Vonnies Health Spot

LOVE YOUR KITTY, LOVE HER E. COLI … EUWWW!

When I was a kid and had cats and dogs around the house, my mother was always reluctant to let them inside. The inveterate animal lover that I have been, even from the cradle, wanted all my pets indoors at night so there was a nightly, emotional tug-of-war about whether my pets could come in or not. I could never understand my mother’s resistance. She would say, “Animals are dirty. They make the house dirty.” In my child’s perception of things, I didn’t see that at all. It seemed like a very weak excuse to me, just to make us all miserable. (Strangely, in her later years, my mother has done an about-face and has quite a few pets that she treats like her children, to my delight and amusement.)

Anyway, my mother’s legacy lives on, in a watered-down way, in me. I still make sure that my animals are inside, safe, warm and cozy at night. But one of the first things my new kittens learn is that the kitchen table and counter tops are definitely off-limits. So are the bathroom counter tops. All other spaces are permitted as long as they don’t start clawing. What the little cuties do when I’m not at home is a whole other matter.

Now a report in the Journal of Infectious Disease (Vol. 197, No. 2), vindicates my mother somewhat. The report titled “Escherichia coli Colonization Patterns Among Human Household Members and Pets, With Attention to Acute Urinary Tract Infection” says that our systems have the ability to clone the bacteria that is spread when kitty explores the higher reaches of your kitchen, carrying on her dainty paws the residue of her latest visit to her litter box.

The study’s subjects were human volunteers, recruited from the staff and visitors at a Minneapolis Veteran’s Administration hospital, and their pets — 48 dogs and 25 cats. Not every fecal sample from people and pets had the so-called extra-intestinal pathogenic E. coli, and even fewer people had acute urinary tract infections during the study.

But in households where people and pets all had E. coli, the bacteria were genetic clones of one another. That meant the person had given the bug to the cat or vice versa. In some cases, researchers said, the animal might have been an intermediate host between two infected humans. They said in conclusion: “Within-household sharing of E. coli … is common and can involve any combination of humans and pets.”

Granted, the study was small and we don’t know how well controls were instituted, but I’m including it in my blog as a cautionary tale, and I suggest that it might be a good idea to make sure your table and counter tops are cleaned with a sanitizer of some kind before preparing each meal. Also be fastidious about washing your hands after cleaning the litter box.

And if our little furry friends could read medical literature, I’m sure they would do the same for our germs.

Take a look at www.catwatchnewsletter.com for more information.

CYBERKIDS & WORK-RELATED INJURIES

“Now kids are using computers at age two, so by the time they enter the workforce they’ll already be primed for injuries,” says Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and an international authority on office ergonomics. “One-third to one-half of all compensatory injuries are repetitive-motion injuries associated with office-type work.”

Back injuries also account for one-third of all workplace injuries. A decade ago most of these were associated with heavy lifting. Today they are mostly caused by people sitting for longer periods of time—often in front of a computer. The younger onset of computer use makes the current rate of damage claims “the canary in the coal mine.” Hedge has found that there is typically a 10- to 15-year period before injuries start to develop. In the early 1990s he showed that the average age of workers reporting carpal tunnel syndrome was in their late 30s to early 40s; last year, he found the average age of onset had dropped to the mid-20s and even younger for some people.

“This is very serious because an injury can become life-changing; carpal tunnel, for example, is not curable. They’ll have to manage this chronic condition for the rest of their lives,” Hedge says. To better determine how design concepts can prevent such injuries, Hedge’s Cornell Human Factors and Ergonomics Research Group studies innovative products. Among his recent projects are:

➢    A vibrating mouse. To see if a vibrating mouse can prevent upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders in computer users by signaling people to take their hand off the mouse to avoid overuse, Hedge and graduate student Chris Moe reported at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting in October 207 that although subjects do remove their hands more often with a vibrating mouse than with a conventional mouse, they tended to hold their hands just above the mouse. “This position is potentially more detrimental because of an increase in static muscle activity required to hover the hand,” Hedge says, concluding that people would have to train themselves to rest their hands on a flat surface when they feel the vibration.
➢    Movable arms for monitors. Another study looked at how suspending a flat panel computer monitor on a movable arm affects people’s comfort, posture and preference. Hedge and graduate student Kathryn Boothroyd found that people unanimously liked the monitor arm because they could adjust their LCD screen, and it gave them more room on their desktops for documents.
➢    Undulating chairs. Yet another study examined whether a seat that made a continuous massaging, wavelike movement at an adjustable rate would alleviate back pain in people whose pain increases when they are seated. Although his findings were mixed, Hedge and graduate student Erin Lawler concluded that the movable seat was a concept with promise, particularly for individuals with back problems.

“Everything we do can be summed up in the phrase: Good ergonomics is great economics,” Hedge says. “More than 90 percent of a company’s costs are people costs, so making small investments in improving the workplace by using good ergonomic products pays huge dividends.”

Reported by Cornell University and www.sciencedaily.com, December 27, 2007. 

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Disclaimer: The purpose of this weblog is not to dispense medical advice nor in any way is meant to be construed as diagnostic or prescriptive. Always check with your physician before beginning any new program or trying any of the items discussed in the posts that appear on this site.

THAT LITTLE WORD "MAY" MAKES SUCH A DIFFERENCE

The New York Times Magazine recently ran a story by author Gary Taubes titled "Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?" that served up some healthy skepticism about what investigators know and don’t know about staying healthy. The story concluded with the answer “not really,” except for the obvious, such as not smoking, limiting sun exposure, avoiding obesity, controlling blood pressure and being poor.

Taubes' focus was on the limitations and unreliability of some of the basic tools used by medical researchers, especially epidemiological (observational) investigation. He looked at why the results of studies are often misleading and why this produces confusing health advice. Epidemiological studies are an indispensable arm of research, focusing on the distribution of disease and trying to find links to lifestyle or environmental factors. Epidemiology is plagued by pitfalls, though, mostly because, unlike clinical or laboratory research, it looks at people living in the real world, without any intervention or control by the researchers. These studies usually cannot prove cause and effect, but can identify associations.

John Swartzberg, MD and chair of the editorial board of the University of California, Berkeley, Wellness Letter says,  “Such a study on the connection between vegetables and prostate cancer, for example, may conclude that men who regularly eat broccoli have a lower risk of prostate cancer. But that is not the same as ‘broccoli prevents prostate cancer.’ It is fair to report that finding as ‘broccoli may prevent prostate cancer.’”  Put the emphasis on may. “Vegetable eaters are usually health-conscious in other ways, which may account for the benefit. Researchers try to control for such ‘confounders’ statistically, but can’t eliminate all of them. These hidden variables can easily cloud results.”

He goes on to say, “Observational studies are good at generating hypotheses that can be tested in clinical trials. Most hypotheses turn out to be wrong, so you shouldn’t change the way you live on the basis of such observations. Still, a body of research (including basic lab studies and clinical trials), in which evidence accumulates bit by bit, can eventually uncover the truth.”

“Research into human health has made enormous strides, but only by the process of trial and error.” It’s a good idea to retain a spirit of inquiry and a healthy skepticism, and not to fall victim to cynicism when conflicting research results come out or when common wisdom is overturned.

The take-away is this:

>epidemiological studies deal with people living in the real world, a less controlled research environment (key-word may)
>clinical or laboratory trials are conducted in a controlled environment and eventually prove or disprove the hypotheses of the epidemiological studies

Also keep in mind that the media jump on every crumb in an effort to be the first to report findings, so some of their reporting may be a little premature for you to take action on.

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Disclaimer: The purpose of this weblog is not to dispense medical advice nor in any way is meant to be construed as diagnostic or prescriptive. Always check with your physician before beginning any new program or trying any of the items discussed in the posts that appear on this site.

HMMM, I SUSPECTED THIS CONNECTION ALL ALONG

It's always so nice when science finds proof of what I thought was just me being a slight hypochondriac. I used to think I was a little weird because I would start choking every time I used a spray cleaner. While I love what spray cleaners do, I am often hesitant to use them because they take my breath away. Now I find out I’m not unusual at all. Researchers at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research in Barcelona, Spain, have found that “frequent use of household cleaning sprays may be an important risk factor for adult asthma.”

Air fresheners, and furniture and glass cleaners had a particularly strong effect. Researchers found that the risk of developing asthma increased with frequency of cleaning and number of different sprays used, but on average was about 30 to 50 percent higher in people regularly exposed to cleaning sprays. “Our findings are consistent with occupational epidemiological studies in which increased asthma risk was related to professional use of sprays among both domestic and non-domestic cleaning women,” says Jan-Paul Zock, Ph.D., who headed up the research. “This indicates a relevant contribution of spray use to the burden of asthma in adults who do the cleaning in their home.”

Two-thirds of the study participants who reported doing the bulk of the cleaning were women, about 6 percent of whom had developed asthma at follow-up. The clinical application is for physicians to be aware of the potential of cleaning products to cause respiratory symptoms and possibly asthma, according to Kenneth D. Rosenman, M.D., professor at Michigan State University.

“The relative risk rates of developing adult asthma in relation to exposure to cleaning products could account for as much as 15 percent of adult asthma cases,” says Zock.

The study is the first to investigate the effects of cleaning products on occasional users rather than occupational users and appeared in the second issue for October of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The study included more than 3,500 subjects across 22 centers in 10 European countries. Subjects were assessed for current asthma, current wheeze, physician-diagnosed asthma and allergy at follow-up, which took place an average of nine years after their first assessment. They were asked to report the number of times per week they used cleaning products.

The study was not designed to find the biological mechanism behind the increase in asthma. “There is a need for researchers to conduct further studies to elucidate both the extent and mechanism of the respiratory toxicity associated with such products,” Zock says.

In the meantime, play it safe by using cleaners that don’t come in spray bottles, or if you must, wear a dust mask like the ones you find in hardware and drug stores. I know it looks a little extreme, but who cares if it helps to save your lungs?
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Disclaimer: The purpose of this weblog is not to dispense medical advice nor in any way is meant to be construed as prescriptive. Always check with your physician before beginning any new program or trying any of the items discussed in the posts that appear on this site.