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Monthly Archives: August 2013

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    Toddler chokes to death with no medical care available in Center, Texas

Toddler chokes to death with no medical care available in Center, Texas

An 18-month-old girl died Monday night after apparently choking to death in Center.

San Augustine County Justice of the Peace Adris Mosby pronounced Edith Gonzales dead at a San Augustine hospital.

Center resident Charles Bush posted on his Facebook page that he was at CVS in Center around 9 p.m. when he watched Edith’s grandfather springing from his car and seeking help for his choking granddaughter in the vehicle outside.

“The grandfather pulled in, and he was absolutely frantic, so I knew something was wrong,” Bush said.

Even though Bush could not understand the Spanish-speaking man, he jumped into action to help him. After a short conversation, he realized that the man was concerned about his granddaughter, Edith Gonzales.

“She was bleeding from her mouth and choking,” Bush said. “We found out later that it was a grape.”

Bush said he dialed 911 but was told there was not an ambulance available; the four units on duty were all on calls. He said a deputy with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and officers with Center police arrived at CVS and attempted to help her breathe.

The deputy took Edith in his car and met an ambulance in town around 9:05 p.m. The ambulance arrived at a San Augustine hospital around 9:45 p.m. and Edith was pronounced dead at 10:30 p.m.

Bush posted his message on Facebook because he was concerned that if there was a hospital in Center, Edith may still be alive.

Three ambulances were on call Monday night and and all were on calls when the 911 call came in, said ACE EMS director Jessie Griffith.

Griffith said that not having a medical center in Center makes response times on calls even longer than before.

“You make patient contact. You do some treatment on scene,” Griffith said. “You transport to say Nacogdoches. You get […]

Q&A on the science of growing hamburger meat in the lab

By MARIA CHENG
AP Medical Writer
 At a public tasting in London on Monday, Dutch scientists served a single hamburger made from cow stem cells. Some questions and answers about the science behind the revolutionary patty, how it could help combat climate change and what it actually tastes like.
Q: What are stem cells?
A: Stem cells are an organism’s master cells and can be turned into any other cell type in the body, i.e. blood, tissue, muscle, etc. Adult stem cells are found in small numbers in most human tissues, including bone marrow, fat and muscle.
Q: Why is the meat so expensive to produce?
A: The technology is new and scientists are making very small quantities of meat. There are no economies of scale to offset the initial high costs. If more scientists or companies start using the technology to produce more meat products, that could drop the price substantially and speed up its production.
Q: When could this meat be in stores?
A: Probably not for another 10 to 20 years. It would take years to refine the technology, encourage other producers and scientists to get involved, and overcome any regulatory issues.
Q: Who paid for the research?
A: Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, underwrote the 250,000-euro ($330,000) project, which began in 2006. The Dutch government previously donated 2 million euros to the research.
Q: How is this better for the environment?
A: It could reduce the number of animals needed for the meat industry. Raising cows, pigs, chickens, etc., contributes substantially to climate change through the production of methane gas. Growing meat in the laboratory could reduce the impact on agricultural land, water and resources.
Q: How long does it take to grow a burger?
A: At the moment, a long time. It has […]

Dog put down after eating paralyzed man’s testicle

An Arkansas man, who is paralyzed from the waist down, is being treated at St. Bernards Regional Medical Center after a stray dog he picked up reportedly ate one of his testicles.
The man, who was not identified in the police report, told Trumann police that he woke up to a “burning pain in his mid-section. “He told the responding officer that he sleeps in the nude and when he woke up, he noticed the dog between his legs. He said there was blood on the dog’s muzzle and front paws. When he investigated further, he noticed the dog had eaten one of his testicles.
The dog was a stray that the man had taken in about three weeks prior to the incident. Until this, he said the dog had been “completely docile while it had been in his home.”
The dog, which is described as small, white, and fluffy, was taken to the Trumann Animal Clinic where it was euthanized. The dog’s head was sent to the Arkansas Department of Health to be tested for rabies.
KSLA

Does Cooking Strip Red Wine’s Benefits?

 Are the health benefits of red wine still available if the wine is reduced by half through cooking and then consumed with the food?
The short answer is probably yes: You can drink your wine and cook it too.
Red wine essentially has two properties that make it good for health when consumed in moderation. One is its alcohol content, which is known to increase “good” HDL cholesterol and reduce levels of fibrinogen, a precursor of blood clots. The other is its abundance of polyphenols, natural compounds like resveratrol that, according to some studies, can protect blood vessels and help reduce inflammation.
Although it is widely assumed that alcohol in food burns off completely during cooking, that is not always the case. According to research by the Agriculture Department, the amount of alcohol that remains varies widely, depending on the cooking method. A sauce that is made with wine and simmered and stirred for 30 minutes, for example, can retain as much as a third of its alcohol content.
A red wine reduction requires a fairly lengthy cooking period, so it is likely that much of the alcohol evaporates along with water during the cooking process. But red wine without alcohol still appears to have some health benefits.
In a small randomized clinical trial published in the journal Circulation Research last year, Spanish researchers found that men who were assigned to drink 10 ounces of nonalcoholic red wine daily experienced a decrease in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure after four weeks. “There is growing evidence,” an accompanying editorial pointed out, “that chemical constituents present in red wine confer health benefits beyond alcohol and independent of potential confounding factors.”
In another study published in 2011 in The Journal of Cardiovascular […]

Parked cars deadly for kids this summer

It’s only mid-July and already 21 children under the age of five have died from heatstroke in parked cars across America.
Child safety advocacy groups urge parents and caregivers to take extra precautions this summer to help prevent child fatalities resulting from leaving kids unattended in hot parked cars.
In the past decade, approximately 600 children have perished from hyperthermia, otherwise known as heatstroke.
Of the 21 deaths reported through July 17, 2013, 16 were under the age of two and seven were age one year and under. States with the most confirmed or probable child heatstroke deaths include: Florida (4), Texas (3), Virginia (3), Alabama (2), and one each in nine other states (California, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma and North Carolina).
Outside temperatures ranged from 76 degrees to over 100 degrees, but temperatures inside the vehicles often exceeded 125 degrees.
How can such a tragedy happen? Here are the details of a few of these unfortunate child deaths:
– In Fresno, California, a 15-month-old infant boy died after being unintentionally left in a vehicle for an hour. The outside temperature was 101 degrees. Numerous other children had been in the vehicle when the family got out with groceries, thinking the infant boy was with his dad.
– In Miami, Florida, a woman was arrested in connection with the death of an 11-month-old baby boy left inside a vehicle for an undetermined amount of time. His body temperature had reached 109 degrees. The child was discovered after his father asked about his whereabouts and the mother recalled leaving him in the vehicle.
– In June, a 23-month-old Illinois boy died of suspected heatstroke after being forgotten by a parent and left in a hot car for about two hours.
– […]

The Ultimate “Deskercise” Stretch Routine

Who Uses That Gym Membership, Anyway?
An analysis of job industry trends over the past fifty years revealed that at least 8 in 10 American workers are desk potatoes. Neck and shoulder pain are common pals of a sedentary job.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that about 8 in 10 Americans will experience significant lower back pain at some point in their lives. Unfortunately, ladies, according to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, women are more likely to experience lower back pain and neck pain than men.
Work out your computer screen kinks and paperwork pains with these deskercise gems. 

The Daydream
Gently pull each elbow to the opposite side overhead. Just pretend you’re under a Tahitian waterfall and need to scrub your shoulder blades. 

The Carpet Gazer
Remaining seated, extend your legs and reach toward your toes. Stare at the purplish-gray office carpet or search for lost bits of popcorn for 20 seconds. 

The Half-Bear Hug
Hug one knee at a time, pulling it toward your chest. Tell passers-by you need a mini childhood flashback, or that “this is how you roll.” 

The Olympic Diver
Clasp your hands in front of you and lower your head in line with your arms. Pretend you actually know how to dive correctly, and use this “proper technique” to impress your cubicle companions.

The Almost-Aerobics Reach
Extend each arm overhead and to the opposite side as you imagine Richard Simmons goading you toward a fabulous body. 

The “Who Cares if I’m at Work” Shrug
Raise both shoulders at once up toward the ears. Drop them and repeat as you explain to your boss that you are, indeed, listening with interest. 

The Freedom Search
Clasp hands behind your back, push the chest outward, and raise the chin. Count yourself […]

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    Following blood pressure-drug schedule may be critical to survival

Following blood pressure-drug schedule may be critical to survival

Failure to take blood pressure-lowering medicines as directed greatly increases the risk of stroke and death in patients with high blood pressure, a new study finds.
“These results emphasize the importance of hypertensive patients taking their antihypertensive medications correctly in order to minimize their risk of serious complications such as fatal and non-fatal strokes,” said study first author Dr. Kimmo Herttua, a senior fellow in the Population Research Unit at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
“Non-adherent patients have a greater risk even 10 years before they suffer a stroke. We have also found that there is a dose-response relationship, and the worse someone is at taking their antihypertensive therapy, the greater their risk,” Herttua said.
For the study, published online July 17 in the European Heart Journal, researchers followed more than 73,000 hypertensive Finnish patients, aged 30 and up, from 1995 through 2007. They looked at how often prescriptions were filled for these patients each year to determine if they followed their medication regimens. During this time, more than 2,100 died from stroke and more than 24,500 were hospitalized with a stroke.
Compared to those who followed their medication schedule, patients who did not adhere to the schedule had nearly four times the risk of dying from a stroke in the second year after being prescribed their medicines and three times the risk in the 10th year.
In the actual year that non-adherent patients died from stroke, they had a 5.7-fold higher risk than adherent patients, the study found.
Patients who didn’t take their blood pressure-lowering medications correctly had a 2.7-fold higher risk of hospitalization in the second year after being prescribed the drugs, and a nearly 1.7-fold higher risk in the tenth year, the study […]