Category: Health
Snohomish County 2013 Walk MS
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Location: View with Google Maps
Address: Tulalip Amphitheatre, 10400 Quil Ceda Blvd, Tulalip, WA
Site Opens: 9:00 a.m.
Route Length: 2.4 miles
What if we could connect every person living with MS? Every person who cares about someone with MS. Every family affected by it. Everyone who has seen what this disease can do to people. What if we could come together, even one day a year, to show the power of our connections? At Walk MS, our connections become more powerful than the connections MS destroys.
When you participate in Walk MS, the funds you raise give hope to the more than 12,000 people living with MS in our community, and more than 72,000 others whose lives are directly impacted (family members, friends, co-workers, and caregivers). The dollars raised support life-changing programs and cutting-edge research.
Register now, connect with others and start fundraising today.
CONTACT US
If you would like more information about Walk MS, or the Greater Northwest Chapter and the services we provide, please use the contact information below.
General Questions: walkMSnorthwest@nmss.org
Donations: waswebdonations@nmss.org
Website: waswebsite@nmss.org
Check your child’s shot record to ensure full protection
Early vaccination works best — National Infant Immunization Week, April 21-28
Source: Snohomish County Health District
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. – Parents want to protect their children, but they might not know about some of today’s vaccines or the serious diseases they prevent, such as polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, and whooping cough. These diseases can be especially serious for infants and young children – witness the Lake Stevens infant who died in the whooping cough epidemic that swept Snohomish County last year. More than 35,000 cases of whooping cough were reported across the United States last year, including 15 infant deaths. The majority of these deaths were among infants younger than 3 months of age.
Medical providers are standing by in Snohomish County to help you ensure your child is fully immunized against 16 vaccine-preventable childhood diseases during National Infant Immunization Week, April 21-28.Vaccination is so important that Washington state subsidizes shots for children under age 19. Families are asked to pay an office visit and administration fee. These charges may be waived if the family cannot pay.
Vaccinate kids on time. Overseen locally by the Snohomish Health District, the state’s Vaccines for Children program enrolls and assists 84 health care professionals to safely stock and administer vaccines according to the recommended childhood immunization schedule. The Health District also immunizes children at its clinics in Lynnwood and Everett.
Vaccinate completely. A recent sample of local medical records showed about 25 percent patients aged 3 months-10 years were not up to date with the recommended whooping cough shots. Forty-nine percent of children 19-35 months of age in Snohomish County do not have complete vaccination records on file in the state’s central immunization registry.(Source: Washington State Department of Health, Child Profile Immunization Registry, 2010).
All vaccinators are encouraged to enter immunization information into the state’s Washington Immunization Information System, formerly known as Child Profile. Ask your pediatrician and family practice doctor if they participate, and check your family’s immunization status.
Vaccinate during pregnancy. In response to recent whooping cough outbreaks in several states, including Washington, the national Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices advises all pregnant women to get adult whooping cough vaccine (Tdap) during each pregnancy, ideally in the third trimester. The antibodies formed will provide disease protection until the child is old enough to begin the vaccine series at two months of age. If Tdap is not given during pregnancy, women should get the vaccine as soon as possible following birth to prevent them from getting pertussis and passing it along to a newborn.
Flu vaccine is also recommended for pregnant women, so a baby is born with protection until it can receive flu vaccine at 6 months of age. To protect infants under six months old, make sure that everyone near them is fully vaccinated.
Established in 1959, the Snohomish Health District works for a safer and healthier Snohomish County through disease prevention, health promotion, and protection from environmental threats. Find more information about the Health Board and the Health District at http://www.snohd.org.
How much exercise do we really need?
Local food code goes low-cal as state’s beefs up, May 1
Duke Study Finds Diabetes Research Concentrates on Treatment, Not Prevention
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
A recent Duke University study has found that diabetes research primarily focuses on drug therapies as opposed to prevention, reported the Huffington Post.
In a report published in the journal Diabetologia, study authors concluded that research pertaining to diabetes prevention and therapy is insufficient.
Duke scientists examined nearly 2,500 diabetes-related trials from 2007 to 2010, of which almost 75 percent emphasized diabetes treatment and only 10 percent observed preventative measures. The majority of trials, more than 63 percent, involved a drug, whereas less than 12 percent used behavioral tests.
In addition, study authors found diabetes research tends to exclude older adults and children who stand to significantly benefit from improved disease management. Adults and seniors face the highest risk of diabetes, but the condition is also on the rise among children and youth—especially in Indian country, a finding consistent with increases in obesity among Native American youth, states a U.S. Department of Agriculture 2012 report to Congress titled, “Addressing Child Hunger and Obesity in Indian Country.”
Furthermore, many trials were completed in a short time span of two years and did not include geographically diverse diabetes patients. “The majority of diabetes-related trials include small numbers of participants, exclude those at the extremes of age, are of short duration, involve drug therapy rather than preventive or non-drug interventions and do not focus upon significant cardiovascular outcomes,” the report in Diabetologi states. “Recently registered diabetes trials may not sufficiently address important diabetes care issues or involve affected populations.”
Study researcher Dr. Jennifer Green, an associate professor at Duke University School of Medicine and a member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, said the exclusion of older adults and children from these trials means that the research can’t necessarily apply to them. “We really don’t understand how best to manage disease in these patients—particularly among patients of advanced age,” she said in the statement. “So the exclusion of them from most studies and the small number of trials that specifically enroll older individuals is problematic.”
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/04/08/duke-study-finds-diabetes-research-concentrates-treatment-not-prevention-148670
World Health Day: What Steps Will You Take to Stay Healthy and Cancer-Free?
![Exercise through sport or dancing to stay healthy. (J. Morgan Edwards Photography)](http://www.tulalipnews.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/j._morgan_edwards_photography_099.jpg)
Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
April 7, 2013 is World Health Day. As part of the movement to promote healthy living, what steps will you take to stay healthy and cancer-free?
The American Cancer Society has five easy suggestions that will help keep you healthier and reduce your risk of cancer at the same time.
Get off the couch and get on the treadmill. Or on the stair stepper. Or on the elliptical. Whatever the case, get active! Now that Spring is finally here, you don’t have an excuse. Grab a loved one and go for a nice evening walk outside. The American Cancer Society recommends a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise daily for adults, so get moving!
![Eating fresh produce regularly may reduce your risk of cancer.](http://ictmncdn1.tgpstage1.com/sites/default/files/default/files/uploads/peachy.jpg)
Avoid drinking in excess. If you drink, limit alcohol to one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. The American Cancer Society has found that drinking damages body tissue and increases the risk of cancer. Is the extra drink really worth the risk?
Watch your waistband. Arlene St. John Black Bird, program director for the Breast & Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (BCCEDP) at Cheyenne River Health Center in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, offers some dietary advice: “Research shows that poor diet is strongly linked to cancer. To stay healthy, limit red meat and avoid processed meat. Instead, try lean proteins like chicken or turkey. Making small changes to your diet can actually make a big difference.”
Get regular cancer screenings. If you have a family history of cancer, you should talk to your doctor about getting screened at an early age. Statistics show that early detection saves lives.
Be tobacco free. Tobacco use accounts for at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths and 87 percent of lung cancer deaths. By smoking, you’re not only putting yourself at risk—you’re also jeopardizing your loved ones. Each year, about 3,400 non-smoking adults die of lung cancer as a result of breathing secondhand smoke. Quit today and keep yourself and your loved ones cancer-free.
Did you know that 2/3 of all cancers are preventable? That means following the American Cancer Society’s guidelines will reduce your risk of cancer and, potentially, save your life.
With statistics like that, it seems like a no-brainer: This World Health Day, commit to healthy living.
For more healthy living suggestions, contact the American Cancer Society at 1.800.227.2345 or www.cancer.org.
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/04/07/world-health-day-what-steps-will-you-take-stay-healthy-and-cancer-free-148649
Business interests trump health concerns in fish consumption fight
“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”
By Robert McClure
March 30, 2013
The Washington State Department of Ecology has known since the 1990s that its water-pollution limits have meant some Washingtonians regularly consume dangerous amounts of toxic chemicals in fish from local waterways.
At least twice, Ecology has been told by its overseers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fix the problem and better protect people’s health. Ecology was close to finally doing that last year — until Boeing and other business interests launched an intense lobbying campaign aimed not just at Ecology but also at the Washington Legislature and then-Gov. Christine Gregoire. That is the picture that emerges from recent interviews as well as government documents obtained by InvestigateWest under the Washington Public Records Law.
The problem lies in Ecology’s estimate of how much fish people eat. The lower the amount, the more water pollution Ecology can legally allow. So by assuming that people eat the equivalent of just one fish meal per month, Ecology is able to set less stringent pollution limits.
Meanwhile, citing the health benefits of fish, the state Department of Health advises people to eat fish twice a week, eight times as often as the official estimate of actual consumption. The state knows that some members of Indian tribes, immigrants and other fishermen consume locally caught seafood even more often than that and are therefore at greater risk of cancer, neurological damage and other maladies.
The Boeing Co. looms large in this story. In June 2012, Boeing said if Ecology went ahead with plans to make fish safer to eat, it would “cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and severely hamper its ability to increase production in Renton and make future expansion elsewhere in the state cost prohibitive,” according to a Gregoire aide’s reconstruction of a conversation with a Boeing executive that month.
In July 2012, Ecology announced it would not go forward with a new rule to adjust the fish-eating estimate as planned. Instead the agency launched a “stakeholder process” that would delay any new rules for at least two years. Last week that process plodded on in Spokane, where state and local government officials and others spent more than three hours discussing the many contaminants that for years have prompted official state warnings against eating Washington fish too regularly.
“All we’ve seen is delay,” said Bart Mihailovich of the Spokane Riverkeeper environmental group, one of several that have refused to participate in the new series of meetings. “Why are we going back and doing what was already done?”
At the meeting in Spokane Thursday, a representative of Indian tribes called Ecology’s conduct “a betrayal” and explained that the tribes are boycotting the current process because it is unnecessary.
“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”
Ecology had at least one other false start in fixing the rules, back in the mid-1990s, an effort that petered out even before a rule change was proposed, said Melissa Gildersleeve, the Ecology manager overseeing the current stakeholder process. That followed a 1994 study by the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission that documented how the national estimate of one fish meal per month was greatly and regularly exceeded by some members of Indian tribes.
While who eats how much contaminated fish is a slippery and much-debated corner of science, few of the parties involved in the current dispute in Washington contend that the current fish-consumption rate accurately reflects the true amount eaten, especially by some groups such as members of Indian tribes, subsistence fishermen and immigrants. The figure came from a 1973-74 federal study that asked consumers to fill our “food diaries” for three days, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
How to Dispose of Unused Medicines
Source: FDA Consumer Health Information www.fda.gov
Is your medicine cabinet filled with expired drugs or medications you no longer use? How should you dispose of them?
Most drugs can be thrown in the household trash, but consumers should take certain precautions before tossing them out, according to the Food and Drug Administra- tion (FDA). A few drugs should be flushed down the toi- let. And a growing number of community-based “take- back” programs offer another safe disposal alternative.
Guidelines for Drug Disposal
FDA worked with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop the first consumer guidance for proper disposal of prescription drugs. Issued by ONDCP in February 2007 and updated in October 2009, the federal guidelines are summarized here:
- Follow any specific disposal instructions on the drug label or patient information that accompanies the medication. Do not flush prescription drugs down the toilet unless this information specifically instructs you to do so.
- Take advantage of community drug take-back programs that allow the public to bring unused drugs to a central location for proper disposal. Call your city or county government’s household trash and recycling service (see blue pages in phone book) to see if a take-back program is available in your community. The Drug Enforcement Administration, working with state and local law enforcement agencies, is sponsoring National Prescription Drug Take Back Days (www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov) throughout the United States.
- If no instructions are given on the drug label and no take-back program is available in your area, throw the drugs in the household trash, but first:
- ° Take them out of their original containers and mix them with an undesirable substance, such as used coffee grounds or kitty litter. The medication will be less appealing to children and pets, and unrecognizable to peo- ple who may intentionally go through your trash.
- ° Put them in a sealable bag, empty can, or other container to prevent the medication from leaking or breaking out of a garbage bag.
FDA’s Deputy Director of the Office of Compliance Ilisa Bernstein, Pharm.D., J.D., offers some additional tips:
- Before throwing out a medicine container, scratch out all identifying information on the prescription label to make it unreadable. This will help protect your identity and the privacy of your personal health information.
- Do not give medications to friends. Doctors prescribe drugs based on a person’s specific symptoms and medical history. A drug that works for you could be dangerous for someone else.
- When in doubt about proper disposal, talk to your pharmacist.
Bernstein says the same disposal methods for prescription drugs could apply to over-the-counter drugs as well.
Why the Precautions?
Disposal instructions on the label are part of FDA’s “risk mitigation” strategy, says Capt. Jim Hunter, R.Ph., M.P.H., senior program manager on FDA’s Controlled Substance Staff. When a drug contains instructions to flush it down the toilet, he says, it’s because FDA, working with the manufacturer, has determined this method to be the most appropriate route of disposal that presents the least risk to safety.
Drugs such as powerful narcotic pain relievers and other controlled sub- stances carry instructions for flushing to reduce the danger of unintentional use or overdose and illegal abuse.
For example, the fentanyl patch, an adhesive patch that delivers a potent pain medicine through the skin, comes with instructions to flush used or left- over patches. Too much fentanyl can cause severe breathing problems and lead to death in babies, children, pets, and even adults, especially those who have not been prescribed the drug. “Even after a patch is used, a lot of the drug remains in the patch,” says Hunter, “so you wouldn’t want to throw something in the trash that contains a powerful and potentially dangerous narcotic that could harm others.”
Environmental Concerns
Despite the safety reasons for flushing drugs, some people are questioning the practice because of concerns about trace levels of drug residues found in surface water, such as rivers and lakes, and in some community drinking water supplies. However, the main way drug residues enter water systems is by people taking medications and then naturally passing them through their bodies, says Raanan Bloom, Ph.D., an environmental assessment expert in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Most drugs are not completely absorbed or metabolized by the body, and enter the environment after passing through waste water treatment plants.”
A company that wants FDA to approve its drug must submit an application package to the agency. FDA requires, as part of the application package, an assessment of how the drug’s use would affect the environment. Some drug applications are excluded from the assessment requirement, says Bloom, based on previous agency actions.
“For those drugs for which environmental assessments have been required, there has been no indication of environmental effects due to
flushing,” says Bloom. In addition, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, scientists to date have found no evidence of adverse human health effects from pharmaceutical residues in the environment.
Nonetheless, FDA does not want to add drug residues into water systems unnecessarily, says Hunter. The agency reviewed its drug labels to identify products with disposal directions recommending flushing or disposal down the sink. This continuously revised listing can be found at FDA’s Web page on Disposal of Unused Medicines (www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/ Consumers/BuyingUsingMedicineSafely/ EnsuringSafeUseofMedicine/Safe DisposalofMedicines/ucm186187.htm).
Another environmental concern lies with inhalers used by people who have asthma or other breathing problems, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Traditionally, many inhalers have contained chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s), a propellant that damages the protective ozone layer. The CFC inhalers are being phased out and replaced with more environ- mentally friendly inhalers.
Depending on the type of product and where you live, inhalers and aerosol products may be thrown into household trash or recyclables, or may be considered hazardous waste and require special handling. Read the handling instructions on the label, as some inhalers should not be punctured or thrown into a fire or incinerator. To ensure safe disposal, contact your local trash and recycling facility.
12 Things Doctors May Not Tell You About the Drugs They Prescribe
By Jennifer, WAKE UP! www.wakeupnow.org
When physicians prescribe medication they do so after a thorough evaluation of their patient. It is up to the patient to educate themselves on safety warnings and potential dangers associated with taking the drug.
1. Many prescription drugs including pain and anti-anxiety medications can be addictive.
2. Just because a controlled drug is legal to prescribe, doesn’t make it safer than illegal drugs.
3. A teenager’s brain continues to develop until age 24, which increases their risk of addiction 8 fold.
4. Taking a prescription drug that doesn’t belong to you is a FELONY.
5. Sharing, selling or giving someone a controlled prescription drug is a FELONY. You are seen as a drug dealer/trafficker, with a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
6. Driving a vehicle under the influence of controlled prescription drugs is legally the same as a DUI (Driving Under the Influence “of alcohol”)
7. Never adjust the dosage of a medication that was prescribed to you. Depending on the controlled substance, it can lead to withdrawal symptoms including: difficulty breathing, confusion, exhaustion, decreased heart rate, anxiety, insomnia, muscle tremors, physical dependence, and even life-threatening consequences.
8. Mixing controlled substances can be dangerous – make sure your physician is aware of all medications and herbal supplements you are taking. Your doctor may not have access to the names of medications prescribed by other physicians. Mixing controlled substances can lead to overdose and death.
9. Do not mix alcohol with controlled substances. It can cause: drowsiness, dizziness; increased risk for overdose; slowed or difficulty breathing; impaired motor control; unusual behavior; and memory problems.
10. Don’t just throw unused medicine in the trash. There are specific guidelines provided by the government on how to dispose of medication. To learn more visit:
http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm101653.htm#GuidelinesforDrugDisposal
11. Keep track of when you take all medications – this will minimize the chances of taking double doses, or missing a dose.
12. Don’t discuss what medications you are taking with anyone but your medical or mental health team, and keep the medications in a secure place at all times. Prescription drug abuse of controlled substances has become an epidemic in the United States. Often these medications are stolen from medicine cabinets and nightstands. Addicts have been known to break into homes where they suspect they can find meds, as well as assault someone who is in possession of the prescription medication they desire.