Economic stress really hurts. Literally. So finds a new survey conducted by the American Pain Foundation. Nearly 7 in 10 people (68 percent) with acute back pain or other muscle strains and sprains report that the recession has played a role in their pain. More than a third (37 percent) said the recession had a big painful impact.

"People are willing to admit that the stress of this recession is having an effect on their bodies," says Michael Roizen, MD., RealAge.com founder and chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic. "They are having to work harder now, and the stress of the economic situation seems to be having a physical stress on them." Working with King Pharmaceuticals, RealAge has launched a tool to help people prevent and treat back (and other) strains and sprains. 

iVillagers had different responses to President Obama's speech on health care reform last night. They were nearly unanimous that Representative Wilson's outburst was out of line, although some conservatives had mixed emotions. Samples:

Positive reaction

"Thank you Mr. President for keeping the priorities straight - security and stability for those with healthcare, the opportunity to have healthcare insurance for those who don't, and cost control." 

"Over all - I though the speech was excellent. It feels like Obama has to work twice as hard through & jump through hoops explaining himself...more than any other president. Fingers are crossed that he changed a few opinions of the plan..."

Negative reaction

"It was the same old stuff he's been saying all along. Same lies, same partisan childish divisiveness. He really didn't say anything different. At the end he pretended he was going to say we need tort reform and then he didn't really do it." 

As for Representative Wilson...

"It was an embarrassment. That is NOT the forum for that kind of behavior, and an audience with the president isn't the place at all.

"I think President Obama handled himself well. To me it looked like he looked over at Wilson like "what, are you nuts?!" LOL And Pelosi looked MAD. A couple other times it seemed like President Obama looked back over at Wilson like "Yeah, you gonna say anything to this?"
The stupid thing...we already have LAWS that illegal immigrants wont get government health care $. But, in the end we ALL end up paying for it because emergency rooms MUST treat everyone. They can't say "well, show me your greencard first". They go to the ER for minor things, and we end up paying for those visits :-( "


"Wilson apologized - ya it brings to mind my a few people I have met who think they can act any way they want (judgmental, mean, drunk, high etc..) as long as they go to church on Sunday and ask God for forgiveness. Well I guess Joe Wilson can disrespect you and treat you any way I want as long as he apologizes."

"Probably could've said the same thing at a lot more places in the speech! But, I will say, I can't believe he actually did it! Definitely unprofessional of him. But yet part of me says - atta boy! "

It might--if your mom or sister has had breast cancer, finds a new study published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "If a woman has a family history of breast cancer, she can feel especially good about breastfeeding," says lead author Alison Steube, MD, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The finding: high-risk women who breastfed were 59 percent less likely to develop breast cancer before menopause over the next 8 years.

"Breastfeeding is good for mothers, not just for babies," says Dr. Steube.

"Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem?" asks Tara Parker Pope in her New York Times column, Well. She reports that some parents, media watchdogs and alcohol counselors are concerned that these scenes may encourage children and adolescents to engage in underage drinking. "In scene after scene, the young wizards and their adult professors are seen sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows," she writes.

Harry Potter fans beg to differ, including my 13-year old daughter, Emily. Last night, when she called from camp and I mentioned this, she exclaimed, "Butterbeer doesn't have any alcohol or only a little bit! The only person to get drunk on butterbeer ever was Winky, and she drank like 20 of them, and everyone knows that elves are really small! " (As a dad, I'm impressed that she already has a good intuitive sense of the relationship between body weight, alcohol dose, and intoxication risk, let alone the tendency of certain elves with low self-esteem to fall victim to alcohol abuse.)

What's more surprising is that some addiction experts also find the controversy a little odd.

getty images

getty images

When Sonia Sotomayor was a young girl she loved Nancy Drew, according to President Obama. But "when she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8, she was informed that people with diabetes can't grow up to be police officers or private investigators like Nancy Drew," said the President when he nominated her to the Supreme Court. "In essence she was told she'd have to scale back her dreams."

Times change. Judge Sotomayer's discipline in controlling her type 1 diabetes, in which the body destroys its own insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas, is so effective that her doctor says there's no evidence she suffers from any of the complications of the condition common in people who've had it for decades. She controls her blood sugar better than 98 percent of people with type 1, according to the New York Times.

That makes her a role model for many iVillagers--along with Mary Tyler Moore, of course.
"My nephew was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at age 8," writes one iVillager. "The discipline that that disorder requires is phenomenal. Fortunately, when he was diagnosed, I was able to find people familiar with Type I/IDDM who were able to clue me in that with discipline, someone with Type I can play professional hockey or run a marathon. BUT - it requires enormous discipline. One night alone with too much insulin, might be the last. So yeah, when I hear the Sotomayor has been coping with diabetes since age 8, my respect for her increases, dramatically." 

Fortunately, the future for children and young adults diagnosed with type 1 is getting brighter. Continuous pumps and monitors make a hard job a little easier, even for toddlers. Research continues on an "artificial pancreas", a seamless system that would continuously monitor blood sugar and control it through insulin.

But what if the condition could be prevented entirely? A vaccine shows promise. So do simple acts, like breastfeeding and following recommendations on introducing solid foods:

• Breastfeeding, for at least six months is linked with lower rate of the development of type 1. Moms should try to breastfeed for at least a year, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)
• Delaying solids. Babies should not be introduced to solid foods before four months of age, according to the AAP. Yet half of moms give their babies food before four months.
  

 "Although there is a lot of research on the environmental causes of type 1 diabetes, we still do not know them and don't completely understand why the disease is on the rise all over the world," says Dana Dabelea, MD, PhD, a associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado, Denver. "Among the most interesting hypotheses are those related to various early life exposures, especially recent changes in infant diet patterns (i.e., overfeeding, earlier introduction of solid foods, etc), which may result in increased rate of childhood growth in both weight and height, thus creating an additional burden or stress on insulin-producing beta cells (the overload hypothesis)."

Whatever one's politics, one can appreciate the power of Judge Sotomayor's example for parents of kids with type 1. But let's hope that some day we won't need role models anymore.

Related links:
Type 1 Diabetes Center

Stem Cells Buy Freedom from Insulin for Type 1 Diabetics

Most Kids with Type 1 Diabetes Lack Vitamin D


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What's bathed in olive oil, seeped in wine, a perfect balance of vegetables and fruits and beans and grains and fish, with smaller portions of dairy foods and just a little red meat? It's the Mediterranean Diet and the closer you adhere to it, research suggests, the longer you'll live. Now the latest study finds that certain components are more protective than others: Plenty of vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes and olive oil, moderate alcohol intake and only small amounts of meat are associated with longer life. But eating more fish and grains and going light on dairy products may not keep you on the planet longer. Yes, it's just one study, so don't write off fish or whole grains or moderation in dairy foods just yet. But it does raise an interesting question: Does olive oil make it easier to enjoy a plant-based diet?

That's certainly what study author Antonia Trichopoulou, Ph.D., an epidemiology professor at the University of Athens, believes. She's not only studied the Mediterranean Diet but embraces the lifestyle of her native Greece. When I spoke with her last year at a conference on the Mediterranean Diet, she told me, "Olive oil is why we consume so many vegetables: tomatoes, zucchini, garlic and onions. Plus we add it to legumes, lentils, peas, and bread. Without olive oil, it's not easy to adopt the Mediterranean diet."

But it doesn't need to be the pricey kind, she says. "Yes, extra virgin tastes better and has extra-healthy antioxidants and other compounds, but cooking with it destroys much of those. So save the virgin for your salad, and use cheaper olive oil for cooking." The main benefit to switching to the oil of the olive, says Trichopoulou: "Vegetables taste better."

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Is eating raw cookie dough another innocent bit of fun that's about to become a nostalgic, slightly-scary memory, like driving without seatbelts? Toll House cookies has joined the ranks of beloved American food institutions felled (at least temporarily) by disease-causing pathogens. Spinach is a fresh staple but not everyone loves it. Peanut butter hit home. But Toll House cookies? That's attacking a piece of American history, dating back to the original recipe from the Toll House near Whitman, Massachusetts in 1930.

The voluntary recall announced on Friday involves Nestle's TOLL HOUSE refrigerated cookie dough products. It's no idle warning: The pathogen, e. Coli O157:H7, a renegade form of the common e. Coli that inhabits our guts, is the same bacteria that killed children and adults who ate infected hamburger years ago. Already, this cookie dough outbreak has sent 25 people to the hospital, some with "hemolytic uremic syndrome," which can result in kidney damage--and death.

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Federal taxes on cigarettes went up months ago and now President Obama has signed legislation letting the FDA regulate tobacco. You'd think that smoking rates would fall. But there's a hitch: When times are tough, smokers tend to smoke more and put off their quit dates.
 
We spoke to NBC News Medical Editor Nancy Snyderman, MD, to learn how to fight the urge to light up.

Q: Why do people smoke more when times are tough?

Dr. Nancy Snyderman: When money is short, you'd think that people would stop wasting money on cigarettes. But under stress people smoke more. They eat more high-fat foods too. Part of it is the "What the heck?" phenomenon when you're under stress.

Photo: Getty Images

The World Health Organization is on the brink of declaring the swine flu outbreak a true pandemic. That means it's on every continent (Australia tipped the balance) but it's still a fairly mild strain everywhere on Earth. For now.

Sleepaway camp concerns: One odd aspect of the H1N1 virus (the official name for what everyone still calls swine flu) is that it appears to be spreading even though the weather is balmy. No winter recluse is this. Now that kids are either out of school or eagerly counting the days, many parents are starting to worry about summer camp. Will swine flu outbreaks close summer camps just as they have closed schools? The answer is...it just happened. A Boy Scout camp in Utah closed on Tuesday, June 9. Expect more camps to close. Unlike schools, though, kids at sleepaway camp can't just take the school bus home immediately; it could be a logistical nightmare, and a big concern for parents hundreds of miles away from their kids.

It's easy to worry. Influenza experts are watching carefully for signs the virus may become more virulent now that it's in the southern hemisphere, and come back as not only a pandemic but a potentially dangerous one in the fall. For now, there are concerns for pregnant women and parents.

The best advice? Stay calm but stay informed.

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The death of a 20-year-old woman from swine flu in Chicago one day after giving birth has made pregnant women nervous--and full of questions. To answer them, we asked pediatrician Claire McCarthy, MD, who answered iVillage moms' top questions about swine flu in May. Dr. McCarthy is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, a senior editor for Harvard Health Publications, and a contributing editor for Parenting Magazine.

Q: I'm pregnant, and worried.  Are there any special precautions I should take?

A: We are still learning about H1N1 (formerly known as swine flu), so we don't know for sure how it might affect pregnant women and their babies.  What we do know is that pregnant women can be more likely to get sick than other people, and when they get sick it can be dangerous both for them and their baby.  So it's important to take precautions:

• Wash your hands with soap and water, or alcohol-based gel (carry it with you), every chance you get
• To the extent that it is possible, stay away from sick people.
• If you have been exposed to someone with H1N1 (or with a flu-like illness that might be H1N1), talk to your doctor about whether taking medication to prevent illness (or at least make it milder) makes sense
• if you have flu symptoms (fever, congestion, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, vomiting, or diarrhea) call your doctor immediately.
• For more information, here is the link to the CDC's recommendations for pregnant women
  

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Susan Boyle on May 8 Photo: bauer-griffin

Susan Boyle on June 5 photo: ap images

Less than a week after being hospitalized for "exhaustion" and a reported "nervous breakdown", Susan Boyle has reportedly been released. To understand what she might be going through, and whether she's getting the best care, we spoke with Srinivasan Pillay, M.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinical associate at McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.

"Coming back too soon and too fast can be dangerous, if a person is exposed to a stressful situation without treatment in place," says Dr. Pillay. What is too fast, of course, depends on the individual, he says, "but a reasonable estimate is to try to diminish exposure to high-levels stresses for two to four weeks after the initial event. Afterwards, you can expose yourself to a lower-stress environment, while remaining in contact with your therapist, so before and after the event you can process what's been happening."

Over the weekend, H1N1, aka swine flu, reminded us that it can still pack a deadly wallop. A beloved assistant principal at a public school in New York City died, becoming the sixth American citizen to succumb. Dozens of schools, especially in New York and Texas, remain closed due to the outbreak. Meanwhile, the CDC estimated that as many as 100,000 Americans may have gotten swine flu, even though only a little over 5,000 cases are confirmed. "It's not going away, despite what you may have heard," says CDC spokesperson Anne Schuchat, M.D. on Monday, May 18. "People are continuing to get sick, to get hospitalized, and to die, and we expect more. This virus is the ultimate moving target."

"It astonished us," recalls Wanda Jones, Dr.P.H., director of the federal government's Office on Women's Health, now celebrating the 10th anniversary of Women's Health Week, the focus of iVillage's Health is Beautiful campaign.  She is recalling the "electronic brainstorming" sessions that began in 2003 and eventually lead to the report released this morning, May 11, 2009, Action Steps for Improving Women's Mental Health. The core question: What is the most important action for improving the mental health of girls and women?

"Resilience was at the heart of it," says Dr. Jones. Yes, it's true, women are more at risk for mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety disorders compared to men. Yes, they are much more likely to experience trauma, violence and abuse, with potential lifelong damage to mental health. These are real, and the appropriate response isn't to adjust to them, but to prevent them in the first place.

But women also have more emotional strengths than men have, and more ways to support each other. "Resilience is the ability to bounce back when things hit us hard," explains Dr. Jones. "If you are resilient, you can go back to a normal approach to work, to play, to family. The event or issue doesn't dominate your life. It's not quite as if it never happened, of course," she says. "We are changed by these events. Whether it's a natural disaster or being victimized, some people are completely incapacitated. But others can put it in perspective and move on."

Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities, by Elizabeth Edwards, was published by Broadway Books on Friday, May 8, 2009. It is an honest searching book that explores her own struggles to be resilient in the face of the death of a son, her terminal cancer, and the marital infidelity of her husband, John Edwards. Here are a few quotations:

On Resilience
"Too many times I have had to use my father's strength--or my mother's grace as she stood beside him--as a touchstone. I suspect we each have someone like him, someone whose personal courage in the face of impossible odds inspires us to do something we thought we could not do, who reminds us that what seems like a mountain in front of us can in fact be climbed. My father was an imperfect man in many ways, but maybe it was better than he was imperfect and that I knew he was, for I learned that perfection was not a requirement of resilience. This was Dad, and if he could decide to live, so could I."
p. 9

On Acceptance
"This is the life we have now, and the only way to find peace, the only way to be resilient when these landmines explode beneath your foundation, is first to accept that there is a new reality. The life the army wife knew before her husband went to war, the life of the patient before the word "terminal" was said aloud, the life of the mother who sat reading by her son's bed and not his grave, these lives no longer exist and the more we cling to the hope that these old lives might come back, the more we set ourselves up for unending discontent....My life was and would always be different, and it would be less than I hoped it would be. Each time, there was a new life, a new story."
p. 31

On Finding Support on the Web
"I found a group of people who were as lost and miserable as I was and we helped each other find our footing and find our individual paths. I suspect there are few better examples of barely functional people than those who have just buried their children. We are fortunate just to be dressed, particularly fortunate if it is not exactly what we wore the day before. We barely eat, we don't know where to go, we don't seem to belong anywhere. Yet some of us gravitate to the Internet, and there, with a little searching, we find one another...And there we were all equal, in a fashion. There we were all parents who have done the impossible: We have placed our child in a box and the box in the ground and we do not know what to do next. And yet we were stronger when we were with one another." 
p. 82

On Choosing Happiness
"I cannot pretend that I didn't wish the disease was in my control. All that is in my control is how I live now. I could fill the days with fears--there are plenty of those--or I could fill them with the best joys I can cobble together....There is enough unhappiness and pain to fill my days, but I choose to be happy."
p. 149

Is health beautiful? Is beauty healthful? Evelyn Lauder has been answering "yes" to both questions for more than 20 years. In the early 90s, Mrs. Lauder, senior corporate vice president of the Estée Lauder corporation. founded the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign, with its famous pink ribbons, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. But even earlier, in 1988, she joined with fellow members of the cosmetics industry to help create the Look Good, Feel Better campaign.

"The cosmetics industry got together to help women during their time of treatment for cancer," she says. "The idea was that if they look good, they would feel better when they look in the mirror."  It's succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. "We get letters from women who write, 'I've never used cosmetics before I had cancer. Now I look better with cancer than I did before,'" she says. The simple act of taking care of your appearance can be a healing experience. "By looking good, she feels better, and that can help her heal psychologically."

Claire McCarthy, MD, is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, a senior editor for Harvard Health Publications, and a contributing editor for Parenting Magazine. We asked her to answer questions iVIllage moms have been posting on our message boards.

1)    How can I stay calm?
The best way to stay calm, I think, is to realize that even if the worst happens--i.e. that you or someone in your family get the H1N1 virus--you will most likely be completely fine.  While people do get sick with it, in the vast majority of cases there is a full recovery.  The virus is also sensitive to antiviral medication, and there are thousands of stockpiled doses.

For a little perspective, every year during regular flu season there are more than 30,000 cases of flu--and up to 10% of the people who get it die (usually the very young, the very old, and people with other health problems).  Yet we all go about our daily lives each year during flu season without panicking.  

Another way to stay calm is to get the real information behind the sensational (and frightening) headlines.   The best, most comprehensive source of information is the CDC's H1N1 website; turn off the TV and visit the website regularly, and check in with your local department of health.

"After one death, there is no other," wrote Dylan Thomas. And now we have the first confirmed death on American soil from swine flu, a 23-month old child in Texas who traveled from Mexico with his parents to Brownsville. It's not the first death, of course. In Mexico, there are 159 suspected dead, with seven confirmed. If parents in the U.S. are scared, those in Mexico City must be terrified.

What's it like to be in the epicenter of a potential worldwide flu pandemic? Lucy Popescu, author of The Good Tourist, a book about human rights and ethical travel, writes in her blog about what it's like to be in Mexico City when even the churches are silent. She's also experienced an earthquake and gotten a little too close to a scorpion...

Just in time for Earth Day, the EPA has come clean: Global warming is bad for health. On April 17, 2009, the EPA found that "greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations." Turns out that heat waves, wildfires, flooding, rising sea levels and more intense storms are bad for people's wellbeing, too. Who knew?

 

So reducing your carbon footprint is a healthy act. More directly, taking care of your health can be good for the planet. Eat less beef, more beans? Less risk of cancer and heart disease, less carbon produced in the agricultural process. Walk or bicycle to work instead of driving? You'll be fitter and spew less carbon. You can even save money.

 

Nature may help heal the mind, too. Spend an hour walking in the woods and you begin to shed the ultrastimulating nature of modern life that makes attention-deficit disorder a social malady as well as an individual diagnosis. Contact with nature can decrease mental fatigue and accidents, and enhance mood and concentration.

Yoko Ono brought the missing pieces of her autism art on the TODAY show this morning. She'll restore them when the mysteries of this devastating spectrum of disorders is found. Proceeds of the auction will benefit the non-profit group Autism Speaks.

In the meantime, parents watch their infants for signs. Did my 3 month old smile? Was my 7 month old interested in the mirror? Did my year old cry when mom or dad leaves? These are the hallmarks of normal development. Learning them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the key to discovering potential delays that may signal development issues including autism. Not so long ago, it was believed that autism couldn't be discovered before 18 months or two years, but now we know we can see telltale signs as early as 3 or 6 months. The earlier treatment starts, the better the chances of success.

But until we know what causes autism, we won't be able to prevent or cure it. Sure, there's always news about autism, tiny pieces of the puzzle.  But until we know more there will be controversy and pain. Yes, we can help each other and celebrate small victories. But our children deserve better. Thank you, Yoko.

--Bob Barnett