Tag Archives: Sick
Relationship Worries Can Make You Sick
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
FRIDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) — Feeling insecure and frequently anxious about your romantic relationship can actually harm your health, new research contends.
The feelings may boost levels of a stress hormone and lower your immune system, according to Ohio State researchers.
In their study, married couples who were often anxious about their relationship — wondering if their partner truly loved them, for example — had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and lower levels of T-cells, which are important in the immune system to fight off infections, lead author Lisa Jaremka said.
“These concerns about rejection and whether or not you are truly cared for do have physiological consequences that could, in the long-term, negatively affect health,” said Jaremka, a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.
The study was recently published online and will appear in an upcoming print issue of Psychological Science.
Jaremka said she was not describing the normal now-and-then concerns about a relationship. “Everybody has these thoughts and feelings sometimes,” she said. “They are a natural part of being in a relationship.”
But for the highly anxious, she added, “it’s a chronic thing.”
Jaremka studied 85 couples, all married for an average of more than 12 years. Most were white. Their average age was 39. All the partners reported their general anxiety levels and symptoms, and answered questions about their marriage and about their sleep quality.
The couples were generally healthy. Those with wives who were expecting a baby, or who drank excess alcohol or caffeine or had health problems affecting the immune system were all excluded.
The couples provided saliva samples over three days and blood samples twice. From these, the research team measured levels of cortisol and T-cells.
Participants with higher levels of anxiety about the marriage produced about 11 percent more cortisol than those with lower anxiety levels. Spouses with higher anxiety levels had between 11 percent and 22 percent lower levels of T cells than those with less anxiety.
Jaremka said the two findings are likely linked, because cortisol can hamper production of T-cells.
The study found a link or association between relationship anxiety and the body’s stress and immune response, but cannot prove cause and effect.
While the study did not track whether the highly anxious partners got sick more often, the link is reasonable, Jaremka said, based on other research about the ill effects of chronically high stress hormone levels.
“A lot of the negative consequences of high cortisol are beyond the common flu,” she said. Rather, she added, high level have been linked to heart problems, sleep problems, depression and other conditions.
Another expert who also studies attachment styles said the link between attachment anxiety and stress is not new, but the link to immune system function is newer. And it is “not that surprising,” said Jeni Burnette, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Richmond, in Virginia.
Relationship Worries Can Make You Sick
FRIDAY Feb. 22, 2013 — Feeling insecure and frequently anxious about your romantic relationship can actually harm your health, new research contends.
The feelings may boost levels of a stress hormone and lower your immune system, according to Ohio State researchers.
In their study, married couples who were often anxious about their relationship — wondering if their partner truly loved them, for example — had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and lower levels of T-cells, which are important in the immune system to fight off infections, lead author Lisa Jaremka said.
“These concerns about rejection and whether or not you are truly cared for do have physiological consequences that could, in the long-term, negatively affect health,” said Jaremka, a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.
The study was recently published online and will appear in an upcoming print issue of Psychological Science.
Jaremka said she was not describing the normal now-and-then concerns about a relationship. “Everybody has these thoughts and feelings sometimes,” she said. “They are a natural part of being in a relationship.”
But for the highly anxious, she added, “it’s a chronic thing.”
Jaremka studied 85 couples, all married for an average of more than 12 years. Most were white. Their average age was 39. All the partners reported their general anxiety levels and symptoms, and answered questions about their marriage and about their sleep quality.
The couples were generally healthy. Those with wives who were expecting a baby, or who drank excess alcohol or caffeine or had health problems affecting the immune system were all excluded.
The couples provided saliva samples over three days and blood samples twice. From these, the research team measured levels of cortisol and T-cells.
Participants with higher levels of anxiety about the marriage produced about 11 percent more cortisol than those with lower anxiety levels. Spouses with higher anxiety levels had between 11 percent and 22 percent lower levels of T cells than those with less anxiety.
Jaremka said the two findings are likely linked, because cortisol can hamper production of T-cells.
The study found a link or association between relationship anxiety and the body’s stress and immune response, but cannot prove cause and effect.
While the study did not track whether the highly anxious partners got sick more often, the link is reasonable, Jaremka said, based on other research about the ill effects of chronically high stress hormone levels.
“A lot of the negative consequences of high cortisol are beyond the common flu,” she said. Rather, she added, high level have been linked to heart problems, sleep problems, depression and other conditions.
Another expert who also studies attachment styles said the link between attachment anxiety and stress is not new, but the link to immune system function is newer. And it is “not that surprising,” said Jeni Burnette, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Richmond, in Virginia.
Until more research is in, Jaremka suggests people who are highly anxious in relationships work on reducing their stress. Reduce stress by yoga or other exercise or meditation, she suggested. That would lower cortisol, presumably, and help their health.
Burnette suggested that highly anxious partners might also try to be more forgiving, and not keep replaying negative events such as arguments. “Some of our work suggests that anxiously attached individuals are less forgiving and tend to respond with more rumination,” she said.
The study was supported by an American Cancer Society grant, a Comprehensive Cancer Center at Ohio State fellowship and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
More information
To learn more about improving a relationship, visit the American Psychological Association.
Posted: February 2013
CDC Ranks Foods Most Likely to Make Americans Sick
TUESDAY Jan. 29, 2013 — Leafy green vegetables are responsible for more foodborne illnesses than any other food, according to a new government report.
But meat and poultry cause more deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published online Jan. 29 and in the March print issue of the journal Emerging infectious Diseases.
Almost half (46 percent) of illnesses were traced back to produce, including fruits and nuts. Twenty-two percent were due to consuming leafy vegetables such as kale or spinach.
Dairy products were responsible for 14 percent of illnesses, fruits and nuts for 12 percent, and poultry for 10 percent.
Meat — particularly poultry — was responsible for the most deaths, with 43 percent of all deaths estimated to have come from land animals. Nineteen percent of deaths were due to poultry alone and mostly from listeria or salmonella.
Two years ago, the CDC published estimates on the number of foodborne illnesses acquired in the United States, including the number caused by each of the major pathogens, said study senior author Dr. Patricia Griffin, chief of the CDC’s enteric diseases epidemiology branch.
According to that report, about 48 million people — or one in six in the United States each year — get food poisoning. More than 9 million of those cases are caused by one of the major pathogens tracked by the CDC.
“The next logical questions was, What categories of foods are causing these illnesses?” Griffin said. “Answers to these sorts of questions are important for regulatory agencies and for industry in figuring out how to target their resources.”
This is the first time the CDC has tried to evaluate the actual food sources of foodborne illnesses. The analysis is based on data from all outbreaks since 1998, the first year authorities started filing information on ingredients.
Norovirus was the main contaminant driving the illnesses, the study found. People carry this virus and they can pass it on if they don’t wash their hands after using the toilet or vomiting and before handling food, Griffin said.
“It’s a reminder that it’s important for everybody who handles food both in restaurants and at home to wash your hands well before handling food,” Griffin said.
Consumers should also make sure they wash leafy greens, such as lettuce, well before eating them, added Mary Ann Scharf, an associate professor in the Seton Hall University College of Nursing in South Orange, N.J.
Meat needs to be kept refrigerated and then cooked thoroughly before it is eaten, she added.
Make sure that any knives or cutting boards that have come into contact with poultry are thoroughly washed before they come into contact with fresh vegetables or other food, Scharf advised.
More information
The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about food safety.
Posted: January 2013
Dirty Pacifiers May Make Infants Sick: Study
FRIDAY Nov. 2, 2012 — Pacifiers are universally popular with new parents and their infants, but there’s one big problem with them: They can get dirty. Very dirty.
Researchers report that they found a wide range of disease-causing bacteria, fungus and mold on pacifiers that young children had been using.
They added that pacifiers can often grow a slimy coating of bacteria — called a biofilm — that actually alters the normal bacteria in a baby or toddler’s mouth. That biofilm can spur inflammation and potentially increase the risk of developing gastrointestinal problems such as colic or even ear infections.
In fact, the same types of bacteria found on a common pacifier have been linked to cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, said study author Dr. Tom Glass, a professor of forensic sciences, pathology and dental medicine at Oklahoma State University.
Glass said the problem with pacifiers applies also to removable orthodontic appliances such as retainers and even athletic mouth guards and dentures. Pores in the plastic can capture fungi, bacteria, food and water, creating a perfect spot for bacterial and fungal growth and infection, he explained.
The research was scheduled to be presented Friday at the American Society for Clinical Pathology annual meeting in Boston. The data and conclusions of the study should be considered preliminary until they are published in a peer-reviewed journal.
The study authors collected 10 pacifiers from healthy infants at a pediatric clinic. They chopped up the nipples and shields finely, and put them in laboratory dishes designed to allow any bacteria or fungi that was present on the pacifiers to grow.
After 24 and 48 hours, the investigators compared the growth around the used pacifiers to the growth in dishes in which chopped-up new, unused pacifiers had been placed.
While half of the 10 used pacifiers were lightly contaminated, the other 5 were heavily contaminated (with levels reaching as high as 100 million colony-forming units per gram).
The researchers cultured 40 different species of bacteria from the 10 used pacifiers. One pacifier was contaminated with four different strains of Staphylococcus aureus. Yet, the unused pacifiers were found to be sanitary (with colony growths in the dishes less than 100 colony-forming units per gram).
What was particularly concerning, said Glass, was that many of the bacteria growing from the used pacifiers were resistant to commonly used antibiotics such as penicillin and methicillin.
The development of such resistance to certain antibiotics does not cause the organism to be more infectious than other strains that have no antibiotic resistance, but it can make the infection more difficult to treat.
Glass doesn’t recommend that parents use pacifiers to calm their babies and toddlers. “After doing the study, I say why take a risk? The key is to recognize that pacifiers can cause illness,” he said. “In the long run, it may be that what you do now [using a pacifier] may have a lot to do with whether a child ends up developing atherosclerosis or type 2 diabetes.”
For those who still choose to use pacifiers, Glass recommends soaking them daily in a denture-cleaning agent and carrying extras so a dropped or soiled pacifier doesn’t have to be replaced without first cleaning it thoroughly at home.
He also recommends throwing out pacifiers after two weeks of use because wear increases the bacteria-trapping porousness of the plastic.
Some experts are not concerned about pacifiers carrying disease-causing germs.
Dr. Ben Hoffman, medical director of the Children’s Safety Center at Oregon Health and Science University’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, said he can’t think of an infection a child has had that he would attribute to a pacifier.
“The majority of things you’re going to find on a pacifier are things we’ll find on our clothes, normal human flora,” said Hoffman. “It’s not a reason to demonize pacifiers if people find them useful.”
More information
Find out more about the risks and benefits of pacifiers from the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Posted: November 2012
Marijuana Only for the Sick?
One year after federal law enforcement officials began cracking down on California’s medical marijuana industry with a series of high-profile arrests around the state, they finally moved into Los Angeles last month, giving 71 dispensaries until Tuesday to shut down.
At the same time, because of a well-organized push by a new coalition of medical marijuana supporters, the City Council last week repealed a ban on the dispensaries that it had passed only a couple of months earlier.
Despite years of trying fruitlessly to regulate medical marijuana, California again finds itself in a marijuana-laced chaos over a booming and divisive industry.
Nobody even knows how many medical marijuana dispensaries are in Los Angeles. Estimates range from 500 to more than 1,000. The only certainty, supporters and opponents agree, is that they far outnumber Starbucks.
“That’s the ongoing, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ circus of L.A.,” said Michael Larsen, president of the Neighborhood Council in Eagle Rock, a middle-class community that has 15 dispensaries within a one-and-a-half-mile radius of the main commercial area, many of them near houses. “People here are desperate, and there’s nothing they can do.”
Though the neighborhood’s dispensaries were among those ordered to close by Tuesday, many are still operating. As he looked at a young man who bounded out of the Together for Change dispensary on Thursday morning, Mr. Larsen said, “I’m going to go out on a limb, but that’s not a cancer patient.”
In the biggest push against medical marijuana since California legalized it in 1996, the federal authorities have shut at least 600 dispensaries statewide since last October. California’s four United States attorneys said the dispensaries violated not only federal law, which considers all possession and distribution of marijuana to be illegal, but state law, which requires operators to be nonprofit primary caregivers to their patients and to distribute marijuana strictly for medical purposes.
While announcing the actions against the 71 dispensaries, André Birotte Jr., the United States attorney for the Central District of California, indicated that it was only the beginning of his campaign in Los Angeles. Prosecutors filed asset forfeiture lawsuits against three dispensaries and sent letters warning of criminal charges to the operators and landlords of 68 others, a strategy that has closed nearly 97 percent of the targeted dispensaries elsewhere in the district, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the United States attorney.
Vague state laws governing medical marijuana have allowed recreational users of the drug to take advantage of the dispensaries, say supporters of the Los Angeles ban and the federal crackdown. Here on the boardwalk of Venice Beach, pitchmen dressed all in marijuana green approach passers-by with offers of a $ 35, 10-minute evaluation for a medical marijuana recommendation for everything from cancer to appetite loss.
Nearly 180 cities across the state have banned dispensaries, and lawsuits challenging the bans have reached the State Supreme Court. In more liberal areas, some 50 municipalities have passed medical marijuana ordinances, but most have suspended the regulation of dispensaries because of the federal offensive, according to Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes access to medical marijuana. San Francisco and Oakland, the fiercest defenders of medical marijuana, have continued to issue permits to new dispensaries.
In 2004, shortly after the state effectively allowed the opening of storefront dispensaries, there were only three or four in Los Angeles, experts said. The number soon swelled into the hundreds before the city imposed a moratorium. But dispensaries continued to proliferate by exploiting a loophole in the moratorium even as lawsuits restricted the city’s ability to pass an ordinance. Over the summer, the City Council voted to ban dispensaries.
Anticipating the ban, the medical marijuana industry “that historically had not worked together very well” began organizing a counterattack, said Dan Rush, an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which formed a coalition with Americans for Safe Access and the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance, a group of dispensary owners. The coalition raised $ 250,000, mostly from dispensaries, to gather the signatures necessary to place a referendum to overturn the ban on the ballot next March, said Don Duncan, California director for Americans for Safe Access.
Instead of allowing the referendum to proceed in March, when elections for mayor and City Council seats will also be held, the council on Tuesday voted to simply rescind the ban. José Huizar, one of only two council members to vote against the repeal, and the strongest backer of the ban, said the city was not in a position to fight an increasingly well-organized industry.
Mr. Huizar said California’s medical marijuana laws, considered the nation’s weakest, must be changed to better control the production and distribution of marijuana, as well as limit access to only real patients.
“Unless that happens, local cities are going to continue to play the cat-and-mouse game with the dispensaries,” he said, adding that the industry had fought attempts here to regulate it. “These are folks who are just out to protect their profits, and they do that by having as little regulation or oversight as possible by the City of Los Angeles.”
But coalition officials say they favor stricter regulations here.Rigo Valdez, director of organizing for the local union, which represents 500 dispensary workers in Los Angeles, said he would support an ordinance restricting the number of dispensaries to about 125 and keeping them away from schools and one another.
“We would be able to respect communities by staying away from sensitive-use areas while providing safe access for medical marijuana patients,” he said.
Such an ordinance would shut down many dispensaries catering to recreational users, said Yamileth Bolanos, president of the Greater Los Angeles Collective Alliance and owner of a dispensary, the PureLife Alternative Wellness Center. “I felt we needed a medical situation with respect, not with all kinds of music going, tattoos and piercings in the face,” she said. “We’re normal people. Normal patients can come and acquire medicine.”
But the hundreds of dispensaries that would be put out of business will fight the federal crackdown, as some are already doing.
In downtown Los Angeles, where most of the dispensaries were included in the order to close, workers were renovating the storefront of the Downtown Collective. Inside, house music was being played in a lobby decorated to conjure “Scarface,” a poster of which hung on a wall.
“We don’t worry about this,” the manager said of the federal offensive, declining to give his name. “It’s between the lawyers.”
David Welch, a lawyer who is representing 15 of the 71 dispensaries and who is involved in a lawsuit challenging a ban at the State Supreme Court, said the federal clampdown would fail.
“Medical marijuana dispensaries are very much like what they distribute: they’re weeds,” he said. “You cut them down, you leave, and then they sprout back up.”
A version of this article appeared in print on October 8, 2012, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Marijuana Only for the Sick? A Farce, Some in Los Angeles Say.
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Norimitsu Onishi
Published: October 8, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
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