Health TO YOUR
Midvalley Newspapers
April 2012
A guide to wellness and healthy living in the Mid-Willamette Valley
STAT QUICK READS ABOUT HEALTH TOPICS IN THE NEWS
Web weight A company called Fitbit has unveiled the Aria Smart Scale — a Wi-Fi-enabled device that lets users weigh themselves and automatically publish the results online. The raison d’etre of the WiFi scale is not to announce your weight to the world but, rather, to send the data to Fitbit’s website, where it will be incorporated into charts and graphs to help you track your weight-loss goals. And although you are welcome to make this information public, the default setting is to keep it private. The Aria Smart Scale can be pre-ordered online for $129.95. — Los Angeles Times
Insomnia costs According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 75 million Americans — more than onequarter of the population — say they don’t get enough sleep. Almost 30 million say they suffer from chronic insomnia. This restlessness, the CDC warns, can lead to a number of chronic illnesses and conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and depression. It can also take an economic toll. Lack of slumber results in an average of 11.3 days, or $2,280, in lost productivity per worker each year, and the total cost to the nation is more than $63 billion annually, according to a recent study by Harvard Medical School. — Los Angeles Times
Several members of the Young Adult Cancer Survivors support group participated in Walk for the Cause in Albany last October. From left: Julie Ahrendt, Christine Smith, Brenda Bianchi, Julie Pett Ridge and Christina Jacob with baby Sarah. PROVIDED PHOTO
Strength in numbers Young cancer patients, survivors find solace in support groups By JENNIFER ROUSE hristine Smith, 35, is a school social worker. She’s a doglover. She’s a daughter, a friend, a neighbor. What she’s not is someone who sits around and feels sorry for herself. That’s why, even when in the midst of dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis at the age of 33, she was not interested in going to a support group. She remembers getting a flier in the mail for a “Young Adult Cancer Support Group” and thinking, “Oh, I so don’t want to deal with that.” Brenda Bianchi, 40, an Albany sign language interpreter and fellow breast cancer survivor, felt the same way. “I’m not really a big counseling, supportgroup type person,” she said. “I’m not into telling my problems to a bunch of strangers.” And yet, for one reason or another (Brenda went “to appease my mother,” she recalls), back in 2010 both women found themselves sitting in the same room at the first meeting of a newly formed young adult support group. What they found there that day surprised both of them. “This place was really relaxed,” Bianchi said. “We could laugh about things. And when you realize everyone else in the room is going through the same things you are, it is a relief.” Both women have been regular attendees ever since.
SUPPORT GROUP INFO
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Making connections Jan Spencer, director of the Samaritan Cancer Resource Center in North Albany, said that’s exactly the kind of connection that helps cancer patients through their diagnosis, treatment and recovery. Young adults in particular can feel lost when they find themselves living with a disease that perhaps their grandmothers, uncles, or parents may have faced at some point — but
What: Young Adult Cancer Survivors; a support group open to adults ages 18-40 at any stage of cancer diagnosis, treatment or recovery. When: 7 to 8:30 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month. Where: Samaritan Cancer Resource Center, 400 Hickory St. N.W., Albany. To learn more: 541-812-5880.
DAVID PATTON | DEMOCRAT-HERALD
Cancer survivor Christine Smith of Albany is a member of the Young Adult Cancer Survivors, a support group for people ages 18-40. none of their peers. “Most clinical trials are geared more to older adults or to pediatrics,” Spencer said. “In fact, cancers in young patients are often caught later, because physicians don’t expect it. They simply don’t think it could be cancer at that age.” According to Spencer, cancer is actually the leading disease killer for adults between the ages of 20-39, and 70,000 young adults are diagnosed with cancer in the United States every year. Last week, April 3-9, was National Young Adult Cancer Awareness week. Young adults face unique challenges with cancer when compared to people at other stages of life, Spencer said. Cancers in younger adults are often more aggressive, and doctors tend to treat them with more
aggressive methods. At the same time, they’re juggling multiple responsibilities. They’re at the age where they are completing school, establishing careers and starting families. “Just staying home to take care of myself was not an option,” Smith said. She worked through her radiation treatment, and scheduled her chemotherapy for the summer, when her education job allowed her to take time off. “I still had to pay my mortgage. I still needed to keep my health insurance.”
Alienation risk Many young adults say they feel alienated when they get diagnosed with cancer. Most often, they’ve never known anyone their age with the disease. Smith said that she’s known older adults who found themselves with a diagnosis similar to hers, and they didn’t seem to feel as alone as she did. “They had more people already naturally in their lives who had experienced this,” she said. “They had this natural support group.” For all those reasons, Spencer said, starting a support group for young adults was something she had wanted to do for many years, but she wasn’t sure there were the numbers to support the group in the midvalley. Then, in 2010, a cancer survivor approached her about creating such a group, and the Young Adult Cancer Survivors was born. SEE STRENGTH | A6
ER guidelines Americans made more than 119 million visits to emergency rooms in 2006, according to the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Among the most common causes are trauma, abdominal pain, chest pain, fever and acute upper respiratory infection. To help you keep out of the ER, experts say you should be getting ongoing care from a primary physician who may be able to catch small problems before they escalate. At the same time, they say, don’t hesitate to go if you are experiencing bleeding you can’t stop, gaping wounds, breathing troubles, chest pain, extreme pain, vomiting that will not stop, extremely high fever or suicidal thoughts. — Dallas Morning News
It’s hip Well before the tidal wave of the baby boom generation began hitting retirement age, the number of hip and knee replacement procedures more than doubled between 1996 and 2007, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Today, Americans undergo more than 1 million of these knee and hip procedures each year, and a growing number are performed on people in their 50s and 60s. For example, almost 5 percent of people aged 50 and older have had knee replacement surgery, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons says — and so have 10 percent of people 80 and older.
— McClatchy Newspapers
Cost of tests Doctors who have access to computer test results order more tests than doctors who don’t, according to a new study that challenges an assumption about electronic health records. The study in the March issue of the journal Health Affairs found that doctors with access to computerized images ordered 40 to 70 percent more imaging and lab tests. The study authors warn that pushing for more health information technology might not deliver cost savings from reductions in duplicative or inappropriate tests and could drive up costs. — The Baltimore Sun
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To Your Health
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Strength Continued from A5 It’s open to any young adult at any stage of cancer diagnosis, treatment or recovery — when people use the term “survivor,” they don’t just mean people who are done with treatment, but people who are surviving and living their life despite the disease. “These people are still working, they’re dating, they’re in school,” Spencer said. “They’re still living their lives.” They meet once a month, and they talk about what’s going on in their lives; conversation ranges from topics both cancer related and noncancer related. They get together for bowling, movies and other events. They encourage each other to pursue their nor-
mal activities. “We talk about our fears, our concerns, our joys. We might tell each other when we’re going in for our annual mammogram and they know what that’s like,” Bianchi said. “Because your family and your friends are there for you, but they don’t have that same perspective.” Smith said that going to the group, especially during the stages where she was bald from her treatment, was a relief. It’s a place where you don’t have to constantly deal with other people’s shock and worry, she said. “When we get there, it’s not, ‘oh, you poor thing, you have cancer.’” she said. “When we get there, we’re all normal.”
Exercise with a dog has great benefits — but be careful BY LESLIE BARKER GARCIA THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
ANDY CRIPE | CORVALLIS GAZETTE-TIMES
Lauren Tobey shows off the Potato Nachos recipe on the meal-planning website created by OSU Extension.
Healthy meals made easy OSU’s extension revamps Food Hero site By GAIL COLE
Oregon State University’s Extension Service has reached out to Oregon families with its revamped Food Hero initiative, aiming to show how healthy, inexpensive meals can be a breeze to prepare. Using data from a 2009 phone survey of users of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as the Food Stamp program — and from a U.S. Health and Human Services Department study on online media literacy, Extension developed the easy-to-use website www.foodhero.org, filled with recipes and cooking, shopping and menu-planning tips, plus accompanying Facebook and Twitter pages. Nearly all content is also available in Spanish. Food Hero targets Oregonians eligible for the SNAP program, and fills a need for education on inexpensive, healthy food: Oregon has one of the
highest childhood food insecurity makes seemingly unhealthy dishes rates in the nation. actually nutritious. For example, So far, the website lists over 200 cheesy beef pasta calls for lean recipes developed by Extension ground beef and zucchini, and apple agents over the years and tested by bars calls for whole wheat flour and OSU campus nutritionists. fragrant cinnamon, nutmeg and “There are recipes we’ve been using cloves along with apples. again and again in programming,” said Tobey said Extension plans to conLauren Tobey, an tinue adding OSU nutrition information the specialist. “We tips section, hopfinally put them ing to eventually Check out the OSU Extension Food all in one place.” link specific tips While ranging Hero program online at this website: to ingredients and from sweet to www.foodhero.org directions on savory, nearly all recipes — for the breakfasts, lunches, dinners and example, a link to instructions on how snacks have one thing in common: to cook chicken can be found on a they incorporate either fresh, frozen chicken casserole recipe. The easyor canned fruits and vegetables. to-find information may be a huge Tobey said using all forms of produce help to inexperienced cooks. helps people reach daily nutritional “We really want to help them out, recommendations. so they know you can really cook food Using fruits, vegetables and low-fat at home and it can be easy to do,” ingredients in the Food Hero recipes Tobey said.
ONLINE
SLEEP APNEA: Common, bad for you, and easy to fix By JEN MATTEIS
Obstructive sleep apnea affects as many as 15 percent of men and 10 percent of women, and the side effects can be serious. During an episode of sleep apnea, your upper airway relaxes too much in the wrong place, so that you stop breathing. The brain then wakes up a little to tell you to take a breath. “There’s this very low-grade wakeup, just enough to take a few breaths,” explained Dr. Mari Goldner of The Corvallis Clinic Sleep Medicine Department and Samaritan Sleep Disorders Center. “The whole thing cycles over and over and over — 10 to 15, 20, sometimes way more than 20 times per hour. That ends up being a whole lot of really unhealthy interruptions to a person’s sleep. That takes a toll.” Most men with sleep apnea snore, and their partners are usually pretty good at noticing the disruptions in their sleep. Other symptoms include day-time sleepiness, issues with concentration, and slips in short-term memory and general mental sharpness. Goldner compared it to a clerk having to drop everything he’s doing to answer the phone in the front office — again and again, each time the brain needs to wake up the body. “The work that is supposed to be getting done for the brain during sleep doesn’t get done very well. The person wakes up tired.” Sleep apnea can also lead to hypertension, as the body uses adrenaline and other stress hormones to wake you up. Goldner described the influx of these hormones as pressing a “chemical panic button,” which strains the heart and the cardiovascu-
ARE YOU AT RISK? TAKE THE QUIZ Are you at risk for obstructive sleep apnea? Snoring: Do you snore loudly? Tired: Do you often feel tired, fatigued or sleepy during daytime? Observed: Has anyone observed you stop breathing during your sleep? Blood pressure: Do you have or are you being treated for high blood pressure? BMI (Body Mass Index): Is your BMI more than 35 kg/m2? Age: Are you age 50 or older? Neck Circumference: Is your neck circumference greater than 16 inches if you’re a woman, or greater than 17 inches if you’re a man? Gender: Are you male? HIGH RISK: Answering “yes” to three or more items. LOW RISK: Answering “yes” to less than three items. If you think you might have sleep apnea, talk to your primary care provider and get a referral for an evaluation at The Corvallis Clinic: 541-754-1268 or www.mycorvallisclinic.com. lar system. Due to this, having sleep apnea can double or even triple your chances of a heart attack or stroke. The repeated drops in oxygen can also cause hardening of the arteries, which can lead to problems with the blood vessels such as erectile dysfunction. Sleep apnea itself usually isn’t fatal, with one exception. People with sleep apnea are much more likely to be involved in a fatal car accident — a side-effect of being tired and having a delayed response time.
“Most people would say the car accident rate in untreated apnea is over four times the general population rate — that’s huge,” Goldner said. “Bad sleep apnea is very serious because it dramatically increases high blood pressure, stroke and car accident rates, and it doesn’t bring out the best in people’s personality.”
Easy to fix Luckily, sleep apnea is also easy to resolve. “It’s really common, it’s really bad for you — and it’s easy to fix,” noted Goldner. Most cases of sleep apnea — 85 to 90 percent — are weight-related, and losing the extra weight will often cure the condition. “If it did come with weight gain, it can go with weight loss and that’s a beautiful thing,” she said. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to lose weight, as the fatigue associated with sleep apnea can lead to eating unhealthy foods and feeling worse after exercise. The associated stress can also induce your metabolism to store calories. A night at a sleep lab will determine the extent of the condition. Sleeping on your side may be enough to resolve very mild cases. For severe cases, surgery exists, but it doesn’t always work and it’s “excruciatingly painful.” According to Goldner, the gold standard of care is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), in which applied air pressure helps keep the airway open during sleep. The masks may be uncomfortable, but they work — and they’re a lot more natural than a night spent snoring, ceasing to breathe, and thrashing around in your sleep.
EXERCISING WITH FIDO
Wanted: A perfect exercise partner. One who improves physical capabilities and mental outlook, Heed this advice before lowers blood pressure and raises morale, has no grabbing the leash: ■ Get the medical nod. qualms going out at any hour of any day, is always After you get the OK from happy to be with you, and your doctor about starting will never call to cancel an exercise program, take your pet in for a vet checkyour workout. Plus (added bonus) licks up, says James Bias, president of the SPCA of Texas. your face when you’re fin“It’s not rocket science,” he ished. says. “Like people, you “They always want to need to build up. If you’re go,” says Leslie Blake, 57, of going to participate in a 5K her dogs, Jake and Charley with your dog, build up (Cha Cha). “It doesn’t your dog’s capacity prior to matter what time it is or the event.” what the weather is like, ■ Be smart. Would you and that gets me out when wake up one morning and normally I might skip my decide to run five miles? Probably not. Nor should run.” Studies abound touting you submit your dog to the benefits of dog walk- that. “If people are making poor decisions about theming. selves,” Bias says, “it People who walk their stands to reason they’re dogs are more likely to making poor decisions engage in additional forms about their pets.” of exercise, according to Michigan State University research. like it is with people,” she A University of Western says. Australia study found that When people call the pet seven of 10 adult dog own- hospital and are put on ers get 150 minutes of hold, they hear not elevaexercise weekly, compared tor music but information with four out of 10 about health benefits of nonowners. owning a pet. A study published in Alexandria Williams is Preventative Medicine co-founder with Whitney reported that dog-walk- Patterson of Sporty Afros ing dog owners are 25 per- (sportyafros.com), an cent less likely to be obese organization that encourthan people who don’t ages exercise, especially own dogs. in black women. At com“I have many clients munity events, she touts who come in and say, ‘My the benefits of exercising dog and I are going on an exercise pro‘You have a pet? Walk. gram togethFifteen, 30 minutes a day, er. We’re going to walk four to five days a week. ’ every day,’” ALEXANDRIA WILLIAMS says veteriSPORTYAFROS narian Lynda V a n Antwerp, owner of Carrollton West with dogs. “I say, ‘You have a pet? Pet Hospital. When Van Antwerp Walk,’” says Williams, 28. talks about the benefits of “Fifteen, 30 minutes a exercise — healthy joints, day, four to five days a active digestive systems, week. You could lose a weight control — the line’s pound every other week that without blurred as to whether doing she’s talking about the changing anything else. pets or the owners. Both, Plus, psychologically usually. your pet enjoys it, and “Diet and exercise is a you’re getting out of the huge portion of all our house, letting your mind (pets’) health problems flow.”
To Your Health
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
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