A health wish list for the new year
As we visit the waning, dark days of 2005, I’m putting together a wish list for the new year. I could start working on my own New Year’s resolutions, but there’ll be time for that. Instead, I offer you my health wish list for 2006.
• I wish that the feared bird flu pandemic would fail to materialize just like the dire predictions of Y2K computer bugs. Failing that, I wish that the valiant scientists who are working on a vaccine will achieve their goal in time and that a drug company will step forward to produce it, even though it won’t make them a fortune.
• I wish for clean air. Scientists have known for 20 years that hospitalizations and deaths from heart disease and stroke increase when traffic-related air pollution increases.
Scientists reporting in the Journal of the American Heart Association think they know why. They exposed volunteers to one hour of diesel exhaust and found that their blood vessels failed to dilate, or expand, with exercise. They also found that the level of an enzyme that keeps blood from clotting decreased in response to the pollution.
Both of these can set a person up for a heart attack, especially if the arteries are already clogged, as many of ours are.
• I wish that teenagers would not take up smoking.
According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, while smoking rates in teenagers declined significantly after peaking in the 1990s, the decline has slowed almost to a stall in the past two years. More than 23 percent of high school seniors still light up.
The report surmises that this has come about because states have cut their funding for tobacco cessation programs while the tobacco companies have increased their marketing to record levels.
• I wish we’d get to the bottom of the Women’s Health Initiative, the landmark study that caused a lot of us to stop our hormones.
Two recent articles have questioned the methods of that study. The average age of study participants was 63 years old, hardly the age of incipient menopause.
Only one preparation was used – the fixed dosage Prempro, or Premarin alone for women without a uterus. There are other estrogens and other ways to take them (cyclically rather than both every day, patches rather than pills).
A multicenter trial started last year, but unfortunately the results won’t be available until 2010, so I guess I won’t get my wish this year.
• I wish we’d get a sensible Medicare drug benefit, not one that is so confusing it’s driving seniors crazy.
I wish the government would negotiate reasonable prices with the drug companies, like it does for the Veterans Administration and like every other Western country does for its citizens.
• I wish that we, the richest nation in the world, a country with 341 billionaires at last count, could provide health coverage for all its citizens.
Approximately 45 million Americans, or one of seven, are currently without health-care coverage. Close to 82 million of us spent a portion of either 2002 or 2003 without health-care coverage. That’s one third of the population below the age of 65.
• I wish we’d all figure out how to eat better, sleep longer and exercise more.
• I wish some entrepreneurial spirit would open a chain of fast-food restaurants with nothing but healthy food on the menu. Along the same lines, I wish the plates restaurants serve their food on, and the portion sizes served on them, would get smaller and not larger.
• I wish we all walked more.
• Finally, I wish we would treat the barrage of health news – what’s bad for us, what’s good for us – with some healthy skepticism and stick with the simple stuff that we know is nourishing to the soul and the body: happy, loving relationships and a healthy lifestyle.
A happy, healthy new year to you all, and thanks for stopping by to visit every Tuesday.