High School Sports Concussions: Girls at Greater Risk

The little guy's preschool sports.

Girls soccer is apparently second only to boys football in concussion rates. When playing similar sports, girls are twice as likely to have a concussion. (Girls soccer is considered an incidental contact sport rather than a collision sport.)
Football had a concussion incidence of 0.6 cases per 1,000 athletic exposures. This was followed by girls’ soccer, at 0.35 per 1,000 athletic exposures, and boys’ lacrosse, at 0.30 per 1,000. Baseball and cheerleading had the lowest rates at 0.06 per 1,000. That means the incidence of concussion was 10.9-fold greater in football than in baseball, and 6-fold more in girls’ soccer than in cheerleading.  An 11-year study of 12 sports at 25 high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia found that in the three sports that are similar for boys and girls – basketball, soccer, and baseball/softball – the concussion rate was consistently twice as great for girls. This gender disparity has previously been observed in college sports, but this is the first study to demonstrate it at the high school level.
The findings were reported by Internal Medicine News on Dec. 8, and released at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in November.
This begs the question - why? Why are girls more likely to get concussions? Are they truly more delicate? Do they feel the need to dispel stereotypes and push themselves beyond their limits? 
The January issue of Prevention magazine devotes an entire article to concussions in women. It says: "Although recent media attention has focused on concussions in pro football players, research indicates that adult women may be especially at risk. 'Women have smaller frames and neck muscles than men, which may make them more prone,' says Daniel Labovitz, MD, assistant professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY. Once a woman is injured, the effects can be much more dire. In a 2010 study, women took longer than men to recover from concussions; this was especially true among women of child-bearing age. Fluctuating hormones may affect how the brain recovers from trauma, says Jeffrey Kutcher, MD, a sports neurologist at the University of Michigan. Other research found that female soccer players performed worse on neurological testing after concussions than men with comparable injuries."
Never thought I'd be in favor of cheerleading, but at least it seems a little safer. I loved playing soccer in school, and if I ever have a daughter I will still support her if she chooses to play; but remind her of the importance of playing safely.
Concussion defintion from The Mayo Clinic.

Low-fat diets are unhealthy

Homemade pizza and salad.

Experts at last month's American Dietetic Association Food and Nutrition Conference warned that the conventional dietary wisdom of healthy=low fat is an inaccurate and unfortunate simplification of a truly healthy diet. In fact, this widely practiced - if not almost inescapable - notion of low fat as best for you, is in fact dangerously unhealthy. It turns out that replacing dietary saturated fat with carbohydrates can actually increase your risk of heart disease. 

"The emphasis should be on displacing saturated fat and trans fat with unsaturated fat because that is where the data is," Alice H. Lichtenstein, director of the HNRCA Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, said at the conference. "Displace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat has been simplified to 'low fat.' That oversimplified ... message remains pervasive." 

Other experts called for eliminating "total fat" numbers from Nutrition Facts panels. They also reported that slightly higher-unsaturated-fat diets are actually healthier, especially when compared to diets high in refined carbohydrates. For longtime purveyors of slow/real food diets, or anyone that's ever bothered to read a few books or articles on nutrition, this come not exactly as "news". In my personal opinion, most food that have had the fat drained out of them taste terrible, and are markedly less filling. This recent "mainstream" reporting of the fact that fats are a necessary part of a healthy diet, is really an awesome confirmation that we should in fact be eating foods that taste good. By eating real food I think you not only consume fewer calories, but you actually enjoy it more.

The Hippie Health Writer Goes Back to School

... and I'm back. Sorry for the summer silence, but life has been uber-hectic. We moved to the DC area, I got a part-time writer/editor job, my husband got a new full-time job, and ... I finally got into grad school. I started the Science/Medical Writing Masters at Johns Hopkins University in September, and I am loving it. It makes me so happy that all those other schools turned me down. The program is an awesome opportunity to delve into the details of my craft, as well as learn about the issues and politics in the worlds of health and environment (among other sciences).

My ideas for upcoming blog posts include:
- Do we really need to worry about electronics causing cancer?
- The Hippie Health Writer attempts to lose 20 pounds
- What my "abnormal cells" reveal about my skin cancer risk
- The evils of the "baby bucket"
- My thoughts on child-spacing
- Why diesel cars rule

Smoothie vs. Cookie

So warm days are finally here, and with them comes my desire to eat more produce. It's warm enough in the morning for green smoothies again. Huzzah.

My current favorite green smoothie recipe:
1 or 2 bananas
A handful of frozen fruit- tropical (mango, pineapple) or berry (strawberry, blueberry, blackberry)
1/2 cup of organic yogurt, flavored or plain (organic coconut milk for vegan smoothie)
1/4 cup frozen spinach (less if no tropical fruit)
2 t chia seeds (cheap, and rich in Omegas. Read nutrition facts here)
A splash of unsweetened coconut flakes
Enough orange juice to make it your desired consistency

It's a great, filling breakfast for those of us with a sweet tooth, and I'm already well on my way to "5 a day." I find that when I have a breakfast smoothie, I tend to eat better for the rest of the day. The reverse is also apparently true. In a last-ditch bid for warming comfort foods, my body's been craving cookies. A weak moment at Costco led me to the packaged cookies and once I got a taste for them I wanted more. According to new research, it's not just me who's experienced junk food "addiction."
Published in March's Nature Neuroscience, a study conducted by the Scripps Research Institute looked at rats given unrestricted access to high-fat, high-calorie foods. The rodents began to eat compulsively, even when they received an electric shock every time they ate.

"We found that development of obesity was coupled with emergence of a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses. Similar changes in reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin are considered to be crucial in triggering the transition from casual to compulsive drug-taking. Accordingly, we detected compulsive-like feeding behavior in obese but not lean rats, measured as palatable food consumption that was resistant to disruption by an aversive conditioned stimulus. Striatal dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) were downregulated in obese rats, as has been reported in humans addicted to drugs. Moreover, lentivirus-mediated knockdown of striatal D2Rs rapidly accelerated the development of addiction-like reward deficits and the onset of compulsive-like food seeking in rats with extended access to palatable high-fat food. These data demonstrate that overconsumption of palatable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuits and drives the development of compulsive eating." 

It's my brain chemistry's fault that I love cookies. Luckily I also love watermelon, grapes, pears, peas, kale, asparagus, broccoli, and smoothies.

Cake, Controversy and Cancer Hope - This Week in Health

This week in my kitchen: Cauliflower, green bean and lentil curry with organic brown rice. YUM!

In lieu of a post with original content I bring you a roundup of some of the most interesting nutrition and women's/children's health stories of the week. What can I say, I've had a busy week. This is a feature I plan on adding to my blog in addition to a weekly original post. I know I like reading collections of news tidbits.

"Bacteria in yogurt could treat cancer, Irish research finds

New research has found that bacteria, commonly found in probiotic yogurt, is an effective way to deliver gene therapies to treat cancer. Researchers at UCC have found that the harmless bacteria has a natural ability to travel through the body and grow inside tumours. The team from the Cork Cancer Research Centre says it can genetically engineer these bacteria to pump out anti-cancer agents specifically inside tumours."

- Irish Examiner

"India Halts Use of Gardasil Vaccine After Four Deaths

The Indian Council of Medical Research has suspended the cervical cancer control vaccination program for girls in India. According to Mercola.com, the program is part of a two year study to look into the "utility of a vaccine in public health programs and acceptability of Gardasil, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine made by Merck [a US pharmaceutical company]." The suspension was made after four deaths and more than 120 complications were reported by young women who had received the Gardasil vaccine. ¹

Concerns have surrounded the use of Gardasil in the US for years, with more than 17,000 adverse events and 67 Gardasil related deaths in having been reported in the US since the vaccine's release in this country in 2006."

- Mothering Magazine

"Do toddlers need cake as well as carrots?

A new survey shows some nurseries are giving children too much in the way of fruit and vegetables, and not enough starchy carbohydrates to meet their energy needs. Have healthy eating messages left us in a state of confusion about what children should be consuming?
This latest study carried out by the local government regulatory body Lacors focused on children in nursery schools across 29 English councils. While finding that some children were being given portions that were too large and too high in salt, others were simply not being offered enough at all."

- By Clare Murphy, BBC News

"'High GI' carbohydrates increase women's heart risk

A study of over 47,000 Italian adults found that women alone whose diets contained a lot of bread, pizza and rice doubled their heart disease risk.
These foods have a high glycaemic index (GI), meaning they release energy and raise blood sugar quickly. The findings are published in Archives of Internal Medicine.
The experts say much more research is needed to understand why these high GI foods, rather than carbohydrates per se, appear to pose a risk - and why the risk applies to women and not men.
Low GI carbohydrates, such as pasta, which release energy and raise blood sugar far slower, showed no such link with heart disease."

-BBC News

"Nutritional risks of picky eating may be higher in autism

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many kids are picky eaters but new research suggests the trait is even more common in autistic children who tend to refuse more foods and are more likely to restrict their diets to a smaller variety of foods than other children.
Such habits in both autistic and non-autistic children may put them at nutritional risk.
"If children are not eating foods from each of the food groups in sufficient amounts they may be at risk for nutrient inadequacy," Dr. Linda Bandini, of the E. K. Shriver Center, University of Massachusetts Medical School and Boston University told Reuters Health in an email.
Picky eaters were found in both the ASD and typically developing children although the children with ASD "displayed more food refusal and exhibited a more limited food repertoire," the authors report in the Journal of Pediatrics." 

- Rachael Myers Lowe, Reuters 

Spring has sprung into my nose

A very pregnant me wandering in an orchard. Credit: C. Ian Campbell

Allergies. I have been a sufferer of seasonal allergies for as long as I can remember. I heard on the news yesterday that this year's allergy season is set to be one of the worst on record. Actually, I didn't really need the news to tell me that. Having left the windows open to get some air circulating during the unseasonably warm April, I've had to mop and wipe down my kitchen every morning this week because it's coated in bright yellow pollen.
So it's not just going outside that sends me running for my hankie - it's being inside my house too. Last year I finally went to the allergist to see what exactly it is I'm allergic to. Turns out it's everything - except dust. I'm allergic to trees, grasses, mold, ragweed, cats and dogs. He gave me samples of Nasonex and Zyrtec and sent me on my way.
In my experience over-the-counter allergy meds have only dampened my allergies, not gotten rid of them. And unfortunately it seems that the drowsy-inducing meds work better than non-drowsy. This spring I am excited to try out some natural alternatives. I have tried homeopathic nasal sprays and tablets in years past and they did little to nothing.
Plenty of natural treatments claim to offer relief. Butterbur (Petasites hybridus) is an herb whose antihistamine effects have been being studied and reported on in many journals recently. In 2002, the British Medical Journal published a ranomized, controlled study showing that just one tablet of butterbur four times a day was as effective as a Zyrtec (cetirizine) in controlling the symptoms of seasonal allergies. But a placebo-controlled study of butterbur's effectiveness in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in 2004, saw no significant difference in the symptoms experienced by the placebo and butterbur groups.
So which is it? Well for me, it sounds like it might be worth a try, if I can find it easily and it isn't too pricey. Other natural remedies I'm eager to try and have heard many good things about are:
A neti pot
Freeze-dried nettles
Goldenseal
Local raw wildflower honey
Vitamin C
Quercetin

My allergies got much worse while I was pregnant, and in the lactating years to follow. I wondered if it was just a fluke, and can't find too much research or information on the topic. A report in a 2006 issue of Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America says:

"Twenty to forty percent of women in their childbearing years have some form of allergy. Of those pregnant women who have known allergies, some studies suggest that as many as 10 to 30 percent experience increasing allergic symptoms during their pregnancy and return to their normal pre-pregnancy state after delivery. In addition, increased circulating blood volume and hormonal influences on nasal mucosal secretions that are seen in pregnancy promote nasal vascular engorgement and noticeable nasal congestion. It stands to reason, therefore, that pregnancy can amplify any pre-existing nasal condition."

So maybe it wasn't a fluke. Or maybe it's because I moved to the pseudo-woods where I am surrounded by trees.

Top Green Tips

 
So you’ve dusted off your recycling bin and switched your light bulbs to compact fluorescents, maybe you even bring reusable bags to the grocery store and carpool to work -but what’s next? What are you putting into those reusable bags? How can you take your eco-friendly activities further without remodeling your home or breaking the bank? Not ready to go off-the-grid homesteading yet?

Frugal, eco-friendly living is not just a recessionary practice; it’s a way of life. Greening your lifestyle isn’t expensive and complicated, it’s actually quite easy and saves money. Living a more sustainable life not only helps your wallet, health, and quality of life; it also helps the planet.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that as of 2007, residential housing is responsible for 54 percent of national energy use and 31 percent of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, the most common greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. It’s not just the power plants that are causing the problems. Every action, every person, can make a difference. It’s not so much “saving the earth,” just trying to use it up more slowly.

My top tips for frugal eco-friendly home life
- Be suspicious of single-use products, even if they tout “eco-friendliness”.

- Buy less. Period. Re-use and fix things instead of tossing them. When you do buy, buy used. Shop at thrift, friends or relatives hand-me-downs, craigslist, swap, barter, freecycle,

- If you don’t buy used, buy sustainable, quality products. Better to buy one good thing once instead of lots of poorly made things over and over. This strategy might cost a little more at first, but it will save you money and the planet’s resources in the long run.

- Re-wear clothes before washing.

- Ditch the extra TVs. I am a firm believer that one TV per home is plenty. Ditch cable/satellite service.

Kids
- Choose battery-free, toxin-free toys.

- Limit exposure to child-aimed marketing - that stuff is RUTHLESS!

- Breastfeeding.

- Cloth diapers.

Bathroom
- Use cloth toilet paper.

- Use bath towels more than once.

- Flush less often.

- Shower less. I shower every two to three days. This saves my skin's natural oils and money on soap and hot water.

- Plastic shower curtain alternatives = polyester.

- Use cloth feminine pads or a reusable "cup".

- Know your bad bath product ingredients.

- Use essential oils instead of perfume.

Kitchen
- Be wary of soy. And not just because of the phytoestrogens. Check out tofu's environmental footprint.

- Know what kind of produce to buy organic, and what is OK if it is conventionally farmed.

- Choose local grass-fed meats, no to hormones and antibiotics. Eat less meat.

- Valuable kitchen tools: food processor, blender, water purifier, Pyrex storage, stainless steel or cast iron pans (no to non-stick Teflon).

- I shop for basic pantry staples instead of for weekly menus.

- If you can’t pronounce an ingredient or don’t have time to read all the ingredients then don’t eat it.

- Bulk items=less packaging waste=generally cheaper.

- Use cloth instead of paper – towels, napkins, baby face-wipes, etc.

- Eat out less – esp. fast food for its multiple disposable containers.

- Keep your fridge on the lowest or “energy-saving” setting.

- I use my stainless steel water bottle at home. It helps me drink enough water every day and saves tons of glasses.

Can't Win For Losing

 (Photo by C. Ian Campbell, depicting the source of the most joy - and stress - in my life.)

Stress. It's that unhealthy thing we all have in our lives that we do have some nature of control over. I think I'm a closet sufferer. That is, I feel stressed quite often, but feel like as a mostly stay-at-home mom I shouldn't be stressed. The fact that I am not meeting this unrealistic expectation of stresslessness is no doubt adding to my stress. I feel like my stress comes from being very hard on myself on a daily basis. I think about all the fruits and vegetables I haven't eaten today, I think about all the writing I haven't gotten around to, I think about not being creatively playful enough with my son, I think about all the money I'm not making by being at home, I think about all the exercise I didn't do, about all the chores I haven't done around the house. I realize now that all this worrying and obsessing about being healthy, living well and being a good parent is only serving to make me unhealthier and unhappier. According to Prevention magazine, I'm not alone. It actually lists perfectionism as a cause of stress. Who knew?

Stress has been linked with a variety of physical ailments from headache to depression to symptoms that mimic a heart attack. The balance between stressors and your ability to cope with them, however, can determine your mental health. When the stressors in your life meet your coping abilities, you feel stimulated, engaged and appropriately challenged. Too many stressors in your life that overwhelm your attempts to cope, however, can result in depression or anxiety.

During stress, hormones including adrenaline and cortisol flood the body, resulting in:

• an increased need for oxygen
  
• increased heart rate and blood pressure
  
• tensed muscles
  
• increased blood sugar levels
  
• spilling of stored fat from cells into the bloodstream
  
• constriction of bowel and intestinal muscles
  

All this can strain your heart and artery linings. ... Stress can also cause what has been termed "toxic weight gain." Cortisol, a hormone released when you're under stress, is an appetite trigger. That's why so many women eat more - and less-than-healthy food - when under a lot of stress. Those extra calories are converted to fat deposits that gravitate to the waistline. These fat deposits, called visceral fat, are associated with life-threatening illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke and cancer. Chronically high levels of cortisol may stimulate the fat cells inside the abdomen to fill with more fat. As you age, this expanding waistline can be life threatening.
Too much stress can also affect your immune system, weakening it and making you more susceptible to colds, coughs and infections.
 -Prevention on stress

I've been killing myself in the name of health. So with this in mind I now will strive to be more mindful - to be easier on myself. I can attempt to be a better person without that making me miserable. I can wake up with intentions for the day, but try my best not to beat myself up about whether I've achieved all I wanted at the end of that day. I can always try again tomorrow.

Detox Smeetox

 

                                     photo: C. Ian Campbell 

Addressing the myth of the detox/cleanse diet trend is something I've been wanting to do since I started this blog. They don't make any sense to me. How could a week of deprivation, will-power lemon-water and vitamins suddenly render your body "clean." Maybe if you eat a diet of highly processed food and drink and/or smoke I can see how that might compromise your body's natural cleansing systems.  Maybe detox diets are for these people whose bodies are most likely not working at their maximum performance. Even then, a cleanse would only be temporary surely, and long-term relief from toxin build-up could only occur by cessation of smoking, reduction in drinking and improvements in diet.  

Over at Choosing Raw this week Gena brings up this very topic on her extensive post about women's health. 

"There is no reason for a healthy, average woman to drastically lower her caloric consumption with 'cleanses'. In fact, there’s a good chance that whatever cleanse you’re interested in–juices, lemonade, all raw veggies, smoothies only, and the list goes on–will only leave you feeling deprived, strip you of water weight, and lower your metabolism."

 The Guardian's (British newspaper) glorious Ben Goldacre addressed the issue in this 2005 article The Detox Myth. 

"There's certainly no evidence I'm aware of that eating a slightly unusual diet for a few days and munching on some vitamins speeds up the degradation and expulsion of any of the things these products claim to help you get rid of. And it's not really possible to imagine what experiment you could do to measure whether they were having an effect on real people, although if you came up with one, I'd be happy to try to do it."

(For more of Goldacre's fabulous wit see his debunking blog Bad Science.)

Another Guardian article in January 2009 found here offers a similar story.

The bad news for the ever-expanding detox/cleanse industry continues on WebMD:

"But the science behind the detox theory is deeply flawed, says Peter Pressman, MD, an internal medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The body already has multiple systems in place -- including the liver, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract -- that do a perfectly good job of eliminating toxins from the body within hours of consumption. "There's no evidence at all that any of these approaches augment the body's own mechanisms," Pressman tells WebMD. 
Detox dieters may report a variety of benefits, Pressman notes, but none can be traced to the idea of detoxification. Fewer headaches can be traced to other lifestyle changes such as reduction in alcohol and caffeine intake. Clearer skin can result from improved hydration, and less bloating could be a result of eating less food.
Some detox dieters report a boost in energy and even a sense of euphoria. Pressman says the feeling -- also commonly reported by people who are fasting -- is actually a reaction to starvation. It likely evolved as a way to help a person evade threats and locate food, he says."

So why are so many alternative health enthusiasts so convinced by the junk science that is the detox? Maybe it's just that those of us who try to live healthily are just as susceptible to aggressive marketing campaigns as the rest of the population. Maybe the idea behind it just sounds so good. It's a quick fix, albeit a torturous one. It's easy to market because it's easier to sell than a "eat healthily all your life" product. That's just it. A healthy lifestyle isn't a product. There's no money to be made in the unpackaged produce aisles. (According to Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle small farms that produce a variety of crops earn much more per acre than large single-crop farms. But I'm sure we're not talking about profits as large as the multimillion dollar diet industry here.)  
I think if you're eating a well-balanced diet of minimally processed foods and getting enough water, exercise and sleep then there's no real need for a cleanse. Even so, if one of these areas is lacking a quick-fix cleanse is not a permanent solution or a free pass to go wild the rest of the year. A better approach is to work toward an attainable, sustainable balanced life.

Boobs, Boobs Good For the Heart

      
      The January issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology found yet more evidence for the protective, preventative effects of breastfeeding -- for the mother:

Mothers who do not breastfeed their infants seem to be at increased risk of vascular changes associated with future cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for U.S. women. As such, it is important to identify how behaviors, such as lactation, modify women’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Lactation increases a mother’s metabolic expenditure by an estimated 480 kcal/d.1 Mothers who do not breastfeed retain more weight in the postpartum period than women who do breastfeed. In addition, lactation improves insulin requirements, glucose tolerance, lipid metabolism, and C-reactive protein profiles in the postpartum period. Recently, a number of studies have indicated longer-term effects of lactation, including a reduced risk of midlife metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.

       So all you selfish mamas out there considering using formula, think again. Breastfeeding can be self-serving too! Other benefits of nursing for moms is reduced risk of osteoporosis, breast cancer, postpartum depression, endometrial cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. Ovarian and uterine cancers have also been found to be more common in women who did not breastfeed. With breastfeeding and its benefits, there is a dose-related effect for moms and babies. Meaning that the longer you nurse the more disease prevention you are likely to gain.

       Lactation duration and breast cancer risk are inversely related. The longer a woman breastfeeds the less likely she is to get pre- or postmenopausal breast cancer, even with a family history of the disease. Re-examination of data from 47 international studies found that for every year a woman breastfeeds, she reduces her risk of breast cancer by an average of 4.3 percent. The risk is reduced a further 7 percent by simply having a baby. One study found that women who've nursed for six years or more reduced their risk of breast cancer by as much as a 63 percent.

       A study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009 found that for women with an immediate relative who had breast cancer, those who breast-fed had a 59 percent lower risk of premenopausal breast cancer. Making their risk about the same as women who had no breast cancer in the family.

       For each year of breastfeeding, a woman decreases her chances of getting type 2 diabetes by 15 percent, reported a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005. So if a woman breastfeeds three children for two years each, she's earned a 90 percent reduction in her risk of developing diabetes.
       My 2-year-old is still an avid nursing enthusiast, occasionally to my chagrin. It can be taxing and annoying at times, but mostly its a calming, bonding please-fall-asleep-now experience. I hope to wean him by age 3. My siblings and I were all breastfed for three years. Find more info on extended breastfeeding at Kellymom.

Healthy Body Image

 

Photo credit Kalshassan.

(Me a few years back in my dancing prime)

      In teaching a 100-level class on mass media last fall, I was hit by the inevitable end-of-semester barrage of final papers on the topic of "the media's portrayal of body image." They could have come up with any topic they wanted, but lo, so many of them did not realize how mundane and overdone that topic has become. I was sick of hearing about my classmates writing about it when I was in school, so I'm definitely bored of it now.
      One thing it did make me think of though, was how we as Americans are fighting a war against epidemic-proportion obesity in adults and children, while at the same time demanding that plus-size women be as equally represented and glorified in the fashion and media industries as their size 0 counterparts.
      This January Washington Post article on the subject caught my eye: Robin Givhan zeroes in on debate over plus-size women in fashion. Post staff fashion writer Givhan says: 

"after a volley of exhausting complaining, defending, finger-pointing and declaring one's right to creative license, a new conundrum has presented itself: It's hard to even know what an acceptable-size model is supposed to look like anymore. How big is big enough? And when does plus size, in a profoundly overweight population, become just as distressingly unhealthy an image as emaciation?"

      She has come to the conclusion that "Somewhere between emaciation and obesity lies good health. And somewhere between those extremes there is also a definition of beauty that is inclusive, sound and honest." And this is about where I'm at. Shouldn't women and fashion/media critics be calling for a healthy body image to be represented instead of championing the size 16-and-up set?
      Waif-like models are most likely unhealthy, otherwise they would have some nature of muscle tone from regular exercise. While I do think bodies can come healthily in all shapes and sizes, someone wearing a size 18 is most likely not hitting the gym every day either. Metabolism and genes can play as much of a role in a woman's size as diet and exercise, and I do know people that just look like they were meant to be a certain size, be it size 2 or 12. To me, it's about people that look healthy, like the shape their body was created to make.
      So which is more of a problem, eating disorders or obesity? It doesn't really matter I guess since they are both problems that are in a large part shaped and influenced by fashion and media. "Be super-skinny like practically every famous actress, anchorwoman and model." *cut to commercial* "Drink lots of Coke to be happy and eat at McDonald's 'cause they're made of good stuff now." Those mixed messages alone are enough to create a case of bulimia.
      In the end I hope that girls are getting the bulk of their self-esteem and body image ideas from healthier sources, like family, sports or clubs. Could the problem be more in the breakdown of family values than the fault of the media? It's possible, but plenty of studies have shown connections between what we see in the media and our subsequent behavior. I'm not going to end this post by saying celebrate your size - you are woman - because that's not how I feel. Celebrate your beauty, yes, celebrate your family and friends. Work toward health. Attain a healthier body image by striving to exercise and eat well, not by staring at the scale or idolizing any size model.   
   

Finding Your Food Philosophy

       During my January visit to NYC I spent most of my time with my best friend and roommate from college. She had been voraciously consuming Michael Pollan's books on food and nutrition (In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Botany of Desire.) and was happy to find in me someone who shared her excitement and interest for such topics. We had both discovered a new way of thinking about our food independently yet at almost the same time. Through different sources we had come across similar information and come to nearly the same dietary conclusions. (She is attempting a near vegan lifestyle, while I enjoy local, grass-fed game.)
       Her reasons for picking up these books was to "find out what kind of relationship I'm supposed to have with my food." This statement resonated with me. Here's a young woman whose grandmother still lives in Spain - where a rich, native food culture is alive and well - and even she is confused about what and how to eat. The other reason this struck me is that I'd never really thought about food as something I had a relationship with. It's not like I was going out and making friends with the pigs that would be my bacon. (Perhaps if I did I wouldn't eat it anymore.) Food was for eating, not relating with. But she was right. How we eat our food, what kind of food we buy, where we buy it - it's all part of our relationship with our food. It shapes our daily interactions, affects our health and well-being, and changes our economy by affecting our relationship with farmers and marketers. 
       When we decide to go in search of our food philosophy what we find is many different ideas, doctrines, approaches, rules, forbidden foods, gimmicks and get-skinny-quick schemes. Americans don't have one single historical food culture to govern our daily dietary principles. (Sorry, hot dogs and hamburgers don't count.) We also don't have any real seasonal or local-food restrictions that other regions do. You can get any food at any time, no matter what the season. So we are alone in the sea of cuisine grasping for a life-raft. You can choose to align yourself with vegetarian dogma - but that can mean you eat as much soda and potato chips as you want, as long as there's no meat passing your lips. You can try a "typical" American diet of white bread, meat and sugar - but likely little thinking goes into this diet, and you won't be around long either.
       Experience and research has led me to lean toward a "real food" diet. This is a relatively new movement in American dietary history and goes along with the slow food movement and local food movement. My interpretation of real food is to buy foods in their original, irreducible form, limiting processing as much as possible. I prefer that I can understand all the ingredients in the foods I buy that are somewhat processed (whole wheat pasta, Triscuits) and be sure that they don't contain any artificial ingredients or hydrogenated oils. (Artificial sweeteners are evil. More on that topic later.) I try to eat as many fruits and vegetables as possible - I shoot for a minimum of five servings a day and generally average about 7-10. Winter is harder, as I tend to crave bread and cheese instead of fruits and veggies, but I make a lot of veggie-ful homemade soups.
       So my number one rule in the kitchen is: it's not that hard to make it from scratch. Really, it's not. Buying mixes (pancakes, tuna helper, cookies, cakes, etc.) wastes money and packaging and adds a bazillion ingredients in the processing stage. Yuck.
       My number two rule is: say no to cans. The only thing I buy in cans anymore is coconut milk, tuna and wild salmon. Cans are lined with dangerous and varying amounts of BPA that can leach into your food (especially acidic foods like tomatoes.) And canned fruits and veggies have little to no nutritional value left.
       My number three rule is: buy fresh, buy local or buy frozen.
       My number four rule is: eat lots of fruits and veggies - especially raw. There are many days that I go without eating any meat, and the meat I do eat is generally fish or local grass-fed game. Never underestimate the nutritional value of grass-fed beef and grass-fed cow's raw milk and butter. Or should I say, do doubt the nutritional value of corn-fed, antibiotic-ed, hormone-d beef. Yuck.
       Winter is hard. There's only so much butternut squash soup and potatoes I can eat. I have yet to attempt preserving, except for a tragically terrible foray into homemade jam. Unless you've spent summer preparing for winter veggie shortages, a local-food winter can be tricky. It feels like forever until the farmer's markets open in May. Until then I will be buying the gorgeous pesticide-free, vine tomatoes from New Mexico. (Sorry.) My eating less meat will help environmentally off-set my non-local winter produce purchases.
       I'm not into total organic-ness. As Nina Planck (Real Food: What to Eat and Why) suggests, if you eat meat and dairy it makes sense to buy organic things higher on the food chain and buy conventionally processed produce. I can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. Not everything sold there is necessarily healthy in my book either. Processed is processed, whether it's in a fancy food shop or a quickie mart. Planck also notes that most studies concluding how amazing fruits and veggies are for you were most likely done with conventionally produced produce. If you can afford all organic and purely local, good for you. It will help the environment and send a message to farmers.

So here's a sampling of what we eat at my house:

lots of fruits and veggies
organic yogurt
nitrate-free bacon and sliced turkey
tuna, tilapia, wild salmon
wild, acorn-fed, humanely killed, cleanly processed, local venison
cheese
lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas
free-roaming, nesting chicken eggs
brown rice, wheat pasta, sprouted or whole wheat bread
shredded wheat, steel-cut oatmeal
organic peanut butter
no-sugar added jam
butter, extra virgin olive oil, extra virgin organic coconut oil
real maple syrup, honey, sucanat
Triscuits, occasional corn chips
oats, wheat flour, popcorn kernels
dried cranberries
walnuts
homemade cookies, bread, pretzels, pies, crumble, pudding.

A typical day meal plan:
Breakfast- Weekdays: green smoothie; oatmeal; fried eggs and grapefruit. Weekends: whole wheat, homemade waffles with fruit and nitrate-free bacon
Lunch- Dinner leftovers; tuna melt sandwich with cucumber; salad; turkey and cheese sandwich with tons of veggies; organic tomato soup and grilled cheese; egg salad with sprouts.
Snacks: cranberries and walnuts; apple and peanut butter; grapefruit; carrots and dip; watermelon; pear; crackers and cheese; yogurt; applesauce; popcorn.
Dinner: I generally make one-dish casseroles or stir frys with tons of veggies, deer or fish or beans and rice, pasta or potatoes; homemade pizza; cheesy ratatouille and rice, baked potatoes with veggies, tuna and cheese; curry; salad; deer roast; deer meatloaf; soup and corn muffins or biscuits; quiche or frittata; eggplant Parmesan; salmon patties; kale patties; lasagna; sushi; shepherd's pie; bubble and squeak; deer chili.

SIDS and Serotonin, Cry-It-Out and Cortisol

A few weeks ago a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association said researchers found low levels of serotonin (and the enzyme needed to make serotonin) in babies who died from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Serotonin acts as a neurotransmitter, regulating sleep, breathing, heart rate, body temperature, mood, appetite, muscle contraction and memory.
This news immediately made me think of the studies that show how leaving babies to cry-it-out alone raises their cortisol levels. (Cortisol is a stress hormone.) I was curious how serotonin levels and cortisol levels were related. Were they inversely related? Now I'm not implying that crying it out kills babies, I am just curious as to whether leaving a baby with this "fundamental abnormality" to cry it out alone could add to the risk of death.
Many studies link serotonin imbalances with depression. When we're stressed our bodies release the hormone cortisol. Among other things, cortisol stimulates hepatic detoxification through inducing tryptophan oxygenase (to reduce serotonin levels in the brain).

The fact that patients with major depression exhibit decreased brain serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) function and elevated cortisol secretion has reached the status of textbook truism. More recent formulations have suggested that elevated cortisol levels, probably caused by stressful life events, may themselves lower brain 5-HT function and this in turn leads to the manifestation of the depressive state (see Dinan, 1994). This elegant proposal neatly ties abnormalities of cortisol secretion and 5-HT function into a causal chain in which cortisol is the key bio- logical mediator through which life stress lowers brain 5-HT function, thereby causing depression in vulnerable individuals.

- P.J. Cowan, British Journal of Psychiarty 2002, 180, 99-100.

Could these findings apply to babies instead of depressed adults? I would think babies count as "vulnerable individuals" and babies with a genetic abnormality affecting their serotonin production would definitely be vulnerable.
I've also read in numerous places that having a baby sleep in the same room as its parents can help the child to regulate its breathing - subconsciously imitating parental breathing patterns. (Although I'm not sure how this would work if a parent has sleep apnea or something.)
I've always been an advocate of nighttime parenting through safe bed-sharing practices, but your baby doesn't even have to been in the bed with you to reap the benefits of your breathing patterns. Until a test is established to check for this genetic serotonin abnormality, I would suggest all parents pull the baby's crib into their room and never let them cry-it-out alone. Not to mention that crying it out teaches your baby not to trust you and tells them that you aren't responsive to their needs. Crying is the only way they know how to communicate. (If a baby is crying a lot, but being held, the cortisol-production response is not the same. A crying held baby doesn't equal a stressed baby, but crying alone baby does.) Always make sure your baby is sleeping on their back, has no pillows, toys or bedding near their head and isn't over-bundled.

(Photo by me of my son sleeping on his daddy when he was very tiny and new.)

Local eats

Health news from my town makes it to BBC News. Yay for farmers. Yay for eating local.
Richmond's Farm Bus
Thanks to fellow Richmond writer Lea Marshall for finding this on BBC.

My 2010 Reading List

I've already read the first two, and have started the third. I might include health book reviews in my posts. Reading is fun - and such a luxury when you have little kids.

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
She’s Gonna Blow by Julie Barnhill
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 by Elizabeth Kolbert
Telling True Stories by various authors
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
Infamous Scribblers by Eric Burns
The Case for the Real Jesus Christ by Lee Strobel
The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel
More Than a Theory by Hugh Ross
The Cell’s Design by Fazale Rana
Radical Womanhood by Carolyn McCulley

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my new blog. I will do my best to source and link to any research and news I discuss. I love writing about health topics but have too many story ideas to turn every topic into a full-blown piece. So I'll turn them into a blog instead. I am an avid consumer of health news. My main sources for health news are BBC News, CNN, Pediatrics, Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, The Journal of Human Lactation, Mothering Magazine, Prevention Magazine and NPR's Your Health.