WASHINGTON – The human mouth is home to millions of micro-organisms. These are not a problem in a healthy mouth, but where there is dental disease, these oral pathogens are extremely harmful.
Jessica Rickert DDS, Health Editor – Praire Band PotawatomiA common malady is periodontal disease, where the gums deteriorate. The bad bacteria present in active gum disease can include FUSOBACTERIUM NUCEATUM (Fn). There may be millions of these harmful germs. As they are swallowed, they can settle in the digestive tract. Yiping Han PhD, at Case Western Reserve University, discovered recently that Fn can attach and invade human colorectal cells. The molecules then turn on cancer growth genes and stimulate inflammatory responses in these cells and promote tumor growth. But, whether this FadA adhesion is an indirect or causal link remains unclear.
The Human papillomavirus is present in many patients’ mouths. When the HPV is present, it can cause an increase in oropharyngeal cancers.
Both cancers, and all cancers, are increased when the patients smokes tobacco and/or uses alcohol. Both cancers’ incidence and aggressiveness will be worsened by tobacco and alcohol usage.
A dentist is trained to look for oropharyngeal cancers at every dental checkup. But, if a sore which will not heal in 10 – 14 days is noticed, immediately see your dentist. Often, these cancers of the mouth are completely without symptoms.
Sound advice is to keep your mouth as healthy as possible by:
excellent oral hygiene;
a diet without white sugar and low in carbohydrates;
dental cleanings and checkups every 6 months.
It is time to quit using these poisons: tobacco and alcohol.
Mental health services for Native Americans took a 5 percent cut due to federal sequestration, and the reduction has cost tribes essential staff and programs, reports NPR.
Native teens and 20-somethings are killing themselves at an alarming pace. For those 15 to 24, the rate is 3.5 times that of other Americans and rising, according to the Indian Health Service (IHS). Tribes have declared states of emergency and set up crisis-intervention teams.
“People are overwhelmed. Sometimes they’ll say, I just can’t go to another funeral,” says Diane Garreau, a child-welfare official on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota.
But many of these mental health and suicide prevention programs are either being forced to scale back due to a lack of funding, or stunted and unable to expand to meet their community’s needs.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, for one, is now unable to hire two additional mental health service providers, Cathy Abramson, chairwoman of the National Indian Health Board, told NPR.
“Since the beginning of the year, there have been 100 suicide attempts in 110 days on Pine Ridge,” Abramson said at a Senate committee hearing in Washington last spring. “We can’t take any more cuts. We just can’t.”
FINDING HELP
• 1-800-273-TALK is a free, confidential 24/7 hot line for anyone who is in crisis about any issue and wants to talk to a trained counselor. You can also call if you know someone in crisis and want advice about what to do.
• The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) administers youth-suicide prevention funds provided by the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, named for a senator’s son who killed himself in 2003. The agency hopes that going forward more tribes will apply for them, says Richard McKeon, chief of SAMHSA’s suicide-prevention branch.
• SAMHSA offers technical assistance, on grant-writing and more, through its Native Aspirations program (NativeAspirations.org) and publishes a prevention guide, To Live to See the Great Day That Dawns, available online. The agency also maintains a registry of evidence-based (scientifically tested) suicide-prevention practices.
• For Indian Health Service resources, check the agency’s website.
• Two nonprofits, the One Sky Center and the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, offer much helpful information.
One of the fringe benefits of living car-free is that you end up exercising more, as a matter of course, as you bike to work or sprint to the bus stop as you see the last, late bus coming around the bend. But say you wanted to up your game, burning the most calories possible while getting around. What mode should you choose? Should you bike? Walk? Run?
According to broad calculations from the American College of Sports Medicine, someone weighing 150 pounds who runs at a brisk seven minutes per mile will incinerate about 1,000 calories per hour. That same person pedaling at a steady 16 to 19 miles per hour will burn about 850 calories. Meanwhile, walking requires far fewer calories, only about 360 per hour at a 4-mile-per-hour pace.
On a sunny afternoon, Oakland chef Crystal Wahpepah is measuring her success in many portions: a scoop of walnut pudding, a hunk of salmon with roasted zucchini, a ladleful of summer squash stew in a plastic cup. The occasion is the opening of a new Native American Health Center office in Richmond, and the food is the fruit of Wahpepah’s five-year effort to build a business.
Her catering service, Wahpepah’s Kitchen, specializes in traditional Native American cuisine, particularly recipes from her Pomo and Kickapoo heritage.
“Right now it’s a good time for my menu because it’s harvest time,” she says, handing a piece of pumpkin fry bread to a guest. “I like to know where 90 percent, maybe 100 percent of my food comes from.”
In fact, she’d picked the pumpkins over the weekend at a garden she keeps with friends in Sebastopol.
Wahpepah has been passionate about cooking since she was a child, when she would visit the Kickapoo Nation in Oklahoma and help her grandmother make meals of sweet corn, bison, summer squash and pumpkin. She also recalls the recipes she learned in the home of her uncle, who was active in the American Indian Movement in Oakland and hosted visitors from tribes across the nation.
“Those are the best memories of my life,” she said. “I learned what food the Sioux made, what the Apaches made.”
Native American-owned businesses are a rarity in the Bay Area, making up just 0.9 percent of the firms in the region. In Oakland, where Native Americans are less than one percent of the population, the number of businesses they own is low enough not to register in Census Bureau tallies.
The lack of Native American eateries is particularly striking given the diversity of the Bay Area food scene, which places a premium on local and ethnic foods. So far, Wahpepa says, she knows of no one else who’s making dishes like her savory potatoes wrapped in seaweed from the Pacific Coast, or her lemongrass tea from the Great Plains.
According to Tracy Stanhoff, president of the California American Indian Chamber of Commerce, the dearth of Native-owned business is due in part to a catch-22: when few Native Americans run businesses, would-be Native entrepreneurs struggle to find people who can offer them advice or financial help.
“There is a lack of mentors and a lot of first-generation business owners who are scraping to get by,” she said.
But Stanhoff doesn’t think urban Indian entrepreneurs face significantly different obstacles than other ethnic minorities. On tribal lands, tangled property laws and an absence of financial institutions mean that credit and collateral are often in chronically short supply. But in cities, Stanhoff says, the situation is not the same.
“There are barriers, but in urban areas it’s not too much different than for a regular small business,” she said. “We’re generally an underserved population and lack access to capital, but it can be done.”
Wahpepah grew up in East Oakland and studied marketing at American Indian College in Phoenix, Ariz., and, briefly, cooking at the California Culinary Academy. But with little in the way of capital, she struggled to get her business off the ground until she was accepted into La Cocina,an incubator program in San Francisco designed for low-income entrepreneurs.
At La Cocina, she learned about loans available through Kiva Zip, an offshoot of the successful micro-loan website Kiva.org. With an endorsement from Oakland’s Native American Health Center, she secured a $5,000 interest-free loan to help her pay for business permits, cooking space, equipment and other start-up costs.
“It helped tremendously,” she said of the Kiva Zip loan, which she received in December 2012. “I love Kiva because you can express yourself. Instead of looking at your credit, they look at your passion.”
She currently supplements her catering by teaching classes on Native American foods.
“The dream is to make Native Americans and non-Native Americans aware of how beautiful our food is, and how healthy too,” she says. “We should be proud.”
On September 10th the World unites to remember loved ones lost to Suicide during World Suicide Prevention Day. This year Tulalip will participate with a “Walk for Life” from the Tulalip Health Clinic parking lot to the tribal gym where we will have a potluck and candle lighting.
Suicide is a difficult subject to talk about for many people; but the most important thing we can do for prevention is break the silence, reduce the stigma and share. Please see the attached flyer, print it, give it to family members, create walking teams and help loved ones you know who may still be grieving, healing or living with suicidal thoughts themselves to come out and unite for this evening of Love, Acceptance and Remembrance.
This is an ALL COMMUNITY event, employees, friends, spouses, tribal members and everything else in between J
See you Tuesday September 10th, 6pm at the Health Clinic Parking Lot. (there will be rides back to your car afterward).
This Oct. 11, 2012 file photo shows a basket of medical supplies await storage in Brookhaven, Miss. The No. 1 question about President Barack Obama’s health care law is whether consumers will be able to afford the coverage. Now the answer is coming in: The biggest study yet of premiums posted publicly by states finds that the sticker price will average about $270 a month if you’re a 21-year-old buying a mid-range policy. That’s before government tax credits that will act like a discount for most people, bringing down the cost based on their income. ROGELIO V. SOLIS, FILE — AP Photo
WASHINGTON — The No. 1 question about President Barack Obama’s health care law is whether consumers will be able to afford the coverage. Now the answer is coming in.
Published: September 4, 2013
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR — Associated Press
The biggest study yet of premiums posted by states finds that the sticker price for a 21-year-old buying a mid-range policy will average about $270 a month. That’s before government tax credits that act like a discount for most people, bringing down the cost based on their income.
List-price premiums for a 40-year-old buying a mid-range plan will average close to $330, the study by Avalere Health found. For a 60-year-old, they were nearly double that at $615 a month.
Starting Oct. 1, people who don’t have health care coverage on their job can go to new online insurance markets in their states to shop for a private plan and find out if they qualify for a tax credit. Come Jan. 1, virtually all Americans will be required to have coverage, or face fines. At the same time, insurance companies will no longer be able to turn away people in poor health.
The study points to the emergence of a competitive market, said lead author Caroline Pearson, a vice president of the private data analysis firm. But it’s a market with big price differences among age groups, states and even within states. A copy was provided to The Associated Press.
The bottom line is mixed: Many consumers will like their new options, particularly if they qualify for a tax credit. But others may have to stretch to afford coverage.
“We are seeing competitive offerings in every market if you buy toward the low end of what’s available,” said Pearson, a vice president of Avalere.
However, for uninsured people who are paying nothing today “this is still a big cost that they’re expected to fit into their budgets,” Pearson added.
The Obama administration didn’t challenge the study, but Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said consumers will have options that are cheaper than the averages presented. “We’re consistently seeing that premiums will be lower than expected,” she added. “For the many people that qualify for a tax credit, the cost will be even lower.”
With insurance marketplaces just weeks away from opening, the Avalere study crunched the numbers on premiums filed by insurers in 11 states and Washington, DC.
Eight of them are planning to run their own insurance markets, while the federal government will run the operation in the remaining four. There were no significant differences in premiums between states running their own markets and federal ones.
The states analyzed were California, Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. No data on premiums were publicly available for Texas and Florida — together they are home to more than 10 million of the nation’s nearly 50 million uninsured people — and keys to the law’s success.
However, Pearson said she’s confident the premiums in the study will be “quite representative” of other states, because clear pricing patterns emerged. Official data for most other states isn’t expected until close to the Oct. 1 deadline for the new markets.
The study looked at premiums for non-smoking 21-year-olds, 40-year-olds and 60-year-olds in each of the 11 states and the District of Columbia.
It compared four levels of plans available under Obama’s law: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Bronze plans will cover 60 percent of expected medical costs; silver plans will cover 70 percent; gold will cover 80 percent, and platinum 90 percent.
All plans cover the same benefits, but bronze features the lowest premiums, paired with higher deductibles and copays. Platinum plans would have the lowest out-of-pocket costs and the highest premiums.
Mid-range silver plans are considered the benchmark, because the tax credits will be keyed to the cost of the second-lowest-cost silver plan in a local area.
The average premium for a silver plan ranged from a low of $203 a month for a 21-year-old in Maryland to a high of $764 for a 60-year-old in Connecticut.
The silver plan premiums for 40-year-olds were roughly $75 a month higher than for 21-year-olds across the states. But the price jumped for 60-year-olds. The health law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times more than younger ones. That’s less of a spread than in most states now, but it could still be a shock.
“It’s striking that the curve increases quite dramatically above age 40,” said Pearson. “As you get older and approach Medicare age, your expected health costs start to rise pretty quickly.”
But older consumers could also be the biggest beneficiaries of the tax credits, because they work by limiting what you pay for health insurance to a given percentage of your income.
For example, an individual making $23,000 would pay no more than 6.3 percent of their annual income — $1,450 — for a benchmark silver plan.
That help tapers off for those with solid middle-class incomes, above $30,000 for an individual and $60,000 for a family of four.
The study also found some striking price differences within certain states, generally larger ones. In New York, with 16 insurers participating, the difference between the cheapest and priciest silver premium was $418.
Youth involved in the University of New Mexico’s Honoring Native Life initiative want to be heard. The Native American Suicide Prevention Clearinghouse, a resource to tribes in New Mexico for suicide prevention and suicide response, today helped their voices reach far and wide with the release of a video directed toward tribal leaders and policy makers.
“What we need from our tribal leaders and policy makers is more sympathy towards the different generations that exist in our communities—the elders, parents, adults, youth, adolescents,” says a participant in the video. “Something that will bring those groups together but also recognize their differences.”
The video, which can be viewed at http://honoringnativelife.org, is meant to direct attention to the needs of Native American youth and strengthen tribal leadership and tribal policy makers’ involvement in suicide prevention.
The video was created at the recent Honoring Native Life Summit, an event specifically focused on addressing suicide in Indian Country. The Summit included involvement from the Pueblos of San Felipe and Zuni; Navajo Nation; Mescalero Apache Nation; Albuquerque Area Indian Health Service; New Mexico Indian Affairs Department; White Mountain Apache Tribe of Arizona; and several other tribal communities throughout the State.
“The message that we are hearing from tribal youth is that they want a voice, and in that respect, they want to feel like a priority to leaders and policy makers,” said Sheri Lesansee (Pueblo of Zuni), UNM, Department of Psychiatry, Center for Rural & Community Behavioral Health.
More than 30,000 people in the U.S. die by suicide every year. It is this country’s 11th leading cause of death. New Mexico consistently ranks among the top five states in the U.S. for its suicide rate, which is 1.5 to two times the national average. Suicide is the 9th leading cause of death for New Mexicans.
When Lucy Jackson was just 2-and-a-half years old, she seemed like a perfectly normal, healthy youngster. But that all changed on Thanksgiving day in 2007 while the Mill Creek family vacationed in Florida.
Lucy Jackson, 8, of Mill Creek (center) is one of 300,000 children across the country fighting the pain and debilitating effects of juvenile arthritis (photo courtesy Jackson family)
“She woke up and couldn’t walk,” says her mom Katie. She was in serious pain.
Lucy had been perfectly healthy up to that point in her young life. At first, her parents thought she’d possibly been bitten by a bug or something and went to the emergency room. There, the doctor couldn’t find anything wrong, except for some indicators she might have some inflammation in her joints. He mentioned the possibility of juvenile arthritis.
“We thought he was crazy. We just had no idea. We’d never even heard of juvenile arthritis,” she says.
When they got back home, doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital confirmed the diagnosis. Lucy had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA).
JRA is just one of more than 100 different diseases or conditions that fall under the umbrella designation of arthritis – a complex family of musculoskeletal disorders that destroy joints, bones, muscles, cartilage and other connective tissues, hampering or halting physical movement – according to the Arthritis Foundation. The word “arthritis” literally means joint inflammation, but can involve the eyes, skin and gastrointestinal tract as well.
In Lucy’s case, it is often painful and debilitating.
“I think she pushes through things she shouldn’t, but she limps a lot, her joints are sore at the end of the day,” says Katie.
“It is very hard because it hurts,” says Lucy.
At first, she had to get joint injections several times a year and take various medications. But as she’s gotten older, the arthritis has spread through her body, affecting a number of joints. Some days the pain, and stiffness, gets so bad she has a hard time moving. Now, she has to get weekly injections and take daily medications, which often cause serious side effects.
“She gets tired, nauseous. It just knocks her out,” says Katie.
Lucy’s not alone. Children’s Hospital estimates nearly 300,000 kids in the United States have some sort of arthritis. Unfortunately, there is no cure. The goal of treatment is to relieve inflammation, control pain and improve a child’s quality of life.
“This is a tricky disease, it doesn’t have clear boundaries,” Katie says.
While it can be overwhelming, luckily Lucy’s family doesn’t have to manage her arthritis alone. The Arthritis Foundation is there to help her and the one in every four Washington residents who struggle every day with this serious health epidemic.
“Our goal is to help reduce the unacceptable pain, disability and other burdens of arthritis and related diseases. We offer information, events, research funding, advocacy activities and other vital programs and services,” says Dr. Steven Overman, a nationally renowned Seattle-based rheumatologist and Arthritis Foundation of Washington board member. “We believe the heavy toll arthritis takes is unacceptable, and that arthritis must be taken as seriously as other chronic diseases because of its devastating consequences.”
For Katie, the Arthritis Foundation has been a “blessing” for the entire family. “It’s opened up a community of people that were going through similar stuff that we were. It helped us connect and feel normal because they knew what it felt like. It felt like a family,” she says. “It is a blessing. They are such kind people. And their goal is so narrow focused. They want a cure. I love that they have this optimism and they have a plan.”
“I hope they can come up with a cure because I want to be a veterinarian,” Lucy says hopefully.
There is no cure on the immediate horizon. But with increased research, more doctors focusing on arthritis and advances in treatment, Dr. Overman says the goal is to reduce by 20 percent the number of people suffering from arthritis-related physical activity limitations. But they can’t do it alone. The Arthritis Foundation needs your help, whether it’s donating to one of their fund-raising events or volunteering.
“Not only will you make a world of difference now in the lives of people who are disabled by arthritis. You will also be paving the way for a future free of arthritis pain,” Overman says.
“I would love my daughter to grow up and not have this pain anymore. I would love for her to be able to share her story and have it be a recovery story,” says Katie.
That’s why KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, 710 ESPN Seattle, AM 770 KTTH, Les Schwab Tire Centers and Carter Subaru are proud to recognize The Arthritis Foundation of Washington as our Charity of the Month. You can learn more and how to help here.
ATLANTA – Researchers have figured out how much a person with type 2 diabetes can expect to pay over a lifetime. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, Xiaohui Zhuo ran a computer model based on national data.
Here’s what he found:
“Persons with diabetes pay on average over $85,000 treating the disease over his or her lifetime.”
This includes treatment for diabetes such as insulin, and treatment for conditions that grow from diabetes, such as kidney disease, heart disease and stroke.
Unfortunately, American Indians and Alaska Natives have alarming statistics when it comes to diabetes. American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest prevalence of diabetes among all United States racial and ethnic groups, according the Indian Health Service.
The following statistics relating to diabetes among American Indians and Alaska Natives are staggering:
2.3 times higher – Likelihood of American Indian/Alaska Native adults to have diagnosed diabetes compared to non-Hispanic whites;
9 times higher – Likelihood of American Indian/Alaska Native youth aged 10-19 to have diagnosed type 2 diabetes compared to non-Hispanic whites;
1.9 times higher – Incidence rate of kidney failure due to diabetes in American Indian/Alaska Natives compared to the general United States population and
1.6 time higher – Death rate due to diabetes for American Indian/Alaska Natives compared with the general United States population.
Even with the dismal statistics, Type 2 diabetes is preventable and can be managed through eating healthier meals and increasing physical activity.
