I Think It's Time to Up the Weight

Personal trainer: "Alright, I want you to do 20 reps on this one."

Client: "Ok."

[trainer begins to help somebody else adjust a machine real quick while current client lifts away.]

Personal trainer: "Alright, I'm back. How many did you do?"

Client: "50."

How to Skip a Couple Heartbeats

Fake emergencies are nothing new to where I work. Honestly, some days I wonder if the members of my gym are taking bets to see how long it'll take before they put some of the staff in the hospital with some of the things they try to pull.

Attempting to tie your shoe while on a treadmill that's moving? Let me just tell you ahead of time. That's a bad idea.

Faking a heart attack as a joke while doing push-ups? Also a bad idea.

And then there's today.

I'm running around helping gym members with the new software program when a man in a sling begins to yell "HELP! HELP!", while frantically pointing across the gym.

I quickly run over and ask, "What's wrong?! What is it?!"

Gym member: "Can you get me a new piece of paper?"

That man owes me a new pair of pants.

Like Having No Filter?!

[Older man, in his 80's is sitting on the chest press machine when I walk over after just finishing with a personal training client]

Old guy: "Boy, aren't you put together funny!"

Me: "Huh?"

Old guy: "You're built like a worm! I guess God made each of us with our faults..."

What If We Were Bugs?

Here's an interesting what-if scenario for ya.

If you take a close look throughout the animal kingdom, taking time to look at mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, and reptiles, you'll find that all of them have a softer skin surrounding their body, and a hard skeleton on the inside.

Humans have this hard skeletal system too.

Other than serving as a base of support for us, bones also protect vital organs (think of the rib cage), and provide an attachment point for muscles. Sooo...they're pretty important.

Now look at bugs. Unlike virtually every other moving, breathing thing on this planet (minus jellyfish, worms, oysters, and a few other things), bugs have their skeleton on the outside of their body. It's called an exoskeleton.

Now why would God create just about every moving, breathing creature on earth with the same basic fundamental skeletal system with the exception of bugs? Why are bugs really the only creatures on earth with exoskeletons?

My theory is this: bugs are little. Imagine being in a world surrounded by giants everywhere. Big, mean giants that stomp, flick, swat, and hit you. If you were in a world like this, wouldn't it be nice to have some type of armor surrounding your body to protect you? Without it, if all of your soft tissues were on the outside of your body, like ours, imagine the damage that being flicked would cause to you. You'd be obliterated!

Yet how many times have you flicked an ant off of your picnic basket, only to watch it quickly skitter away from you once it lands on the other side of the blanket?

That little exoskeleton protects those little bugs. And without it, there'd be no little bugs, and as a result, there'd be no pollination of plants, no little bugs to eat decomposing material, no food for thousands of animals, and consequentially, no us.

So, that little exoskeleton plays a purpose. God thought of that, and I think that's pretty cool.

9 Minutes to Kill

I've been working on a powerpoint presentation for overweight high school kids attempting to build muscle today (well, kinda. I spent most of the day avoiding it by going swimming and meandering through the local hiking store), and currently have exactly 9 minutes before I have to leave for my last session of the day.

So, the powerpoint pretty much just got thrown out of the window. (I'll just do it later! Yeah, right. And I'll trim the poison ivy off the back porch again, too.)

And so, I sit here typing and reading Action Potential, my favorite medicine-y blog, with the knowledge that I have 6 more papers/projects to write within the next 2.5 weeks before my diabetes class starts up.

Tonight. It's getting done tonight.

What Can You Do With an MPH?

"Oh, you're getting your MPH? What exactly can you do with that?"

I suppose that's a fair question, but since I'm literally asked that question at least twice a day, my answer has become so memorized that I begin to sound like a auctioneer at a hospital spouting out random medicine-y sounding terms. 

I've got a lot of friends considering getting their Masters in Public Health at the moment, and for anybody else that's considering life after undergrad, here's some of the potential opportunities for an MPH student:

• Biostatistician - If you're good with numbers, and medicine interests you as well as statistics and probablility, this may be for you. The pay is awesome, not too many people do this (read: no competition), and you could end up being the researcher that discovers the cure to Alzheimer's using what you know.
• Epidemiologist - Have you seen World War Z, or Contagion? If you want to be the government/hospital employee who is the first to get the vaccine during the next apocalypse, this is the job for you. You'll also be spending your time analyzing the spread of disease in order to find out just where and why outbreaks occur, as well as how to stop them. Pros: awesome pay, super interesting, an extremely broad field, and job security so good you'll be living in a vault. Cons: potentially being in contact with the world's deadliest diseases.
• Health Policy Creator/Politician - A more political route, but a vital one, nonetheless. You'll be responsible for the development of policies that effect populations. Your specialization will probably effect what type of policy/legislation you would help create. For example, if your cognate is nutrition, you'd be the guy who mandates that all high schools in the area have to teach one nutrition class before graduation.
• Humanitarian Aide Guy- If this is what you're into organizations such as the Red Cross, Samaritan's Purse, and the Peace Corps like to snatch up people like you. You'll be traveling overseas and overlooking the distribution of medical supplies and food. You might want to work on learning a second language as well if this is your goal. 
• Public Health Education Person - Your goal here is to educate the population on certain topics pertaining to public health. This is great if you're really passionate and know a lot about a certain subject, and want to tell as many people as possible. 
• Healthcare Management - Though you'll probably never end up managing a large hospital solely with an MPH and no business experience, an MPH is an awesome way to help be certified if you want to own a series of nursing homes, clinics, etc. Really. Take some business classes first.
• Research Assistant - You'll be involved in discovering the risk factors and cures to today's problems. A very noble profession, be be warned, this is often a lot of writing, reading, statistics, and other field/lab work.
• Environmental Health Manager - One of the things that fascinated me about my environmental health class was just how interesting waste management is. Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid. But it's not! I promise! If you want to own a water plant, waste removal business, or something similar, this can help.

Other potential job opportunities lay within the Center for Disease Control (what they blow up in season 1 or 2 of the Walking Dead), the World Health Organization, the United Nations. 

Overall, an MPH prepares you for a rather diverse job field. Whereas with a DPT (nothing against physical therapists), with an MPH you're not pegged to one job for the rest of your life. If you get tired of being an epidemiologist, you can go into research. And once you tire of that you can teach at a university. Then you can write a book. You get the point. So, if you're interested, check it out!

$120

Today was just another day.

Until I clocked in at work this evening just to realize that my client's session was 7 AM, not pm.

And that he woke up early, and stood around for half an hour waiting for me, while I sat on my couch reading 'Divergent', waiting till I was supposed to clock in at other work.

And that I passed on extra hours at rehab, because it was going to interfere with my "evening session"

And now I'm giving two free sessions in an attempt to appease my guilt.

A $120 decision. Crud.

At least 'Divergent' was good, though.

Opinions on Autism

The other day I took my 30 minute lunch break in a Subway, happy to get away from all of the noise at work for a little while, just to have some time to be in the quiet, and to relax my mind.

About 2 minutes after I sat down with my food, a lady entered the restaurants with her 4 kids. She got her food and sat down, and almost immediately one of the kids began to scream REALLY loud. The screaming continued, as I wondered just when exactly the mother was going to tell her child to behave.

She didn't, and after I finished my meatball marinara sub, I quickly exited the restaurant, stealing a glance at the source of the noise on my way out.

The kid was autistic.

I felt like a jerk.

It got me to thinking though. I've noticed that that particular town that I was working in that day seems to have an extremely high rate of autism. I see and hear about autistic children in everyday conversation at the site all the time, and it got me to wondering.

Why has autism continued to become more and more prevalent in today's society?

When you boil it all down, there really could only be two reasons:

1. We have better diagnostic tests than we ever had before, or...
2. There's an actual problem that we need to address

If you read a lot of the reports out there, people will tend to say that the improved tests result for a large number of these, and though I agree that this could be part of the problem, overall I think that this answer is mainly a cop out. 

Why? Well, let's take a look at the statistics.

In the year 2000, 1 in 150 children was diagnosed with autism. In 2008, this number skyrocketed to 1 in 88 children. Then in 2010, the number went even higher to 1 out of every 68 children being diagnosed with autism (1).

Back in the 1970's the ratio was something like 1 in 25,000 children were diagnosed with autism. Do I think that better testing resulted in a larger number of children being diagnosed between the 70's and today? Absolutely. But I don't think that better testing resulted in the 45% increase in autism between 2000 and 2010. That'd make absolutely no sense.

So, let's assume that there's an actual problem that we need to address. 

Well, what is this problem? Something has obviously changed between 2000 and today to result in 1 in 68 children being diagnosed with autism.

Once again, I think that this comes down to two reasons. Either:

1. Autism is genetic, or...
2. Some environmental exposure is resulting in the greater incidence of autism

Let's start with discussing genetics.

Now certain genetic problems have been associated with autism. Down syndrome, tuberous sclerosis, and fragile X syndrome are all genetic problems that are correlated with autism. However, can we blame genetics completely? I don't think so. 

Again, I point to the increased prevalence of autism within society. I think that genetics plays a part, yes, but I also believe that there must be other factors at play here. 

So, that brings us to point number 2: is there some sort of environmental exposure that is resulting in the greater incidence of autism. And once again, I think that this question can be further broken down into two questions:

1. Is it the parent's environmental exposure to some risk factor, or...
2. Is it the child's environmental exposure to some risk factor. 

I'll start off by saying that autism is commonly diagnosed when children are around 2 years of age. So, it seems as if some kids may not be born with it, but rather develop it over time. However, some kids may be born with autism, and in this case, is it the parent's exposure to some risk factor?

Let's look at the parents first. 

We know that the age of the parents plays an important part in the child's chances of being autistic. Older parents are more likely to have autistic children than younger parents. When you couple this with the fact that the average American wedding age is 29 for men and 27 for women, much older than this has ever been in the past, this may help to explain why autism rates have jumped so high in recent years (2). People used to marry at a much younger age (which results in less of a risk factor), than they do today. 

So age alone may play a part. But what about other risk factors that parents are facing? What has really changed since 2000 to result in higher autism rates? 

Well, cell phones come to mind (as do laptops). Think about how many people you knew who had a cell phone in 2000, and how many you know who have one today, as well as the amount of use. It's a big difference. Could this be affecting the autism rates? I can't say for sure, but cell phones do emit radiation, and studies have shown that men who carry cell phones in their pockets have a decreased sperm count as well as altered sperm, so I think it's fair to include this in the conversation (3).

Am I saying that cell phones cause autism? No. There's no research to show that yet. What I am saying is that the rates have risen and we need to take a closer look at why.

What about nutrition though? Could we possibly be ingesting something that is changing our risk factors? Did you know that what you eat can change how your genes work? It's a fascinating new field of science known as nutritional genomics, a closer look at how what you eat impacts you more than you know. 

Is there some sort of preservative or pesticide that we are consuming today that we weren't consuming 14 years ago that's hurting our kids? It's hard to say. 

What about the kid's exposure though? 

If it's not the parent, maybe it's the kid. Maybe the kid is exposed to something that results in the development of autism. Living things, across the entire biological board, are more susceptible to adverse environmental factors during the developing period (4). 

Vaccines are the first thing that come to peoples' minds when they think of children with autism. But I don't see any correlation here, and neither does the CDC (5). Thimerosal is the main scapegoat people point to here, but even after its use was reduced in vaccinations in 2001, we still saw an increase in autism nationwide.

The 'no-vaccine for kids' movement is something that I understand. I get it. Having something bad happen to your little kid is scary, and nobody wants that to happen. However, at the same time, I don't think that it's scientifically sound, and overall, I think that it's dangerous as well.

There's been an increased outbreak of mumps internationally because of this movement, an infection that we previously had controlled. And get this: even though your child may have been vaccinated against a disease such as mumps, he could still get it if he hangs around enough kids that did not get the vaccination and contracted it. The vaccination is overpowered by such a significant exposure to the virus, that your kid ends up sick with something that he never should have gotten because of other people (6).

And what if your kid ends up having a complication, such as deafness, due to mumps because he was exposed to infected children even though he was vaccinated? Is it likely? No. But is it possible? Yes. This is why I think that the anti-vaccination movement seems to be detrimental to public health as a whole.

So,

If it is the kid's exposure to some agent that causes autism, what else can we look closer at? I think that food may once again play a key part. Is there something new in baby food, or is it coming through breast milk? Lead and mercury has been shown to cause birth defects and developmental disorders. Is this an issue? Dioxin and PCBs are accumulating in human tissue higher than ever before as well. Are they a risk factor? 

In conclusion...

Though it's hard to say for sure, I think that instead of just raising awareness about autism and blaming the issue on genetics we need to take a closer look at the why. We need further research. Only then will we be able to reverse the current trend.

If you really want to further your understanding of how the environment drastically effects human health, I highly recommend Our Global Environment by Anne Nadakavukaren. You can pick it up on Amazon for around $25 at the moment, and it does an excellent job of explaining not only the importance of public health, but ways to take care of yourself as well as your planet. It's not an easy read, but it is fascinating. Check it out. 

Stopping Vitamin D

Here's an interesting piece of physiology for ya:

Vitamin D, the 'sunshine-vitamin', can be toxic when ingested in extremely large amounts. You drink a lot of milk, and eat a lot of yogurt though. Does that mean that you shouldn't go out into the sun? If being outside in sunlight increases the amount of vitamin D in your body, couldn't that lead to a toxic build up of this little vitamin inside of you leading to your developing hypervitaminosis D or hypercalcemia, and the organ and bone damage that these cause?

Nope. God thought about that.

Overexposure to sunlight results in the body shutting down production of vitamin D, keeping you safe and healthy.

I swear, the more I study physiology, the more I am in awe that atheist doctors/physiologists/biologists/etc exixt.

To Da Beach!

After about a solid month of straight 60 hour workweeks of training people we retreated to the beach. The first thing that I realized while I was there? I've apparently lost my ability to sleep past 7am. Work's rewired me.

Anyways, we had a blast. The beach was empty, and therefore, beautiful.

Highlight of the trip? Hard to say. Playing Settlers of Catan late into the night with a bunch of awesome people, eating crab legs, teaching my wife how to ride a wave with a boogie board, and finding the store that keeps people like me in business were all pretty cool.

Yep. That's a keg of gummy bears. Note the water bottle for comparison.

I got a nice little break from grad school (kinda. I still spent a good bit of time listening to human metabolism lectures),  and even got to go kayaking a little bit, where I promptly sliced open my fingers on really pointy oysters while chasing a bunch of little crabs.

So, yep. Now it's back to the real world. Two new personal training clients tomorrow! Woot woot!


P.S. Here's a random thought for you: I talked with a guy right before I left who mentioned how aloe vera grows like crazy down in Florida. It got me to thinking. Isn't it cool that God made a plant which does an excellent job of soothing/healing sunburn, and then made it so that little plant flourishes where people are likely to need it?