Oh. Good to Know.

It's 9 in the morning as I walk into work for a personal training session with a new haircut. Before I can even put my stuff down, one of my regular clients sees me.

"Wow. I just want you to know your hair looks much better longer."

Sigh.

Old people. Sheesh. 

Did it bug me? Nope. Seriously, I've become pretty immune to patient comments. Why? Because they literally say stuff like this EVERY DAY (I grew pretty accustomed to this stuff in the nursing home), and usually when it happens I'm pretty excited that I'll have another story to tell my friends about work. 

Like the time I went to the barber shop. The lady finishes cutting my hair, whirls me around in the spinny chair, and proclaims, "Now WHAT are we going to do about those eyebrows?"

Uh, I need stuff done to my eyebrows? Do guys do that? My eyebrows are bad? What do you do to eyebrows?

I've been compared to a worm, told my clothes look ridiculous, etc. etc. 

I swear. I'm lucky I don't need counseling already. 

On the other side, for some reason I tend to remind just about every old white person on the planet about their grandson. This results in all kinds of compliments (at least I think).

"Hey, you look just like my grandson!"

"I do?"

"Yeah! He has dark hair too!"

"You remind me of my grandson! You're both really tall!"

"Hey! My grandson likes the exercise field too!"

I've literally had clients bring in their grandsons before, just so we could meet. 

THAT'S an awkward situation.

Both of us clearly know why the other is there, and the conversation typically goes like this.

"Hey man."

"Hey, how's it going?"

"So...I see you've met my grandpa."

[grandparents whisper loudly in the background, "See!? I told you they'd get along!"]

I think that's one of the things I like about working with people. You never know what you're going to come across next. One day I'll get the opportunity to work with a man who actually stormed the beaches on D-Day, and the next I'll listen to a retired farmer's collection of the corniest jokes known to man. 

(What's Bruce Lee's favorite drink? WAAAATAAAAHH!!)

But for the moment, I guess I'll be content with the unfiltered comments about my haircut. 

You're Young, You Can Fix It

I spent a little bit of time just going through some of my old pictures on my laptop tonight.

I found these two beaut's.

When my grandparents bought a wildlife camera that they couldn't figure out how to get working.

All Kindsa Happenins

So Yellowhed's and my first anniversary was this past weekend! Woohoo!

We went away to the coast for the weekend to check out some pretty cool historical sites/go shopping. Well, she did most of the shopping. I just hung around the front of each store reading "Investing for Dummies". (Seriously, if you know anything about mutual funds, let me know.)

I recently accepted a new position at work as well! The receptionist ended up leaving for another clinic here in town, and as a result, we had nobody to schedule new patients/deal with the insurance companies/etc. It's been pretty good so far. I completely overbooked us for this coming week so that we're going to be at the clinic all night, and still have a pretty steep learning curve ahead of me with the insurance stuff, but it's still fun.

In other news, our house is infested with tiny ants...

They like Italian food. They must be Italian ants.

I finally got my stuff from home to make a little gym in the basement...

And Yellowhed tried to fix our "noisy" fan by punching it at 2 in the morning...

"I was trying to fix it!"

So, things have been good. I'm completely exhausted from working late into the nights, and my biggest load of classes yet is coming up this fall, but I can honestly say that I absolutely love what I'm doing. 

What You Didn't Know About Ebola

I recently harped about this issue right here, but seriously, this is getting to be a much bigger problem than any of us anticipated. And in case you didn't realize why, take a look at some of these facts.

• there currently is no cure for Ebola
• Ebola has a 90% fatality rate. That means 9 out of 10 people who are infected die. 
• it can take up to 21 days before symptoms develop, plenty of time for an infected person to travel abroad and come into contact with thousands of people (1)
• it's extremely difficult to diagnose the disease in the initial stages of it
• people contract it through contact with other peoples' blood or secretions
• there's a chance that it could be spread through respiratory droplets (2)
• the first American to die due to ebola flew on two international flights after he was infected (3)
• Around 1200 people that we know of have been infected so far
• 3 Americans have been infected in Africa
• There are several strains of ebola. One of them is named after Reston, VA, where it was discovered. It only kills monkeys.(4)
• 600+ people have died due to infection so far

Pray!

References

1. http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/symptoms/index.html

2. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423

3. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ebola-doctors-told-prepare-global-3933249

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus

Reasons to Punch an MPH Student in the Head

I keep seeing this over and over again, and it's starting to scare me.

One of the things that somebody with an MPH is qualified to do is be a public health official. You'll have taken all of the courses in administration, environmental health, policy and legislation, and grant writing that you'll ever need.

Unfortunately, what our schools are producing don't seem to be capable leaders who have can effectively improve America's health without trampling all over the Constitution.

Let's take the worldwide battle on obesity, for example.

Over and over again, when I read other student's papers, when I read textbooks, or actual public health official's statements (I'm looking at you Michael Jacobson), the only solution that they can come up with in order to trim down our waistline involves creating new taxes and laws, which instead only result in trimming down our wallets as well as our freedoms.

The 4 most common ways I see people thinking that they can fight obesity are these:

• portion control laws
• unhealthy food taxes
• ingredient control laws
• mandate that grocery stores lower the cost of healthy foods

Let's look at the first one, portion control laws. 

New York recently instituted something like this when they said people can no longer buy a certain size of soda. It was supposedly brave. Where does this end though? When does buying large pizzas become illegal, or super sized Snickers? I can see the day when trick-or-treaters are rounded up into the back of cop cars. 

These are absolutely ridiculous. 

I can remember discussing this in one of my undergrad nutrition classes when the law first came out. The entire class was in agreement with the law. I couldn't believe my ears! I sat there thinking to myself, "What are we preparing for ourselves? If these people get into office, we're doomed."

The second type of law is unhealthy food taxes.

This seems to work with cigarettes, and alcohol, so why not try Oreos? Once again though, who is to mandate what is unhealthy and what is not? What about foods such as eggs? I can easily cook an egg in a way where it is going to be full of artery clogging fats that are even more dangerous that whatever could be in a Pop-Tart. 

And how are food companies such as Nabisco, General Mills, and Post going to respond to these potential taxes? By upping their prices, and increasing their advertising, resulting in a much larger grocery bill for you when your wife NEEDS her Chips Ahoy.

The third type of law involves ingredient control.

This means that the government gets to mandate what you can put into your food, and what you cannot. Obviously we have the FDA to make sure that people aren't putting lead into your cereal, but do you really want the government telling people how much sugar they can put into their soda? 

Not only would your Pepsi taste funny, but the government would once again be reaching its fingers into peoples' lives.

The last, possibly strangest public health 'solution' to obesity is to mandate that grocery stores lower the cost of fresh produce.

That's right. The government comes into a grocery store and says, "Hey, you're selling apples for $1.50/pound. People will never be able to afford that. They're going to buy unhealthy food now instead. You need to lower the prices, or we're going to fine you and throw you in jail."

First off, if you want people to have money to buy food, how about you don't take >25% of their paycheck every week. Second, what gives the government the authority to come in and tell you how much you can charge for a product? The grocery industry already battles razor-thin margins. Why do you want to further harm them? Seriously, my grocery store already only has 2 lanes open as it is. Don't make it worse.

In conclusion...

So, be on the lookout for this stuff. These trains of thought are becoming a lot more common than you think.

Look! An MPH student!

What's Changed with Diabetes?

Diabetes is on the rise, and is now reaching epidemic proportions worldwide.

But why?

What has changed over the past century?

Well, we've increased:

• our weights - we're now heavier than ever, overtaxing our pancreas
• caloric intake - closely tied to excess weight, but a separate factor nonetheless
• protein intake - we now eat more protein than ever before (Eskimos have always eaten a largely meat diet though)
• how much we sit - sitting does increase blood sugar and cause some other metabolic changes in the body, maybe this effects things?
• how clean we are - killing the microbes that may condition our immune system at a young age
• environmental toxins - these things cause all kinds of problems

While we've decreased:

• activity - we're more sedentary than ever
• vitamin D - less activity means less sun, which means less of this vital vitamin
• intestinal parasites - some tapeworms actually cause our immune system not to attack our own cells as much

An unknown virus could be another cause too. 

Odds are that the cause behind the rise is a myriad of these factors put together. The cause behind disease can often be complex, but like in the case of mono, Ebola, or TB, it can often be pretty simple as well. Avoid this virus, avoid this problem. Figuring out what the root cause behind the increase is going to take a lot more research.

My bets are on environmental toxins, but hey, what do I know? I'm just a student. 

5 Theories As to Why Type 1 Diabetes is on the Rise

So, I just finished reading an excellent book for my Diabetes and Obesity class called 'Diabetes Rising'. It's the first book that I've found on the subject of diabetes that actually spends its time addressing the why behind why diabetes is on the rise (aka, I liked it).

Obviously, Type 2 diabetes is associated with excess weight gain, and our world is getting fatter than ever. But does this explain the rise in Type 1 diabetes, otherwise known as juvenile diabetes, that has been occurring as well?

Here are 5 of the top current theories behind this rise.

The Accelerator Hypothesis - kids weigh more now, and at a younger age, than they ever have throughout the course of history. Excess weight is known to overly tax the pancreas, and any life-form is extremely vulnerable during the early stages of growth and development. This excess weight at such an early age allows the pancreas to be forced to work too hard for a longer time-frame than it would have to if say somebody in there 40's gained 50 pounds. Kids have longer to live.

Cons: Though obesity may play a part, what's the baseline cause? If a skinny kid gets diagnosed with Type 1, isn't this theory blown out of the water?

The Cow's Milk Hypothesis - we drink a lot of milk nowadays. However, is the human body designed to be able to digest it? The average person in China drinks 2.3 gallons of milk annually, while the average person in Finland drinks 48 gallons of milk per year. Finland has one of the highest rates of Type 1 diagnosis in the world, whereas China has one of the lowest. Doesn't this show a correlation?

Also, more women are feeding their women formula instead of breastfeeding than ever before. Formula contains cow's milk as a common ingredient. This milk is composed of complex proteins that babies bodies are not prepared to digest, and so the pancreas goes haywire and ends up getting damaged in the process. So, formula = diabetes.

Cons: Asides from potentially being assassinated by the milk industry if you're a proponent, experts argue that you could get the same exact results as some of these studies as you could get with any other protein. Many scientists cannot match the study results that proponents of the Cow's Milk Theory came up with either.

The POP Hypothesis - we live in a polluted environment, and persistent organic pollutants (POP's) are everywhere. These environmental toxins do unknown damage, accumulate in fatty tissue, and have been proven to be building up to very large levels within the human body within the past few decades. Studies have shown that those with the highest levels of POP's in there blood have 37.7 times the risk of developing diabetes than those with the lowest levels as well.

Cons: I actually think that this is the real cause, so I don't have many cons for this one. My only question is this: if POP's build up in fatty tissue, and the only way to make fat cells disappear is through liposuction, wouldn't that procedure significantly lower peoples' risk?

The Sunshine Hypothesis - Vitamin D has been proven to have a lot of important roles in the body, particularly helping the cell junctions to remain tight. The farther away a country is from the equator, the higher the diabetes prevalence as well. Perhaps it is the lack of sunlight/vitamin D in these regions that is leading to the diabetes epidemic.

Cons: Doesn't this mean that all Eskimos/Vikings/Russians throughout history would have been doomed?

The Hygiene Hypothesis - we are cleaner than ever before, but some microbes are helpful. Perhaps our cleanliness is depriving us of microbes that condition our immune system to not attack ourselves. Ingestion of certain types of tapeworms has been shown to lessen diabetes symptoms, so maybe there's something to this.

Cons: I think there may be something here as well, and don't really have too much negative to say.

The cause behind diseases is often a bunch of risk factors combined, so I wouldn't go off and say that milk is the sole reason for the increase in diabetes cases (if one at all). So, stay tuned to the research, and if you want to know more, google it!