs to cut their saturated fat intake by 5 to 10 grams a day. But how do you do that?

Fortunately, reducing saturated fat isn't all that difficult. First, read the labels on the packages of the foods you buy, to avoid ingesting products high in saturated fat. Usually, food manufacturers are not primarily concerned with the health of your arteries, much less the functioning of your pancreas, when they implore you to purchase their products. No big surprise there.

Second, think about substituting skinless chicken or seafood for red meat in your diet whenever possible.

Third, switch from whole milk to skim or 1%. Substitute a small amount of good quality olive oil for butter or margarine.

Some folks like to implement these changes slowly or others do it all at once. Either way, you win.

When it comes to seeing ourselves as we truly are, some of us are wandering around in the dark. According to a study conducted at the University of North Carolina, only 15 per cent of study participants who met the National Institutes of Health Criteria for obesity in adults, actually realized that they were obese!

According to federal guidelines, people with a Body Mass Index (known as BMI) less than 18.5 are considered underweight. Those people who are in the range of 18.5 to 24.9 are considered normal weight. BMI's from 25 to 29.9 show that a person is overweight, and people with a BMI of 30 and above are overweight.

This blind spot could be lethal when it comes to your health. Being obese carries a set of frightening health risks, including increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer, to name a few. But if an obese person doesn't even identify with being obese, all the messages in the world about reaching a healthy weight will go unnoticed.

Do you know what your BMI is? You can calculate it easily at the National Institute's of Health Body Mass Index Calculator

References: Truesdale, K.P., and J. Stevens. 2006. Do the obese know they are obese? Experimental Biology 2006. FASEB Journal 20(March 7):A1313.

I'd Rather Switch Than Fight, Saturated Fat That Is

Just when you thought dietary news couldn't get much worse, here's another food zinger.

The public has known for a fairly long time that foods high in saturated fat (red meat, full fat dairy products and so forth) increases our LDL (aka "bad' cholesterol) levels and raises our risk of developing heart disease. Some of those folks who have never had to worry about their cholesterol levels have not paid much attention to their daily intake of saturated fats. Some surveys suggest that on average, Americans consume about 12% of daily calories from saturated fat. The newest dietary guidelines suggest a maximum of 10% (or 20 grams a day) for the average adult.

But now, new studies suggest that saturated fats are worse that we originally thought. Not only do they contribute to bad cholesterol, but they have been found to interfere with the function of insulin, which could possibly lead to diabetes, and to raise the risk of cancer, ovarian problems in women and other detrimental health effects.

The average adult in the U.S. needs to cut their saturated fat intake by 5 to 10 grams a day. But how do you do that?

Fortunately, reducing saturated fat isn't all that difficult. First, read the labels on the packages of the foods you buy, to avoid ingesting products high in saturated fat. Usually, food manufacturers are not primarily concerned with the health of your arteries, much less the functioning of your pancreas, when they implore you to purchase their products. No big surprise there.

Second, think about substituting skinless chicken or seafood for red meat in your diet whenever possible.

Third, switch from whole milk to skim or 1%. Substitute a small amount of good quality olive oil for butter or margarine.

Some folks like to implement these changes slowly or others do it all at once. Either way, you win.

Through a Glass Darkly

When it comes to seeing ourselves as we truly are, some of us are wandering around in the dark. According to a study conducted at the University of North Carolina, only 15 per cent of study participants who met the National Institutes of Health Criteria for obesity in adults, actually realized that they were obese!

According to federal guidelines, people with a Body Mass Index (known as BMI) less than 18.5 are considered underweight. Those people who are in the range of 18.5 to 24.9 are considered normal weight. BMI's from 25 to 29.9 show that a person is overweight, and people with a BMI of 30 and above are overweight.

This blind spot could be lethal when it comes to your health. Being obese carries a set of frightening health risks, including increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer, to name a few. But if an obese person doesn't even identify with being obese, all the messages in the world about reaching a healthy weight will go unnoticed.

Do you know what your BMI is? You can calculate it easily at the National Institute's of Health Body Mass Index Calculator

References: Truesdale, K.P., and J. Stevens. 2006. Do the obese know they are obese? Experimental Biology 2006. FASEB Journal 20(March 7):A1313.