Healthy Bytes

In Pharm we don’t trust

read time: 154 words, about a minute

A couple months ago PriceWaterHouseCoopers (PwC) released a study concerning the perceived reputation of pharmaceutical companies… not exactly promising if you’re a pharm company.

PwC concluded that the sinking reputation of pharms is a serious threat to their long-term success.

Says Peter Claude of PwC:
“the public is questioning the industry’s motives and practices from sales and marketing to pricing to drug development.”

79% of those surveyed thought pharms were good corporate citizens in 1997. Six years later, that number dropped to 44%.

Folks believe the pharms are more concerned with profits than public health.

It would be interesting to compare this drop in pharm confidence to that of corporate America in general. I know confidence has decreased, tho I suspect not as much as the pharms.

But once again, who is the boss of you? How much control and power do you defer to ANY person or company whether for profit or not.

Soda - the national drink

read time:130 words, a minute

The Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP) studied what folks are gulping down… and it’s not as much milk as they would like it to be.

Nearly half – 50% - of Americans, AGE 4 and older drink a soda on a given day. That pencils out to roughly 25% of their daily calories.

The American Beverage Association claims the average American guzzles 54 gallons of soda a year.

12 ounces of Coke has about 10 teaspoons of sugar.
Sugar in soda accounts for 36% of added sugar in the U.S.

Then there’s the diet species with artificial sweeteners which, all in all, are worse than sugar. New Mexico is proposing banning aspartame – the manufacturing of and contents of – in the state.

Soda… obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis

Put the can down, walk away.

Health and fitness survey

read time: 178 words, about a minute

Cooking Light surveyed 1,072 folks about health and fitness.

Some of the numbers…

- 6 percent of Americans adults get 30 minutes of exercise a day
- 22 percent exercise three to four times per week
- 19 percent walk or bike instead of taking transportation
- 41 percent take the stairs whenever possible
- 33 percent regularly park their cars farther from their destination to get in extra walking

- 67 percent recognize that making small, healthy improvements today add up to big benefits later
- 76 percent are satisfied with their mental and emotional well-being
- 45 percent are satisfied with their body weight
- 58 percent are satisfied with their stress level

Maybe these numbers are true, but I don’t believe most of them.
I might be able to believe the first two, maybe even the third. The rest of them - I believe - are exaggerated. I don’t have any data to back up my suspects, but the numbers don’t line up well with data on overweight and various prescription drugs.

Of course users notoriously exaggerate on surveys, sometimes as much as 40%.

Health ensured

read time: 223 words, about 2 minutes

Back in 2004, University of Baltimore created the Obesity Initiative and gave states a grade based on what they were doing about childhood obesity. The measurements included:
Controlling the types of food and beverages during school
Vending machine usage/access
Body Mass Index (BMI) scores
Recess and physical education
Obesity programs, research and treatment

The first year there were no A’s. there were 23 Fs, 16 Ds.

In 2004 16% of kids were obese. In 2006 – 17.1%. The 2010 projection is 20%.

New Jersey was one of the states that didn’t do so well.
In one particular school that was featured on CBS Evening News last night, they chatted with the school nurse who was responsible for taking height and weight measurements and calculating BMI.

For kids with high BMI scores, she would send a “referral” to the parents informing them of average scores and their kids score.

The cafeteria does not serve food with little nutritional value, no candy, no soda, no snacks with more than 8 grams fat. The kids also get exercise and in some cases exercise homework.

According to the nurse, in the 2 years they have instituted the program, referrals are down, especially for the lower grades.

Nearly $120 billion a year in medical care is obesity related.

Change the eating, add exercise. Health ensurance rather than health insurance.

Whose healthier… red state kids or blue state kids?

read time: 790 words, about three minutes

Michael Petit, author of a new book “Homeland Insecurity … American Children at Risk,” lays out an interesting set of data comparing kid’s health in each state to how the state voted in the 2004 election.

To determine the kid part, he used 11 statistics measuring health, including insurance coverage and prenatal care.

The top ten: Wisconsin, New Jersey, Washington, Minnesota, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, and New Hampshire. Only Iowa voted Republican.

The bottom ten: Wyoming, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Louisiana and Mississippi. All Republican.
In fact 24 of the bottom 25 are red states.

That’s ummm, significant.

Timothy Jost, professor of health care law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law says:
“States that tend to be politically and economically conservative have less inclusive medical assistance programs. So, it would make a great deal of sense that states that are Republican have conservative social and economic policies that lead to a decreased health status for poor children.”

How does this jive with that No Child Left Behind platform? But I digress.

Of those blue states Jost says:
“More liberal states probably have better food stamp, public assistance, housing and education programs.”

Back in early December, 2006 I wrote about an annual report on America’s Health Rankings.

The top 5 states for health were: Minnesota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Connecticut… all blue states, four of them in the top 10 for kid’s health.

Jost believes the solution is to get people insured:
“That is not going to happen through the private sector; the government is going to have to step in. It is a political problem, and it needs to be solved politically.”

Perhaps that is A solution. Is it the BEST solution?

I dunno.
Health care costs big bucks. I just made my quarterly payment and by golly, it’s gone up again. And I don’t have fancy insurance.
And my experience has been it’s not necessarily easy to get decent health care, EVEN IF you have insurance.

The Universal Health Care platform is popping up quite a bit these days.
In California… where I live and pay taxes… they’re talking about it. 6.2 million folks are uninsured in California. We’re talking about a lot of oranges and artichokes there.

But beyond that, is “having health insurance” the magic pill (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun). Yes, I realize there’s utility in insurance. But for the most part, health insurance is sick insurance and health care is sick care.

Do you go to a doctor when you’re well?

In the U.S. we spend significantly more on health care and yet, we’re not the healthiest… by far.

Let’s throw another piece of data into the conversation…
For every $1 spent on “wellness”, $3 is saved on “health” care.

World changer people were hanging out in Davos Switzerland this week at the World Economic Forum.

Back in 2000 Bill & Melinda Gates and a few others formed GAVI - the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. GAVI has immunized 138 million kids for preventable diseases. Darn big numbers.

The estimate is the program has prevented 2.3 million deaths and heck of a lot of illness. They’ve spent $1.5 billion. That’s under $11 a kid and about $650 a life saved.

One of the changes they’re going to make is in the personnel sticking all those needles in all those kids. They’ve invested in training and funding doctors to do the work. Seems those doctors move onto other opportunities. They will now instead train paramedics. Lowers the costs of training and the thought is turnover will also be lowered.

It’s true, a paramedic is not able to do as much medically as a doctor, but they can dispense vaccinations. GAVI doesn’t have a timid goal. They’d like to vaccinate everyone who needs to be. If they cut their costs, they can vaccinate more people.

How much does it costs to have PE in schools? Are we saving a dollar only to incur a $3 expense elsewhere?
I bet a year of PE costs less than a round of chemotherapy.

Instead of focusing on “Universal Health Care” in the form of health insurance, why don’t we spend our resources on Universal Well Care with education on nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and stress relief and management and other programs.

Sooooo many “health” care dollars are now being spent on preventable lifestyle diseases. Just because you have insurance should you do your best to use it?
Would you burn down your house because you have homeowners insurance?

It costs less to prevent than to treat. You get what you focus on.

Can you be too clean?

read time: 231 words, a minute or so

Sanitation was voted as the greatest medical advance in the last 166 years (since 1840) by more than 11,000 doctors and scientists worldwide.

In fact, increases in average life expectancy is largely due to two things: better sanitation and antibiotics.
You probably don’t know what life was like before sewers, clean water and doctors actually washing their hands before delivering babies and performing surgery.

All good. But can you over do it, can you be too clean?
Well a few studies say so.
Have you noticed antibacterial everything – soap, wipes, laundry detergent and numerous other products.

Here’s the thing. An immune system needs to be “developed”. It needs to be exposed to germs so that it develops the ability to battle them.
What is a vaccine? It’s a small amount of a virus. It stimulates the immune system to develop antibodies so that if you’re subsequently exposed to the virus you’ll have the ability to shut it down.

A weak immune system is more vulnerable to disease.

Now for all of the last century, average lifespan in the U.S. increased. BUT for kids born in this century, it is predicted they will NOT outlive their parents, i.e., average lifespan is going to drop.

Why? Lifestyle diseases resulting from poor nutrition. Not because this is a third world country. Because we have substituted real food for processed food. Survival of the fittest.

The greatest medical advance in history is…

… Sanitation.
So say 15.8% of 11,000 voters worldwide.

So much for expensive drugs and fancy machines.

Sanitation is still a big issues in less developed areas, but for those of us with hot running water… wash your hands.

Prescription drug costs - R&D or marketing?

Consumer Reports has a website comparing prescription drug costs.
The site is designed not to just show you generic versions of drugs but to show you all competing options.

Not surprisingly, the most heavily advertised drugs are often substantially more expensive than competing drugs.

The website also has safety alerts and updates and some educational content.

How much would someone have to pay you to exercise?

If you’re an IBM employee, exercising 3 times a week scores you $150.
They’ll even pay you $150 for filling out your health record and another $150 if you stop smoking.

IBM is spending $130 million on “Wellness incentives”. Paid health time instead of paid sick time.
Studies show $1 spent on wellness = $3 saved on health care.

That lunch time power walk can actually save you money.

4 + 2 (legs) = better health

read time: 228 words, about a minute

Psychologist Dr Deborah Wells of Queens University in Belfast has reviewed numerous research papers about the health benefits of pet ownership.

Her findings to be published in British Journal of Health Psychology:
in general, pet owners are healthier than average…
Lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

Further, dog owners tend to be healthier than cat owners, experiencing fewer minor ailments and serious medical issues.

Some of it’s obvious – dog owners walk more.
Some of it may not be obvious to non-dog people – dog owners tend to have more social contact.
I can testify to that. When dog owners are out walking their dogs and meet other dog owners there’s often a social exchange. Additionally, people spontaneously talk to you… or stop and want to pet your dog.

It’s like that with parents. They immediately bond on parenting issues and people spontaneously stop and chat with babies.

I was a bit surprised about the research. Not what they found, but what they didn’t discuss. Perhaps it’s not true, or perhaps no one has looked at it.
And that is: unconditional love. You could be gone for 30 minutes and when you get home, the typical dog greets you like a long lost friend. It never matters what you look like, how good a job you do or what your financial worth is.

Now wouldn’t anybody want a friend like that?