The CBC article ‘Smoking bans cut hospital admissions: study’ states the following:

In Monday’s issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the researchers reported the following changes since the ban took effect:

• 17 per cent decrease in the heart attack hospitalization rate.
• 33 per cent decrease in rates of admission for respiratory conditions such as asthma, pneumonia and bronchitis.
• 39 per cent decrease in admissions because of cardiovascular conditions such as angina and stroke.

This article isn’t all that fascinating. One would think that this is a logical outcome. Smoke less, live longer and be sick less. Common sense? I thought so until I started reading the comments on the article (obviously, for the smoking community this is a hot topic). A sample:

.. 2nd hand smoke is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the general public by its own Govt

A hogwash study to justify the moronic freedom-destroying legislation from our Nannystate.

Yet another example on how one can cheat with statistics. Headline says what it says. Detail makes it pretty clear that the whole thing is baloney.

The Smoker’s History site makes it pretty well known (using BOLD LETTERS) that they believe the whole thing is a hoax:

The stock pretension of the morally depraved anti-smoker spin-meisters (who self-righteously spew unadulterated Nazi pseudo-science in our faces) is to pretend that big-money investments by pension funds are a moral issue of profiting from tobacco. In fact, their financial control gives them voting control, and that is how the anti-smokers elect traitors and appoint stooges who let the anti-smokers get away with their scientific frauds to lie the public about the risks of tobacco, support cowardly sell-out politicians, and throw lawsuits so that smokers will be forced to pay outrageous and unjust "damages."

And they add in analysis that smoking is not responsible for heart disease.

They performed no new studies, and merely uncritically regurgitated "published and unpublished data and testimony on the relationship between secondhand smoke and short-term and long-term heart problems." They ignored the CDC and other data on death rates which shows no discernable effect of smoking bans, and which furthermore reveals that the authors of the anti-smoking studies cynically cherry-picked their study periods and control populations. This data is freely accessible to the public, AND TO THE MEDIA, WHO UNQUESTIONINGLY PARROT THEIR FLAGRANT LIES AS TRUTH. (Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects: Making Sense of the Evidence. National Academies Press, 2009.)

The comment on the article that really caught my attention was this one:

By the way, I do not smoke. However, a study has been made (and ‘interestingly’, not published widely) that smokers actually SAVE tax payers money. They live shorter and health care costs are way more in old age. Hence, total cost to taxpayers is actually LESS for smokers (not even counting the extra taxes they pay).

Both Wired and Popular Science had articles on Henrietta Lacks in February. Who is this amazing woman?

Henrietta Lacks (August 1, 1920 – October 4, 1951) was the unwitting donor of cells from her cancerous tumor, which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. This is now known as the HeLa cell line.^[1]

Her cells are unlike any other cultivated today:

Researchers "discovered that [Henrietta’s] cells did something they’d never seen before: They could be kept alive and grow."^[14] According to reporter Michael Rogers, the subsequent development of HeLa by a researcher at the hospital helped answer the demands of 10,000 who marched for a cure to polio just a few days before. By 1954, HeLa was used by Jonas Salk to develop a vaccine for polio.^[12] To test Salk’s new vaccine, the cells were quickly put into mass production in the first-ever cell production factory.^[15] Demand for the HeLa cells quickly grew. Since they were put into mass production, Henrietta’s cells have been mailed to scientists around the globe for "research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits".^[12] HeLa cells have been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products.^{[citation needed]} Scientists have grown some 50 million metric tons of her cells. ^[16]

But most interesting is that her family never knew (or consented):

In her 2010 book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot documents the histories of both the HeLa cell line and the Lacks family. Henrietta’s husband, David Lacks, was told little following her death. Suspicions fueled by racial issues prevalent in the South were compounded by issues of class and education. For their part, members of the Lacks family were kept in the dark about the existence of the tissue line, and when its existence was revealed, family members were confused about how Henrietta’s cells could have been taken without consent and how they could still be alive 50 years after her death.

And how important are her cells? (From the Wired article)  More than 60,000 scientific papers have been written using her cells, and basically every major genetic finding has some link …

And all without her consent. I wonder if she would have agreed?

I have started watching a few of the TED videos (I would love to attend this conference). Jamie Oliver’s speak on obesity is a reminder than many need to hear. It is the number 1 killer in North America, preventable and getting worse.

His point on teaching about food in school is also very interesting. Something simple, that does not get taught.

I don’t know if this is an urban myth or not, but it landed in my Inbox. Posting this in the dead of winter … will mean that I need to remember it for the spring. I have not dealt with mosquitoes for a few years, and expect them in droves in the summer:

I was at a deck party awhile back, and the bugs were having a ball biting everyone. A man at the party sprayed the lawn and deck floor with Listerine, and the little demons disappeared. The next year I filled a 4-ounce spray bottle and used it around my seat whenever I saw mosquitoes. And voila! That worked as well.. It worked at a picnic where we sprayed the area around the food table, the children’s swing area, and the standing water nearby. During the summer, I don’t leave home without it

We will see.

I had a physical the other day and I was left wondering, why? Now don’t get me wrong, there is a piece of mind element and as you cross that magic 40 year old barrier, things start to break and you need to watch a bit more carefully. But after the whole event, I was left wondering if it really did anything.

I have heard the stories of someone who caught something early due to a test, urban myth or not. But one has to wonder, does it really help? When I told my little brother, he went on a tirade about it, complaining that the medical system is burdened by these tests which come out inconclusive, and then lead to a bunch more tests with costs piling up and statistics demonstrating that most of the pre-event testing is a waste of money.

HBR seems to agree. From the article Executive Physicals: Whats the ROI?:

Very few screening tests have been proven to identify diseases before they begin to cause noticeable problems. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that does tough-minded assessments of health care interventions, recommends that only a handful of them be performed regularly (if not annually). These include checking for unhealthful behaviors such as smoking, alcohol abuse, poor diet, and lack of exercise; monitoring stats such as weight and blood pressure; and testing for cholesterol. Once the doctor finds a problem, he or she may prescribe preventive treatments endorsed by the task force – for instance, low doses of aspirin for adults at increased risk of heart disease or estrogen receptor modulators for women at increased risk of breast cancer. The task force also suggests doing a modest number of imaging tests, such as ultrasounds for abdominal aortic aneurysms in high-risk men (65- to 75-year-olds who have ever smoked), mammograms and bone density tests for women over 65, and colonoscopies for people over 50. It does not call for other imaging tests that are often part of executive physical programs; full-body and coronary artery CT scans are especially not recommended. Indeed, many leading scientific and medical organizations caution against using these scans to screen for disease.

And to support the point of view about leading to additional tests:

Many times the scans are “falsely positive”: They detect suspicious-looking spots that turn out to be benign, raising needless worry and frequently prompting invasive tests. They also can be “falsely negative”: They may find nothing wrong when in fact a disease is present, creating a sense of security that leads the patient to ignore early warning signs. Even if a recent CT scan of an executive’s coronary arteries indicates a low risk of heart disease, she should tell her doctor about the squeezing sensation in her chest and the mild nausea she has started to feel after about 10 minutes on the treadmill. Not doing so could prove fatal.

I am not sure. I left glad to know that I have a ‘good’ physical fitness (but not great) for my age .. it took me 9 minutes and 36 seconds to get my heart rate to 90% of maximum (161). At my age, ‘excellent’ health is 10 minutes or over. Oh yah, and my cholesterol is a tad high …. Such a cliché for my age.

This weekend we were up north and came across this playground. It was all outdoor gym equipment. It looked really odd but was surprisingly functional. Turns out that Green Gym (a Canadian Company) is making headway around the world. With the levels of obesity in our society rising steadily … what a great idea. And how nice is it to do it outside? Neat company.

For the press exercises, you push your own weight (instead of weights).

According to Ralph Keeney, a century ago only 5% of deaths were related to personal choice. Now a full 55% of deaths of people aged 15 to 64 can be attributed to decisions made that have alternatives (like smoking, overeating, driving without a seatbelt, etc.) – the other 45% are mainly attributed to disease. No surprise, as 23.1% of Canadian adults are clinically obese (almost double the rate from 1978).

His last line is interesting:

Keeney notes that society already holds people accountable for some actions: Some workplaces disqualify smokers as job candidates; alcoholics are often denied liver transplants. We could deploy more of these penalties: costlier health insurance for the obese, or criminalizing texting while driving the way we do drunk driving. But in the end, punishment is inevitable anyway. "The ultimate penalty is death," Keeney says. "I don’t want to totally thwart survival of the fittest."

Full article here.

In business, keeping weight down is very difficult. Hectic schedule makes getting into a regular work out routine hard and the schedule of off the plane, on the plane, in the hotel, dinner with client, business lunch or breakfast means that it is easy to gain weight (some cream with that dinner Mr. Weening?). Clean your plate at a business dinner and you are guaranteed to lose the battle of the waistline (sorry Mom). A friend of mine has a business dinner rule .. he only eats the size of his fist and leaves the rest.

In the end, I choose to allow nature to select me … I really do want to see 100. Imagine what the world will look like in 2068? In the article ‘To change effectively, change just one thing’, Peter Bergman has a few insights on how he lost weight and interesting details on a diet study (and how they are all the same).

I agree with him, just find that one thing. I also wear a seatbelt, don’t drink often and don’t smoke. It all adds up to better odds.

I have been travelling a lot over the last month and one of the biggest challenges is food – doing client dinners and lunches and breakfasts can be threatening, thanks to crossing 40. It also does not help that I have a personal goal of stopping in a DQ in every province (Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario and Alberta complete).

Frank Bruni has some great advice:

1. Don’t fast beforehand: If you prep for a big meal by avoiding food all day, you’ll eat madly and mindlessly, your hunger and sense of sacrifice egging you on.
2. Pace your alcohol: If you start right in with two martinis, you’ll lose perspective and restraint. Enjoy a cocktail or two–but gradually, as the meal progresses.
3. Lose the breadbasket: Indulge for 10 minutes, max, and then have the basket removed. If it’s there, you’ll reach for it without thinking. If it’s not, you won’t miss it.
4. Take inventory: You don’t need to eat everything. If the food is great and you’re not full yet, have some more. But if the food’s disappointing, stop scarfing it down.
5. Share a dessert: It’s a kindness to your wallet as well as your waistline. You’ll still enjoy your sweet fix. And as sacrifices go, it’s not a huge one. (Don’t know about this one … let’s share a dessert mr.client …. how about don’t order or don’t finish it).

Via.

The debate on the impact of metabolism is an interesting one. You often hear comments like this:

"I’m super lucky with my metabolism. I have to be realistic – that might not always be the situation. That’s why I chose really intense training."

A recent article in Men’s Health (March 2009) states differently:

Overweight people, on average, have slower 3,000m steeple chase times than slim people. They also close the fridge door slower. Overweight people DO NOT, however, have slower metabolisms. To blow this myth out of the water, a recent study by the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute discovered that most groups of organisms favour the same optimum metabolic rate, while Germany’s Journal for Nutritional Science found overweight people actually have faster basal metabolic rates (presumably because of the extra effort shifting that excess weight around).

Personally, as I have crossed into 40land, I have noticed weight gain when my lifestyle becomes less active and my consumption of food outstrips my bodies ability to burn it off.

Time and time again, it all comes back to lifestyle and staying active. The only thing that will slow down is my choice to get off that couch!

On the train to London I went through the latest Men’s Health and here are a few points that caught my attention:

• On family: ‘What are you normally doing at 5:47pm? According to a recent study, just 10 years ago you would have been around the table with your family …. Office for National Statistics research shows the average working man now spends just 15 minutes a day caring for kids’   Something to always keep in mind.
• On no sugar drinks:  ‘Researchers from Purdue University in the US have found that low-cal alternatives are linked to a gain in fat. This is because their sweet sugary taste tricks the body into expecting a massive calorie hit … when this doesn’t happen, your body starts craving those empty calories making you more likely to fill up on junk. The researchers suggest that to beat the bulge, you should have a little of what you fancy and count calories rather than opting for ‘diet’ versions of popular products’      Personally, I cannot agree more. I would rather have a single can of real Coke over 4 diet Cokes any day.
• In the how the heck did they figure that out category:
• The perfect age to get married: 31 years, 9 months (University College London)
• The perfect age to write a blockbuster novel: 50.5 years (Based on analysis since 1955)
• Making the perfect gym drink: 750ml of water, 250ml of orange juice, 2 tsp of sugar and 1 large pinch of salt.
• In the make up your mind category:  To get the best workout, it use to be slow and steady (70% of your maximum heart rate). Now the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is saying that high intensity intervals burn as many as 30% more calories. Put the tread mill on high Scotty!

I am not sure why, but I have been getting sick a lot more in the UK than in Canada? I have come down with another mancold at the most inopportune of times. I have to speak at the Mobile Broadband Congress this afternoon and will doing my utmost not to break into a coughing fit.

The really frustrating thing is that I started to vitamin bomb the cold too late and missed the window of opportunity.

Irritating.

An email is floating around the web (as they do) espousing the power of honey and cinnamon. As I am now interested in these things due to my forced health consciousness due to arthritis, I read it. I then went on the web and found this site with a post on the topic. A few that caught my eye …..

TOOTHACHE: Make a paste of one teaspoon of cinnamon powder and five teaspoons of honey and apply on the aching tooth. This may be applied 3 times a day till the tooth stops aching. (Or your tooth rots and fall out).

ARTHRITIS: Arthritis patients may take daily, morning and night, one cup of hot water with two spoons of honey and one small teaspoon of cinnamon powder. If taken regularly even chronic arthritis can be cured.
In a recent research conducted at the Copenhagen University, it was found that when the doctors treated their patients with a mixture of one tablespoon Honey and half teaspoon Cinnamon powder before breakfast, they found that within a week out of the 200 people so treated practically 73 patients were totally relieved of pain and within a month, mostly all the patients who could not walk or move around because of arthritis started walking without pain. (I wonder if they forgot to mention that the people were also participating in a test of Ibuprofen in the next building over).

BAD BREATH: People of South America, first thing in the morning gargle with one teaspoon of honey and cinnamon powder mixed in hot water. So their breath stays fresh throughout the day.

There are many other benefits – slowing hair loss, curing an upset stomach and on and on. I do know that cinnamon in your coffee is good for you (and is a great flavor).

Who knows. As I was just knocked flat by a 24 hour flu, perhaps it is time to go drink a gallon of honey?

An interesting read here, found on Wil Wheaton’s site. A few that stand out to me:

2. Let go of your need to make all the choices all of the time. Other people have better ones sometimes.

10. Love what you love. Don’t trick yourself or others.

11. Cut out people that bum you out.

14. Ignore social constraints if more convenient or sensible than abiding by them.

15. Learn to play D&D.  If you’re already laughing this one off, learn it immediately. (This one really cracks me up, I know how to play D&D, I did it all through junior and senior high school)

16. Feel free to simply let parts of your past go.

17. Get rid of the stuff you’re hoarding. It’s an emotional drain. (Moving really helps)

21. Whoever makes you happy most of the time, that’s "the one."

From the comments section, an addition:

8. Don’t ever begrudge anyone their personal success, because their success may come in handy to you someday. (A good one that my wife and I have talked about. I would add ‘Be happy for their success’)

I also enjoyed his ‘I am a Macaholic’ blog. Read it here.