Odds and Ends

CFPA: Have you heard the commercials? Very serious, stern and foreboding - the government and the CFPA - , blah blah blah - tell Congress that you do NOT want this CFPA. The CFPA will make it harder for you to get credit and all that jazz. The ad always uses the letters CFPA and never once tells you want the letters stand for - only that the CFPA is bad and you better do something to stop it. Well, it stands for Consumer Financial Protection Agency - and it will likely put a limit on if not halt predatory lending. If you are in the hole financially, if you cannot meet your monthly obligations - you will have stress, if you have stress - your health will be affected. And so, before you speak out against the CFPA - all I ask is that you learn what it is.

Pollen: I have had a few bad days this spring. Eyes feeling very tight - you know like they are stretched open and propped that way with toothpicks. This is usually accompanied by a bit of a headache - my sinuses feeling squeezed shut. Sometimes when I go walking at work where there are many trees, I feel a little weird after - like my histamine or something has been triggered. I am not sure about other states, but in Florida it has been said that this is one of the worst years for pollen of all types. Add to that, I heard that the chemicals present in particulate matter or air pollution - such as pesticide residue - is also in the pollen. AHA, that explains some of why we have such unpleasant reactions to it.

Genetic Findings: I only jotted down those two words and now I am supposed to know what the heck I was referring to! I may have been referring to a court finding against a company that wants to patent the technology for testing to find the gene associated with breast cancer. If they had been able to keep a patent ( and I am sure that the fight is not over) it would mean that a person who gets a gene test has no way to get a second opinion.... and to me, that just isn't acceptable. Still, even if one is predisposed to breast cancer, they can reduce their odds of getting it through health promotion measures.

Coupons: I was just aghast to see coupons in my latest email from the health insurer BCBS of Florida. On my statement of how my insurance company has assisted me, were coupons. One of those was for a supplement for joint health - for which we know, there is no FDA regulation or proof of efficacy. Why would my insurance company want me to waste my money on something that does not have proof of doing me any good? It seems like my insurance company is now accepting advertiser dollars.

Event + Time = Cancer: In reading about the risk for cancer from radiation in medical tests which I recently blogged about, I took note of the comment that the event - exposure to radiation - led to cancer ten or more years later. I parked that in my brain because smoker's are at great risk for lung cancer, but not within the first few years of beginning to smoke - only many years later. The people I counsel seem confused about this - especially if they hear of individuals getting cancer AFTER they quit. I see now that the best analogy I can offer them has to do with skin cancer. Recall that the biggest risk factor for melanoma is sunburns in one's youth. It is in middle age that the melanoma is diagnosed. If you have a few sunburns as a child - you have a certain risk of skin cancer that will never go away - if you continue to expose yourself to the sun's UV rays without protection - that risk is exponentially increased. If you are tanning up until your diagnosis, you can connect the event and the disease - the same as if you are smoking at the time of a lung cancer diagnosis - but it could be that the damage began some ten or more years ago.