Lift Up Your Hearts!

The State of Florida has seized a woman's assets and imprisoned her because they think they can make better decisions for her than she can herself.

Lore Farrell's story should frighten us all.
Why should an 85-year-old woman be able to be forced out of her home, be forbidden to make her own legal and medical decisions, and even told what kind of shoes she can and cannot wear, just because living on her own his riskier? The Orlando Sentinel article calls hers a "sad story with no villains," but I see plenty of villainy in the attitude that gives the State such power over a person who has committed no crime. If Lore Farrell thinks the risk of bleeding to death on the floor of her own home is preferable to the living death she feels at an assistive living facility, that choice should be hers, not some bureaucrat's, well-intentioned or not.

A 62-year-old British woman is being called selfish, ridiculous, irresponsible, and unnatural because of the recent birth of her son, who was conceived through in vitro fertilization with a her husband's sperm and a donated egg. I have serious problems with the extremes to which many people are resorting to combat infertility, but age has nothing to do with it. A post-menopausal woman who uses unnatural means to conceive a child is no more absurd than an older man with a Viagra prescription.

Most of the news we hear about people with severe brain injuries (such as Terri Schiavo) is from a negative perspective: How long can we afford (emotionally, finanacially, and in terms of prioritizing the use of resources) to keep an unresponsive, totally dependent person alive? Would a person in such a state want to be kept alive? What does the term "quality of life" really mean, and should it be the determining factor in critical medical decisions? To whom to such decisions belong—the person (through a "living will"), the family, the doctors, the government?

Organizations that focus on the possibility of recovery from severe brain injuries through coma arousal efforts and other stimulation programs, such as the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential and the Family Hope Center, are derisively labelled as "alternative medicine" if not as outright quackery. In light of recent discoveries, however, perhaps it's time to rethink our attitude.

After 19 years in a "minimally conscious state" after an accident, Terry Wallis is making significant progress towards recovery, with proven evidence of brain healing and regrowth. Now that there is clear evidence that healing of brain injuries is possible, there is no excuse for reflexively dismissing the work of those who have been saying so for years. If Terry's brain could heal itself, slowly, with minimal outside stimulation, it is inexcusable not to consider the possibility of speeding up the process.

I've occasionally wondered what we might be doing to ourselves by prolonging daylight with the use of artificial lights. A study by the U. S. National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences presents evidence that the use of artificial light during the hours of darkness is a signficant risk factor in the development and progression of cancer.

Although the study specifically targeted breast cancer, it's hard to believe other cancers are not similarly affected. Other studies suggest that the problem may be that the hormone melatonin, which slows the growth of cancers and boosts the immune system, is produced by the body only in darkness.

Apparently what matters most is light received through the eyes, rather than that falling on the rest of the body, as breast cancer afflicts blind women at half the rate of those who can see. I would like to see more details of that statistic, specifically how the cancer rate varies among different causes of blindness. When the fault is in the brain, is the protective effect the same as when the problem is directly with the eyes?

Similarly, I'd like to know what variations there are among people who live in different lattitudes, those who have about the same hours of daylight throughout the year, and those whose light and dark patterns vary widely with the seasons. Assuming there are enough people without artificial light to study, that is.

Although other studies indicate the problem is with light itself, the effect of artificial vs. natural light is not clear. One article suggested that lighting manufacturers should develop more natural lighting, but if the problem is light stopping melatonin production, that won't help.

I wonder what this says to those of us who stare at computer screens much of the time? And what about the common practice of putting night lights in children's rooms?

The article linked above made the following suggestions for mitigating the problem:

I notice they don't suggest reordering our lives along more natural lines, probably because for most folks such a change would be close to impossible. It's worth thinking about what is possible, however, because of studies indicating that night shift workers are significantly more likely to develop breast cancer, as are women who stay up late two or three times a week. (The article, unfortunately, did not define what "staying up late" means.) It would be irresponsible to conclude that what is true of breast cancer is true of other cancers, but even more irresponsible, risky, and foolish to assume that it isn't.

A recent New York Times article on the effort to promote breastfeeding includes this interesting line:

Nursing may even produce a euphoric feeling

So if you can't convince them with the overwhelming evidence of breastfeeding's benefits for the baby, try suggesting it as a new way to get high!

There's nothing like a little foreign travel to open your eyes, and while we were in Japan my eyes discovered xylitol, which appeared to be a popular sweetener. Normally I wouldn't have given it two seconds worth of attention, as I loathe artificial sweeteners. I make an exception for chewing gum, but otherwise strive to avoid all versions of Saccharine, NutraSweet, Splenda, etc. and get really annoyed when they're included in a product without their presence being announced in big, obvious letters.

But xylitol was something popular in Japan and not here, so I did a little investigating. What I've found makes me astonished that it's not widely available, and very popular, in this country. I'm still looking for the down side, so maybe someone who reads this can fill me in. Here's what I've learned so far:

Xylitol is a sugar alcohol (rather than a sugar), present naturally in the human body, and found in a surprising variety of plant materials, including raspberries, mushrooms, and cauliflower. The most commercially useful sources are corn cobs and birch wood. (Xylitol is also called "birch sugar.")

It looks and tastes much like sugar, and can be used one-for-one in most applications. (Yeast breads are a notable exception; see below.)

It is already approved and considered safe in any quantity for diabetic foods, and is a commonly-used sweetener in many other countries, from Finland to China.

The most well documented benefit of xylitol is its ability to prevent—and possibly even repair—tooth decay. As I understand it, there are several different mechanisms by which it does this. It increases salivation (as does sugar, but that's not enough to overcome the harm sugar does); it starves the bacteria primarily responsible for tooth decay because they cannot metabolize xylitol; it helps prevent plaque from sticking to teeth; and it promotes remineralization of tooth enamel.

Other studies indicate that xylitol inhibits the growth of bacteria that often cause ear infections in children.

In addition to its anti-bacterial properties, xylitol inhibits the growth of yeast, which is good news for sufferers of candidiasis, and bad news for bread bakers.

All this antibacterial and anti-yeast action made me concerned about the effect of xylitol on the "good guys," the helpful inhabitants of our intestinal ecosystem. I have found little that addresses this question, but what I did find inticates that xylitol actually has a prebiotic effect and promotes rather than inhibits the growth of beneficial intestinal flora!

Animal studies indicate xylitol may fight osteoporosis by increasing bone density.

Xylitol has a low gylcemic index, and does not cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and resultant insulin response.

Xylitol is not a calorie free sweetener, but has about 40% fewer calories than sugar.

The only side effect I've been able to find is a temporary laxative effect in people who consume large amounts without giving their body time to adjust by increasing production of the enzymes used in the digestion of xylitol.

Now for a bit of personal experience. One advantage of being past the childbearing years is that one feels freer to experiment a bit. Xylitol is not easy to find in this country. A few brands of chewing gum contain some xylitol -- though for the positive dental effects it really needs to be the primary sweetener in gum. The "sugar" section of our grocery stores offer an amazing variety of real and artificial sweeteners, but no xylitol. But on the way home I stopped in to our local health food store and found a one-pound bag, which I promptly bought. The cost was $7, so it's not going to replace sugar in great quantities any time soon. (I subsequently found a five-pound bag for $22.)

So far, I think xylitol is great! I haven't used it in baking yet, but I've found it works well in yogurt and when I want to add a little more sweetness to fruit puree. Mostly I've just used it in small amounts (1/2 - 1 teaspoon) to swish around in my mouth after eating (and after rinsing my mouth with water). I must say it's weird because it tastes as if I'm coating my teeth with sugar -- and that can't be good, right? I don't know if I'll ever be able to attest to any anticariotic effects, since my teeth are at the stage where my greatest problem is the demise of ancient fillings. But I have noticed one thing. For many years my gums have been more red than pink, which alarms dental hygienists but which dentists, having been unable to determine a cause, and having ruled out all the bad possibilties they know, have chosen not to fret over. Suddenly, after two weeks of xylitol use, my gums are pink!

So -- I throw the subject open for discussion. What do you know about xylitol? Are there bad side effects I haven't been able to discern? Why is it so uncommon in the United States?

If you want to investigate for yourself, xylitol.org isn't a bad place to start.

I like to check out Google News every morning, and I'm especially interested in their Health section. Today there were two headlines that caught my attention, and each turned out to be totally misleading.

Flying does not cause blood clots, say experts

Do you feel safer now, as you prepare for your long flight? Do you think you can relax, forget about periodically wiggling your toes, stretching your feet, and disturbing your seatmates so you can get up and walk around? Not so fast! What the article says is that low cabin pressure and reduced oxygen do not increase the risk of blood clots. The damage is done by reduced circulation caused by long periods of inactivity, whether on plane, train, bus, or car. Although the article does not address this issue, I'm guessing sitting at a desk all day isn't a good situation, either.

Considering the relative leg room offered by the other modes of transportation, it's not surprising that the problem appears more often among those who fly. To give the casual reader the impression that he's safe from bloodclots on a long flight is misleading and dangerous.

Nonsmoking Men, Women Face Same Lung Cancer Death Risk

Same as whom? The point of the article is that among nonsmokers, women face no greater risk of lung cancer than men. But the impression I received from the headline itself was that nonsmokers face the same lung cancer risk as smokers, a truly startling (and untrue) finding.

Our local newspaper includes Parade Magazine in its Sunday edition. I find it generally to be a waste of paper. (A judgment almost equally true of the whole paper, now that it has gone to a format that emphasizes pictures over words, but that's another blog post.) However, I ususally find Marilyn vos Savant's column interesting, and this week it was especially so.

Marilyn answers questions sent in by readers, and last Sunday featured two that have been high on my list of Questions I Wonder about but Have Been Too Lazy to Investigate.

The first one was why entertainers play their music at such a high volume, to which I would add churches, theaters, theme parks, skating rinks, and many other places. I had thought perhaps it was because the rest of the world is deaf, but here is her very interesting answer:

They’re trying to generate excitement, and a high level of decibels accomplishes that goal. Subjected to such intense sound, listeners’ bodies produce adrenaline, noradrenaline and more. These substances make the heart pound and give an impression of increased muscle strength. Not surprisingly, some people become psychologically addicted to this hormone rush, which is implicated in thrill-seeking behavior.

I'm not sure the churches would take that conclusion very kindly, but some might think it worth considering.

The other question concerns the number of people (specifically, Americans) killed in automobile accidents, as compared to wars. I've often wondered how the automobile-related death rate would stack up against other causes of death, not just wars, but crimes, illnesses, and the like. Here is the answer for war:

Since the start of the Revolution in 1775, about a million Americans have died in wars. And since Henry Ford introduced the mass-produced motorcar in 1913, more than 2.5 million Americans have met their deaths on the road.

Not the sort of statistic that makes me want to jump into the car and drive off. Nonetheless, we leave soon for choir rehearsal.... Which explains why people don't pay much attention to automotive risks: as yet there are few of us who have a reasonable alternative.

It is nearly as dangerous to base life's decisions on individual scientific studies as it is on Bible verses taken out of context. Nonetheless, I enjoy reporting encourging news, and this morning's is about chocolate. This Scientific American article reports on a study of the cocoa consumption (in any form) of 470 elderly Dutch men, which found that those who ate the most cocoa were half as likely to die of cardiovascular or any other disease as those who ate the least. They haven't identified the protective mechanism yet; maybe it was the antioxidants, maybe the men were just happier. :)

Still, there's no need to go overboard on the Ghirardelli. The average daily cocoa consumption of the highest group was "more than four grams." Four grams is not a lot of cocoa, even in its pure form.

What is worse, dying because you can't afford medical treatment, or dying because the cogs in a socialized medicine system decide they can't afford to treat you? Or because someone else thinks you would be better off dead than alive?

A high court in the United Kingdom has ruled that two year old Charlotte Wyatt's life belongs in the hands of the hospital where she is being treated; her parents cannot force doctors keep her alive if the doctors decide it would be in the child's best interest to die.

Whatever your views on what would be best for Charlotte, and whatever confidence you might have in your own doctor, this court precedent should terrify you. The chasm between trusting the advice of a doctor who has treated your family for years and proven his compassion and competence, and submitting to the decision of a medical bureaucrat (be he doctor, judge, or accountant) that the patient does not deserve to live, is that between heaven and hell.

Fixed ideas, even if later discredited, are hard to dislodge. This is why urban legends and Internet rumors must repeatedly be quashed. Either we like what we "know" and don't care enough to be concerned about its veracity, or a new generation comes upon the outdated information and unwittingly embraces it. Or both.

This, I'm afraid is what will happen in the case of obstetrical practice. Several years ago a study (the "Term Breech Trial") led to the conclusion that it was safer for breech presentations to be delivered by Caesarean section, rather than vaginally. Consequently, this has become standard, established practice.

However, an article in the January 2006 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology reports serious flaws in the Term Breech Trial, and concludes that the recommendations from that study should be withdrawn.

Most cases of neonatal death and morbidity in the term breech trial cannot be attributed to the mode of delivery. Moreover, analysis of outcome after 2 years has shown no difference between vaginal and abdominal deliveries of breech babies.

Because Caesarean sections are considered to be more convenient than vaginal deliveries (nature is so messy!), and because people seem less inclined to sue doctors for interventions than for not intervening, I don't expect to see a rise in the number of women allowed to attempt vaginal deliveries of breech babies. Nonetheless, it is important to note yet another instance of major life decisions being made on the basis of erroneous data.

As further proof that we haven't progressed much, ethically, from the days when unsavory characters made midnight forays into graveyards to provide medical researchers with cadavers for dissection, I offer this macabre story of tissue removed from bodies entrusted to various mortuaries in New York City, without consent and without proper safety precautions. The tissues were then implanted, in the form of bone and skin grafts, in hundreds of unsuspecting patients across the country.

I'm beginning to suspect that "factory medicine" is as dangerous a practice as factory farming.

Because I have a friend who is an avid deer hunter, the New York Times article on chronic wasting disease caught my eye. CWD is the deer and elk equivalent of mad cow disease, and has spread so far to 11 states and two Canadian provinces.

The news is not all bad for hunters. Bruce Morrison, chairman of the National Chronic Wasting Disease Plan Implementation Team is himself a hunter and asserts, "I'm not worried." However, he also recommended that hunters in states where CWD has been found have their deer and elk meat frozen while the brain is tested, and warned that no part of an infected animal should be eaten.

Which is not good news for the rest of us. I fail to see a material difference between this warning and a call to increase greatly the testing of animals that end up in the meat departments of our grocery stores. We have not learned well from Great Britain's sad experience with mad cow disease, and need to stop burying our governmental heads in the sand. Japan's recent renewal of the ban on U.S. beef is not the most important reason for tightening the regulations, although it is the one grabbing the headlines.

Personally, I'm awaiting news from Symantec and McAfee that they will be implementing special protection measures for Gateway computers.

Imagine: You are happily expecting the birth of your child, and when the thrilling moment approaches you check into your local hospital, a scenario common to most American mothers-to-be. You give birth to a healthy baby boy, but when you, yourself, are finally released from the hospital, it is more than three months later and you have lost your uterus, both arms, both legs and very nearly your life.

That's what happened to Claudia Meija. Somehow during what should have been a very brief stay at the hospital, in an area (labor and delivery) where the patients aren't even sick, she acquired an "aggressive streptococcal infection," a.k.a. flesh-eating bacteria.

There were no complications with the birth: "Everything was normal." But then she developed a rash ("possible allergic reaction to the sheets") and severe stomach pain ("normal for someone who had just given birth"). Two days later, doctors performed a hysterectomy. Twelve days later they amputated all her limbs, having given her the choice between that and dying. Even so, it was months before she was healthy enough to leave the hospital.

Is it any wonder that when Jon was in the hospital with viral meningitis I prayed as much that he would not acquire a new infection as I did that he recover from the original?

Is it any wonder that, despite its own inherent risks, home birth is looking more and more like the safer alternative?

Because of the vaccine shortage, we abstained from our annual flu shots last year. Perhaps that was a good thing, because it encouraged us to avoid public drinking fountains, to be more careful with handwashing, and to make use of pocket vials of hand sanitizer when out among the hand-shaking public. (This was recommended by a physician friend whose specialty is infectious diseases. The alcohol-based formula is effective on both bacteria and viruses and, because of the way it works, does not promote resistance as anti-bacterial soaps do.)

It was thrilling to have avoided the flu without the vaccine, but we decided not to translate that excitement into presumption, largely because we will be with people this season to whom we particularly do not want to pass the illness. So we paid a visit to the county health department.

We discovered the health department as a source of immunizations one year when we tried to go to our doctor and discovered his office was no longer giving flu shots that year. That turned out to be a blessing! We've gone back to the health department ever since. Which of these two scenarios would you choose? (1) Go to the doctor, hang around for half an hour or so in a waiting room full of sick people, and hand over a $20 copay; or (2) go to the health department, wait five minutes, and pay $18!