Stress: Can Be the Culpit in Your Backache

"Stress So Bad It Hurts -- Really" is the headline for Melinda Beck's article in the March 17th Wall Street Journal that explains the toll that stress can take on our physical well-being. She quotes from Christopher L. Edwards, director of the Behavioral Chronic Pain Management program at Duke University Medical Center:

Decades ago, when doctors said a condition was psychosomatic, it was the equivalent of saying it wasn't real, since there was little evidence that the body and the brain were connected. "Now, we recognize that what happens in the brain affects the body and what happens in the body affects the brain," he says. That knowledge gives us the tools to try to manage the situation, he adds.

Dr. Edwards says his pain-management program in Durham, N.C., is seeing a rise in patients amid the current economic crisis: "There's a very strong relationship between the economy and the number of out-of-control stress cases we see."

You'll have to read the article for yourself as I don't have time to add more to this blog post. I'm off to the gym with my exercise partner to relieve my own stress.

Read this Wall Street Journal article on stress now.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

GERD (Acid Reflux) Found in Babies as Young as One Day Old

GERD (acid reflux) is something I know about – I’ve been taking Prevacid for the last few years to control this reaction. Then I read Melinda Beck’s July 22^nd Health Journal in The Wall Street Journal titled “Baby crying? Doctors Say It May Be Acid-Reflux Disease.”

Here’s the first paragraph of this article:

Oliva Manganello was 1 month old when she started screaming, usually right after she nursed. Her family tried switching to formula, then different formulas, but nothing helped. Finally a pediatric gastroenterologist diagnosed gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and put Olivia on Pepcid. “In two days, she was a completely different baby,” says her mother, Trina Chiara of Avon, Conn.

When my mother read this article, her response was to wonder which of her grandchildren who cried all the time for the first few months might have had GERD.

My husband accuses me of practicing medicine without a license. But I believe it’s important, as a do-gooder Scrooge, to know about common but often undiagnosed medical conditions in order to help others.

For example, my older daughter called me from college when she worked part-time as an aide in a elementary school classroom to ask for information on allergies and asthma. My daughter could tell that a child in the class was suffering and that the mother was clueless – she needed resources to learn about her child’s medical issues. (If you need allergy and asthma resources, check out www.aanma.org.)

And that’s why I’m blogging about this topic today. (I actually woke up in the middle of the night and thought: “I haven’t shared that info yet.”)

Apparently there’s a disagreement as to whether babies are being overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed with GERD. Regardless of this, if you suspect GERD in a baby you know who cries every day for hours and hours, gently suggest to the parent that this condition be evaluated by a doctor trained to recognize it in infants and young children.

For more information, go to www.reflux.org, the website of the Pediatric/Adolescent Gastroesophageal Reflux Association (PAGER).

If a medical solution is found for a baby’s incessant crying, the baby as well as the parents and entire family will probably be forever grateful to you for their regained calm and sleep.

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GERD, gastroesophageal reflux disease, acid reflux, www.reflux.org, www.aanma.org, Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck

Vitamin D: Needed for a Shield Against Diseases as Well as for Strong Bones

“It’s D-Lightful: Vitamin D Gets Its Moment in the Sun” announced the July 15^th Wall Street Journal Health Journal by Melinda Beck. And the article went on to explain that, while Vitamin D is known for being crucial for strong bones, there’s new research suggesting it also protects against a wide variety of diseases.

Did this news upset me at my age? (Over age 51 the amount of D needed increases.) Not in the least – because only yesterday my new doctor had blood drawn to check my Vitamin D level. The week before, at my first visit to him, he had explained that he’d been finding too low levels of D in his patients.

And since January, when I had my annual gynecological exam, I’ve been taking a Vitamin D supplement daily because my gynecologist told me to do so. (I didn’t ask him why – I just did what he said.)

According to the Journal article, the strongest source of natural Vitamin D is ultraviolet B rays from the sun. These rays convert a form of cholesterol into vitamin D in the skin.

Turns out all of us who have given up sitting in the sun to avoid skin cancer have deprived our bodies of an important vitamin. The Journal article quotes John J. Cannell, founder of the nonprofit Vitamin D Council in Atascadero, California, as saying that Vitamin D “turns into a steroid hormone that’s involved in the maintenance of over 200 human genes.” (See www.vitamindcouncil.org for more info.)

The American Academy of Pediatricians is already recommending that breast-fed infants get 400 international units of supplemental D daily. And the National Osteoporosis Foundation says adults over age 50 should get at least 800 to 1,000 international units to prevent fractures.

The next time you see your doctor, regardless of your age, ask about being tested for a Vitamin D deficiency. It turns out it’s important to be “exposed” to the sun after all – just in a safe (artificial) way.

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do-gooder, John J. Cannell, Melinda Beck, Scrooge, Vitamin D, Vitamin D Council, Wall Street Journal, WSJ