Category Archives: Prevention - Page 3

Sugar and spice, and salt is not very nice Part II

Posted by on February 21, 2013 Comments Off on Sugar and spice, and salt is not very nice Part II

Last time we looked at the danger of dietary sodium, likely to shorten the lives of a million Americans. If knowledge is power, then here is some power for you:

Let’s start simple, with the major sources of dietary sodium from the CDC.
CDC Sources of Sodium

Unless we make our own bread (a fun thing to do with a bread maker, not as much fun by hand), we have little control over the amount of salt in bread. We can look for low-sodium alternatives or we can wait for government action. By the way, the government has been regulating bread for a long time, in Europe before the founding of this country and since the 17th century by colonies/states such as Massachusetts. Since 1941 the US government has been mandating nutritional additives to bread, including folic acid, iron, and other nutrients. Regulating sodium content is not even a stretch.

Take a look at this graphic from the CDC–sodium can be reduced by half in nearly identical sandwiches with a bit of care in choosing ingredients:

Low Sodium Sandwich

Reducing sodium in our diets is one of those simple things we can do to improve our health. Doing the easy thing is sometimes better than the difficult. 2 Kings 5:13

Here is some further reading on dietary sodium:

UCSF Low Sodium Guidelines
CDC Sodium Tip Sheet
Medline Plus: Dietary Sodium

Sugar and spice, and salt is not very nice Part I

Posted by on February 19, 2013 Comments Off on Sugar and spice, and salt is not very nice Part I

“No matter how we look at it, the story is the same – there will be huge benefits in reducing sodium,” said Pam Coxson, PhD, a UCSF mathematician and the lead author on the paper who performed one of the three analyses published in Hypertension.

The quotation is an understatement–the studies claim that hundreds of thousands of lives can be saved by less salt. What are the facts?

Let’s start with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet. Too much sodium increases a person’s risk for high blood pressure. High blood pressure often leads to heart disease and stroke. More than 800,000 people die each year from heart disease, stroke and other vascular diseases, costing the nation $273 billion health care dollars in 2010.

The key point is the relationship of sodium to hypertension and cardiovascular events:

About 45 percent of these cardiovascular deaths are attributable to high blood pressure, and numerous medical studies have already demonstrated how reducing dietary salt – the primary source of sodium – can lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of a heart attack or stroke.

The study’s three analyses came up with varying numbers of saved lives, ranging from 250,000 to 1,200,000 over the next decade by reduced sodium intake–they averaged 280,000 to 500,000. We have long known that certain populations are more salt-sensitive and should radically reduce intake. The CDC list below tells that story, but we all should reduce sodium, not merely by not picking up the salt shaker, but by eating more fresh foods and looking at the labels on the processed foods we eat. Salt-sensitive populations

We can all benefit by a reduction in sodium, long before we become part of a vulnerable population. Next time, let’s look at some strategies we can use while waiting for food companies to offer lower sodium alternatives and government action in this domain.

Helpful links for more information about dietary sodium

The Safety of Our Children: Vaccinations

Posted by on January 28, 2013 Comments Off on The Safety of Our Children: Vaccinations

If there is one aspect of health we care most about, it is that of our children.

We are afraid to do the wrong thing, which might be doing something and might be doing nothing.

Vaccinations are the first major encounter our children have with the health care system.

By major I mean:

Under the recommended plan from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children today are vaccinated against 14 infectious diseases, receiving up to 24 vaccines by their second birthday, and up to five in one office visit.

There has been controversy about the frequency of vaccinations, about the content of vaccines, and about the necessity of the vaccines at all in the absence of the diseases they protect against.

The last reported case of diphtheria in the US occurred in 2003.

The last reported case of polio in the US occurred in 1986.

I do not claim to know the incidence and severity of side effects and reaction to these and other vaccines.

Here is what I know:

  1. When a disease like smallpox was eradicated, the routine vaccination was halted.
  2. The diseases that we are vaccinated against have not been eradicated. We live in a small world: we travel to other countries, and others travel here. HIV/AIDS was brought here on a plane. We do not want to be like the Native Americans, wiped out by diseases from Europe because we were not vaccinated.
  3. The risk and incidence of reactions are minimal compared to the severity of an infectious outbreak.
  4. Science brought us the life-saving vaccines, not hunch or intuition.
  5. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has issued a report on childhood immunizations and found:
    1. the childhood immunization schedule is considered one of the most effective and safest public health interventions available to prevent serious disease and death. Furthermore, the committee’s review of the literature did not find high quality evidence supporting safety concerns about the immunization schedule.
    2. The committee’s efforts to identify priorities for recommended research studies did not reveal an evidence base suggesting that the childhood immunization schedule is linked to autoimmune diseases, asthma, hypersensitivity, seizures, child developmental disorders, learning disorders or developmental disorders, or attention deficit or disruptive behavior disorders.
    3. The committee found no significant evidence to imply that the recommended immunization schedule is not safe.

The bottom line: in all of our health care decisions we are playing the odds–life never affords us certainty. The odds favor vaccination according to schedule. Listen to your pediatrician–vaccinate your children.