Back Surgery: More Damage Than Benefit....According to DOCTORS

When even the medical experts say that it's OK to say "no" to surgery, I'll listen. So should you. Another New York Times piece, this from the Economix blog titled "Saying No to Back Surgery," confirms what I've felt intuitively for a long time: if your surgeon recommends a complication back surgery, politely decline. It comes from a study by a doctor at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. He finds:

"More complex procedures were associated with greater complications, mortality, hospital charges, and other measures of health care use, even after adjustment for patient demographic and clinical characteristics. Age was less predictive than comorbidity or type of surgical procedure…"

What that basically says is this: if your surgeon is recommending a complex surgery on your back --, back away, because you're more likely to have more problems afterward than you had before surgery....more complications, higher possibility of death, higher bills from your hospital and more of everything else that the health-care system can throw at your (rehab, drugs, etc..)...most of it expensive).

It's no surprise that back surgeries also cost more than they ever did, and that's what might be the carrot for doctors: the chance to make more money. Don't give them the opportunity, especially if you love your back. (You wouldn't believe some of the emails I get from people who have terrible, awful, horrible stories of backs and lives that have been damaged by back surgeries gone wrong. I would love to help them, but in many cases, the tissue is so compromised that my stretches are a shot in a dark).

What to do instead
If your back hurts, quit leaning on one leg more than another. Stand on both legs. And if it still hurts, get down on the floor and do a few Rossiter System techniques on it. And get out and WALK!!!!

Had a bug lately?

It makes me feel good to see the government hasn't forgotten us when it tells us that it will now let us know when it leaves bugs in our food.

According to the New York Times:

"The Food and Drug Administration has finalized a rule that will require food companies to list cochineal extract and carmine on the label when they are used in food and cosmetics. But the new rule contains one glaring omission. It doesn’t require companies to tell you that the ingredients come from a bug."

So all those great drinks, fruit punch's, reddish cola stuff, Sweet drinks, all with nummy bugs for coloring, only though. Nice pinks oranges, purples, yummmm. Oh and for you women of the make-up All those colors? Yes you guessed it, bug extracts. Bug juice to put on your face to go with the cow tendons. Oh, you know the ones, elastin and plastin, the good cow extract. These were hidden in the terms artificial coloring and color added. Thank you NYT. You rock. Maybe in the future government nitwits will chew enough of them to get wise.

To think some of my favorite drinks, yogurts, ice creams, all made with, well, bugs. Thank god they are government approved. For the full impact go to> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/bugs-in-your-food/

Had a bug lately?

When technology fails and can't find itself

There are times when wanting to be at the edge of technology is time wasted. Sometimes trying to be technology's edge is a pain when your techie people can't find their butt with both hands. Then they don't show up for work. I'm getting tired of baby sitting. Right now I can't even get into my own site.

rhr

Drugs to Strengthen Bones...may cause BROKEN LEGS

I'll admit it: I don't even like to take aspirin, that's how skeptical I am of drug claims. But I'm MOST skeptical of drugs that promise to reverse ANYTHING, especially bone loss. And now new studies have found that some of the drugs pushed on women (especially older women) to "rebuild bones" and to repair bone loss from menopause or osteoporosis...might actually cause leg bones to break on their own. In fact, some of the women who've broken their leg bones say it felt as if the bone broke and THEN they fell to the ground, not the other way around (which is how it's supposed to happen if you don't try to fool Mother Nature).

Want stronger bones? Then EXERICSE, for cryin' out loud.

Get out and walk every day, or swim, or take a short jog. Walk for 20-30 minutes, and don't just MOSEY....WALK like you're trying to get the first ride at Disney World on opening day. Walk like you mean it. Walk as if someone's chasing you and you want to get out of the way. Work up a sweat, and feel GOOD at the end. That's how you build strong bones....not by taking drugs.

Creaky Joints? You Haven't Heard Anything Until You've Heard...Squeaky Joints

From the "it was bound to happen department," perhaps? A story in the New York Times recounts the experiences of hip replacement patients who are discovering -- up to 7% of them, in some cases -- that their several-year-old ceramic hips (artificial joints) are starting to SQUEAK

Reports Barnaby Feder of the Times: "Any artificial hip can occasionally make a variety of noises. But until Stryker, a medical products company, began marketing highly durable ceramic hips in the United States in 2003, squeaking was extremely rare.

Now, tens of thousands of ceramic hips later — from Stryker and other makers that entered the field — many patients say their squeaking hips are interfering with daily life. One study in the Journal of Arthroplasty found that 10 patients of 143 who received ceramic hips from 2003 to 2005, or 7 percent, developed squeaking. Meanwhile, no squeaks occurred among a control group of 48 patients who received hips made of metal and plastic. “It can interrupt sex when my wife starts laughing,” said one man, who discussed the matter on the condition that he not be named."

Patients say their hips squeak when doing normal activities...bending over, walking, getting up from a chair. One even posted a YouTube video demonstrating the squeakiness.



Makes you wonder...if those artificial hips are squeaking, what else are they doing internally? Deteriorating? Wasting away? Rubbing themselves into joint nothingness?

Another reason to avoid surgery as long as possible and try Rossiter System stretches instead.

Before you reach for that Diet Soda....read this!

My wife can't/won't drink diet sodas - or anything containing the artificial sweetener aspartame - because she says it leaves a strange metallic aftertaste in her mouth. Just as I tell people who are in pain to listen to their bodies and to think of pain as information, I'm convinced HER body is telling her to stay away from the chemical sweetener as well.

So I was even more intrigued when I found this newsletter article from Dr. Mercola's web site (he's an alternative medicine speiclaist). One woman, concerned about her family's intake of diet soda, fed 108 rats small bits of aspartame over two years. And more than one-third of them developed tumors. Some of them were honking BIG tumors. How much did she feed them: the equivalent of 2/3 of the aspartame found in a normal 8-ounce can of diet soda.

Don't trust what i tel you. Start searching the Internet for information about aspartame -- also sold as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Equal-Measure and Canderel. Here's a link to Dr. Mercola's web site about aspartame. Or check out information from the Center for Science in the Public Interest about the Ramazzini study, which found that aspartame in rats is a "multipotent carcinogenic agent." Meaning it's a potent cancer-causing food.

So think before you drink that next can of diet soda...and just say no. Or choose plain old natural sugar instead!

Prescription Drugs...in the drinking water?

Next time you take a big gulp of watery goodness from the tap, consider this: you might be drinking minute concentrations of prescription drugs that treat everything from heart disease to epilepsy, hormonal problems to depression.

The Associated Press says studies indicate that drinking water supplies are contaminated with tiny concentrations of common prescription medicines, and the studies have been done on treated drinking water and watersheds (water sources) from coast to coast.

Federal officials, of course, say the amounts are too small to be of any consequence. But how much is too much? How do they know? And what about water that hasn't been tested?

How do they get into the water? Well, humans take them, and whatever goes in has to go out, and some of the drugs are "released" into the water supply as urine that's flushed down toilets; water treatment systems can't remove everything that's in the water.

Scary....maybe those water filters are more important than we think.