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Weekly Health News Digest: January 30, 2015

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Daryl Cura e-cigarette - Beacon Urgent Care

Daryl Cura demonstrates an e-cigarette at Vape store in Chicago, Wednesday, April 23, 2014. The federal government wants to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels under regulations being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Catch up with Beacon Urgent Care and our Weekly Health News Digest. Here are seven selected stories from the world of health news that we shared on our social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and Google+. Make sure to follow us on social media for the best health news on the web!

State Health Advisory Issued For E-Cigarettes; Study Calls For Devices To Be Strictly RegulatedFrom CBS:

The state’s top health official has issued a health advisory on electronic cigarettes, calling them unsafe and urging people to avoid the increasingly popular devices.

California Department of Public Health director Dr. Ron Chapman also issued a new report calling e-cigs “a community health threat.”

“E-cigarettes contain nicotine and other harmful chemicals, and the nicotine in them is as addictive as the nicotine in cigarettes,” said Chapman in a press release Wednesday. “There is a lot of misinformation about e-cigarettes. That is why, as the state’s health officer, I am advising Californians to avoid the use of e-cigarettes and keep them away from children of all ages.”

The report cites other dangers associated with e-cigarettes and vape pens, such as a sharp increase of poisonings due to e-cigarette liquids, most of which (60%) involve children under five years of age. There are also concerns over the safety of e-cigarette vapor for smokers and non-smokers alike. One of the main safety warnings regards exposure to the aerosol containing particulate matter, which includes chemicals on California’s Prop 65 list of substances known to cause cancer or birth defects.

E-cigarettes are a contested item, but the undeniable truth about these devices is that the health risks are still largely unknown, and those risks that we do know about are pretty severe.

Medical experts divided over plan to pay pregnant women £400 in shop vouchers to quit smokingFrom the Belfast (N. Ireland) Telegraph:

Pregnant women in Northern Ireland who smoke could be involved in trials that offer them shopping vouchers to help them quit the habit.

Researchers in a trial in Glasgow revealed that women who received vouchers worth £400 were more likely to stop smoking.

Six hundred women were involved and more than 20% of those offered vouchers stopped smoking, compared with 9% given normal NHS (National Health Service) support alone.

This might seem like a no-brainer: pregnant women shouldn’t be smoking in the first place, but nicotine addiction is especially difficult to kick. Pregnant women have the highest stakes when it comes to quitting smoking, so the more support they have in their quest to quit, the better.

However, doctors and other health care professionals are divided on the moral and logistical factors of paying pregnant women to quit smoking.

Dr Vinod Tohani, chair of the public health committee at BMA Northern Ireland, said more research was needed:

“The results of this study may show that economic incentives such as shopping vouchers can lead to a reduction in smoking, however it is crucial that follow-up studies are carried out to determine that such initiatives lead to smokers stopping smoking on a long-term basis and not just for the duration of a financially incentivised study.”

Dr George O’Neill from Addiction NI is supportive of the trials, saying that such pilots have been shown to work:

“Previous trials have been successful and are rigorously managed through urine and saliva checks. What they are doing at present is using nicotine patches and chewing gum – all sorts of substitutes that cost money anyway. So the health service are spending funding on it anyway. This could be a better way to spend money.”

Perhaps the best way to look at the issue is to choose the option that helps pregnant women quit, period. As far as the other implications that come up, those may or may not address the health concerns of exposing fetuses to deadly cigarette smoke.

Which Cut of Meat Is Least Likely to Make You Sick? From Mother Jones:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 6 Americans contracts a foodborne illness annually; 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die. Pathogens from meat kill more people than those from any other food group. A CDC study found that between 1998 and 2008, contaminated meat was responsible for 29 percent of all deaths from foodborne illness (23 percent of deaths were from produce, 15 percent from dairy and eggs, and 6.4 percent from fish and shellfish).

Meat is the cornerstone of the American diet. Even as Meatless Mondays are popular across social media, we still like to cram dead animal carcasses in our mouths. The numbers back this up: The average American eats nearly 271 pounds of meat a year.

We also live in a country where meat safety standards aren’t so hot. Chicken is the main culprit of foodborne illnesses, due both to the fact that we eat a lot of the meat (more than 50 pounds a year per person according to the Mother Jones report) and the fact that most people don’t prepare and cook chicken properly.

Americans love burgers, too, which is a problem because ground beef is a risky dish. The report points out that the process that grinds beef allows “the pathogens on the surface of the meat [to] get pushed into the center.” If that ground meat isn’t properly cooked—say, in the middle of a rare burger—the germs get a free ride into your digestive tract.

Other things to know from this report is that whole-muscle meats, like steaks and chops are relatively safe, while processed foods like sausages, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets also pose a low contamination threat (even as they’re not great for you nutritionally). And don’t rely on organic meat to spare you from the germs; while those cuts of meat may contain less antibiotic resistant bacteria, the chance for regular old germs to grow on the flesh remains the same as in non-organic meat.

To Protect His Son, A Father Asks School To Bar Unvaccinated ChildrenFrom NPR:

Carl Krawitt has watched his son, Rhett, now 6, fight leukemia for the past 4 1/2 years. For more than three of those years, Rhett has undergone round after round of chemotherapy. Last year he finished chemotherapy, and doctors say he is in remission.

Now, there’s a new threat, one that the family should not have to worry about: measles.

Rhett cannot be vaccinated, because his immune system is still rebuilding. It may be months more before his body is healthy enough to get all his immunizations. Until then, he depends on everyone around him for protection — what’s known as herd immunity.

But Rhett lives in Marin County, Calif., a county with the dubious honor of having the highest rate of “personal belief exemptions” in the Bay Area and among the highest in the state. This school year, 6.45 percent of children in Marin have a personal belief exemption, which allows parents to lawfully send their children to school unvaccinated against communicable diseases like measles, polio, whooping cough and more.

Here’s another case of how vaccines and public health collide with social norms. Even as vaccine denials isn’t a widespread social norm, the movement has gained enough traction to cause serious problems, and it could cause one little boy to become an unfortunate example of why vaccines matter.

Rhett’s father has petitioned his son’s school district to “require immunization as a condition of attendance, with the only exception being those who cannot medically be vaccinated.” The school, Reed Elementary in Tiburon, has a 7 percent personal belief exemption rate—much higher than the statewide average of 2.5 percent. Mr. Krawitt had previously worked with the school nurse to make sure that all the children in his son’s class were fully vaccinated and said the school was very helpful and accommodating.

The problem with vaccine denialism isn’t kids like Rhett, who can’t be vaccinated due to immune system issues or other problems, such as allergies. The problem is when parents refuse vaccines for otherwise healthy children—or don’t even bother asking their doctors about issues like allergies and alternatives to the traditional needle stick (which can be a problem for a lot of people). There’s a complete lack of dialogue that does not allow for people to share why vaccines matter, and this leaves kids like Rhett at the mercy of everyone else.

Bedtime ‘has huge impact on sport’. From the BBC:

Our internal body clock has such a dramatic impact on sporting ability that it could alter the chances of Olympic gold, say researchers.

The team, at the University of Birmingham, showed performance times varied by 26% throughout the day.

Early risers reached their athletic peak around lunchtime, while night owls were best in the evening.

The researchers say it could even explain why Spanish teams have more success in European football.

Nationalism aside, this BBC article makes a lot of sense about the human body’s need for sleep, and how the right amount (and quality) of rest makes massive differences in overall biological performance.

A study in the journal Current Biology suggests each competitor’s sleeping habits have a powerful impact. The results showed a peak performance in late afternoon, but then the scientists looked separately at early-type people, late-type people and those in the middle.

This time the gap between the best and worst times was 29%, and a far more complicated picture emerged.

Larks – or early risers – peaked at 12:00
Intermediate types peaked just before 16:00
Owls – or late types – peaked not long before 20:00

Lead researcher Dr Roland Brandstaetter told the BBC News website: “Athletes and coaches would benefit greatly if they knew when optimal or suboptimal performance time was.”

For all the investment that sports teams pour into athlete performance and conditioning—like exercise programs and nutrition standards—why wouldn’t proper sleep hygiene be a part of it? It makes sense to incorporate anything that can help an athlete perform at the top of his or her game. Not only is sleep important for performance on the field, it also contributes to overall health, which feeds back into the athlete’s ability in the first place.

Is Skype HIPAA Compliant? From Bridge Patient Portal:

Given the growing interest in providing video conferencing services for communicating with patients online, healthcare organizations often come to us with questions about the use of Skype and whether the software meets HIPAA compliance standards. Though HIPAA doesn’t specifically mention the types of technologies that healthcare providers can use, there are three key issues to consider.

Bridge Patient Portal produced a brief analysis of the ways Skype is not HIPAA compliant, which might throw a wrench into ambitious plans for telehealth.

The good:

Skype uses AES 256-bit encryption for securing the different methods of communication that take place on their platform (chat sessions, voice calls and video calls). This level of encryption exceeds federal guidelines for transmitting protected health information (PHI), as the minimal level of encryption required is 128-bit.

The murky:

Skype will not enter into a business associate agreement (BAA), which is required under the HIPAA Omnibus Rule for any entity that creates, receives, maintains or transmits PHI on behalf of a healthcare provider, health plan or healthcare clearinghouse.

The bad:

Skype does not offer audit control tools for monitoring who has access to PHI, nor does it provide notifications in the event of a breach.

The report has more details on each point and the analysis can get a bit technical, but the overall idea is that Skype was not designed for telemedicine and the current interface does not seem to allow the platform to grow into the requirements that would make it the proper tool for telemedicine. And yet, we must ask which video conferencing platform is being used for telehealth—FaceTime? GoToMeeting?—and if the alternatives are HIPAA complaint.

Weight loss supplement misled consumers, FTC warnsFrom The Hill:

The celebrity nutritionist who promoted a controversial weight-loss supplement on The Dr. Oz Show is coming under fire from federal regulators.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday accused Lindsey Duncan and his two health companies, Pure Health LLC and Genesis Today, Inc., of “preying on consumers trying to improve their health.”

Duncan will pay $9 million to settle charges of false claims that he made about the benefits of green coffee bean extract.

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that The Dr. Oz show featured someone hawking a product that turned out to be a load of garbage. This “green coffee bean extract” claimed to help consumers lose 17 pounds in 12 weeks without dieting or exercising, according to the FTC.

Lindsey Duncan was hit hard with the fine and a ban on making misleading weight loss claims in the future that are not substantiated by scientific tests, according to the report from The Hill. While Duncan was duly punished for his bogus claims, why wasn’t Dr. Oz hit with a fine or a ban? His show will stay on the air and probably allow others to make fantastic health claims to dupe more people out of money and possibly damage their health. Duncan is a bad guy in this scenario, but Dr. Oz is just as culpable for giving Duncan a platform for selling his snake oil.

The post Weekly Health News Digest: January 30, 2015 appeared first on Beacon Urgent Care.


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