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Monthly Archives: August 2013

Uncovering the mystery of children’s immunizations

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Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Keeping Kids Healthy

With the start of school fast approaching, there’s frequently a feeling of a need to get organized.

Living in a family is complicated with schedules and many conflicting needs. Children come with their own entire subset of things to keep up with — their school work, their activities, their chores. And then, there’s that one thing about your children that you have to keep up with that’s sort of mystical: Their immunizations.

You know you have to keep up with their shots, and you know it’s ultimately good for them, their health and safety, and that of the rest of your family. Thankfully, we’re moving away from a long era of immunization misinformation based on faulty and fabricated research. That makes the fearful part much easier for parents, but keeping them in order can be a little confusing and overwhelming at times.

Does MMR come before the hepatitis B? Or does the rotavirus vaccine come before the influenza shot? And, what the heck is MMR, anyway? Here are some answers and resources we think will help. Continue reading →

Taking an antacid trip

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Dr. Victor Sierpina

Dr. Victor Sierpina

If I were to talk to the average person about a proton pump, images of Buck Rogers or Star Trek might come to mind. It is some kind of ray gun or starship drive?

The fact is that each of us has a proton pump in our stomach. It is a cellular mechanism that creates the very high acidity needed for digestion and absorption.

To show how powerful this pump is, the acid-base balance of the bloodstream and other tissues is about 7.4, while that in the stomach is a pH of around 2, many thousands of times more acidic.

The other cells in the body would die at that level of acid, yet the proton pump and stomach lining keeps it all up to facilitate our good health and digestion.

Proton pump inhibitor drugs (PPIs), such as omeprazole (Prilosec), pantoprazole (Nexium), lansoprazole (Prevacid) and others, are widely used antacids that shut down this important physiological process. Continue reading →

Shadowy side of patent medicines

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Drs. Norbert Herzog & David Niesel

Drs. Norbert Herzog & David Niesel

Medical Discovery News

It’s hard to believe that people used to drink snake oil as a “universal remedy,” or rely on a patent medicine called Mugwumps to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Yet, from colonial times to the 1900s, people would unquestionably turn to such “cures.” Patent medicines were sold directly to a patient from the manufacturer without a prescription through mail order, in shops and in traveling medicine shows. They were trademarked (which is not the same as today’s patenting) by the seller, yet untested and unregulated, and as such, rarely worked as advertised. Eventually, people even used the term “snake oil salesman” as a synonym for a fraudster.

Among the early patent medicines to arrive in America were Daffy’s Elixir Salutis for “colic and griping,” Dr. Bateman’s Pectoral Drops and John Hooper’s Female Pills. These and many other remedies were available for just about any ailment and often made outlandish claims for their effectiveness. Continue reading →

Properly store pumped breast milk to protect infants

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Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Keeping Kids Healthy

Breast-feeding offers infants the healthiest nutritional start. Sometimes in today’s busy life, mothers have to spend time away from their infants, so pumping and storing breast milk becomes necessary.

Mothers pumping — or expressing — milk for an infant have a number of choices for storing and preserving it.

The guidelines that follow are based upon information supplied by Anne Merewood, director of lactation services at the Breastfeeding Center of Boston Medical Center, and were published in Contemporary Pediatrics.

The guidelines concern only healthy babies. If your infant has special problems, consult your pediatrician. Continue reading →

The golden triangle

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Dr. Victor Sierpina

Dr. Victor Sierpina

No, I am not talking geometry here. When I refer to the golden triangle, it relates to the three essential components of well-being. These are: nutrition, activity and mind/body/spirit balance.

The media is recently filled with discussions of Obamacare and other big government programs to remedy health care problems in our country. Such problems are many, a fact I do not deny.

However, the libertarian streak in me is deeply suspicious of centralized, governmental involvement in something as personal as our health care.

The frequent tales of abuse, fraud, waste, perverse incentives and unintended consequences in such programs and government agencies are legion.

In fact, such proposed programs aren’t truly health care but are sickness care. They primarily are financial rather than health- or wellness-directed. Continue reading →

Unintentional injuries top death list for children

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Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Keeping Kids Healthy

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children.

About 90 percent of all unintentional injuries in children can be avoided.

The five leading causes of injury death in children 15 and younger are motor vehicle injuries, fires and burns, drowning, firearms, poisoning and suffocation.

Practice the following safety tips to protect your child against accidents: Continue reading →

Medical Discovery News: See the chemistry of opera

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Drs. Norbert Herzog & David Niesel

Drs. Norbert Herzog & David Niesel

Medical Discovery News

The chemistry of an opera can fill an entire theater with its own type of sizzling electricity — the illicit desires of Richard Wagner’s star-crossed lovers “Tristan and Isolde,” the passionate seductions of Georges Bizet’s fiery “Carmen,” and the unrequited yearnings of Giacomo Puccini’s doomed “Madame Butterfly.” However, those feelings aren’t the only type of chemistry at play.

The storylines of many operas involve poisons, love potions and even pharmacists. For Joao Paulo André, who saw his first opera during his third year of college and now works in the chemistry department of the University of Minho in Portugal, the science within such scenes was obvious. In a recent article for the “Journal of Chemical Education,” André divided operas into four categories: apothecary operas, operas of poisonous natural products, operas of the great poisoners of history and arsenic operas.

The apothecary operas are those that involve the work of chemists or pharmacists. In 1768, Joseph Haydn composed a comic opera entitled “Der Apotheker.” The story involves a pharmacy apprentice named Mengino who is in love with an apothecary’s ward, Grilletta. In one aria, he sings about the virtues of rhubarb and manna, plant-based treatments for constipation and diarrhea — not subjects most audiences would expect to be sung about! Continue reading →

Proactive education can help reduce teen pregnancies

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Drs. Tristi Muir and Catherine Hansen

Drs. Tristi Muir and Catherine Hansen

Our Bodies, Our Lives 

Our Bodies, Our Lives focuses on issues surrounding women’s sexual, gynecological and emotional health.

Unintended teenage pregnancy is still a significant problem in the United States. When an unwed teen becomes pregnant, her future options can become very limited. If she has not yet completed school, gained employment skills or even had much opportunity to experience adult life, she is likely to face some challenges.

In 2010, approximately 368,000 U.S. teenagers 15-19 gave birth. Sixty percent of sexually experienced teens reported using a highly effective birth control like an IUD or hormonal method.

Given that so many teenage girls with unintended pregnancies were not using contraception when they became pregnant, it seems that proactive sexual health education might be a good way to reduce this burden. Even if abstinence is the program of choice, we feel that we are obliged to protect the younger generation by equipping them with information and education about their sexual health. Continue reading →

Medical Discovery News: The rise of cavities

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Drs. Norbert Herzog & David Niesel

Drs. Norbert Herzog & David Niesel

By age 65, 92 percent of Americans have cavities in their permanent teeth, and an average of 3.28 teeth missing or decayed. The answer to why this is may not concern toothpaste ingredients or brushing time, but the lifestyles of ancient humans, as two new studies have discovered.

Humans used to live as hunter-gatherers, meaning they hunted for game and foraged for plants to eat. They were mainly nomadic, following herds to keep their food source. That changed about 10,000 years ago when agriculture was invented. They began to settle down in one place, raising livestock and growing crops for food. The human diet changed, as it now included more starch from the grains they harvested.

The breakdown of starch begins with enzymes in the mouth that split the starch into shorter chains of sugars. The process continues in the stomach and the small intestine until the sugar chains are broken down into individual sugar molecules. This leaves a residue of sugar in a film on and between teeth, creating an ideal environment for the growth of bacteria. Two recent studies have documented how this change in diet caused bacteria associated with cavities and periodontal disease to emerge and eventually become widespread. Continue reading →

Two common summer parasitic infections

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Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Drs. Sally Robinson & Keith Bly

Keeping Kids Healthy 

Two of the most common types of parasitic infections that occur during the summer months include giardiasis and pinworms.

Giardia lamblia is a common microscopic parasite that attaches itself to the lining of the small intestines. It interferes with the body’s ability to absorb fats and carbohydrates from digested food.

Kiddie pools are often a source of giardia, which is normally associated with food-borne outbreaks or fresh water, such as springs or creeks.

Even kiddie pools that are treated and maintained with chemicals may be a source of this parasite because chorine degrades in sunlight and the shallowness of the water in this type of pools can add to that degradation. Continue reading →