India 2010

Ideas to blog in more detail about from our just concluded trip to India
Going to the Dogs,
Horn Yuddh
I Gotta Go...
The Glass Wall
Sad Shopkeepers..inside the plush Cineplex
Trash Advertising - just LAY-ing around.
Asphalt Nation
Where will the cars go
Us and them - the story of cars.
Horn bajana - Gaali dena
Bengaluru -The first Street Lights in India this metro still has Air Horns in the city.

singing for fun is motivation for doing more for the world

Happiness is singing to 70's music and strumming my air guitar, vow I love it .
Motivates me to do more for the world.
Like the doctor who was fired in Panama city for disparaging donuts!
America dies on Dunkin.
Wrote a comment on NYT Well blog today.
Tell Ten People and then ten more.

Mind wandering in "sudden death" class, how can we prevent it

My mind was wandering in my "sudden death" class...prevention prevention prevention!!.....

How did my mom learn about cod liver oil? My mother grew up east of the the Kyber Pass. She was the top student in her class in Kohat in the North West Frontier Province of undivided India..
Where oh where did she learn about that stinky, ugly stuff. I cried and held my nose. Daily! She wouldn't take no for an answer. Momma made me drink COD LIVER OIL.

I was daydreaming. Now I was too senior to be kicked out of class, a welcome change indeed from my 8th grade Physics class at St Xaviers, Jaipur. Would it not be better to prevent sudden cardiac death than waste health care $$ on ACLS?

ACLS is when EMT's, nurses and doctors work frantically to revive you after you suddenly fall dead. Skill, teamwork and luck improve your odds of being brought back to life successfully. Luck especially. So, if you must, have a witnessed cardiac arrest around a trained provider who has an automatic electronic defibrillator (AED) on hand and he can "shock you" as quickly as possible.


And then, as I looked around the room at the class - ironically studying death - and I thought how many of us eat McDonald's fries (McDonald’s french fries just got fatter ), smoke dried plant matter,
eat farmed salmon loaded with carcinogenic stuff.(organochlorine contamination in farmed salmon),
do not eat N Dakota flax all the while hoping to get lucky when we get Ventricular fibrillation.
Could we change? Before we get shocked. V Fib, is treated with a DC electric shock. V Fib and V
tach are the most common and - if-they-find-you-and-shock-you-quickly - reversible cause of sudden death.

Could we just ignore the marketing/brainwashing and try change what we eat?

Dietary omega-3 fatty acids stabilize the myocardium electrically, resulting in reduced susceptibility to ventricular arrhythmias and a marked decrease in risk of sudden cardiac death and reduction in all-cause mortality. Oily fish is good for you.. even the Wall Street Journal and JAMA agree on this one!
Trans fats increase sudden death. Omega 3s reduce it.
Brain Blockers-Trans Fats reduce IQ. Omega 3s increase it  so VEGETARIANS can use Flax(Ulsee) or chia seeds, walnuts, hemp, and other sources.

New York is right says Dr Willett of Harvard in banning Trans fats.
But how did my momma know this stinky stuff was so good for me?!

Nutrition is more than laboratory science. Nutrition is us smart humans listening to the wisdom of our elders, learning from observation of nature, and not getting blown away by marketing and the dollar menu.

My momma was smart. Thank you momma!

Doctor Vinod's Wellness Blog: Impact of adolescent overweight on adult mortality

Doctor Vinod's Wellness Blog: Impact of adolescent overweight on adult mortality

Bigger male breasts. Are more male breast cancers coming?

Most young men that I see for infection problems are obese. Because of higher estrogen levels they all have significant amount of breast tissue.

With increased obesity rates more males with breast tissue are among us.

Will we end up with an epidemic of male breast cancer 3 decades from now as these young men reach the age at which women get breast cancer?

Male breast cancer numbers presently are low. Am cancer society estimates that 1720 new cases of male breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2006 and 460 men will die from the disease. http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_1X_What_are_the_key_statistics_for_male_breast_cancer_28.asp?sitearea=

Most obesity is related to sugar drinks.http://www.cspinet.org/liquidcandy/

One more reason to avoid all regular and diet pop. Glad Bismarck schools passed this excellent pop policy last year.
Dr Vinod

Train whistle noise - Effects on health, some ideas, solutions

Vinod Seth wrote on August 27, 2006 6:40 PM:"As a doctor I look for what is the major cause of an ailment and what if fixed would be of the most benefit to the patient. Careful thought is given to the final decision.

In the case of noise around Bismarck-Mandan, N Dakota I think train whistles by far and away fit those criteria best--because of both severity (loudness, 85dB) & frequency (>1000x/day.) Interstate highway noise would be a close second.

Both are fixable if we the people push for it - your city government controls train speeds through town and could hold that as leverage on BNSF or whatever railroad goes thru your towns. The city could require the railroad to give us safe, whistle free European type crossings to continue to go at 35 mph thru town, or cut speed to 15 mph 10pm to 7 am. It was probably 12 years ago that the our city Bismarck increased the speed of the trains from 30 to 35mph. That means we can cut it down too.

For highway I 94 speed its the state N Dakota DOT- we can cut speed thru town on the interstate to 40 mph from 10pm to 7 am and noise would be much more bearable. It was not too long ago that we raised it from 55 to 60mph. That may be a hard sell in the big cities considering how busy those highways are now. But the cities similar to Bismarck, metro population under 100,000 could still do that.

Bismarck Mandan and all of N Dakota, as well as the smaller cities have a precious resource - their quiet. Growth from those who choose to move here or return here from the noisy sprawling big metro areas of a million plus will depend on how well we preserve that resource.
Or we can be sure our cities will sprawl further out as people move out further and further from the city centers to escape noise (without even knowing that that is their motivation)

How do we convince our city, county and state leaders.

How do we compel them to think of our health and that of all the children.

Now, not 10 years from now."


HEALTH EFFECTS OF NOISE

Vinod Seth wrote on August 24, 2006 12:53 PM:" Health effects of noise- a study from Austria- where they studied children exposed to different levels of much less noise 50 db vs 60 dB. I quote "Children in the noisier areas had elevated resting systolic blood pressure and 8-h, overnight urinary cortisol. The children from noisier neighborhoods also evidenced elevated heart rate reactivity to a discrete stressor (reading test) in the laboratory and rated themselves higher in perceived stress symptoms on a standardized index." Cortisol levels in the urine are a marker of stress - the well known fight or flight response which is what saved us through our evolutionary development from sudden dangers. It is subconscious. Find the original article at - The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America -- March 2001 -- Volume 109, Issue 3, pp. 1023-1027.

Also please read - The influence of subjective reactions to noise on health effects of the noise.Environment International, Volume 22, Number 1, 1996, pp. 93-104(12) - concerns in this article were for those exposed to high levels of night noise and included high blood pressure, immune dysfunction. Other researchers have noted anxiety and psychiatric disorders as well as overeating (is obesity connected? I will leave that to somebody else to comment.) .

Yes it is expensive to redo the railroad crossings so that they are safer and noise free but the health of the people, of our children is not for sale. There is no overarching right to profit and specially not at the cost of our health."

Regulations for large businesses only - small is beautiful

Pasteurization was introduced in the 20th century because of the risk of
Tuberculosis in cows infecting humans thru their milk.
That risk is miniscule now.

As has happened with other regulations the small producer(or in the case
of Medicare- the solo physician) is unable to keep up.
Benefits (profits) of scale lead to ever larger facilities and soon we
end up with regulation induced ( malignant) growth throughout all
enterprises food producing, food serving, food manufacture and even all
human services too.

The bottom line is all that matters.

In milk production cows are fed whatever is cheap, and antibiotics and
hormones are used as we all know.. What cows are fed in corporate milk
factories is nauseating. If only they could talk.

A solution out of this regulation induced rampant growth would be good.

Small producers - and small can be whatever would provide a living wage
for each able bodied person in the family enterprise- should be exempt
from science driven well intentioned regulation. Thus milk producers,

meat, eggs and other small scale agricultural production could thrive
again and give much needed boost to non urban lifestyles. The buffalo
commons would fade away.

If you doubt, remember the largest milk induced food poisoning was the
infamous 200,000 patient outbreak of Salmonella gastroenteritis due to
transport of fully pasteurized, cold refigerated liquid Schwan ice cream
in a tanker that had carried liquid eggs on the prior trip. Small
production has inherent safeguards. We all remember the million pound
beef recalls when E Coli contaminantion of mega facilities with their
mega containers makes the news.
Smallness protects us.