Archive for July, 2009

July 24th, 2009

Fat ‘R’Us or Health ‘e’ Run with Fresh Air Fund

by admin

Obesity in Children

Obesity means having too much body fat. It is different from being overweight, which means weighing too much. Both terms mean that a person’s weight is greater than what is considered healthy for his or her height. Children grow at different rates, so it isn’t always easy to know when a child is obese or overweight.

Why is childhood obesity considered a health problem?
Doctors and scientists are concerned about the rise of obesity in children and youth because obesity may lead to the following health problems:

Heart disease, caused by:

  • high cholesterol and/or
  • high blood pressure
  • Type 2 diabetes
  • Asthma
  • Sleep apnea
  • Social discrimination

Childhood obesity is associated with various health-related consequences. Obese children and adolescents may experience immediate health consequences and may be at risk for weight-related health problems in adulthood.

Psychosocial Risks
Some consequences of childhood and adolescent overweight are psychosocial. Obese children and adolescents are targets of early and systematic social discrimination.2 The psychological stress of social stigmatization can cause low self-esteem which, in turn, can hinder academic and social functioning, and persist into adulthood.3

Cardiovascular Disease Risks
Obese children and teens have been found to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), including high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and abnormal glucose tolerance. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, almost 60% of overweight children had at least one CVD risk factor while 25 percent of overweight children had two or more CVD risk factors.2

Additional Health Risks
Less common health conditions associated with increased weight include asthma, hepatic steatosis, sleep apnea and Type 2 diabetes.

Asthma is a disease of the lungs in which the airways become blocked or narrowed causing breathing difficulty. Studies have identified an association between childhood overweight and asthma.4, 5
Hepatic steatosis is the fatty degeneration of the liver caused by a high concentration of liver enzymes. Weight reduction causes liver enzymes to normalize.2
Sleep apnea is a less common complication of overweight for children and adolescents. Sleep apnea is a sleep-associated breathing disorder defined as the cessation of breathing during sleep that lasts for at least 10 seconds. Sleep apnea is characterized by loud snoring and labored breathing. During sleep apnea, oxygen levels in the blood can fall dramatically. One study estimated that sleep apnea occurs in about 7% of overweight children.6
Type 2 diabetes is increasingly being reported among children and adolescents who are overweight.7 While diabetes and glucose intolerance, a precursor of diabetes, are common health effects of adult obesity, only in recent years has Type 2 diabetes begun to emerge as a health-related problem among children and adolescents. Onset of diabetes in children and adolescents can result in advanced complications such as CVD and kidney failure.8

References

1 Ogden CL, Carroll MD, Curtin LR, McDowell MA, Tabak CJ, Flegal KM. Prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States, 1999-2004. JAMA 2006;295(13):1549–1555.

2 Dietz W. Health consequences of obesity in youth: Childhood predictors of adult disease.Pediatrics 1998;101:518–525.

3 Swartz MB and Puhl R. Childhood obesity: a societal problem to solve. Obesity Reviews 2003; 4(1):57–71.

4 Rodriguez MA, Winkleby MA, Ahn D, Sundquist J, Kraemer HC. Identification of populations subgroups of children and adolescents with high asthma prevalence: findings from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2002;156:269–275.

5 Luder E, Melnik TA, Dimaio M. Association of being overweight with greater asthma symptoms in inner city black and Hispanic children. J Pediatr 1998;132:699–703.

6 Mallory GB, Fiser DH, Jackson R. Sleep-associated breathing disorders in morbidly obese children and adolescents. J Pediatr 1989;115:892–897.

7 Fagot-Campagna A, Narayan KMV, Imperatore G. Type 2 diabetes in children: exemplifies the growing problem of chronic diseases [Editorial]. BMJ 2001;322:377–378.

8 Must A, Anderson SE. Effects of obesity on morbidity in children and adolescents. Nutr Clin Care2003;6:1;4–11.

Well these are the facts on Childhood obesity,but how do we treat them,Management by Prevention is one of the best cure for childhood obesity and subsequent development of Adult obesity.

How much physical activity do adults need?

To answer this question visit this website.

But if you are keen to do it for real,then pull out your running shoes and run for a cause-New York City Half-Marathon on August 16th 2009 while also helping Fresh Air Fund children?

visit their website for more information-

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CategoryMain | Comment8 Comments »

July 23rd, 2009

Pagers+Health 2.0=@Twitter

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Twitter phenomenon is allover media and Blogosphere,So Healthcare should not be left behind!

This is my view on Twitter and its impact on Healthcare as of July 2009.We will have to wait and see how things shape up by the end of 2009.

1.Twitter may be taken over by a giant company-Google or Microsoft.

2.Twitter may be a featured on cover of  TIme Magazine.

3.Twitter could have an impact on Health care industry.

According to Wikipedia sources

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other users – known as followers – who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Going back in time-in the good old day pagers dominated the world-as short messanger devices.Commonly known as Bleepers of Beeper,it was The tool of physicians in Hospitals,even now in many hospitals.

It helped to communicate with other health professionals in hospital setting and outside regarding status of a patient.Fast forward to present time-Cellphones and smartphones are the new tools for communication in hospital settings,although some hospitals still ban them considering that they interlace with hosptial based telemeteric systems.

Smartphones have revolutionzed our communications,in health care industry-personal digital assistants were once a standard tool for many physicians along with Stethoscopes and today Smart phones are gradually replacing them as necessary tools.

But,using these devices as standalone,will not benefit much for the care of patients,except for the physician,in that information retrival could be faster.Using an easy to use interface which benefits not only physicians and other health care professionals but also in long term helps patients should be the goal.

To achieve this goal an easy to use interface should be identified.Twitter is one such phenomenon.

its use in mainstream world is well documented,as seen in every day media reports and also in n number of blog posts.The twitter logo is ubiquitious now in almost,if not all over the blogosphere.

Dr.Micheal Lara in his post on How Physicians (Should) Use Twitter,presents his balanced view on the subject of Twitter use among physicians.He believes that Twitter,should be used only for educational and non essential communication in hospitals and not for any critical communication about any patient.

But,Philbaumann has listed over 140 different applications of twitter in healthcare industry. His thoughts are that  health care should be a leader in micro-sharing, not a lagger.

Although in between there are many other views on efficacy and benefits of Twitter,

Chris at Sofware Advice provides an excellent ficitional account of how twitter could help in medicine

@YourDoctor

Imagine this. Doctors around the world are conducting their rounds and examining patients on electronic medical records, which document diagnosis codes. As the physician makes a diagnosis or documents symptoms, he has the option to “tweet” that observation. This allows other doctors to follow that feed and observe trends. Even better, epidemiology-specific analytics can be layered on top of the feeds to recognize patterns as they develop.

Here is a fictionalized example of how analysis of a disease outbreak might unfold if doctors adopted Twitter as a method of communication:

Good Luck with twittering…..

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CategoryConstructive Medicine, Main | Comment2 Comments »

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July 2nd, 2009

Disease 2.0

by admin

The growth of Internet in the past decade has resulted in several new  technologies in information technology highway.In the recent years,web 2.0 has dominated the Internet,which is utilization  of collaborative tools like blog,forums,tweeter and also wikipedia,unlike in the past wherein only a static page with multiple weblinks served the source of information.

This has also an direct impact on Health information outflow,wherein now physicians and also patients can get information about disease and treatment much earlier then in past without Internet technology.

However,it is interesting to note that the disease patterns have also changed-the growth of population,air travel and cross border movement has resulted in several new strains of virus,the recent example is H1N1 swine flu,which has an impact on young and healthy adults.

The World Health Organization has confirmed 77,201 cases of H1N1 as of July 1, with 332 deaths.

Although treatment of this condition is still under research,it is interesting to note that prevention is the only best method of management.Simple techniques like avoiding travel to areas under suspicion of infection,washing hands regularly,taking care while coughing and immediate medical attention in case of respiratory distress could help in some ways.

But, for long term management of this disease and also for any other future outbreaks,other strategies need to be assessed.Using web 2.0 techniques of collaboration,Google Maps mash up technology could be some of the steps taken to prevent the spread of this outbreak.

Rhiza’s web-based mapping product,Insight, is helping Dr. Niman- a biomedical researchre get official and unofficial data into the tracking system faster while giving researchers and the public many options for viewing the data in a useful and understandable way.

Although these technologies are still in the early phase of development,it is quite interesting to note that the virus also mutate to form their own 2.0 version.This requires aggressive surveillance to prevent future outbreaks.

Popularity: 21% [?]

CategoryDisease 2.0 | CommentNo Comments »

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