Another Reason to Join the Go-Green Bandwagon...

I can still taste it. A mix of rotten egg salad and sulfuric acid. It was worst in the spring afternoons when the air was hot and thick. It stuck to the back of your throat and clung to every panting breath as we sprinted up and down the field. It was our home-field advantage. The thick, sour smog that loomed from the factory next to our field became our ally for those two halves; but by the next practice, it was back to being our biggest rival.

Air pollution and athletes don't mix. My lacrosse team swears that down the road one of us will have defective babies or some mysterious disease from hours of sucking the poisonous air, and we'll regret not sending letters to our state congressmen like we wanted. But even if we all keep our strong, healthy physiques and our offspring have the appropriate number of limbs and digits, there's reason for fitness buffs to worry about the supply of fresh O2.

As Dr. Homer Boushey of the Health Effects Institute explains in "The air we breathe" on CNN Paging Dr. Gupta's blog, typical breathing during intense workouts is through the mouth, rather than the nose. Problem? When dirty, polluted air is your body's fuel, that breathing pattern exposes you to more pollutants. And you don't have to be Al Gore to figure out what that does to your health.

That's why Haile Gebrselassie, 34-year-old Ethiopian marathoner, will pass on the summer Olympics in Beijing. The world record holder has exercise-induced asthma, and worries that it won't mix well with Beijing's chart-topping pollution levels. Even though Boushey doubts a short trip to the heart of China's economy will do significant damage to Gebrselassie's health, it's not a risk he's willing to take. Even if it means forfeiting his chance at gold.

While we may not be breaking world marathon records or shipping out to Beijing any time soon, the inconvenient truth is that we can't breathe easy. Unless we start making some green changes, fitness junkies could be taking their workouts indoors--permanently.

Stop Stressing...Stop Cancer?

When it comes to your health, stress has earned its bad boy image (Want proof? Just take a look at what it does to your body.) I just got done reading Steve Mitchell's "Feeling stressed out linked to cervical cancer" on MSNBC, and it's definitely worth a read. A new study shows that a woman's stress-level might be a factor in her body's ability to fight off the cancer-causing virus, HPV. It's too soon to tell (they're currently doing more research), but it's a good article and it definitely doesn't hurt to think about it it--just don't stress about it!

Fat's the new black

I'm going to go out on a limb here and acknowledge the HUGE white elephant in this country: America has a weight issue. While the thin-is-in mentality has faced harsh criticism for its role in the fashion industry and Hollywood, the rest of the nation is dealing with a different, but equally dangerous mindset--that fat's the new black.

As long as I can remember, flipping through magazines meant looking at young girls with bodies that seemed too good to be true (only to find out that they are--mostly every image placed in women's magazines are retouched and fixed to look "better"). Sure, I probably wished my legs were that skinny, or that long, or my hair was that silky, or my lips that perfectly pouty. Maybe I got a complex from all the images, but it was the same complex I got from my gorgeous best friends and my perfectly beautiful classmates.

Flash forward to today. In an attempt to combat the emaciated starlets and models, the country has launched a plus-size counterattack. What began as a fantastic idea in the beginning, has had some unforeseen side effects. With roughly two-thirds of the population overweight or obese (and no, that's not in skinny model terms, that's in professional doctor terms), there are new concerns that our cultural connotations of healthy have shifted into dangerous waters. Take some time to read MSNBC's "Is fat the new normal?" by Karen Collins, which looks at a study from the July issue of Economic Inquiry. It seems as though as our country packs on the pounds, the cultural ideas of "healthy weight" tip the scales as well.

Now don't get the wrong idea here. I don't think it's okay that we let size 00 models stomp (or should I say, dizzily stumble) down runways. I'm still trying to understand how we have sizes like 00. It's uncomfortable to watch Project Runway and hear designers say that their model is harder to work with because she is a healthy size 4. But I also think that telling young women to completely disregard their health as long as they are proud of their bigger bodies isn't the solution either. Despite what some would like to believe, there is a line that no one should cross (on both extremes). There is such a thing as being too fat, just as there is a limit to how thin is too thin. It reaches a point where the curves become dangerous, and the health risks become serious.

I'm all for supporting women of all shapes and sizes, and being proud of who we are despite what the media has to say about it, but I think it's more important to be honest with yourself. Are you within a healthy weight range, or do you need to make some changes?

Give me the Facts!

The fight against America's obesity epidemic and for full-food-fact disclosure has been waging for years. And while no side has been named the clear champ, one middle-party is taking most of the punches--the American public.

Americans today eat out twice as much as they did in 1970--so shouldn't they have the right to know what they're eating? I sure thought so, but apparently it's not that simple.

In 2003, a California bill (SB 679) was introduced to the state Senate that would require fast-food chains or any other restaurant with 10 or more locations to disclose their nutrition data per request and post signs informing customers that the information is available. It has recently become a slow-growing trend, but this early effort was DOA.

Later that year, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) was joined by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and the Center for Science and the Public Interest (CSPI) to introduce legislation to help fight obesity. The Menu Education and Labeling (MEAL) bill would require fast-food joints to list their calorie counts on menu boards, and table-service restaurants on printed menus. It seemed to have some muscle behind it, but didn't have quite enough strength to push its way past introduction.

In 2005, McDonald's announced a new plan to add nutritional facts directly to the packaging, in addition to the information available at their website and brochures in stores. So when you're about to sink your teeth into a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, you know you're putting down 730 calories. It seemed like a win, but later proved to be self-defeating (knowing the startling nutritional facts after you buy the cheeseburger does not keep you from eating the cheeseburger)

All these efforts and others like them seemed like great attempts at one small step for mankind's health (and waistline), but without a law, many restaurants refuted and refused to comply. It was too much work, would take too much time, there was no way to be completely accurate. Maybe. But could restaurants' resistance stem from somewhere else? Maybe, just maybe, could companies like Cheesecake Factory not want consumers to know that hidden in one slice of Chocolate PB Cookie Dough Cheesecake is 1150 calories and 74 grams of fat? I'll place my bets on the latter.

The importance of these laws are indisputable. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the state of the nation's weight in 2006 is in dire need of intervention. Only four states had a percentage of obesity less than 20%. Twenty-two states had a predominance equal or greater than 25%, including Mississippi and West Virginia with obesity equal to or greater than 30%!

Luckily, the fight isn't over yet. Today, at least 14 states and three cities (NYC and Philly have made news recently) have passed or are working on laws to give Americans more of what they want: the facts!

"Grey" area

Last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy--which I had to wait and catch today (I work Thursday nights as a computer lab attendant, so Friday's are my time to catch up and watch online)--got me thinking: how often do we all get it so completely wrong?

Doctors bear the heavy burden of always having to get it right. No matter what, they are expected to take your signs and symptoms and correlate them to the exact cause--and treat it. Immediately. But when those signs and symptoms can indicate one of a hundred possible causes, that task becomes exponentially harder (and makes us all hope our doctors spent their decade of school getting straight A's).

Then add in a patient who omits "unimportant" details (like constant chest pains or frequent migraines), can't describe with any accuracy what his/her body is feeling, or is absolutely-positively sure he/she knows what's wrong, and it begs the question--when it comes to our health, do we lead our doctors astray?

Here are 5 of the most commonly misdiagnosed diseases, according to a recent CNN article:

1. Aortic Dissection: a potentially fatal disease (actor John Ritter died from it), it sometimes masks itself as "heartburn."
2. Cancer: some cases are "silent killers," (ovarian being one) not displaying any symptoms at all until it's too late. But doctors miss it too, according to a Harvard study on U.S. malpractice claims, so don't hesitate to get a second opinion if you think your doctor's missing something.
3. Clogged Arteries: with a national agenda of getting in shape, many doctors push patients that note "being short of breath" onto the treadmill when they should be pushing them into a hospital--and treating them for coronary artery disease.
4. Heart Attack: ever feel nauseous, full in the chest, or just not up to par? These can be symptoms of a heart attack, making it less than the cut-and-dry diagnosis most people think it is.
5. Infection: I didn't think I'd find this on the list, but the same Harvard study ranked infection post-cancer as the number one misdiagnosis.

So how do we know when heartburn needs more than Tums, when cramps need more than Midol, and when a fever needs more than a day's rest and a bowl of chicken noodle soup? Maybe we can't, but we should learn from Dr. Karev and stick to our guns when our intuition is yelling. If something doesn't feel right or won't go away, get medical advice. Prepare an accurate symptom play-by-play for your doctor: when did it start, what does it feel like, how long has it been going on, what makes it feel better, what makes it feel worse?

Don't like the verdict? Get a second opinion, or a third, or even a fourth. You know what your body is telling you, make sure a doctor hears it as well!