Health For Our Kids...Think On It

(Photo credit: danmachold)

On the topic of getting people to exercise, here’s another great article that covers more than just children, but is especially appropriate. The article I just read, asks, and I know this is actually a question or concern for a lot of people, what about people with “special needs?”

The fact that your kid, or someone in your life does have “special needs,” anything ranging from ADHD, to behavioral problems, to handicapped or developmentally challenged, does not have to limit them from still engaging in physical exercise, fun activities, or even having fun like people without special needs.

The great article goes through and offers plenty of tips to make sure that the “special” person in your life still gets the benefits of activity, despite the fact that they have needs that some of us don’t. Head over and check it out, I think lots of people could benefit from it.

I’ve done a post similar to this quite awhile ago, but it’s an issue I think is so important I just have to throw it at you again. All of you women that are pregnant, planning on being pregnant, or heck, just Might be pregnant at some point in the next 20 years, pay close attention to this post.

Doctors, scientists, and researchers are constantly finding new evidence and new results that are proving how extremely dangerous it is for a pregnant woman to be overweight, or obese. 

With the percentage of women between 20 and 40 being overweight at over 50%, and clinically obese at over 33% (imagine the difficulty this will cause with long term care down the road), clearly this is a problem not being tended to. Doctors think, and I agree, all people should be better educated about how important a healthy body weight is; further, women, pregnant or not, need to be making SURE they get at least 30 minutes of exercise every single day. Especially when they are about to have a child. Remember, it’s two lives you’re being healthy for, not just one. Come to Fit Express and get both of you into top shape!

We need more of this; that’s all I know. We need our government spending millions of dollars more than they already are to try to urge our nation’s children to get off the couch, and get moving…for their health’s sake.

In Australia, the government has unleashed a $6 million ad campaign that is urging children of all ages to “get active for an hour a day.” The people behind the campaign say they don’t care if it’s running around, playing sports, going to the beach, or exploring the “bush,” just as long as they get moving.

With almost a quarter of all Australian teenagers being obese, this is clearly something that is needed. Now, lets look at our own situation. Don’t you think, with our children being amongst the biggest in the world, we should be doing similar things, with increased frequency? I do. Come on people, lets get on the ball. Our kids need to be getting exercise every day, and maybe we need more ad-campaigns to get us there.

Tips to Get a Flat Stomach

Is a bulging belly a source of embarrassment for you? Don’t be disheartened as puffiness in the midriff area could simply be bloating rather than fatty deposits. This is since one of the nastiest offenders in such situation is a slackened digestive system – prevalent among females in their forties. But, enthralling studies presently indicate that one could rev up digestion, combat bloated feeling with some simple menus & lifestyle amendments.

Simply incorporate the following tips into your day-to-day practices and one could easily shrink your stomach and fit perfectly into your clothing in below a week’s time.

Adding Duo Types of Fiber

Commencing the day with improved intake for the first meal of the day is a prudent tip to get a flat stomach. Being constipated could distend the abdomen & a simple means of getting riddance of this is to start the first meal of the day with breakfast cereals which assure that our bodies are getting their everyday fiber dosage that helps in getting the digestive system in motion within a day’s or so time & keeping it in this manner.

On the basis of latest trial done on breakfast cereal, Univ. of Toronto scientists noted that the intake of duo fiber forms together at one time is highly effectual. The researchers noted that entrants found it easy in adhering regularly to having cereals which has gel-similar soluble fiber (Pulex derived) & insoluble fiber (bran-derived) which function in concert for drawing water into the large intestines & revving up eradication thus resulting in the person appearing & feeling lighter.

Subtracting Salt

Salt can cause water retention and cause abdominal puffiness. Many people are eating two folds the amount of salt that they must take – crossing 3400 milligrams daily, instead of the suggested 1500 milligrams, as per CDC information.

A smart strategy to shrink your stomach is halt the use of salt shakers on meal tables & checking for its presence on labelling of food forms that undergo packaging, that offer around 3/4ths of the everyday consumption for majority of the females.

Adding High-Potassium Food forms

Food forms like banana, potato assists our bodies in getting riddance from excessive water weight which minimize the midriff section. The additional fluids classically exist due to duo key mineral forms (sodium, potassium) controlling water levels in our bodies – which have got unbalanced. Elevated sodium presence in our bodies leads to greater fluid held in the tissues. Hence for restoring the balance of these key minerals, one should increase consumption of potassium to an ideal 4700 milligrams daily. Once the right balance is attained, additional sodium is discarded from the body thus leading to lesser puffy sensations.

It is always safer to obtain potassium from foods rather than in supplemental form since these could be causal to the mineral accruing inside the body & have the potential to cause irregular cardiac rhythm & also heart attacks, particularly among individuals with cardiac or kidney issues.

Ideal ways of obtaining these minerals is through intake of papayas, potatoes not de-skinned, edamame, oranges, spinach and ketchup of tomatoes.

Subtracting Sugar Alcohol (Sorbitol, maltitol, erithritol, xylitol, lacitol)

Our bodies are incapable of totally digesting such low calorie sweetener types present in water with flavouring, less carbohydrate, food for diabetics, & sugar-free items. Bacterial forms present in the colon cause their fermentation leading to gassiness & also loose bowels.

Hence a smart approach is checking labelling on foods to evade prevalent ones.

Adding Fluid

Guzzling down ample liquids all through the day (a minimum of eight glassfuls) daily alongside plentiful food types that are rich in fluids like fruit, veggie varieties helps to avoid bloating. The amount could be met in any form like milk, juices, coffees, teas, although avoid alcoholic drinks that only dehydrate the body.

Subtracting aerated drinks, gums, candies

Since such foods have the capacity of producing bubbles which bloat the belly hence they are best avoided. Any air that one ingests enters our digestive tract causing gassiness & abdominal distension. Hence, when one eats or drinks swiftly, sips via straws, sucks on firm candies or gums it basically causes air ingestion.

A smart remedy is to eat and chew at a slow pace with mouth shut and trading aerated beverages for flat versions like water or juices.

Adding Yoghurts alongside Probiotic

The live bacterial or probiotic presence in yoghurt helps in taming stomach bloating by being causal to an enhancement in mobility of intestines hence allaying constipated feeling.

Hence one useful pointer is eating four oz. jar of less-fat or fat-less yoghurts everyday which contain live culture.

Subtracting Intake of Raw Items

Though fresh veggie & fruit varieties are great for health, they even occupy space in the tummy and hence distend it.

Hence, a good approach to get a flat stomach is spreading their intake through the day so that at any instant one does not eat over 1/3rd of the suggested everyday sum of 4.5 cupfuls. When these items are cooked it creates a more compacted serve.

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Pasteur, Lister, and Fleming

I have been attempting to manage my family member’s post- operative care as best as I can. I must say that I have learned a lot, both from providing the nursing care, and from bothering my gracious surgeon friends. A serosanguinous discharge emerged from the abdominal wound after a week. It came from a local point around the umbilicus, and as the patient did not have fever, pain, or decreased appetite, I thought of it as a minor, temporary nuisance only. I then went on the Internet, after which I proceeded to freak out (now I know how my patients feel). Googling serosanguinous drainage and abdominal surgery, I came up with a lot of hits on wound dehiscence (when the wound opens up, the patient is at risk for sepsis, and re-operation is indicated). Oy. I was reassured (kind of) by the surgeon who performed the procedure that dehiscence was highly unlikely, that I should open up the wound with a q-tip gently to allow the fluid to flow more freely and that I should perhaps insert a large bore needle to aspirate the fluid.

I did not know that I was going to be a surgical intern, but here I am. I performed the q-tip maneuver but elected to not stick any sharp objects into the wound. I had my family member seen by a surgeon colleague of mine, who probed the wound to make sure that there was no dehiscence (there was not), and who then took out some staples and packed the open part of the wound with Iodoform gauze. With these maneuvers, and with some Penicillin, the wound has finally dried up. The bloody discharge was also freaking out the patient, making the patient more reluctant to get out of bed and move around. With the wound finally dry, the patient was confidant enough to get of the house for an enjoyable shopping excursion (thankfully without me- I have the typical guy response to shopping; i.e., I want to get out of there in about 5 minutes).

As the song goes, “don’t know much about surgery”, but I do know that Pasteur, Lister, and Fleming have made major surgeries possible by recognizing and fighting off bacteria from destroying the handiwork of the surgeon. I thank these giants of medicine, and my family member patient thanks them as well.

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Doctors Office

I took my family member to her first visit to Johns Hopkins Oncology, in the glistening, new, and impressive Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center. After completing the new patient registration, she was given an orange card to be used at all check-ins. We swiped the card, which has a bar code in the back, and poof, she was registered for her appointment with the doctors and with the lab.

The examination room that she was taken too had a computer terminal, which, I presume, was to be used to access an electronic health record. What happened during her intake was very instructive.

The oncology fellow, rather than typing into the computer, scribbled the history and physical information on unlined paper. Now, I am assuming that, later on, she was probably going to dictate her note. But, nevertheless, she obviously found it easier and more efficient to write the information down on pen and paper.

Now I know that we physicians have been castigated for being techno phobic dolts who are balking at using computerized health records. But here was a young physician, a top flight Johns Hopkins trainee appearing to be about 30 years of age, who chose to actually write things down. Now, either the Hopkins folks are dolts as well (doubtful), or this obsession with typed records is not well thought through.

It is more organic to write your personal notes down than to type them into the computer. It is freer flowing and unconstrained by the rigidity of the computer algorithms. We, alas, still think better in an analog than in a digital fashion. Certain things work beautifully by computer. Having laboratory and radiology results available on-line and on the computer are wonderful. Being able to look up current medical data on-line or on the PDA is great. Communicating with other physicians and with patients electronically can easily be seen as improving patient care. But I am yet to be convinced that we must discard the handwritten personal notes. Scan them in, or have them written on a tablet PC if need be. Let’s think long and hard, though, about writing our notes by some program-generated paradigm.

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