Follow my blogs 
Health Headlines
April 14th, 2010
Why Young Women Shouldn’t Drink as Much as They Do
A terrific study that followed nearly 7000 young women for a decade (from their teens into their twenties) has concluded that the more alcohol a young woman drinks as a teenager, the greater her risk of being diagnosed with benign breast disease (BBD) in her twenties.
BBD is an umbrella term for all those non-malignant breast lumps and swellings and thickenings that some women develop.
This is of a concern for at least 3 key reasons:
• We don’t have any really good treatment for either the symptoms of BBD (pain, tenderness) or for the lumps themselves
• Some benign lumps are worrisome until they are determined not to be malignant, but until that happens (and it’s never a 100 % assurance), that woman has to deal with the uncertainly and fear of not knowing if she has breast cancer, and then she has to undergo the investigation (which may involve biopsy and mammography), and then she has the anxiety of waiting till the next worrying lump occurs
• Studies have linked BBD to a higher risk of future breast cancer
So, here’s the worrisome thing that’s happening out there now and which should be a concern to everyone:
• Surveys indicate that young women are drinking way more alcohol than was the case in the past, and drinking more raises the risk of both BBD and breast cancer
• Studies tell us that young women weigh more on average than they used to, with a much greater percentage of them being obese, and obesity raises the risk of breast cancer
• Other studies tell us that young women are more sedentary than ever, although exercise from a young age on is one of the few factors we know that lowers the risk of breast cancer
So are we going to see a huge rise in breast cancer in a couple of decades?
Well, no one knows for sure, of course, but the trends are a real concern.
Bottom line: if they’re concerned about lowering their risk of breast cancer, women – of any age – should be careful about how much alcohol they consume.
I’m Dr Art Hister
April 12th, 2010
US FDA says...
The US FDA says today that it’s reviewing the ubiquitous chemical (apparently, 75 % of us have some trace of it in our urine), triclosan, which is a standard ingredient in many anti-bacterial products because recent studies have raised some concerns about this product, both in terms of its effectiveness, and more worryingly, in terms of its safety, especially for fetuses and infants.
Which brings up some important considerations:
1) We use thousands and thousands of chemicals on a daily basis, and the sad reality is that we have mostly depended on the companies that manufacture these products to conduct most of the effectiveness and safety studies about them, and that is scary.
2) As a kid who was brought up outside on playgrounds and ice rinks and who was forever dirty and never sick, I wonder: why has the world changed so much that we – especially parents - now have to use so many ant-bacterial products - in hand sanitizers, baby products, mouthwashes, even socks and kids’ clothes? There is little proof that these chemicals prevent illness (outside of special settings such as hospitals wards, perhaps) and besides, some exposure dirt is undeniably good for all of us - for babies, for kids, for adults - in that it keeps our immune systems running properly.
3) There’s also this: if you do want some protection from dirt and bugs, hey, Mother Nature, the smartest female in the universe has provided us with water (and in Canada, plenty of it, thank God) to (along with some soap) do the job for us.
I’m Dr Art Hister
April 10th, 2010
Survey says...
In a survey of 2500 Danish men, Danish researchers recently concluded that
those men who drank more than one litre of cola a day not only had way lower
sperm counts than their non-cola drinking brothers, but the quality of the
Coke-chuggers' their sperm was also worse, perhaps because their sperm boys
were sluggish and swimming so much slower because of all that sugar their owners
were consuming (that's just my guess).
Anyway, here’s the bottom line for those dudes who’re drinking more
than a litre of cola a day and also having trouble getting their partner
pregnant, not to mention, of course, having to spend so much of their
waking time trying to find a toilet: stop drinking that much cola.
See why it's sometimes very easy to be a doctor?
I’m Dr Art Hister
April 8th, 2010
This one really bothers me...
This one really bothers me and should bother all of us: according to researchers who published their conclusions in a study in the Journal of Urology, studies of new urological treatments often don’t include enough data about the potential harm of those treatments, that is, the studies hype the good stuff, ignore the bad stuff.
According to these Canadian analysts who looked at 152 urological studies over about a decade, when studies of new urological treatments get published, say a study about a drug meant to lower the risk of prostate cancer or a study about a new surgical treatment for a bladder problem, the researchers focus strongly on the benefits and pay scant, often no, attention to the hazards they encountered.
And although these researchers focussed only on urological studies – this was published in the Journal of Urology, after all, and not in the Journal of Everything - I would argue that a similar conclusion could be made about studies in most other areas of medicine as well, which is why we – doctors and patients alike – invariably end up end thinking that new treatments highly touted in studies will do way more good than they actually end up doing in the real world, and which is why we’re also often very surprised to eventually discover that some much-promoted treatment – hormones for menopause, Vioxx for pain, multivitamins to increase life expectancy, and hundreds more – ends up either not working or worse, doing many of us more harm than good.
Bottom line: unless there’s incontrovertible proof that some new product or therapy will make a huge difference to your life, always wait a bit before trying it because it’s going to take us a while, sometimes a long while, before we really know the true risks and benefits of that approach.
I’m Dr Art Hister
April 6th, 2010
Listen up, dudes: you can’t talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time.
Actually, that isn’t quite right: of course, anyone who chooses to do so can indeed talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time, and millions of you do, but when you do take part both those activities simultaneously, even if you’re using a hands-free phone, research shows that you’re not doing either activity – holding a conversation and driving - as well as you would if you were only trying to do one of them at a time.
That’s according to two impeccable sources.
The first and most important one is me because I swear I can always tell when some idiot in front of me, usually a guy driving a car meant so big that’s got to be a cover for his miniscule manliness, is trying to drive that machine oh-so-carefully because he’s engaged in some world-shaking conversation on his cell phone on the order of “Of course, I’ll make that tee time. I actually don’t have anything else in my life, dude.”
The second source is a bit more objective: a study of 200 volunteers who were given a simulated driving test and a conversation to hold during which they were also given words to memorize to see how well they could that information during their little chat, and 97.5 % of the test subjects not only made way more driving errors when talking but they also couldn’t retain the words nearly as well as when they weren’t driving.
An amazing 2.5 % of the subjects, however, actually improved their memory scores when driving.
The problem is, of course, that nearly all of us think we’re in that 2.5 %, but got news for you: you’re not, and I’m not, so the next time your wife calls you on your hands-free cell phone to tell you not to forget the dry cleaning, do us all a favour and pull over to the side of the road to say, “Yes, dear.”
I’m Dr Art Hister
Television Spots 
Radio Broadcasts
