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Teenager, High Blood Pressure and Lack of Sleep

July 11, 2011 by drburt

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, has conducted a research which concluded that sleep depravation could be the cause of high blood pressure in healthy adolescents. These associations couldn’t be explained by being overweight, socioeconomic status, sleep apnea, or known co morbidities. About 238 teenagers ages 13 to 16 were participating in this study which provided an important data about relationship between lack of sleep and high blood pressure. All of the participants of this study were without any known health issues.

This study was published in a Journal of the American Heart Organization. Young adults were observed 3 to 7 nights about the sleep duration at their homes. Special digital wrist recorder was designed in order to record a motion, sleep and wake up patterns. Special laboratory was used for one night and the blood pressure was measured nine times during that night over two days period. In the research facility, an overnight polysomnography was also made; according to Wikipedia, a polysomnography “is a multi-parametric test used in the study of sleep”, and the test outcome is termed a polysomnogram.

Those young adults who had less than 6.5 hours of sleep a night were 2.8 times to have elevated blood pressure levels, compared to those teenagers who had more hours of sleep. Those with low sleep efficiency, on the other hand, were 4.5 times more likely to have prehypertension. Sleep efficiency might be broadly defined as sleep quality. It took into account factors such as having difficulty dropping off to sleep or staying asleep.

Scientific data was adjusted for gender, body mass index and socioeconomic status. Pre hypertension risks were 2.5 times higher for lack of sleep and 3.5 times higher for low sleep efficiency. Youngster with sleep deficiency had 4mm Hg higher systolic blood pressure than those who had good night sleep.

According to the NHLBI’s Your Guide to Healthy Sleep, children of school-going age and adolescents need at least 9 hours of sleep every night. According to the guide, hormonal influences during puberty tend to affect the biological clocks of adolescents. They are thus more likely to go to bed later at night, and want to sleep in longer in the morning.

The Implications

If the young ones are often having problems falling asleep, getting up several times or for long periods during the night, having sleepy spells during the day, or having difficulty concentrating, then it is possible that they are not having enough sleep, or are having poor sleep.

And, compared with twenty or even ten years ago, teenagers today have even more reasons to stay awake late into the night. Decades ago, there were no computers, no internet, and very small, if any, late night television. Add to that the stress and pressures of increased workloads in school, as well as the nutritional fiasco which is our modern diet of refined foods, and the issue gets a lot bigger.

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Prescription Medication Overuse

June 23, 2011 by drburt

Prescription Medication Overuse.

Americans spend about $300 billion a year on legal drugs. Not millions but billions a year. Pharmaceutical companies probably love these numbers. I am wondering how much people are spending on illegal drugs in this country. Most likely it would easily support the economy of a small country or California State budget deficit which is now over $25 billion.

What is surprising that majority of the revenue does not come from research or scientific data but from advertising campaigns. Many patients come to see Medical Doctor and already know what kind of drug they want for their particular health problem. Why do we need Doctors then? Watch TV advertising of the particular drug and take it till you drop dead or may be fixing the health problem. Well pharmaceutical companies need Medical Doctors for one simple reason so they can prescribe medications to the masses. Only small percentage of general practitioners actually treats the body as a whole.

One of the studies from New England Journal of Medicine provides facts that doctors and hospitals spend a lot of money to treat patients who have Medicare. There is no correlation on how much or little they spend on a particular patient. The study has found that in areas with higher per-capita medical spending, patients were more likely to receive “riskier” (and presumably higher-priced) drugs.

Another study from the same journal found that low Medicare reimbursement for certain drugs change the doctor’s mind about prescribing those drugs. What is interesting when reimbursement rates were higher, doctors were more likely to prescribe – and they were doing inappropriately or unnecessary.

It is a known fact that pharmaceutical companies make billions every year on selling drugs to a public. As population of the world is increasing so is the revenues of these companies will increase in the coming years. These companies spend more on advertising than on research for finding more effective drugs. Health care costs and medication side effects skyrocket as we become a nation of pill-poppers. Certainly not how Thomas Edison envisioned it – “The doctor of the future will give no medicine….” Do not be shy to ask your Primary Care Physician intelligent questions about your treatment options and the kind medications he or she will prescribe to you.

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Prescriptions for Children or Conservative Care

May 6, 2011 by drburt

Children in the USA becoming more and more drug dependent – I am talking about the legal kind of drugs. Pediatricians and Medical practitioners are prescribing drugs for different childhood conditions more then ever before. Many of these prescriptions have no positive effect on a condition that a child might have. Many conditions could have been resolved without any involvement of prescription medication and treated naturally. The truth is that there is a big pharmacological industry that has relationship with doctors who prescribe those medications. Yes, it is money driven medicine. The more medications pushed to a consumer the larger the compensation. Many of these drugs are not even safe to take, for a simple reason that there is not enough research done. No one wants a child to be a guinea pig to find out weather a particular drug works or not.

Chiropractic care is a natural and safe way for many pediatric conditions. You can always load your child with drugs which in most cases will only treat the symptom but not the cause. Chiropractic care allows the body to heal itself naturally. That means using conservative treatment options such as nutrition, diet, lifestyle changes and chiropractic adjustments first, rather than medications:

FACTS ABOUT DRUG CONSUMPTION IN USA BY CHILDREN:

ADHD drugs:

24.357 million

Children 0-9 years: 7.018 million

Children 10-19 years: 17.339 million

Antidepressants:

9.614 million

Children 0-9 years: 1.026 million

Children 10-19 years: 8.588 million

Antipsychotics:

6.546 million

Children 0-9 years: 1.396 million

Children 10-19 years: 5.150 million

Antihypertensives (treatment for high blood pressure):

5.224 million

Children 0-9 years: 1.819 million

Children 10-19 years: 3.405 million

Asthma Drugs:

45.388 million

Children 0-9 years: 28.252 million

Children 10-19 years: 17.136 million

Sleep Aids:

307,000

Children 0-9 years: 14,000

Children 10-19 years: 293,000

Statins (treatment for high cholesterol):

94,000

Children 0-9 years: 11,000

Children 10-19 years: 83,000

Non-insulin-dependent (type2) diabetes

424,000

Children 0-9 years: 30,000

Children 10-19 years: 394,000

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Back Surgery, Cost of Insurance and Ineffectiveness of Care

April 13, 2011 by drburt

As the number of orthopedic surgeons in the USA is growing so is the number of back surgeries performed on patients with back pain. Often time it is a 50/50 chance that patient will be pain free after a surgical procedure due to the soft tissue fibrosis and lack of proper post surgical rehabilitation. Did you know that over 100,000 people die each year in this country from surgery complications. This number by far exceeds the number of automobile accidents in the entire country. The ratio is 23 percent for men and 32 percent for women.

It is not the secret that the health care system in this country is the most expensive in the world. Thus all U.S. citizens must get the best educated doctors who in theory would make the healthiest nation in the world and would provide the best medical care available. World Health Organization stated that as of 2000 the U.S. ranked #1 in cost, #72 in population health, #37 in health care delivery with 48 million Americans uninsured. France is ranked as #4, #4 and #1 and only 1% uninsured. The question is why French get more medical care for their money than we are?

TIME Magazine stated that U.S. spends more to get less then any other industrialized country in the world. Why such a waste of resources? This country spent twice as much on a sick-care as it did on food in 2006 and more than China’s 1.3 billion citizens consumed altogether. Wow, we can feed countries like India and China for the whole year.

President Barack Obama stated: “Today, we are spending over 2 trillion a year on health care – almost 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation. And yet, for all this spending, more of our citizens are uninsured; the quality of our care is often lower; and we aren’t any healthier. In fact, citizens in some countries that spend less than we do are actually living longer than we do.”

According to Forbes Magazine Back Pain cost over $40 billion for treatment alone. If we include disability, work loss and other factors the total cost would range somewhere between $100-200 billion per year. That is quite a large amount of money. Most of the countries do not even produce this much. About 3 million people went to Hospital E.R. for lower back pain which cost $9.5 billion. Low Back Pain is the number nine most expensive condition treated in U.S. Hospitals. If people could only maintain their bodies the way they maintain their vehicles things would be different. Regular Chiropractic care could prevent biomechanical vertebral misalignments and therefore save an individual from unnecessary expensive surgical procedure.

Pran Manga, PhD. MPhil health economist stated: “ There is an overwhelming body of evidence indicating that chiropractic therapy of lower back pain is more cost-effective than medical management.” Many other studies proved that chiropractic manipulation for none specific low back pain is far more effective than other forms of treatments. Millions of patients are satisfied with the results that they are getting with chiropractic care. Watch several video testimonials on this blog. Only 42 out of 131 military treatment facilities have access to a chiropractic care due to the medical bureaucracy within the Department of Defense.