rd.com Blog: Living Healthy

It's Enough to Make Your Stomach Hurt

Lisa Davis — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:03:00 EDT

Researchers at Digestive Disease Week 2009—a gathering of gastroenterologists, liver specialists, and others who focus on the region of your insides that handles food—reported yesterday that using some popular heartburn drugs may raise the risk of hip fracture.

The heartburn drugs in question are the particularly effective acid-squelchers known as proton pump inhibitors (such as Prevacid, Nexium, and Prilosec), as well as another group that’s a little less effective in its acid-blocking, the histamine—2 receptor antagonists (Zantac and Tagamet, among others). Because of some early hints that people on these drugs were experiencing a higher rate of fracture, researchers at Kaiser Permamente in California analyzed data on about 170,000 people—comparing the approximately 40,000 who were on acid-reducers to the 130,000 who weren’t. The risk of hip fracture was about 30 percent higher in people who’d been on acid-blockers for at least two years; the risk went up with longer use and higher doses.

These drugs are considered to be pretty safe, the researchers say, but it may be that you need a certain amount of stomach acid to properly absorb calcium.

If you’re prone to heartburn, don’t overstuff at meals, don’t rush, and don't go straight to bed after eating. It can help to lose a few pounds, too. You can find more heartburn-avoidance tips here.

Revitalize Sad Soil for a Healthy Harvest

Fern Bradley — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:34:00 EDT

In this guest post, Fern Marshall Bradley, coeditor of Reader's Digest's All-New Illustrated Guide to Gardening, talks about a great technique for reviving sad garden soil.

In the past two years, thousands of Americans have started growing fruits and vegetables in backyard and community gardens in a quest to provide fresh, nutritious food for themselves and their families. If you're one of those new gardeners, I hope you've had great success and discovered a fabulous variety of delicious tastes and healthful food. But if your garden hasn't been as productive as you'd like, perhaps you need to revitalize your soil by growing a cover crop.

What is a cover crop? It's a planting specifically intended to densely cover the soil surface and to add organic matter to the soil. The thick cover prevents erosion and keeps down weeds. And after the crop has grown for several weeks (or even a whole growing season), you'll cut it down and dig it into the topsoil. All that fresh green material provides a rich feast for earthworms and soil microorganisms that convert organic matter into nutrients that plant roots can absorb. The cover crop roots open up channels for air and water in the soil too. Cover-cropping is an all-around recovery program for sad soil!

Two easy cover crops for home gardeners to manage are oats and buckwheat. You can buy the seed at some garden centers or from your favorite garden seed supplier (Johnny's Selected Seeds is one of my favorites). Here's how to plant a cover crop:

1. Clear away weeds and plant debris and loosen the top inch or two of soil.
2. Rake the soil surface smooth.
3. Watch the weather forecast, and when rain is predicted, sow the cover crop (for buckwheat, 3 to 5 ounces of seed per 100 square feet of garden; for oats, 5 to 6 1/2 ounces per 100 square feet). Scatter the seed by hand in sweeping arcs over the surface of the bed-oats and buckwheat are large seeds that are easy to sow this way.
4. Rake the soil again to cover the seed lightly. Firm the seeds into place by gently walking over the bed surface or tamping the soil surface with the back of a hoe.
5. Wait several days-you should see the crop sprouting! If rain doesn't materialize, you can set up a sprinkler to gently water the bed instead.
6. Let the crop grow for several weeks. If you notice weeds in the bed, you can pull them out, but the crop should quickly blanket the soil. (Note: once buckwheat starts to flower, it's time to end the crop.)
7. To finish out the process of cover cropping, you can use a tiller to turn under the crop, but I prefer a different method. I use my lawn mower or string trimmer to cut down the topgrowth, and I leave it in place to dry for a few days. I sometimes use the dried topgrowth as mulch in other parts of my garden, or I dig it right into the bed along with the roots and stubble.

After you turn under your cover crop, wait a couple of weeks or longer before planting a new food crop. You may still find some cover-crop debris in the soil, but that's no problem. "Messy" soil often produces better results that squeaky clean soil.

Geeky Shoes and Other Cool Stuff

Lisa Davis — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:26:00 EDT

My feet hurt, more or less all the time. This is because I have absurdly high arches, which are fine on a Barbie doll but a design flaw in an actual human. Not many people have that particular problem, but a whole lot of you have some other foot complaint. Flat feet, bunions, corns, callouses, plantar fasciitis, heel spurs—the possibilities are endless. A friend just told me she thinks she has gout!

I'm finally starting to deal with the problem—I've seen an orthopedist and I think I'm going to finally try an orthotic, the custom-made variety. But it seems like such a big deal, such a tortuous process—getting a plaster cast made of my foot, and then an insert designed just for me. Such effort, so many decisions. But I'm going to painfully walk the whole nine yards and report along the way. Coming soon: Do they help? Will they fit into my shoes or do I have to buy a whole new shoe wardrobe? (That's not happening.) Heaven help me, do I have to get clunky orthopedic shoes? (That's not happening either. Besides, I don't think they'd fix my problem anyway.)

But it's likely to take me a while to get those high-end orthotics—my friends can attest to the fact that I've been complaining about my feet for, oh, decades, and haven't done anything productive about it yet. In the meantime, I want to share a few footwear options that I've discovered recently, options that are surprisingly comfy. One is cheap and easy, one is kind of expensive and remarkably goofy. And one I haven't actually tried myself but is very intriguing.

Cheap and easy: Dr Scholl's recently came out with a new kind of over-the-counter orthotic. It's called an Arthritis Pain Relief Orthotic, and though I don't have arthritis, I'll try anything. I slipped them into my shoes and—wow. Amazing! They really help, much more than any other insert I've ever tried. They're much sturdier than your average drugstore orthotic: Instead of simply providing a cushioning layer (worthless to me), these give you serious arch support. They're tough and fairly inflexible, which I guess helps them do a better job of absorbing shock. And the "stabilizing design" doesn't fool around—your feet aren't going anywhere they're not supposed to go inside your shoes. No inappropriate pronating or supinating allowed. The downside is that they're a bit bulky—they fit into only one pair of my shoes. Still, I haven't taken them out of those shoes since I put them in. If your feet hurt, these are definitely worth trying; look for them at the drugstore. And if you're the intended buyer for these insoles—if you actually have arthritis—please tell me whether they help with that problem.

Expensive and goofy: I've been trying out a pair of Z-coil sandals, which actually have a coil, vaguely reminiscent of the innards of a couch or car suspension, under the heel. When I say goofy-looking, I mean goofy-looking, even if Helena Bonham Carter does wear a pair. But I have to say, they're really, weirdly comfortable—those springs actually make a big difference. I called them expensive, but they're not that bad; unfortunately I'm too geeky to be able to pull off geek-chic, so I haven't worn them out of the house yet. My daughter won't let me anyway. But if you are braver than I am, more power to you. Again, if you buy them let me know if you like them.

Intriguing: A new kind of sneaker, called the Rotasole sneaker, is coming soon to basketball courts and tennis courts near you. These are fairly normal-looking sneakers, except that on the bottom of the sole, under the ball of the foot, there's a little disc with a "patented turning ability." They were designed by an orthopedic surgeon; the idea is that the little pivoting disk will let you pivot more easily, with less risk of spraining or of tearing something. I asked my husband to try out a prototype, since he's the survivor of two, count ‘em two, ACL replacements. (Basketball: It's a killer.) He liked them, though he said that he found the prototype a little heavy for his taste. Supposedly the final off-the-shelf model will be lighter. If that sounds interesting, they're supposed to hit store shelves in a couple of months.

That's all I've got for now—the above, plus foot massages. If you have any good solutions for problem feet, I'd love to hear about them!

Swine flu: An expert gives his perspective

Lisa Davis — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:37:00 EDT

With the World Health Organization raising its global pandemic alert level, and its Director-General advising all countries to immediately activate pandemic preparedness plans, it's hard to judge exactly how concerned people should be about swine flu—or what actions we should take. Yesterday, I talked to Brian Currie, MD, MPH, medical director of research at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He's an expert in pandemic preparedness and, as a specialist in infectious disease, also treats patients. Here's what he told me.

Dr. Currie, how worried should we be?

We should be worried. We have a very serious swine flu virus that's developed the ability to infect people, and there appears to be rapid person-to-person transmission. So that's already two of the characteristics you need for a pandemic. The only question is how serious it's going to be, and on that score I'm starting to feel a little reassured.

Why is that?

We're starting to see a number of cases now in the United States, and most of them have been pretty mild. That gives you some sense that the virulence of this virus isn't off the charts. We've had one death, but that's consistent with normal flu. People forget that 40,000 people die each year in the United States from seasonal flu. Many more people in Mexico have died, but it's beginning to look like the number of people who have been infected is larger than we might have thought. The denominator's been the question-how many people have gotten sick. They've been trying to pinpoint the index case [the epidemic's first case] in Mexico, and it looks like there may have been cases as far back as early March. So there have been lots of cases, and in a strange way that's reassuring. It means that this virus may not be more virulent than the normal flu.

I think a lot of people were surprised to hear about any kind of flu problem in April—I know I've always thought of flu as a seasonal issue. Was I mistaken?

Largely, the flu is seasonal, although we do get stray cases thoughout the year. But that's the regular flu. Historically, pandemic strains have not respected seasonality as well, so we don't know what's going to happen this time.

Also, there's frequently an uptick in cases of normal, seasonal flu around now, at the end of the season. And that's making it a little harder to tell what's going on here in New York, where we're getting reports of new cases—are we seeing that normal intensification, or are these cases of swine flu?

Do we know what's most important in spreading swine flu—aerosol transmission? Or people touching germy things and then touching their faces?

Flu is spread through droplets in the air—they go three feet out when a person coughs. Fomites are important, too. Those are inanimate objects that can spread the disease. Respiratory secretions get on the surfaces, and we know flu can survive on surfaces for 24 or 48 hours. If you touch them and then touch your eyes or nose, you can become infected.

Which is another reason we should all be alert to the need to wash our hands frequently. And also I think people don't realize how often they touch their faces.

Correct. Wash your hands. Simple soap and water will do. Wash whenever you think the circumstances warrant it, or use sanitizer. And you might want to think about sanitizing your phone if you're in a shared space.

With a Lysol-type spray?

Yes, anything like that. Even detergent will do. The flu virus is easily disrupted. Doorknobs and telephones, those sorts of objects get easily contaminated.

We've all seen pictures of people in Mexico wearing masks. If things get bad here, is that worth doing?

Masks are useful to prevent transmission in a clinical setting. But we use them on the patient, to block the droplets from being expelled into the air—they're not so useful if a healthy person wears one in order to prevent himself or herself from being exposed. The logic behind wearing masks ignores several possible routes of exposure, like your eyes.

I'm assuming people should not try to stock up on anti-virals like Tamiflu or Relenza—is that right?

It's too late, anyway, at least in the New York area. People have already bought up all of the Tamiflu and Relenza that were available in non-hospital settings. It's too bad, because it makes it hard to discharge patients if they can't fill a prescription for an antiviral.

That's why we want to manage our supplies; you really want to be able to give severely ill people these drugs. They make a big difference.

People have to take these drugs in the right way at the right time to help themselves, isn't that correct?

Yes. And there are side effects that go with Tamiflu—the most common one is gastrointestinal upset.

What makes it a little more complicated is that we still have regular flu strains circulating. Those are resistant to Tamiflu, while the swine flu is susceptible to the drug. So when we treat, we have to give two drugs, one to cover swine flu, and something else in case it's human flu.

Relenza would cover both, but that's very difficult to administer. It's a powder you have to inhale, not a pill. Some patients with asthma or respiratory disease are going to get bronchial spasm. Or people end up medicating their mouths instead of their lungs.

Timing is a consideration, too. Isn't there a window of opportunity?

They need to be given within 48 hours of onset.

Do these drugs also help prevent illness—if, say, you're a family member of a patient?

Yes. Tamiflu is about 70 percent effective. If you give it to ten people who have been exposed, it will prevent illness in seven of them.

What signs and symptoms should send someone to the doctor, especially given that you want to get there within that 48-hour window?

You'll have an abrupt onset of fever of 102 degrees or higher, you'll have cough, body aches, you may have some shortness of breath, and you can be flat on your back in bed within hours—that's how debilitating it is. A lot of people who get sick can pinpoint for you the moment it started. There aren't a lot of things that feel like that. If you have diarrhea or vomiting or nausea, you probably have some other virus.

Is our disaster-preparedness in better shape now than it was a few years back, when SARS or the bird flu was in the news?

In some ways, yes. We've done a lot of planning, and we have stockpiles of anti-virals that can treat the disease and prevent it in people who have been exposed. On the other hand, we don't have a vaccine. Without a vaccine, you've got one hand tied behind your back, at least.

We've been looking at ways to speed up our vaccine-production system, so that you could have vaccine in a couple of months or a month instead of nine months. We have the technology to do that. But the profit margin for a pharmaceutical company on a lot of vaccines, flu vaccine in particular, is minimal. There are a lot of other issues, as well-we don't have a good distribution system, for instance.

It requires a coordinated effort from four different groups in order to solve this-industry, academia, government, and public health. But it's important to do that. If you strengthen our regular vaccine system, it would be more robust when something like this happens.

Going back to people's fears about what may develop—what ages seem to be particularly vulnerable to swine flu?

We're seeing the typical pattern—the young, the old, the immune-compromised. There will be disease in young, healthy people, though, and maybe more than usual. That's because nobody has any kind of immunological history with this virus. But the virulence and the potential to kill don't seem to be greater than what we normally see.

This morning, Dr. Currie gave this update:

We had a meeting this morning where we looked at the volumes of people presenting to emergency rooms and such. The numbers of symptomatic patients are doubling, but the number of people who actually have the flu remains low. That's good news, but the worry about swine flu is creating a stress on the system.

Something to remember is that if symptoms wouldn't have sent you to the doctor before you'd heard of swine flu, they shouldn't send you to the doctor now. And if you go to the doctor, don't expect that you're necessarily going to be treated or admitted. If you're young and healthy and you're weathering the infection all right, the recommendation is just to go home.

And stay home?

Yes! And stay home.

Four steps that can help protect against swine flu

Lisa Davis — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:43:00 EDT

It's too early to know exactly how big this outbreak of swine flu will become. It's very strange to watch something this potentially dangerous and fast-moving unfold, and I think it's caught the attention of a lot of people. This morning, my across-the-hall colleague, Adam, asked, with a mix of journalistic black humor and earnest, new-parent worry, "So, are we all going to die?"

It's definitely a little scary when public-health experts take a disease outbreak as seriously as they're taking this one. On the other hand, it's reassuring, too. You know they're going to do everything they can to make sure things don't get away from them—and they've looked very hard at the really bad epidemics of the past to try to learn what works and what doesn't.

So don't worry too much—but do wash your hands often. (Don't worry, but don't ignore.) In fact, here are a few steps I think are worth taking:

1. Wash your hands right. A lot of people don't; they treat a bar of soap as though it's magical. Unfortunately, merely touching the soap will not vaporize germs. Soap works by coating germs—essentially, making them slippery so that water can wash them away—but you have to help things along by rubbing and scrubbing. The standard advice is to wash for about as long as it takes to sing "Happy Birthday." As an additional public health measure, you may keep your singing under your breath.

2. Use hand sanitizer. Whenever there's a lot of illness around, it makes sense to carry one of those little bottles of sanitizer because, let's face it, who wants to wash their hands for as long as it takes to sing "Happy Birthday"? Alcohol-based sanitizers are actually better at killing germs than soap and water. But the sanitizer has to be alcohol-based; check the label, because some aren't. Look for ones that are at least 60% alcohol. And again, you have to do the job right. Use a nice, big glop of sanitizer, enough to get your hands thoroughly wet, and rub until they're dry.

3. Get plenty of sleep. I wish it were otherwise because I'm perennially short on sleep, but studies do indicate that your resistance to infection goes down when you don't get enough. Do as I say, not as I do, and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

4. Think about vitamin D. I personally think it's worth taking this particular supplement daily, even though generally I think diet is the way to get your vitamins. You can't get enough D through diet unless you really, really like cod-liver oil. And the research on this vitamin is awfully impressive. In fact, some recent studies show that people who are deficient in D are 36% more likely to develop respiratory infections.

Finally, stay tuned for more—chances are, this story isn't over.

Healthy Snacks for Your Garden Soil

Fern Bradley — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:59:00 EDT

Here's another guest post from Fern Marshall Bradley, coeditor of Reader's Digest's All-New Illustrated Guide to Gardening.

In my last post, I introduced the link between soil health and human health. It's a simple connection. The plants we eat (and that livestock such as beef cattle eat) draw all their nutrients from the soil. So in order to have a healthy diet, we need to eat plants and meat that were properly nourished by growing in a healthy, nutrient-rich soil.

As I explained last time, one great way to boost soil health is to make and add compost to your soil. But besides composting, you can also treat your soil to healthy "snacks" all season long by covering the soil with organic mulch. What's organic mulch? Simply some type of formerly living plant material, such as fallen leaves or grass clippings. Earthworms, centipedes, and a host of other tiny creatures and microorganisms that live in soil will feed on the organic mulch and digest it, yielding a wide range of nutrients that plant roots can absorb.

Here's a top ten list of organic mulches for home gardens:

Shredded leaves
Leaf mold (decomposed leaves)
Grass clippings
Pulled weeds (remove any that have gone to seed first)
Wood chips (let them age for several months before using)
Straw (in vegetable gardens)
Pine needles (especially for acid-loving plants like rhododendrons)
Newspaper (soak it before laying it on the soil around plants)
Shredded paper (use it like straw)
Coffee grounds (collect them from a local coffee shop)

Just spread mulch 1 to 2 inches thick between and around all the plants in your gardens. Be sure to leave several inches of open space between plant stems and the mulch though, to help prevent stem or trunk rots and slug or other pest problems.

P.S. Would you like to win an edible garden for your community or local school? If so, check out the contest that Reader's Digest is offering in conjunction with Share our Strength and the Food Network. They're giving away five great gardens, and you could be one of the winners!

Compost for Healthy Soil and Healthy Food

Fern Bradley — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:25:00 EDT

Hi there. I'm Fern Marshall Bradley, coeditor of Reader's Digest's All-New Illustrated Guide to Gardening. I'm back again with another guest post on organic gardening, and this week, my topic is something that's fundamental to our own good health: building healthy soil. Now you may be wondering: What's the connection between soil and staying healthy? The connection is food quality. A recent article in Time magazine explains why the big, beautiful-looking fruits and veggies we buy at the supermarket may be sadly lacking in nutritional value. One way to get produce that packs the full punch of vitamins and nutrients is to grow it yourself in rich, healthy soil, and one of the best ways to build healthy soil is to add compost to it.

The challenge with compost is how to make enough to meet your needs. I'm still working on that challenge myself. I've tried several composting methods over the years, and here are three few nuggets of composting wisdom I've learned along the way:

A double bin boosts output. I've found that I reap more compost faster when I set up two simple three-sided composting enclosures. I've used cinder blocks and pallets for the sides. (They're cheap, and they work well.) I collect kitchen scraps and garden wastes in one bin, and once I have a sizeable stockpile, I move it to the other side, adding straw or shredded paper and mixing everything well. Then I let that pile "cook" and start collecting more in the first bin again.
Bury small batches. If you have only small amounts of kitchen scraps and garden wastes available as compost materials, try composting in holes instead of setting up a compost bin. Simply dig a hole about a foot deep anywhere in your yard that's convenient, such as in an empty garden bed, near an existing blueberry bush or fruit tree, or between rows of asparagus or strawberries. Dump in the compostables and shovel the soil in place over it. Over time, earthworms and other soil creatures will break down those organic riches into nutrients that your plants will love.
Fancy tumblers need fancy preparation. Those compost tumblers sold at garden centers seem like nifty tools for making compost, but unless you follow specific guidelines, you'll end up with a smelly mess of undigested organic matter in your composter. First, you must shred or chop up all the materials, and you need to have the correct balance of nitrogen-rich and carbon-rich materials. You need to add all the materials at one time, not bit by bit, and the moisture content has to be right-like a wrung-out sponge. If you skimp on even one of these requirements, the compost will be a long time coming. And that's why I haven't used my compost tumbler for years-I'm just not organized enough to get it right.

However you decide to make compost, the important thing is to get started and keep on doing it, for the sake of your soil and your health. There are other great ways to build soil health too, and I'll continue later this week with a blog about easy healthy snacks for your soil.

Six Tips for a Lawn You'll Love

Fern Bradley — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:36:00 EDT

Hi there: I'm Fern Bradley, one of the editors of Reader's Digest All-New Guide to Gardening. In the next few weeks, I'll be adding several posts about organic gardening here in the Living Healthy blog. And today I'll start with some thoughts on organic lawn care.

Comstock.com

Lawns are a great place for children and pets to play, but lawns can also be a health hazard. More and more people are concerned about exposure to synthetic pesticides applied to lawns, and some states are even passing regulations to ban pesticide use on playing fields at public schools.Many people fear their lawns will die or become weed-ridden if they stop using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, but it’s just not so, as an experiment at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. has shown. The organic lawn planted there in the Fall of 2007 is doing great! Realistically, you probably can’t start with a from-the-roots-up renovation like they did on the National Mall, so you may see some changes in your lawn as you switch to organic. For example, it may not instantly “green up” in the spring like it did when you applied synthetic fertilizer. Be patient though, and stick with it. Your lawn will revive once it kicks the chemical habit. Here are six tips for caring for your lawn the organic way:

1. Leave it long to prosper. One of the simplest changes is to start letting your grass grow longer—3 inches long—before you mow it. And when you do mow, never remove more than one-third of the height at one time. This stresses the grass less, and the longer lawn naturally shades out weeds.

2. Stop bagging the clippings. Grass clippings are natural fertilizer. Leave them in place each time your mow, and in the course of a year, they’ll add roughly 2 pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet to your lawn.

3. Spread compost. Stop applying chemical fertilizer and substitute compost instead. Apply screened compost at least once a year, spreading a layer that’s no more than 1/4-inch thick. You can do the job by hand with a rake or use a drop spreader.

4. Water deeply. If you must irrigate your lawn, be prepared to soak it thoroughly. This will encourage roots to grow deeper into the soil, and that strengthens your lawn over time.

5. Overseed for a lusher lawn. If your lawn seems sparse, perhaps it just needs more grass plants! You can apply more grass seed right to your existing lawn. It may help to aerate or dethatch your lawn before you spread the seed. Fall is the right time to overseed cool-season grasses; spring for warm-season grasses.

6. Diagnose problems before you treat. If your lawn is looking sickly with patches of dying or dead grass or other unusual symptoms, make sure you diagnose the problem properly before you try to treat it. Gardening reference books like the All-New Illustrated Guide to Gardening include charts of lawn pest and disease symptoms and treatments, or try taking a digital photo of the problem and e-mail it to your local cooperative extension service for a diagnosis.

Comstock.com

Best of luck as you transform your lawn to organic. Spring is a great time to start the transition. Spring is also a great time to take steps to feed your soil—a process that’s at the heart of organic gardening. In my blog posts next week, I’ll focus on several techniques you can use to boost your soil’s health by feeding it with compost, cover crops, and organic mulches.

P.S. Would you like to win an edible garden for your community or local school? If so, check out the contest that Reader’s Digest is offering in conjunction with Share our Strength and the Food Network. They’re giving away five great gardens, and you could be one of the winners!

Grow Gourmet Greens—No Garden Required!

Fern Bradley — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Hi there: I'm Fern Bradley, one of the editors of Reader's Digest All-New Guide to Gardening. In the next few weeks, I'll be adding several posts about organic gardening here in the Living Healthy blog. Here's some information about how anyone can garden--even without a yard.

Here in upstate New York where I live, early April is too early for much outdoor veggie gardening. But I can still enjoy healthy snacks that include fresh-cut "microgreens" because I grow them right on my windowsills! Microgreens are simply seedlings of salad greens and other crops harvested when they're very young, only about an inch tall. They're a gourmet treat served up in fancy restaurants, but here's how you can grow your own easily and inexpensively at any time of year:

1. Assemble materials. Gather up some organic seed-starting or transplanting mix, seed flats or other shallow (1 to 1 1/2-inch-deep) containers, a mist spray bottle, and seeds. I use seeds leftover from the previous gardening season: salad crops (lettuce, arugula, spinach, endive, chicory), cabbage-family crops (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower), beets, and a few herbs, especially dill and cilantro. Oh, and don't forget peas! ‘Dwarf Gray Sugar' peas are my favorite for pea shoots.

2. Sow the seeds. Moisten the mix and fill the containers nearly to the rim. Sprinkle seed densely and evenly over the surface of the mix-seeds should be about a quarter-inch apart (you can sow peas nearly touching one another). Cover the seed with a little bit more moist mix (about a 1/8-inch layer).

3. Add heat if you can. If you have a heat mat for seed-starting, set the containers there until seeds start to germinate. If not, put the seeded containers in whatever warm spot you can find around your house.

4. Turn and mist. Once the first few seedlings pop up, move the containers immediately to a sunny windowsill. Turn the containers daily to keep the seedlings growing upright, and mist them (or water them lightly with a watering can) as often as need to keep the mix fully moist.

Within a few weeks, your microgreens will be miniature green forests ready to harvest. Just grab your kitchen scissors and snip handfuls as needed. For a delicious healthy snack, I put a thin slice of a favorite cheese and a sizable snipping of greens between two whole-grain crackers. And with pea shoots, I simply cut a healthy handful and munch them plain. It's as sweetly satisfying as eating fresh sugar snap peas right off the vine.

My microgreen enterprise satisfies my gardening urge until the soil warms up later this month. Meanwhile, I've noticed that my lawn is already starting to turn green. So in my post next week, I'll offer some helpful tips about caring for lawns the organic way.

Two (and a half) personality traits that keep you alive longer

Lisa Davis — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:29:00 EDT

For years, researchers from Boston University School of Medicine's New England Centenarian Study have been paying close attention to a group of very long-lived people-subjects have to be at least 100 (or 102 for women), or the sibling, spouse, or child of a centenarian. This study has already discovered some interesting attributes of particularly long-lived folks:

They tend not to be obese; men are almost always lean.

They generally stay sharp-witted, and sidestep or at least delay developing many of the major age-associated diseases, like heart disease and cancer. So they're not just hanging on in diminished shape for years on end; they're living robust lives.

They typically handle stress well.

Now there's a little more news on that last point, from a study on children of these centenarians. These weren't exactly babies; these kids had themselves racked up at least 75 years on earth. The researchers gave them personality tests, and did the same with a group of randomly picked unrelated people of the same age, then compared the results. The groups showed some substantial differences—leading the researchers to speculate that the following personality traits may help you live longer:

Low neuroticism. This is the Woody Allen of personality traits—it measures the tendency to feel negative emotions, like depression or anxiety. Male and female children of long-lived parents scored at the bottom of the normal range for this trait.

High extraversion. The offspring of centenarians tested at the top for sociability. They like being around people and don't mind being the center of attention.

Women also scored high in agreeableness, which means what it sounds like: They tended to be cooperative types. (The elderly male children of centenarians were just average in this trait.)

The researchers made particular note of the extraversion findings, which were higher than you'd expect to see on average among people of any age—even though extraversion tends to diminish with age.

It's possible, the scientists conclude, that low neuroticism and high extraversion bring health benefits. It certainly makes sense that it might not be good for you to be constantly nibbled by worry and angst; the findings fit with other research showing the damaging effects of long-term elevations in stress hormones, for instance. As for extraversion...well, all that dancing on tabletops must have cardiovascular benefits.

It hurts to talk about it

Lisa Davis — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:48:00 EDT

Yow. I mean...Ow.

From 1996 to 2006, the amount Americans spent on prescription pain pills tripled—from $4.2 billion (no small potatoes to begin with) to $13.2 billion. A lot of that increase was due to the climbing cost of prescription drugs: The average cost per prescription for one of these meds more than doubled in that time, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the government bureau that just released this data. But it also reflected a big jump in the number of prescriptions we're filling for aches, pains, and serious discomfort. In 1996, we paid for about 164 million of these prescriptions; ten years later, the number had jumped to 231 million.

What I want to know: Are we hurting more? Or accepting it less? And are the pain pills working?

Judging from research on back pain-one of the most common sources of discomfort and worse for Americans—we may not be getting all we hope for when we're standing there at the drugstore counter. Last year, a study showed that spending on back-pain treatment (drugs, including narcotics, as well as surgery and other procedures) surged 65 percent between 1997 and 2005. But for all that medical attention, the number of people who said they were limited by back pain actually increased over that time.

We'll be looking at what really works for back pain in the magazine soon—and at promising approaches for pain in general. Do you suffer from chronic pain? What kind? What works for you?

PSA Tests Fall Short

Lisa Davis — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:35:00 EDT

Talk about coincidence. Two major studies out this week drive home the point we made in "What's Wrong With Cancer Tests," the cover story in this month's issue. In that piece, award-winning writer Shannon Brownlee makes the startling and discomforting suggestion that many cancer screening tests could be doing more harm than good.

It's generated some heated commentary. And no wonder. The Today show did a segment on our story, and Matt Lauer commented, "I was reading [Shannon's article] last night, and I'm thinking: Tomorrow I'm going on the air and I am going to tell people that everything I have told them for the past 10 years, 12 years that I have done this show may be thrown out the window. And I don't know if I'm comfortable doing that."

At times when I was editing this piece I had the same feeling—although the article doesn't say don't get tested. It simply says, These tests are flawed, much more flawed than you realize. And you should consider their limitations and the ways they can backfire as well as their potential benefits when you're deciding whether to be tested.

And that I'm comfortable with. Now, here's more support for that position. It comes from in those two studies I mentioned, which were published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. One, a US study, followed about 76,000 men for 11 years, and found no reduction in mortality among those who were assigned to get PSA screening plus digital rectal exams, compared to men who got no screening. The other, a multi-center European study, was larger but shorter; it followed about 162,000 men for about 9 years, and found a 20 percent reduction in mortality among those who got PSA tests compared to men who got digital rectal exams. That seems like a substantial benefit, but the study authors themselves caution that the benefit came along with a "high risk of overdiagnosis"—meaning that a lot of men got very debilitating treatment they didn't need. As one expert said, commenting on these findings, "The question isn't whether this test does any good—we know it does good. The question is whether it does more harm than good."

That's a judgment call, of course, but some people will look at these results and say that for a lot of men it looks like a lot of harm for not so much good. (The risk-benefit equation may be different if you fall into certain high-risk categories.) In a roundtable discussion, also published by the journal, Mary McNaughton-Collins, an internist and researcher at Mass General Hospital and Harvard, made that point:

"The two studies together show marginal to no benefit across several years of follow-up at the cost to so many men of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. So that deceptively simple PSA test inevitably leads to a cascade of biopsies, which lead to prostate-cancer diagnoses, leading to aggressive treatments for those prostate cancers, leading to men having substantial side effects from those treatments, urinary incontinence, sexual dysfunction. And the problem being that, for many of these men, they suffer those downstream troubles for a cancer that was never, ever destined to cause them harm in their lifetime."

And she goes on to stress the need for patients to be fully informed and to consider their own values and preferences when they're deciding whether to get a PSA test.

We couldn't agree more. Check the end of our article for a special offer to our readers—the opportunity to view video cancer screening decision aids produced by a company called Health Dialog.

The Shocking Truth About Cancer Tests

Lisa Davis — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:09:00 EDT

Here's an unabashed plug for a feature in our April issue—already in your hands if you're a subscriber, and coming to newsstands any day now if you're not. The article is called "What's Wrong With Cancer Tests," and it raises some very unsettling questions about screening tests like mammography, colonoscopy, and PSA testing ... and, indeed, the whole notion of screening people for cancer. This article gores sacred cows right and left: Its basic claim is those tests aren't nearly as effective as most people believe, and a whole lot riskier. Maybe the most shocking thing of all is that many top cancer experts agree with that claim.

The piece was written by Shannon Brownlee, author of last year's book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer—a best-seller and, even more important, highly respected by medical researchers, not to mention economists. Shannon has generously agreed to guest-blog periodically while this issue is on newsstands. She's also hosting a discussion about this topic—please head over here to ask questions and share your thoughts!

And now, here's Shannon:

Why would a medical writer want to suggest that people shouldn't necessarily get screened for cancer? After all, I and my fellow reporters have spent the last three decades urging readers to get their mammograms, colonoscopies and Pap smears. My first clue that maybe we in the media should dig a little further before making such blanket recommendations came about a decade ago, when I was on staff at U.S. News & World Report.

In reporting a story about cancer, I happened to talk to a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, who told me that there was a lot of controversy around the Prostate Specific Antigen, or PSA test. More and more men were taking this simple blood test to see if they had early stage prostate cancer. The National Cancer Institute researcher told me that the test wasn't as great as everybody thought it was.

So I did what any good reporter does - I began asking him and other doctors and researchers a lot of questions. It turned out he was right. There was (and still is) a lot of controversy around the PSA test. What's more, much of the evidence suggested that it wasn't reducing men's risk of dying of prostate cancer —which is the point of screening tests.

I turned the story in, and to my surprise, my editor told me to rewrite it. Why? Because he just couldn't believe that what I had found could be true. The magazine printed the story in much watered down form, but I knew my reporting was solid.

Not long after that, my 70-year-old father called me and told me his PSA test had come back high. His doctor wanted him to get a biopsy. What should he do?

I sent him to a doctor I had interviewed for the story, who happened to practice in Portland, Ore., near where my parents live. That doctor was able to explain to my dad what the evidence said about prostate cancer and PSA testing. My father decided not to get a biopsy, which can be painful and lead to serious infection. He's still alive today and glad he didn't go through it. (If I'd known about patient decision aids, I would have sent him one.)

That's when I began to think that screening might not be right for everyone. It was also the moment when I started to understand that there was such a thing as too much medical care.

For anybody who has spent time in the hospital, either as a patient or as a family member of somebody who is seriously ill, that might seem pretty obvious. Many of us have wondered if all those CT scans, blood tests, drugs, and (often painful) procedures were really necessary. A lot of them aren't. In fact, about a third of the money we spend on health care—$600 to $800 billion—goes toward tests, surgeries, drugs, procedures, and time in the hospital that does nothing to improve our health.

Eventually I wrote Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. I wrote it for my parents, to help them make choices about their own care. I had the same motivation for this article—and I hope it helps you, too.

Finally, the best way to lose weight

Lisa Davis — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:42:00 EST

Want to lose weight? Pick a diet, any diet. Well, maybe not an all-chocolate-all-the-time diet. But when it comes to low-fat or high-fat, protein-heavy or carb-depleted, it's diner's choice. The strongest study so far on the subject-roughly 800 dieters, followed for two years, which is much longer than in previous research-recently found that healthy versions of any of those produced essentially the same weight loss. Done by Harvard researchers, it was methodologically sound, to use the scientific jargon, so it finally answered some questions that have bedeviled researchers for a long time-crucially, what kind of diet is best. Answer: whatever you'll stick to.

How much weight did people lose? Not so much. At the six-month mark, people had dropped about 13 pounds, on average. But then the weight began creeping back on, and after two years the average loss, no matter the diet approach, was about 7 pounds. One newsletter for medical professionals summed up the results with the headline "Four Low-Calorie Diets Yield the Same Mediocre Results." The loss is definitely enough to make a difference in health-it cuts the risk of diabetes and probably would make arthritic knees much more comfortable. Still, it may not be quite what the dieters were hoping for when they signed up.

Years ago when I was at another magazine, out of a burst of outsized, truly crazed ambition, we decided to create our own weight loss study, teaming up with Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive medicine (he directs Yale University's Prevention Research Center). Science writer Christie Aschwanden did a lot of heavy lifting on that study and wrote the article about our results. When we talked about the recent study, it was like old times-we both had the same rueful tone.

Christie: "It made me want to say, ‘Can we just stop talking about this now? Can we all agree that there is no magic diet?" Meaning that a low-carb approach won't suddenly wipe out your appetite or keep you from feeling deprived (and neither is it necessarily an unhealthy way to go). So long as you're eating fewer calories than you're burning, you'll lose weight. What's trickier is keeping it off.

Christie again: "Maybe we're looking at it all wrong. I really think, after all the research I've done, that the obesity epidemic is an epidemic of inactivity-we've just engineered so many calories out of our days with the way things are set up. Maybe if we all kept the remote control across the room, and rode our bikes to work..."

On that score, the editorial that went along with the Harvard study points to a promising experiment in France. Here's what it said:

"A little-noticed study in France may point the way. A community-based effort to prevent overweight in schoolchildren began in two small towns in France in 2000. Everyone from the mayor to shop owners, schoolteachers, doctors, pharmacists, caterers, restaurant owners, sports associations, the media, scientists, and various branches of town government joined in an effort to encourage children to eat better and move around more. The towns built sporting facilities and playgrounds, mapped out walking itineraries, and hired sports instructors. Families were offered cooking workshops, and families at risk were offered individual counseling.

"....[T]he results were remarkable. By 2005 the prevalence of overweight in children had fallen to 8.8%, whereas it had risen to 17.8% in the neighboring comparison towns, in line with the national trend....

"Like cholera, obesity may be a problem that cannot be solved by individual persons but that requires community action. ... It is an approach that deserves serious investigation, because the only effective alternative that we have at present for halting the obesity epidemic is large-scale gastric surgery."

Love that. Let's all live a saner life and see what happens to our weight then.

For more on the study, check out what Dr. Katz had to say, here.

A few more thoughts on vaccines and autism

Lisa Davis — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:58:00 EST

Okay, following up on my post from a week or so ago, I'm going to say just one more thing about the autism/vaccine theory and then shut up about it, at least for a while. I've been discussing this issue with someone on staff here who's had reason to be particularly alert to the possibility that environmental exposures could affect a child's development, which has made me want to slow down and make sure I don't sound dismissive of people's real concerns. And of course I do understand the concern a parent feels before signing a child up for a medical intervention that can have a side effect—and the fact is that any medical intervention, including vaccines, can have side effects. Years ago when it was time for my older daughter to get her first shots, I felt strongly that it was the right move, but I still felt nervous. There are never any guarantees that your child will skate through without experiencing one of the known possible complications, and it's scary to think that any potential problem would be the result of an action I'd taken. But I took a deep breath, figuratively speaking, and went ahead (after calling my brother, who I should have said in the previous post is a pediatric epidemiologist who's done research on vaccine safety—just so he could tell me what I already knew). Since then, I've been reminded that it's no easier on a parent, no more bearable, when a child's suffering comes as a result of purposeful, considered inaction rather than action. A lovely woman I know made the decision not to vaccinate her children, out of the very best motivations...and her newborn caught whooping cough from one of her older kids and nearly died. It goes without saying that her feelings of guilt were overwhelming.

But I really didn't want to talk here about my history or that of my friends. I just wanted to steer you, if you're interested, to a couple of wonderful discussions of this topic. The first is a great summary of the research that's investigated the possibility of a vaccine-autism link; it's by a Yale neurologist, and you can read it here. And the other, here, is an empathetic, thoughtful piece from a mother of two autistic kids. One is a little dated, and some of the comments on the other get a little raw...but both are well worth your time.

Vaccines Get a Booster Shot

Lisa Davis — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:24:00 EST

A surprising number of people are suspicious about vaccines—surprising to me, at least. I find the evidence overwhelming that the massive increase in the number of autism cases over the past few decades has basically nothing to do with the vaccines kids get. But I think many people can’t help feeling that where there’s this amount of smoke, there must be at least a little fire—that given the loud and emotionally compelling narratives of distraught or angry parents who feel their child’s autism was triggered by getting vaccinated, there must indeed be some kind of link. But a special federal court just decided that neither the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine nor the vaccine preservative thimerosal played any role in the autism that developed in three kids whose parents were suing over their claims of a connection. For a good explanation of the court’s reasoning, and the reaction of researchers and the parents of the kids involved, read the Los Angeles Times story.

Melanoma and mindfulness

Lisa Davis — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:35:00 EST

Wow—here's a fascinating but frightening finding. Scientists at Ohio State University have found evidence that stress can speed the progression of malignant melanoma, a particularly aggressive kind of cancer. Since there's nothing more stressful than learning you have an aggressive form of cancer, this bad news seems especially unfair.

The evidence is suggestive, not iron-clad—the researchers were looking at the behavior of cancer cells in lab dishes, not in humans. But it's in line with work this group has been doing for the past few years. What they found was that when they dosed the cancer cells with norepinephrine—a hormone that's released as part of the "fight or flight" response—the cells reacted by producing enormously increased levels of a protein that's known to foster tumor growth.

Assuming this connection is real, there may be medications that can help block the effect of stress. But the finding makes me think about the powerful results other researchers have seen with techniques like mindfulness meditation, which is a Western, non-religious form of meditation. It's been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, help with insomnia, even increase immunity; not coincidentally, it also lowers levels of stress hormones. It's one of those all-around good-for-you behaviors that I never seem to get around to, though I did buy a how-to mindfulness meditation CD a few years ago. This is the sort of research that might make me actually listen to it.

Soothe your soul (and save your ears)

Lisa Davis — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:33:00 EST

Listen up, says the European Union's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks: Millions of people are playing their iPods and MP3 players too loudly and too long, and will suffer hearing loss as a result. The report focuses on kids and teens, for obvious reasons-and because hearing loss is occurring at younger ages these days, thanks to noise exposure. A study a few years ago found early signs of hearing loss in more than 12 percent of 6- to 9-year-olds. Scary. You can read a non-technical version of the EU report, including recommendations, here.

I do my best to monitor my own kids—if I can hear their music "leaking" from their earbuds, I tell them to turn it down, and otherwise make a nuisance of myself. But I know that our society is full of noise assaults, and not just on subway platforms and music venues. I was at a dance class recently where the music was so loud I found myself sticking my fingers into my ears. I hate being the mom of the world, but I did think about asking the dance instructor to turn the volume down...or quietly leaving a copy of the EU report or some other worrisome study at the gym's front desk. I don't suppose anyone would thank me for it, but I like to think that if someone did, I'd be able to hear it.

Roadmap Toward a Saner Healthcare System?

Lisa Davis — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:27:00 EST

If our new president wanted to do some light reading yesterday morning before taking his walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, a few health care experts made sure he had something worthwhile to read. A white paper from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice sketches a remarkable picture of healthcare in the United States—one in which your odds of getting one treatment as opposed to another, or of being hospitalized, or of having surgery, depend not so much on what’s going on with your body but where your body happens to reside. Shannon Brownlee, author of last year’s much-talked about book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, helped write the white paper (and is writing an article on cancer screening for Reader’s Digest—coming soon). She told me that the Dartmouth researchers wanted to highlight some of the knottiest healthcare issues for legislators in a way that would make it easier to envision possible solutions.

“What’s happening in our country now is that you take two groups of people with the same problem and give one of the groups four times more medical care—and the outcome is the same. What’s up with that?” Shannon says. If you have back problems, you’ve got a 20-fold bigger chance of ending up with a lumbar fusion if you live in one region of the country versus another, for instance. In areas with more hospitals, more people are admitted to the hospital—though they recover no faster on average (and may even do worse). All this may seem weird and worrisome but the Dartmouth researchers say it should help policy makers in setting priorities. “The problem is not a matter of appropriate care versus inappropriate care or good doctors versus bad doctors or greedy docs versus altruistic ones,” Shannon says. “It’s a matter of organized versus disorganized care.”

That’s because the Dartmouth data also shows where there’s less variation in care, and where patients face a smaller risk of getting overly aggressive treatment (yet still get the kind of care that’s widely recommended). That tends to occur in “organized care” practices, primarily run by physicians, like the Mayo Clinic, or Kaiser Permanente, or Group Health in Puget Sound. For more on these ideas, take a look at the white paper at http://tdi.dartmouth.edu/

Women and Heart Disease: Still Overlooked

Lisa Davis — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:59:00 EST

The holidays were great fun, but time with friends and family, not to mention in planes, left me behind in blogging. I won’t try to catch up, except to ask: What do you think of the possibility of Sanjay Gupta as our new Surgeon General? Do you think he’d help America get healthier…or would you prefer that he keep his current job? (Make that jobs—after all, along with his reporting duties, he continues to perform brain surgery. Definitely an impressive guy!)

An interesting study out today underscores a point we made in our current issue in The Whole-Family Guide to Heart Health—yet another study showing that when women have heart trouble, care tends to be delayed. The researchers were looking at a simple question: When someone in Dallas county, Texas, called 911 complaining of cardiac symptoms, how long did it take paramedics to get him or her to the hospital? In all cases, the EMS got to the house fast. But about 10 percent of the time, it took the crew a little longer than optimal to get the patient to the hospital—and women were half again as likely as men to be delayed.

There’s no way to know what slowed things down, and one possibility is that women were more likely than men to resist the idea that they really were having a heart attack. But one of the most shocking things I learned in editing our heart health package is that women can’t always count on their health care provider to know some basic facts about female cardiovascular risk. Take this stat: In a 2004 survey, fewer than one in five doctors knew that more women than men die each year from heart disease. That’s just dismal…and so is this current finding.

The Latest on High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Lisa Davis — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:31:00 EST

There's been some interesting news lately about sugar in all its permutations. A couple of weeks ago, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition included a special supplement devoted to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sweetener used in sodas, granola bars, spaghetti sauces, and, it sometimes seems, just about everything else you can find on a grocery shelf. People have had their suspicions that HFCS might not be all that good for us-specifically, that it might somehow incline the American dining public to obesity. There are a number of ways HFCS could at least theoretically do this, one being that it might have some unique metabolic effect, and another being that as a low-cost sweetener it helps makes sweet stuff cheap, and we all know what too many Big Gulps can do to a waistline.

For the most part, the recent studies suggest that HFCS acts no differently in the body than sucrose-plain table sugar. One team did find temporarily higher levels of blood fats in the group that consumed HFCS. But levels of blood sugar and leptin-an important appetite-regulating hormone-were basically the same, whether the sweetener was sucrose or HFCS. Which makes sense, considering that sucrose and HFCS are very similar, chemically speaking: Both are about a 50-50 mix of fructose and glucose (approximately-HFCS is more like 55-45).

But that doesn't mean that really loading up on either sucrose or HFCS is good for you. I talked to a friend of mine, Cynthia Sass, about this. Cynthia's a registered dietician with a number of books to her name (a new book that she co-authored, The Ultimate Diet Log, is coming out in January). Cynthia pointed out that eating lots of fructose-no matter where it comes from-has been linked to problems like high blood pressure and kidney and liver disease. Not to mention gout. And who likes gout?

"While the research is not consistent, I don't think it's time to throw in the towel and say ‘never mind,'" Cynthia said. "I think we're still learning about the unique properties of foods within similar categories that may make one a better choice than another." Honey, for instance, is looking like it delivers some unexpected health benefits, Sass says. But the biggest message is probably to go easy on all sources of concentrated sugar, boring as that sounds. I'm not crazy about the idea of taxing soda and other sugary drinks, as proposed by New York Governor David Patterson the other day (although New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof persuasively argued in favor of the ban on Thursday). But I do think a soda habit is a particularly bad thing for your health-you're just mainlining sugar, and whether it's HFCS or not, your body doesn't have a good way of handling it. Cookies are much saner, I think. With milk.

The Simple Things That Matter

Lisa Davis — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:14:00 EST

Have you gotten a flu vaccine this year? A new survey from the American Lung Association found a disconnect that will probably seem familiar. Checking in with mothers across the country (moms still being the ones who tend to make the doctor appointments), the association found that 78 percent think flu is scary and potentially life-threatening...but only 46 percent say they're going to encourage their spouses and kids to get the vaccine this year, and only 38 percent plan to get it themselves.

You hear a lot about mind/body connections, but mind/body disconnections are at least as important-when your mind says "go" but your bottom stays planted in the chair. I certainly understand this one. Like most adults, I grew up thinking the flu was trivial. I'm not sure why, considering that the flu pandemic of 1918 is now thought to have killed 30 to 50 million people worldwide. (For more information about that time, check out http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/the_pandemic/) But no one talked about that when I was young, or even a young adult; it's almost like those memories were boxed away, too horrific to look at.

My great-grandparents died in that epidemic, leaving my grandmother to herd her younger siblings across European borders (hidden in a hay wagon, according to one version of the story), and eventually to the United States. So when, some years back, researchers began revisiting those years, and I started reporting on their findings, I felt pushed to let go of my denial. And a few years ago, I got a more personal reminder of how important the vaccine might be. I'd gotten everyone in the family vaccinated except my younger daughter, Lily, who was just two-too young at that point to get the shot. (Now, kids can get the vaccine starting at 6 months-for more on the who, what, and why of the vaccine, go to http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/protect/keyfacts.htm.) A while later, sure enough, Lily got sick. Very sick, though I never got her tested to see if it was actually influenza. I just gave her ibuprofen for her fever and lay in bed with her, worrying and trying to comfort her as she cried miserably and sneezed in my face. I never got sick, for which I thank the vaccine. She got better, for which I thank our good fortune. And every year since then, I've made sure everyone got the vaccine.

Taking Research the Way I Take My Vitamins (Cautiously)

Lisa Davis — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:44:00 EST

One of the best things about blogging is that it's so fast-it really is an awful lot like opening your mouth and starting a conversation (with a whole bunch of people). But because of that speed, you're going to read this post long before you see my name on the masthead of the magazine. So let me introduce myself. A new deputy editor at Reader's Digest (one of two), I'm going to be responsible for the magazine's health and medical coverage-the breakthroughs and the blunders, the big-picture questions (what in the world are we going to do to make healthcare more affordable?) and the small stuff that sometimes seems to matter a whole lot more (what kind of thermometer is easiest to use when your kid is screaming at 2 AM?). It's a subject I love. It's always interesting, and only gets more so the longer I cover it. Which is good, because I've been covering it a long time-nearly 25 years, as a reporter and an editor for newspapers, weeklies, and magazines.

One thing I've learned in that time is not to get too fond of theories, no matter how persuasive and no matter how much I'd like them to be true. Because in journalism and in science, great stories have a way of being ruined by pesky facts. That's what seems to be happening now with vitamins. Scientists have had good reason to think that vitamins C and E, along with some of the B vitamins, would protect against heart disease. And there was a really good theory to explain why some vitamins (like some Bs, as well as E and C) ought to help ward off cancer. But earlier this month, a major study concluded that neither E nor C reduced the risk of "major cardiovascular events"-heart attacks, strokes, and the like. (In fact, E seemed to increase the risk of one kind of stroke.) A few weeks earlier, another big study concluded that B vitamins didn't guard women against cancer, at least not those under age 65. And this summer another study delivered a big blow to a really great idea: the notion that folic acid and other B vitamins could protect against heart attack by lowering levels of a substance called homocysteine. Researchers still think homocysteine is bad stuff-high levels have been associated with a higher risk of heart problems. And in the study, the vitamins did bring down homocysteine levels. But unfortunately, that didn't do the volunteers any good, heart-wise.

But don't give up on vitamins just yet-at least, not all of them. This is the year (or maybe the decade) of vitamin D. There's increasing evidence that vitamin may help protect against aches and pains, lower your risk of infection, and help prevent a wide variety of serious ills, including breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, maybe even schizophrenia. In fact, researchers at Johns Hopkins this past August concluded that a lack of the vitamin can substantially increase the risk of death. That's strong stuff-important stuff, especially since there's a lot of research suggesting that a very high percentage of Americans are deficient in D.

I'm not big on taking pills, but I have a bottle of vitamin D tablets in my cupboard and actually manage to remember to take one on a fair number of mornings. As for the other vitamins? The news on them reminds me to take everything else with a grain of salt.