I am in the midst of final exam week and grading. In the background, Dr. Oz started talking about ‘paraben’ and how it acts as an estrogen. I am always on the alert for these kind of messages. Hormones, research, cancer, blood clotting… these all came to mind. I got up from the computer and went to listen carefully. And then I went to my bathroom. My shampoo have five kinds of paraben in it. My two different types of body lotions had multiple forms of paraben as well. I got rid of them. Trash. Not a moment’s hesitation.

Why? Well, one of the facts Dr. Oz shared is that in one research study, 19 of 20 women diagnosed with breast cancer had significant levels of paraben in their breast tissue. I will hunt down the research and share it soon. For now, here is a summary of content from Dr. Oz with the link to the story at the end:

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Dick Clark died today. I was reminded of how much music benefits our health. Here is a link to a summary of some of that research: http://www.designandhealth.com/uploaded/documents/publications/papers/paul-robertson-wcdh2000.pdf. It says that music can reduce pain…all kinds of pain. Thank you Dick Clark for lessening our pain… all kinds of pain.

What does it mean to be a public figure like Warren Buffet? It seems that it includes a feeling of obligation to inform the public of medical test results. Which is what he did today. In a way that reflects hope and action. His message is a good example of talking about health.

A beautiful new granddaughter came into my life one week ago. And I am reminded of the meaning of sleep deprivation. And I am happy that I enjoy a good cup of dark roast coffee. Sitting in the piles of research I have been reviewing was an article about the incidence of gout in women and drinking coffee [see http://www.ajcn.org/content/92/4/922.short]. Following the behaviors of 89,433 women across time, 896 cases of gout were confirmed in the women, or about 1% of the women being followed. These women were found to consume less coffee than women who did not experience gout… I thought coffee drinkers among us would want to know this and talk about the possible health benefit with other coffee drinkers as well…

In the research I discussed in my last post, I noted that there are different styles, so to speak, for predicting how we might want to communicate about our health. The personal control folks believe that their personal behaviors determine how genes relate to health. The participants who fit this style did not want to much communicate about their health. In fact, they were least likely to want to talk about their conditions. Perhaps they believe they have everything under ‘their control’. But what if not talking means that they miss a chance to prevent a poor health outcome?

Here is an example. On Dr. Oz today, he was giving advice about reducing fat in various parts of the body. He advised in one case to use red clover tea. He did not add that it should NOT be used if you are taking Coumadin/Warfarin–a blood-thinning medication. It interacts with the medication and can cause excessive bleeding. Someone in the facebook exchange about the advice noted this important fact.

Others noted that no one should take anything suggested by Dr. Oz without  first consulting a physician. And so, the idea of personal control does not mean we should NOT talk about our health. In fact, in trying to have control over our health, we need to be sure that the advice we think makes sense for us fits based on our pesonal health history and current medications and therapies.

That is the question posed in one story about some recently completed published research. Science Daily reported about the research on March 12th [see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312114119.htm]. The report describes the finding that there are four ways of looking at how genes affect our health in the U.S. population that are rather equally distributed. For some,  their beliefs form around how personal behaviors relate to whether genes affect out health, whether our social environments have any effect, and whether religious faith and spirituality play a role. For others, their beliefs form around confidence that our personal behaviors predict whether our genes will affect our health. For a third group, they convey uncertainty about how genes affect our health, neither agreeing nor disagreeing that personal behavior, social environments, or spirituality plays a role. Finally, a fourth group is quite confident that our genes are our genes, and how they affect our health has nothing to do with our personal behavior, our social environments, nor our spirituality.  

It is the finding that we vary in our beliefs that led one reporter to talk about it in terms of our ‘style’ [see http://www.communicationstudies.com/matching-communicaton-styles-to-patients-beliefs-study]. I’ll talk about how that might be a good ‘fit’ for thinking about communication and health over the next few days.

The members of the Centre County Canoe & Kayak Club return to the water, as seen in this video… It is a metaphor for the news of the day…the rocky and wild path of health care reform in the U.S.

In my book, Talking about health, I weave several themes through the book in a number of ways. One of these is: know your health history, know your family health history, and know what is ‘normal’ for you. My youngest sister had a recent experience that she thought would remind us of just why it is so important to do these things and to be our own health advocate.

First, let me say that my sister is trained as an intensive care nurse. I begin with that because her doctors know of her background, and yet even she feels that it is difficult to stand her ground and act on her own behalf in her own best interests sometimes. And she has a lot of medical education and experience to back her up.

Our family, as illustrated in Talking about health, inherited the factor five leiden mutation which increases risk for blood clotting. There are a number of other risk factors for blood clotting and we also have inherited some of these as well. In my sister’s case, she has a couple of factors contributing to risk, and she tells about them in her story in my book. Well, in the past several months, a gynecological finding  led to the recommendation that she take Provera [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000688/ ]. Here are some highlights of what followed when she said that she thought that would not be a good idea based on her health history and…

I am sure that you’ve all heard about it. But just to be sure we are on the same page, let me share a brief story about ‘pink slime’ below so you know what I am talking about. I guess one of my favorite comments I’ve heard during this discussion came from a vegetarian who stated, “If I knew where my meat was coming from, I might eat it.” For me, it is the use of the word “lean” that gets me. Count the number of times it appears in the news story here. It really makes me wonder how often I have purchased really ‘lean’ ground beef in the past and got it at a good price–but really wasn’t getting what I thought I was buying.. Hmm. And when did pink slime first get added to our meat supply? Anyone know?