Discourse Chronicle

“Education is a particularly powerful factor in both life expectancy and health, and we’re not quite sure why,” Richard Suzman, associate director for behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, said in the teleconference. Better-educated people may have more money to pay for health care, and they may know more about a healthy lifestyle, he said.

[According to this article, “education” is defined as having an undergraduate degree, so “higher education” is not being factored into it. I am actually glad that post-undergraduate degree holders are not included. I am always willing to talk about graduate school since now I am “in the trenches,” but I also tell people that graduate school is not for everyone. I usually say, “Don’t go. If you have a choice between going and not going, then I say don’t go, unless you are absolutely sure that is what you want or you have no choice.” BK]

category: Health, Pedagogy    

A study of more than 36,000 healthy postmenopausal women determined that taking a standard calcium-and-vitamin-D supplement for seven years had no significant effect for most of them on preventing fractures in the spine, arms and hips, although it did lead to a 1% improvement in hip-bone density. Yet women who managed to take the vitamin-mineral combo at least four days out of five had a statistically significant 29% fewer hip fractures. And women over 60 suffered 21% fewer broken hips.

A companion study found no beneficial effect on the rate of colorectal cancer. But those women were not at any particular risk of colorectal cancer. Other studies have concluded that men and women who have already had one precancerous polyp surgically removed from their intestinal tract develop fewer subsequent polyps if they take calcium supplements.

[…]

But there are still some quirks in the data. More than half the participants were also on hormone therapy, which is known to increase bone density. Moreover, most of the studies’ subjects were already getting more calcium and vitamin D from their diet than the average American woman. Maybe supplements work best in people who need them most. Finally, the women were on the chunky side, which also protects bones.

[A few years ago, I was taking a multi-vitamin because I was learning how to cook on my own and constantly caught a cold during winter (four consecutive infections). Now, I learned how to make a few more things in the kitchen and maintain a policy of “If I don’t eat it, then I must drink it,” referring to fruits and vegetables. Whenever I go to the grocery store now, half gallons of orange juice and V8 are not uncommon for me to buy. I also stopped taking multi-vitamins and I am not entirely sure they were doing anything for me at all. BK]

category: Health, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Debra Moffatt of Lombard, Ill., seeks unspecified damages in a suit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court that accuses the company of misleading the public. Her attorney, Thomas Pakenas, said his client has celiac disease that causes gastrointestinal symptoms when set off by eating gluten, a protein found in wheat.

[…]

On Friday, Mark and Theresa Chimiak of Jupiter, Fla., sued the fast-food chain, claiming their 5-year-old daughter has an intolerance to gluten. On Wednesday, Nadia Sugich of Los Angeles sued McDonald’s, saying she is a vegan and would not have eaten the fries if she had known they contained dairy products.

Until recently, the company had said its fries were free of gluten and milk or wheat allergens and safe for people with dietary issues related to the consumption of dairy items. But this month, the fast-food company quietly added “Contains wheat and milk ingredients” to the french fries listing on its Web site.

category: Health, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

The suit, filed on behalf of John Kiel Patterson and all other iPod buyers, seeks monetary damages to compensate for the hearing loss suffered by iPod users as well as a share of Apple’s iPod profits. The suit also seeks to force Apple to offer a software upgrade to limit the iPod’s output to 100 decibels as well as provide headphones designed to block out external noise.

[I remember one professor saying to me last semester about how he was investing in the hearing aid market because all of the current young people listening to iPods will need hearing aids in old age. BK]

category: Health, Popular Culture, Technology    

Six viruses have already been shown to produce obesity in animals, but University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have now shown that a human virus can cause obesity in chickens, a strong suggestion that it could make people fat, too.

The findings, which implicated a type of adenovirus, were released by the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, which published the study.

[Because of its suggested origins as a virus, obesity may someday be cured with a vaccine, as this article indicates. I doubt that and I also doubt obesity is “catching” like a cold or a flu. How ridiculous are people going to get about this issue? Will we someday quarantine all people who are obese? I treat this topic as I do when my colleagues ask me how I do things outside of coursework (conferences, grants, publications). I say “Work harder and drink less” and that needs to be in a fortune cookie. BK]

category: Health    

An American Heart Association committee, after reviewing a decade of studies on the claimed benefits of soy, has cast doubt on the claim that soy-based foods and supplements significantly lower cholesterol.

The panel also found neither soy nor the soy component isoflavone reduced symptoms of menopause, such as “hot flashes,” and that isoflavones don’t help prevent breast, uterine or prostate cancer.

category: Health    

An oxygen bar provides users with the ability to inhale 92 to 95 percent oxygen through cannulas (plastic tubes), which are inserted in the nose. Because of pollution and other contaminates, the air we breathe contains about 21 percent oxygen, said Steve Blaustein, owner of AirHeads Oxygen Bars in Coral Springs, Fla.

[Dr. Joel Pace (one of my mentors from undergraduate) and I visited this place on Thursday night. The space being used for this oxygen bar is being shared with a new tattoo parlor, so construction was going on, but it did not disrupt our experience. The bar itself has written on its counter, “It’s OK to Inhale,” which we thought was hilarious for political reasons. Interestingly, after we finished our ten minute session, my head felt much clearer. BK]

category: Health    

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who secured the $1 million funding for the report, said the findings shouldn’t come as a shock as he accused high-profile Hollywood characters of turning children into junk-food addicts.

“This report proves that the onslaught of junk food marketing is endangering the health of our children,” he said. “We would like to think that SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek and the Disney princesses are likable, kid-friendly characters, but they are being used to manipulate vulnerable children to make unhealthy choices. This must stop.”

[And yet we bash Madonna for not letting her children eat a single french fry. Two things come to mind for me on this one. First, maybe practicing some moderation or plain common sense would not kill us. For example, eating fast food is acceptable but eating fast food daily is ridiculous. Second (and this is the big one), where are the parents? I said it before and I will say it again: Stories like this one scare me because good parenting seems rare when it should be the norm. BK]

category: Health    

Doctors in France say they have performed the first partial face transplant on a woman who had suffered extensive injuries in a dog attack. A joint statement from hospitals in Lyon and Amiens in northern France said on Wednesday the surgery took place Sunday in Amiens on a 38-year-old woman, replacing her nose, lips and chin.

category: Health, Technology