Critical observations of health, science, and the physical therapy profession.
A series of articles highlighting some anthropology research which explains why women don’t tip over when pregnant. Their study suggests that women have a slightly different wedge shape in their lumbar vertebrae, with a lordotic curve extending over 3 segments, not the two segments in males. So, I wonder if we should follow the lead of knee-replacement manufacturers and design a gender-specific manipulation for the female specific vertebrae? Perhaps, if manipulation was very specific…
ERIC
"The father of long distance running" and physical therapist, Ted Corbitt, has died. Here is his obituary in the New York Times. In addition to his running legend, he also taught physical therapy at Columbia and NYU. He is known to have run more than 199 marathons and ultra marathons!
"Running is something you just do. You don’t need a goal. You don’t need
a race. You don’t need the hype of a so-called fitness craze. All you
need is a cheap pair of shoes and some time. The rest will follow.” Ted Corbitt, 1998
Did you catch the latest APTA press release last week? The section on Women’s Health getting some press.
Also, check out the 20 Most Popular Health Sites on Constructive Medicine 2.0. How many of these sites have you visited?
Finally, go visit (or wait for her to visit you) Shanna Johnson and her Rolling Rehab RV. Physical Therapy: Delivered!
First, a note on access to the Wall Street Journal. WSJ has now placed Digg buttons at the bottom of each story. When some subscriber diggs the story, it becomes listed on the digg site…enabling free access to everyone who gets there through the digg page. You can subscribe to this as an RSS feed, and get some good WSJ content without the subscription fee!
This story from the WSJ about Yoga came to my eyes in the above fashion. Worth a note on the blog, as I’ve met some pretty hard-core Yoga folk in my time. Bottom line on the article is that Yoga is good at stretching and relaxation (to a debatable degree), but it surely does not qualify as cardiovascular exercise. In fact, it may cause less energy expenditure than
walking!
ERIC
World Anti-Doping Agency chairman, Dick Pound, sounded more vigilante than professional when he commented on the arbitration panel’s decision in the Floyd Landis case:
Pound suggested that lab procedures did not matter if they ultimately found a positive test. I would like to know what planet this guy lives on! Lab procedures exist to ensure an accurate and reliable test. The crux of all tests and measures is that a scientist/clinician can only feel confident in their results if they were performed in the EXACT same manner in which those tests were developed and measured.
Perhaps finding testosterone is a reliable and accurate test. Perhaps finding testosterone through an altered procedure is not so reliable or not so accurate. The truth is, we would not be able to know because no one tests the reliability and accuracy of mistakes in procedures.
Landis’ argument here is that his test could have produced a false-positive due to these "less than perfect" procedures, or more sinisterly, that the lack of control of his sample could have opened the opportunity for tampering. I would not presume to know the truth, but from an outside perspective I cannot trust an agency which conducts scientific tests without regard to the rules.
How can WADA not hold itself to the same high standard that it holds athletes to?
In other news, WADA announced an increased budget for next year, in part due to the publicity the Landis case has created for the organization:
"The rate at which WADA stakeholders fulfill their financial responsibilities accelerates every year…" said Dick Pound about the increase.
Perhaps it is these "stakeholders" which cause Pound to actually criticize the World Golf Foundation’s plan to begin drug testing on all the major golf tours. The reason: they decided not to use Pound’s set of tests and measures. Finally, and in perhaps the best news of all, Dick Pound is set to depart.
ERIC
This morning I would like to point you towards a really fun feature to check out at the Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine. As you might be able to tell by this image, the topic is about genetics: "The Genetic Journey: Following DNA from Cell to Society."
Its good to read some generally informative stuff that you were not planning to. At the end of the article, some well known experts offer their opinions on where genetics, health, and our society will travel in the near future.
As usual, here is an excerpt from the feature:
Given such dizzying intricacy and innumerable moving parts, veteran
researcher Sharon Krag says, "You can sit back and say, ‘My God, I’m
here, and most days I’m normal.’ That’s a miracle in itself."
Some of my friends might bed to differ on that last comment.
ERIC
…or why you shouldn’t believe much of the health information coming to you from your local newscast.
The New York Times magazine has presented a wonderful article written by Gary Taubes, which describes the strengths, weaknesses and intricacies of epidemiological research studies. It is lengthy, but contains more than its fair share of great quotes and good information. It nicely concludes with some basic suggestions for how you or I, as individuals, should interpret what we hear from these type of investigations.
This is a great read for providing some good insight into complicated research in some nice, plain language. The prescriber effect, healthy person effect, and the inability of observational cohort studies to conclude causality between variables are just a few of the topics discussed. My favorite quote of the article:
"There are, after all, an infinite number of wrong hypotheses for every
right one, and so the odds are always against any particular hypothesis
being true, no matter how obvious or vitally important it might seem."
Update: The WSJ has checked in with another Hormone Replacement Therapy update at their blog this morning. The title aptly mentions the words "clue" and "mystery."
ERIC
Welcome!
Thanks for joining me here at the new domain for NPA Think Tank. I do apologize if your feed e-mails have been a little weird lately, the transfer process wasn’t as smooth as I would have hoped. Anyway, here we are. I had a lot of help from Jessica King designing my site, so if you like the page and want one of your own, a link to Jessica can be found in the right sidebar. I should also point out, that Jessica is also quite the musician and can help you out if you’d like to hear some nice music from someone who can work wonders on an acoustic guitar!
Some Updates:
Since this post isn’t really about anything, I’ll continue in the same direction and provide some updates about me. Most of my readers are probably well aware of my new job by now, but to update, I’m now on the faculty at Medical College of Georgia teaching in the Physical Therapy department of course. I’ve been there for about a month so far and I’m really loving it! I hope to be able to explore some new twists in the field of evidence and technology as I go, so stay tuned. As far as upcoming content goes, I plan is to use my teaching content as a generator for posts thoughts. For example, if I’m teaching about Power Training, I might try to write a post on the same subject. That way, the MCG students at least will be able to find something else to think about and the rest of you can keep up with where my brain is.
I’ve run on for long enough! Make sure to re-subscribe to the new feed for this site if you did not subscribe to the Feedburner feed. Not sure if you need to resubscribe? Do it anyway…if you get two feeds, just delete the old one.
Thanks for Reading!
ERIC
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, pretty much everyone must be aware that Kevin Everett suffered a severe spinal cord injury this weekend in the Bills game. At first, the prognosis was expectedly grim after an estimated impact force of 2/3 of a ton to Everett’s spine. Now it seems a more positive outcome may be expected.
In listening to some of the interviews, a physician from the Miami Project made a statement that Everett benefited from the earliest application of moderate hypothermia after a spinal cord injury…ever. That is rather profound. From what I can gather as a very outside observer, doctors began lowering Everett’s body temperature in the ambulance and further reduced it once at the hospital by means of an IV catheter.
It is widely understood that cooling tissues reduces the damage cause by inflammation. It is practiced in neurosurgery, with neonates, after sprained ankles, and now with spinal cord injuries.
This image demonstrates the reduction in neural tissue possible with hypothermia treatment. The top two tissue samples were controls, and the bottom sample was cooled to 32 degrees C. The highlighted parts of the image shows areas of tissue death. Pretty amazing!
And, in a big example of "what comes around, goes around," it was reported that the Buffalo Bills owner is a large donor to the Miami Project.
One final note, the Miami Project doctor I cited earlier did upset me with the quote, "…will walk out of the hospital." This is far from a foregone conclusion and seemed a bit overzealous and self-promoting to say that on ESPN. Either way, I’m writing about him.
“Consumers have just become more comfortable eating films.”
That, from the New York Times.