HUB's LIST of medical fun facts

A baby aspirin a day does not necessarily keep the doctor away.
Daily low dose (81 mg. or a baby tablet) aspirin protects you from having your SECOND heart attack, not your first one. Another recent study confirmed that aspirin gives no such protection to someone who has a normal heart history. A baby aspirin is of NO benefit for primary cardiovascular disease prevention. (Despite these repeated studies many of us continue on our merry way of taking a daily baby aspirin in hopes of preventing “the big one.” )

Ritalin is apparently better than nothing . . . and lots of other things.
ADHD (Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disorder) in school children is not helped much by non-drug therapy. A 2011 review of 54 studies showed little lasting effectiveness of neurofeedback, child behavioral training, parent training, cognitive behavioral (“talk”) therapy, dietary changes, or herbal and Omega fatty acid supplements when compared to the usual psychostimulant drugs like Ritalin. (This lack of evidence of any benefits from non-drug treatment of this common condition is disappointing. The reviewers themselves call for additional studies.)

There’s An App For It – Among things that your smartphone can do are:

• Record and transmit a electrocardiogram of your heart rate and rhythm.
• Ask questions to determine whether you are slipping into a depression, and send a text message to your therapist.
• Have a trained counselor call you within an hour of you opening up a bluetooth equipped HIV self-test kit to interpret the results for you.
• Adjust the volume and sound characteristics of the hearing aid in your ear.
• Operate an automatic pill dispenser filled with your daily medications.
• Give you a “text neck”. The 60 degree angle of your neck as you text puts about 60 pounds of strain on your spine. (That’s the equivalent of 4 bowling balls).
• Measure, record, and transmit your blood pressure or blood glucose level.
• Give you an inaccurate pulse oximetry reading if using a non-FDA approved monitoring app. (In fact, the FDA faced with the existence of about 400,000 health and wellness apps has decided to review 20 apps a year that are directly related to gathering and transmitting clinical data. – FitBits are not included in that category)

Got your flu shot yet?
This year the CDC is recommending the quadrivalent flu vaccine for everyone over 6 months old who does not have a medical contraindication. No particular vaccine brand is recommended over the others. People with egg allergies can safely receive any of the vaccines. ( The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is pouring money into research efforts to reduce the potential effects of one of their greatest fear, another flu pandemic.)

Parents know best.
Children sleep better if fed earlier in life. Official pediatric policy used be to start solids at 6 months. Many parents think that starting at 3 months causes longer sleep periods and less sleep problems. A study of 1300 breast-fed infants in England and Wales showed that the parents are right. Duh! (Pediatricians used to recommend starting certain solid foods at even a later age because of potential food allergies. That is no longer true.)

The “other shoe” on probiotics.
The current wisdom that “probiotics are harmless and can benefit everyone” is not necessarily true. The exploding volume of research on our “microbiome” (the bacteria in our intestines) reveals that the bacterial mix in our intestines is unique to each individual (like a fingerprint) and is “good” for us in its natural state. Probiotics can change that mix, and one study shows that some of us have guts that are not only “resistant” to probiotics, but that alteration of our natural mix by probiotics could delay recovery from some illnesses.

Why your visit to your doctor’s office isn’t the same as the “old days”.
It is estimated that a typical primary care physician needs 22 hours a day to address all of the preventive, acute, and chronic needs of an average patient panel of 2,500 patients. This includes all of the insurance-prescribed, electronically embedded (in the electronic medical record – EMR) quality measures tied to the reimbursement of the physician. (This is one reason we patients are filling out more questionnaires, clicking on more boxes on a screen, and spending more time with nurse practitioners and physician assistants when we go to the doctor’s office. “The doc can’t do it all any more.”)

Watch out. More un-immunized children are on their way to school.
A 2017 CDC telephone survey indicates that about 100,000 children in the U.S. born in 2015 and 2016 have not received vaccination against the 14 disease for which shots are recommended. This is an increase from a similar study of children born in 2011.

Too fat? Just take a pill. . . A new kind of pill.
A capsule with a long thin plastic tube is swallowed by the patient. Once in the stomach air is pushed down the thin plastic tube, the capsule expands into a balloon filling 1/3 of the stomach, the patient has sensation of having a full stomach, and the thin tube breaks off and is withdrawn. In about three months the stomach balloon disintegrates, deflates, and is passed out in the stool. It has been approved in Europe and is being tested in the U.S. hoping for FDA approval in 2020. Another start-up company is hoping that their capsule filled with gel that expands in the stomach juices and accomplishes the same thing will also be approved. ( The gel-filled capsule is a bit of deja vu for me. As a chubby pre-teen trying to lose weight, I remember taking a tablespoon of “weight-loss powder” a half-hour before a meal, waiting to let it expand in my stomach, and feeling less hungry  so I ate less. I forget its name, but I do clearly remember the time I was in a particular hurry, ate too soon after the dose, and promptly emptied my over-filling stomach onto my shoes.)

A timely tip for women.
With all the surprise disclosures of “good men” exhibiting past sexual harassment acts and even sexual assaults, how can a woman feel confident that the man she is with is not the aggressive type? A recent study suggests you can just look at his hands. The shorter the index finger is compared to the ring finger, the more aggressive the man may be. This is from a study of 300 Canadian men and women. No correlation of personality to finger lengths was found in women. Researchers associate this finding with “the amount of testosterone that babies are exposed to in utero”. ( Or could it be related to being born North of the 49th parallel?! )