HealthyConcerns.com

Food Inc is all the buzz this week (cross-post)

Here's one example where one post I write is appropriate for cross-posting at almost every blog I write.

Over at Elisa's Green Scene, I did a brief recap of some of the reviews and some of my thoughts about the new documentary, Food, Inc.

Food, Inc is somewhat based on MIchael Pollan's work and a great deal of its focus is on the health ramifications of our current agro-industrial complex approach to food production on humans, particularly lower-income families.

So I thought it belonged here, and I'm wondering if any of you are planning to see it or have seen it?

Of course, I also have a vegan blog. And a personal blog where I write both movie reviews and occasionally items about animal rights. So this belongs there too.

Might start to feel a little bit like cheating though!

For this blog, I'd like to direct you to a particular part of the site about this documentary: The Hungry for Change Cafeteria.

Healthy school lunches seem like a total no-brainer, but in fact one of the small things you can do is start to activate around your local schools, particularly by telling your local schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks. 

Hell, I'd say you should do that even if you don't have kids in school!

But if you do have kids in school: What are their food options like? Food, Inc. wants us all to know...and to work to make those options healthier...for children in every kind of school at every kind of income level.

Who could argue with that?

So, apparently I've been doing it wrong: Vitamin D and sunlight

Ever since I found out I have a Vitamin D deficiency (like half the population), I've been trying to get a little more sunlight into my life, unblocked by sunscreen

This consisted mostly of me exposing my face and lower arms to the sun when I got a little chance to. (Not for extended periods of time mind you, I was shooting for 10 minutes.)

Well, apparently, my approach is all wrong. 

Thanks to this link from Jack Norris, RD, I got this very different advice about sun exposure from a Vitamin D expert, Dr. Michael Holick:

“I typically recommend people go out for a period of time—depending on the time of the year, the time of day, the latitude, and the degree of skin pigmentation—if you know you’re going to get a mild sunburn after 30 minutes, I typically recommend about 10, no more than 15, minutes of arms and legs exposure, or if you’re in a bathing suit, abdomen and back exposure as well, 2 to 3 times a week. Always wear sun protection on your face because that’s the most sun-damaged area and it’s only about 9% of your body surface, so it doesn’t provide you with that much vitamin D. Go out, enjoy yourself, get some sensible sun exposure, then put sunscreen on if you plan to stay out for a longer period of time. People with a higher degree skin pigmentation, such as African Americans, are walking around with an SPF of 8 to 15. That’s why they need to be exposed for much longer periods of time and why people of color are at especially high risk of having vitamin D deficiency.”

So yeah, "always wear sun protection on your face". D'oh.

I've been doing it wrong :(

Is 4% too much to ask? And if it's not why do only patrons pay?

I spent last weekend up in San Francisco, something I do very rarely. It was a gastronomic delight, as we visited four different restaurants and had four different wonderful meals over the course of the weekend.

At one of them, Palomino on the Embarcadero, I noticed this note on the menu:

Now, at first glance, this didn't bother me at all. After all 4% of a $40 lunch bill is $1.60. I would gladly pay $1.60 so that restaurant workers can have health care benefits. If I can afford to eat at this restaurant, I can afford this surcharge.

But as always there is more to the story.

I've always been most aware of health care for restaurant workers as a political issue because of one blogger: Shuna Fish Lydon from Eggbeater.

As early as 2006 she was blogging passionately about this issue, at her own blog and for KQED.

And her perspective on this surcharge is a little more nuanced than mine. She asks why it is the patron alone who bears this cost? Why does this one cost get passed through, and shouldn't it be managed as one more cost of doing business like any other? Why this gets tacked on as a surcharge, when rising rent or food costs are not? 

Of course counter-arguments are that many businesses tacked on surcharges when gas prices were so high, one assumes because they were potentially temporary surcharges. But this one is permanent and legislated.

There are more, obviously peeved, diners sounding off about it at Eater SF.

I'm not sure I see the difference between calling out the surcharge (allowing angry diners to take their business elsewhere) or raising your prices (where again, diners can take their business elsewhere if prices get too high.)

Are we just angry to be reminded about the ridiculous state of our health care system? If so, then I agree with at least one commenter who said the notice about the surcharge is good if it starts conversations about health care.

I saw the notice. I didn't mind it. I thought it was kind of cool that San Francisco was trying to do something instead of just talk about it.

That was my gut reaction, as an occasional diner in SF.

What's yours?

Universal Health Care, examined

Joe Paduda from Managed Care Matters caught my eye with his Top 10 Reasons Universal Health Care is Bad. The thing is that he listed the ten reasons without commentary, although some were willing to go at it over whether these were valid or invalid reasons in his comments.

Friday he followed up with a post examinig Item #1 on his list: "Universal Healthcare Will Lead to Rationing".

I hope he follows up every single item from the Top 10 list in this fashion!

Here's some interesting data to get you hot and bothered to read the whole post:

Here's what a bit of specific data show (excerpted from the Commonwealth Fund report).

• The percentage of U.S. patients who waited six days or more for a doctor appointment when sick was not significantly different from the rate in Canada (23% v. 36%), the worst-performing country
• Only 47 percent of U.S. patients were able to see a doctor on the same or next day when sick, versus 61 percent to 81 percent of patients in the four better-performing nations
• U.S. patients were less likely than patients in Canada (12% v. 24%) but more likely than patients in Germany (4%) to wait four hours or more to be seen in the emergency department
• U.S. patients were less likely than patients in four countries (except Germany) to wait four weeks or longer to see a specialist (23% v. 40%–60%) or to wait four months or longer for elective surgery (8% v. 19%–41%) (Schoen et al. 2005)

Interview with Kevin MD

KevinMD is a long-time and extremely dedicated medblogger. He is one of the more reliable resources for quick links to news and current events in the medical space. I read him (and link to him) regularly.

The Pulse, a healthcare marketing blog, does a nice interview with Kevin here.

Of course Kevin points out what it takes to be a successful medbloggers:

D.J.: Why do you think that you have been so successful in attracting followers?
KevinMD: It’s persistence. When you start a blog you have to stick to a schedule and I post normally three times a day. When you have a readership that looks forward to that schedule, then it can certainly grow.  I have posted almost everyday. There are very few days that I don’t post unless I’m on vacation and what not.  So I think that posting regularly is very important.  I also have different mediums that people can access my blog through. I have the blog itself.  I have a link to my post served up on twitter, so that it exposes the blog to a different audience. People who don’t want to go to blog itself can read my posts through a RSS reader or they can subscribe by e-mail newsletter. Having a variety of means that people can access your writing is important, and the fact that they all go back to the blog - it kind of helps identify your brand within the Internet and that helps increase readership.

Wowsa. I guess we can see why I'm no Kevin MD. Posting 3x per day? Sigh. I'm lucky when I do 3x/month, and you all would probably fall over dead if I blogged 3x/week!

It's nice interview all the way around. he makes the point that there is no barrier to entry to blogging that anything to do with anything other than your time. It's easy, it's cheap, it's accessible. But it does take time. 

He closes with a plug for appreciating primary care more in the country, and I can buy that too.

Check it out.

Wow, Americans have a slow-death wish

Hat tip to Daily Green for pointing me to Food Politics, if for no other reason than learning about how the most famous cookbook in America (The Joy of Cooking, natch) has adjusted its portion sizes over the year.

One example cited:

That recipe calls for about 4 pounds of ingredients to make only 18 cookies, each of which runs 500 calories — one quarter of the amount needed by most people for an entire day. I’d call one of those cookies lunch or share it with three friends. By the way, a similar recipe in the 1975 “Joy of Cooking” made 45 cookies with just half the ingredients. These would be just under 100 calories each.

Wow, right?

I, too, would like to know how the editors justified this ballooning of portion sizes over the years. Certainly, as people with free will, we could always choose to serve more than the recipe calls a portion if we protested against their original small portion size, but when recipes (and restaurants) put portions of immense size in front of us, it does sort of re-set our expectations of how much we should eat.

Seems like this is just another way that our culture is killing us slowly and insidiously.

Am I being over-dramatic?

Cool project: Diabetes365

There's a pretty robust diabetes blogging community, led, I'm happy to say, by such powerful women bloggers as Kerri from SixUntilMe and Amy from Diabetes Mine.

Through Kerri I discovered a cool project called Diabetes365. from their "About" description:

This is a group for diabetes-related pictures that you take as a 365-day project.

Basic rules: You must post a daily picture by the end of each week. Number each one consecutively and tag them with 'diabetes365'.

Each daily photo should show some aspect of daily living with diabetes and help explain what it's like to live with diabetes every day of the year.

Let's try and show the world how Diabetes is something that we work at and live with all year round.

You can watch Kerri's slideshow she made of her efforts, which is very cool, and if you click through to her own Flickr set, you can get a little story behind each shot. The S.O. and I spent quite a bit of time clicking through on various pictures and getting the background. I encourage you to do the same.

Healthy Concerns still somewhat unusual

Or at least, I think it must be, because how else can I explain being honored with inclusion in this 100 Best Health Care Policy Blogs list from the Radiology Technician Schools site?

It used to be unusual that I was a layperson blogging about health at all. But now there are lots of "PatientBloggers".  However, most of them blog about a particular condition from which they suffer...whether chronic or acute.

I blog randomly about my random thoughts about health care, coverage, politics etc.

And in that, I think, I am still unusual :)

Thanks RT folks!

Where my MedBloggers at when it comes to Steve Jobs?

So Steve Jobs, reluctantly and begrudgingly, posted an open letter about his health today.

In it he states:

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.
Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.
The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

So, I have been scanning my MedBlogger folder in my RSS reader, waitig for the speculation and commentary on what he may be suffering from, and what the referred to treatment might be.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. 

OK, I only follow about a dozen these days, but still...some of the top ones there are.

Where my MedBloggers at?

Eyes are scary

I read with interest today Dr. Val's post about her 85-year old eye.

I read it with interest because recently my right eye lost a full point on the vision scale in about 9 months, going from 20-475 to 20-575.

This was unusual because I have been nearsighted since childhood, and as an adult my eyes have only degraded at a fairly regular, slow pace. Moreover, my right eye has always been a little worse than the left, but has stayed the same amount worse throughout adulthood...now it is significantly worse, because my left eye did not change during these last nine months.

The eye doctor didn't seem overly concerned, although he conceded it was a bit of an unusual drop. He asked me if I was under stress. Ha! Sounds like he might have been thinking of the same temporary issue Dr. Val's doctor mentioned.

Then, sticking with the eyes for a moment, my S.O. got me a lovely lavender and buckwheat eye pillow, which he gave me on Christmas Eve.

Handy tip for you all: Those pillows are not meant to be slept in, as though they were eye shades. I woke up and my vision was blurred...for hours. I'm guessing that the pillow was too heavy and pushed down on my eyes, with the result being blurred vision.

All to say: Eyes are scary. Vision-related issues are scary. And, like Dr. Val, my eye doctor didn't have a lot of answers or suggestions. It's a very wait-and-see-what-happens-next-year kind of thing, from what I can tell.

Meanwhile, I keep checking my vision with one eye, and then the next, closed. I think this eye-pochondria may last a few more days.