I can live with that.
September 16, 2008
June 25, 2008
The Good Enough Guide to Health
ABC News: The Good Enough Guide to Health By CAMILLE NOE PAGAN, Prevention Magazine
e.g. Exercise
Gold Standard: 30 minutes of cardio, five or more days a week
Good Enough: 17 minutes a day
A new study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that women who exercised just two hours a week (or 17 minutes daily) reduced their risk of heart disease and stroke by 27 percent.
“You don’t even have to do it all at once. No fewer than 10 studies since 1995 show that breaking up physical activity into small segments of about 10 minutes is just as effective,” says Barry Franklin, director of cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., and spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s national “Start!” program.
Get ready. Get set. … GO!
January 6, 2008
High Heels And The Body
Sociological Images: Seeing Is Believing: High Heels And The Body
AKA why I wear walking shoes everywhere — unless I’m home, in which case I’m barefoot.
If I’m going to an event/venue that frowns on walking shoes (drinks at the Bankers’ Club comes to mind), I carry a purse big enough to carry heels to the venue and to pop my walking shoes into when I change footwear on arrival. …
His nibs worked with someone long ago who wore HIGH high heels everywhere until eventually she could not wear flat shoes without pain because her leg muscles (gastrocnemius muscles this illustration shows) had shortened in reaction to the abnormally high heels.
Barefoot girl, me.
(via Jason Schultz, Law Geek via Lori Dorn, HR Lori via a tweet from Laughing Squid)
June 27, 2007
And as long as we’re discussing pain and fashion
On Your Feet by January W. Payne (yes, no kidding, payne) Washington Post Staff Writer. Subtitled: How do shoes affect your feet? Is there a good way to walk in heels? Want to know about Morton’s neuroma? How about hammertoe and pump bumps?
A quick snippet from the middle:
One of trendiest shoes this season is YSL’s platform “Tribute” — with a tottering 5 1/2 -inch heel. Often painstakingly selected to complete outfits, shoes like these put stress not just on feet, but on ankles, knees and backs, contributing to the approximately $3.5 billion spent annually in the United States for women’s foot surgeries, which cause them to lose 15 million work days yearly.
Ouch.
(mentioned in the comments tail of the previously mentioned aetiology post)
The things women do for beauty–or, beware the bikini wax
The things women do for beauty–or, beware the bikini wax
Tara C. Smith, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Iowa, creates a post with serious ewww factor.
Here’s the background: A woman with untreated Type 1 diabetes (making her susceptible to infections) gets a bikini wax. … She comes down with a fever, swelling and pain where the bikini wax works its magic, waited another week to find a doctor. … and …
She presented to the ER with not only “grossly swollen” external genitalia, and pain so extreme that she had to be put under general anesthetic just so her physician could perform a gynecologic exam. She was so swollen that, according to the legend to Figure 1 (which you can find online, as the article is freely available), “she was unable to pass urine, and the vaginal space was obliterated by edema.”
Ouch.
The patient also had a rash over her chest and neck. From these clinical signs and the subsequent isolation of S. pyogenes from a urine culture and sample of the vaginal discharge, she was diagnosed with streptococcal cellulitis and toxic shock syndrome, and was also found to have an active herpes simplex virus type 1 infection.
[...]
Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ….
[via pharyngula. Thanks for the intro to Dr. Smith and aetiology, a blog that discusses “causes, origins, evolution, and implications of disease and other phenomena.”]
June 13, 2007
Symptoms Found for Early Check on Ovary Cancer
Symptoms Found for Early Check on Ovary Cancer – New York Times
By DENISE GRADY
Published: June 13, 2007
Cancer experts have identified a set of health problems that may be symptoms of ovarian cancer, and they are urging women who have the symptoms for more than a few weeks to see their doctors.
The new advice is the first official recognition that ovarian cancer, long believed to give no warning until it was far advanced, does cause symptoms at earlier stages in many women.
The symptoms to watch out for are bloating, pelvic or abdominal pain, difficulty eating or feeling full quickly and feeling a frequent or urgent need to urinate. A woman who has any of those problems nearly every day for more than two or three weeks is advised to see a gynecologist, especially if the symptoms are new and quite different from her usual state of health.
[...]
Take note. Read the rest of the article too.