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Show B Landers D j HArts D3 5 Movies D4 The Daily Herald Friday, July 5, 1996 Diseases spread fast in summer Contaminated food and water have always been common ways to spread infectious diseases to others. They still are the cause of millions of deaths around the world due to the diarrheal diseases in infants and children. This kills so quickly if the children are not treated promptly for dehydration. And good sanitation and safe practices food-handli- Sr. Joseph help prevent those diseases and deaths. With summer picnics and community celebrations, there is an increased risk of contaminated foods being served to large gatherings of people. When the food is carried and served outdoors away from refrigeration, ovens, stoves and sinks, it is much more difficult to handle it safely. In these situations, the safest way to avoid illness is to serve and eat foods which require no refrigeration or heating such as baked goods and candy. And it's even safer if they are commercially pre- 4 pared and packaged. ivieai, uairy, egg anu even vegetable dishes with juices need to be kept cool, below 45 degrees, or be kept hot, above 140 degrees, while being held before serving. Some of the safer meats to serve outside are hamburgers and hot dogs because they are usually cooked right before eating and then served hot. ; An important concern here is to take care to cook the ground beef thoroughly so there is no red meat in the center. Sometimes barbecue grills blacken the meat so quickly on the outside that the inside doesn't get adequately cooked. Since ground beef can be contaminated throughout, deadly bacteria such as toxic e. coli may survive in the center of poorly cooked hamburger. Steaks cooked inadequately in the center are less of a concern because the inside would not usually be contaminated. Potato salad is always a favorite for picnics, but the dairy and egg products used make it a high risk food. Care must be taken not to contaminate the ingredients during' preparation by placing them on kitchen counter tops which may have been contaminated by raw chicken or eggs. Also, if the salad is not kept cold, any bacteria which is on the food I':.. will incubate to sufficient numbers to cause illness. Clean utensils and clean hands (preferably gloved I !,.;'. hands) should always be used when lft.S-foods. handling ready-to-e'" . Too often, it's only after an outbreak that people appreciate this i . I precaution. Some of our worst outbreaks of shigellosis and hepatitis : A have been caused by persons handling moist, cool, vegetables such as lettuce and tomatoes with contaminated hands. .'Although the Utah Food Code still only requires frequent hand washing when handling ready-to-efoods with hands, it is highly i,' recommended that clean utensils ! )! J '! or clean, gloved hands be used to touch such foods. It is particularly offensive to see a restaurant work f J ers scratch their hair, rub their nose, handle money, and then pro ceed to put lettuce, tomatoes, or pickles on a sandwich without washing their hands. And we see it lull the time. Thi nnhlir nreik to' remind Hood workers to wash their conta- ninated hands or use cloves Ibefore touching read-to-efood. It only takes one or two comments land requests from a customer for a anew sandwich to really impress ipon food handlers what the pub ic expects. These kinds of operating proce dures are very difficult for health department inspectors to observe lluring their infrequent, semi- mnual visits. It people are too sny i " I o speak up, they can give us a call ( ' ( hand-washi- at . at ) at 1 370-877- 0. Dr. Miner is executive director y f the Utah )eptirtinenl. County Heulth Pediatricians know that the best formula for a baby is mother's milk. But new, carefully designed studies have suggested that breast milk is not only better, but almost twice as good as formula at protecting babies from infections. In fact, research this decade has been so convincing that the ; American Academy of Pediatrics is expected to release a policy statement this summer stressing g that should be the first option for newborns, and not the alternative. "This is the strongest thing I've ever seen come out of the academy," said Dr. Marianne Neifert, a Denver pediatrician and member of the committee drafting the academy's stance. "It has a lot of very strong statements in it," Neifert said. For example, she said, instead of stating something like. "Formula is the closest thing to breast milk," the new policy will say, "Formula is a distant second." The doctors are motivated by the fact that newer research does not have the complications that plagued earlier work. in the underdeveloped nations of Africa and Asia, studies have drawn clear conclusions about the benefits of breast milk partly because living conditions are breast-feedin- ' more uniform and formula-feedin- g can actually be dangerous. In poorer countries, a mother may improperly dilute the formula because the directions are not clear, or she may contaminate it because safe drinking water is not available. But in developed countries, formula-feedin- g is by no means hazardous, and the differences between the two methods are harder to tease apart. For instance, the decision to breastfeed may reflect something about a mother's education and economic status, and those influences may actually be keeping a baby healthier, not the breast milk. Or, working mothers may find it more difficult to breastfeed, and therefore revert to formula. But their babies may get more infections not because of the formula, but because they may be more likely to spend time in day-cacenters. "You can't entirely separate breast-feedin- g from the family and society from which the child comes," said Dr. Lawrence Gartner of the University of Chicago, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Work Group on Breast Feeding. Then there's the definition of breast-feedinSome studies have counted babies as breast-fe- d if they got any breast milk at all, Neifert said. All of which has made the re g. i ( J' AP Photo Sergei Grinkov lifts his wife, Yekaterina Russia's Gordeeva, during their performance at the pairs free skating event at the Hamar Olympic Amphitheater in Hamar, Norway, in February 1994. Grinkov may have inherited a newly discovered genetic risk that led to his death last year at 28 of a heart attack, Johns Hopkins University researchers said Thursday. breast-feedin- g issue extremely difficult to examine. This year, however, scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have conducted a study that tries to take all of this into consideration. More than 1,000 mothers filled out monthly questionnaires after their babies were bom. The survey asked how frequently the babies were breastfed and the incidence of diarrhea and ear infections that month. It also asked about the parents' income, household size, smoking habits and other circumstances known to affect the rate of infections. The study also accounted for a phenomenon called "reverse causality," which happens when a disease has an effect on behavior, and not vice versa. In this case, the researchers wanted to be certain that a mother didn't change feeding patterns because the baby got diarrhea. The scientists' care in dealing with all the variables makes their work significant, said Laurence Grummer-Straw- n of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. This spring, the researchers reported that babies up to 7 months old who received formula exclusively had nearly twice as many bouts of diarrhea and ear infections as the completely d babies. Also, among babies fed both ways, those who received more breast milk had proportionately fewer infections, the scientists reported during the annual meeting of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service. "Even a little breast milk said. helps," Grummer-Straw- n He noted that the analysis of the data is continuing. However, he said, "other studies have not found such a strong effect." Research is also examining why breast milk might protect an infant from infection. Does it have to do with antibodies that are passed from mother to child? Changes in the infant's immune system or intestinal bacteria? The position of the baby while feeding? "Those answers are just beginning to come out," Gartner said. In the meantime, he said, it is important for mothers and their doctors to know how much of a difference breast-feedin- g can make, and to weigh those issues against the difficulties of the method. Neifert, who founded a clinic at a Denver hospital to help said she mothers breast-feehopes the new research and the academy's policy statement will not only encourage more women to breast-feebut make it convenient for them to do so. breast-fe- d, d, Specialists needed to pinpoint certain problems Dear Ann Landers: I've been a he said it was accurate only 50 longtime reader of your column percent of the time. A college friend of mine conand now find I have something that me after learning of my tacted interest and be to of may you your readers. It may save lives. About five years ago, I was having urinary problems. I went to the family doctor, who gave me the routine digital rectal exam and said it was there was nothing wrong merely my age. After several months, the problem was getting worse, so I went to see the doctor again. He gave me another rectal exam and said nothing was wrong. I asked if I should see a urologist, but the doctor said it would be a waste of time and money. I insisted that he recommend one anyway and made an appointment. The urologist gave me a PSA test along with a digital exam. The PSA showed that there might be "a problem," so the urologist gave me an ultrasound and biopsied the five suspicious areas. All were malignant, and the following week, I had a complete prostate removal. When I asked the urologist why the digital exam showed nothing, surgery, and I told him what had wMV' Landers Advice Columnist happened. He had gone to his doctor some years before with the same complaint and received the old age. After I same answer told him about my experience, he went to a urologist and found that he. too, had malignancies. Unfortunately, he waited too long and the removal of his prostate and surrounding lymph glands did not stop the cancer. I just learned that he is terminal, cannot walk and is help victims of schizophrenia By PATRICIA ANSTETT Dramatic advantages found in By LAURA BEIL Dallas Morning News New drugs to Knight-Ridde- gold-medali- st Public Healthline it April, the scientists found that as many as one in five people has the variant gene. The death of BALTIMORE If the variation did in fact kill Olympic skater Sergei Grinkov Grinkov, his death represents a last year puzzled many: How could dramatic demonstration of the posathlete in top form sible a danger in otherwise healthy, die of a heart attack? people, the researchers said. Two researchers from Johns young The variation can be detected in Hopkins University said Thursday a simple blood test and may eventhey may have the answer. be added to the list of factors tually Grinkov had a common inherited known to contribute to heart disgenetic variation that may have ease, the nation's leading natural predisposed him to heart disease, killer, they said. they reported in the July issue of An autopsy revealed that the British medical journal The Grinkov had severe coronary Lancet. artery disease and an enlarged The scientists, who first reportheart. Bray said. It also showed ed the apparent link between heart that Grinkov apparently suffered a disease and this genetic variation mild heart attack about five hours in April, tested the skater's DNA before he collapsed. from a blood sample that was takYoung, healthy athletes may be en after his e collapse Nov. 20 more likely to show no apparent in Lake Placid, N.Y. signs of heart disease, GoldThe Olympic had schmidt said. been practicing with his wife and "Perhaps because the threshold for pain is so high, they just don't partner, Yekaterina Gordeeva. "We were shocked to see, as feel the pain the same way," Goldwas everyone else, that this very schmidt said. "You have to realize healthy Olympic champion died of that these people fight with pain on a heart attack," said Paul F. Bray, a daily basis." In April, Goldschmidt and Bray an associate professor of cardiology-Bray reported a correlation between and colleague Pascal heart disease and a protein that Goldschmidt, also an associate may cause blood platelets to stick professor of cardiology, cautioned together too easily, clogging blood they don't know exactly how the vessels. They linked the protein to variant gene works and are not cer- a gene variant. Researchers in the field caution tain if it contributed to Grinkov's that a correlation between heart death. But they said the association is disease and the Grinkov condition the only apparent factor that linked is not the same as a cause. "The guy might also have eaten with heart disease. Grinkov Grinkov's father also died without a pickle, and the pickle might have warning, at 52, of an apparent killed him," said Dr. Peter Newman at The Blood Research Instiheart attack. varithe tute of the Blood Center of SouthThey proposed calling ation the "Grinkov risk factor." In eastern Wisconsin. By JOHN KENDREN Associated Press Writer on-ic- II. Kline ; Olympic skater had genetic flaw in severe pain. How many thousands of men die each year from prostate cancer because they trust an ordinary doctor's reliance on the conventional digital exam, not realizing that it is only 50 percent accurate? Please, Ann, tell your readers if a man is having urinary problems, particularly if he is over 60, he should go immediately to a urologist and find No Name. No out for certain. State Dear N.N.: I have dealt with this problem in the column lfor and reccWed an astonishing number of letters from men (and their wives) relating similar experiences. While a competent general practitioner should be able to diagnose the problem, I agree that one who specializes in urology is a safer bet. Dear Ann Landers: Please let the aunt in Greenfield, Mass. know that her sister's behavior repeatedly forcing her children to eat something that is repugnunt to them is a sadistic and destructive form of violence. It is definitely a form of assault, and as a self- defense instructor for the past 25 years, I warn all who attend my courses and lectures about it. Food has only two functions: nourishment and pleasure. When my daughter was small, I told her to take a taste of any food and if she didn't care for it, to spit it out in a napkin. Also, when she was satisfied, she should stop eating. "Clean your plate" is a destructive obscenity. The child is important, not the plate or anything on it. The food could be saved for later if she liked it otherwise, it would be thrown out. T.A.W., Ph.D., Minneapolis, Minn. Dear T.A.W.: You have written a letter that could make a big difference in the lives of many children. I agree with your approach and thank you for sharing your wisdom with my readers. Gem of the Day: If you've never been frightened, embarrassed or hurt, you have never taken, a chance, which means you probably have missed a great deal that is exciting in life. r Newspapers Sixty percent of people with schizophrenia improve with new medicines, experts say. And two drugs expected to be approved this year may help thousands of other people who endure unwanted side effects from current drugs, a Detroit expert says. The drugs are known generical-l- y as sertindole and olanzapine, says Dr. Husseini Manji, director of schizophrenia and mood disorders for Wayne State University and Detroit Receiving Hospital. The mechanism by which olanzapine acts, and its effect on the brain, is much like that of clozapine, which is widely described as a breakthrough schizophrenia drug. But clozapine can cause a suppression of the bone marrow's ability to produce white blood cells, a key part of the body's immune system. As a result, people on the drug must undergo weekly blood tests to ensure that they have not developed the side effect. The tests increase the drug's cost to about $9,000 a year; a lifetime of use could run as high as $400,000, according to some estimates. Weekly tests like those needed to monitor clozapine may not be needed for olanzapine if" further studies show it doesn't cause suppression of bone marrow, Manji says. Preliminary studies of olanzapine show it also does not cause muscle rigidity, a problem with many medicines. Side effects shown in early studies include sleepiness, weight gain and excessive saliva production. Sertindole is less known than olanzapine, but early studies show it may be as effective with about the same side effects as olanzapine. Overall, schizophrenia drugs make a big difference, Manji says. Some 25 percent to 30 percent of people lead fairly normal lives whiie taking schizophrenia medicines, he says. Another 25 percent to 35 percent may relapse, but the episodes may not be devastating, particularly after the first one: relapses become less severe as people age, he says. By age 50, "the edge is taken off" and "people learn to deal with the symptoms," Manji says. He says the single biggest predictor of relapse is whether people stay on their medications. After that, the death of close family other and friends, members changes in personal relationships, substance abuse and ability to cope with stress tend to predict who fares the best with the disease. How to get right amount of calcium By DONNA KATO Knight-Ridd- Newspapers If you suspect you might have an intolerance to dairy products, there is a professionally administered breath test that measures the amount of excess hydrogen produced in the body as a result of sugar being improperly digested. But Barbara Levine, a clinical professor of nutrition at Cornell University, says there is an test: Drink a quart of skim milk first thing in the morning. "And don't go out for the rest of the day," she warns. If you exhibit any of the symptoms bloating, nausea, abdominal cramps, severe gas or diarrhea chances are you're lactose intolerant. Nutritionists suggest some of these strategies for eating dairy products and getting enough calcium and nutrients: Drink and eat smaller quantities of dairy products at one sitting and with other foods. Try whole or chocolate milk. The fat and sugar content seems to slow digestion. Eat dairy foods with lower lactose levels, such as aged cheese. Yogurt with active cultures also may be easier to digest. Watch for hidden lactose in y creamproducts such as ers, prescription drugs and baked goods. In addition to the lactase supplements, look for lactose-reduce- d foods in grocery and health food stores. Eat and drink calcium-fortifie- d products such as orange juice and breads. non-dair- . |