Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Butt Out, Buddy

Problem:

I’m not going write this Wednesday without making a confession: there have been two times in my life when I regularly smoked cigarettes (between 1/2 a pack and 1 1/2 packs a day). Each time was brief (don’t worry, Mom), and both times I quit, quickly and cold, though not without struggles.

My buddy Pete, a former 15-year smoker, put it to me this way: “After a couple of days the nicotine is out of your body, then it’s just whether or not you’re a pansy.”

Even though it was mainly easy (but not-so breezy) for me to put out my last butt, I can see how people get hooked and hold onto the habit: it ain’t just chemical. It gets hard-wired in our brains in association with food, work, sex, travel, socializing, and escape. And those are six pretty damned good things.

But (you knew there was one coming, right?) none of those are a good enough reason to start or continue. Is there a good one? Of course not. Every smoker and non-smoker knows this. Should you be allowed to smoke? Probably Maybe. But should you? No $%&@*!^ way.

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Make Progress:

There are three ways to make progress this week: stop smoking; help someone else stop smoking (just email the post to your pals); educate yourself on smoking for your own sake and the sake of others.

• Quit
• Watch
• Look
• Protect

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Quit:

In case you or yours actually need to know why quitting would be a good idea, here goes:

1. According to the American Cancer Society, “smoking is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 deaths in the United States.”
2. And it ain’t just lung, larynx, and mouth cancer staring us down, my people. Smoking is directly linked to cancers of the pancreas, cervix, kidney, stomach, pharynx, esophagus, and bladder.
3. Of course, cigarettes don’t only bring about cancer. Smoking is a major or contributing cause of (in alphabetical order): aneurysms, asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease, pneumonia, and stroke.
4. There’s more: smoking increases your odds of bone thinning, hip fractures, peptic ulcers, and (get this) cataracts.
5. In the year 2000, 8.6 million Americans were suffering from “at least one chronic disease due to current or former smoking.” Says who? Says the Centers for Disease Control. Just for comparison’s sake, let me just mention that there are 8.1 million people living in New York City.
6. How many known carcinogens are in cigarette smoke? 43.
7. And as if we needed to know another reason why the tobacco behemoths dump nicotine in cigs, there’s this: “nicotine, when inhaled in cigarette smoke, reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body intravenously.” We’re all about sticking it to these companies whose goal it is, quite literally, to addict us and destroy us.
8. And on top of all that, cigarettes are freaking expensive.
9. Oh, and they make your breath stink like a burning tire.

But quitting, as I know, is easier typed than done. And why is it so damned difficult? Because, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, “the pharmacologic and behavioral processes that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine.” You read that right: cigarettes are like heroin and cocaine.

Look, I’ve quit myself, and I’ve fired up again. I’ve watched my friends struggle through this addiction. There ain’t nothing wrong with asking for some help, so here’s some from:

• The University of Texas
• The American Cancer Society
• The Centers for Disease Control
• SmokeFree.gov
• The Surgeon General

Or just call this number: 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

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Watch:

Need more umph for you or a pal? Give these pair of thetruth.com videos a whirl.

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Look:

Look, friends, we were going to post three or four or five pictures here of diseased lungs, gangrenous legs, cases of mouth cancer, and laryngectomies, but… well, two things:

1. These photos are so peel-your-eyelids-back gruesome, we didn’t think it would be appropriate for a place we consider to be rather PG, maybe PG-13.
2. These photos made us want to power-puke.

So, our advice to you is this: check it out for yourselves if you want to. If you smoke, it’s a must. I’ll wager dollars to donuts (and I really dig donuts) that you’ll seriously consider a self-imposed cease and desist order for cigarettes (or your tobacco product of choice). And if you don’t smoke, well, hell, these photos will do two things: keep you from ever, ever, ever, ever smoking; convince you to get your friends who stink like old ashtrays to kick the habit before they kick ye old can.

And where might you find some of these not-so-fun photos? Here, here, here, here, and here. Please, please, please don’t say we didn’t warn you. We did. In fact, we’ll warn you one more time: this stuff is messed up, kids.

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Protect:

This sucker is threefold, but we’ll focus on the most unusual of the three:

1. Do yourself a favor and steer clear of bars and restaurants that still allow smoking. (There are only 22 states that allow the former and 20 the latter.) Secondhand smoke kills ya. You’ve made it to adulthood and still need proof? Just click here.
2. Try to keep your kids away from secondhand smoke. Wanna know why? Read this, baby.
3. Protect your pets.

If you’re not worried about yourself and you don’t have kids, at least consider your furry and feathered friends, because besides saving your own hide from cancer, emphysema, and breath that smells like a cadaver, here’s another reason to leave Marlboro country:

“There have been a number of scientific papers recently that have reported the significant health threat secondhand smoke poses to pets,” said veterinarian Carolynn MacAllister of Oklahoma State University. “Secondhand smoke has been associated with oral cancer and lymphoma in cats, lung and nasal cancer in dogs, as well as lung cancer in birds.”

Cats living with smokers are also twice as likely to develop malignant lymphoma, a cancer that occurs in the lymph nodes and that is fatal to three out of four cats within 12 months of developing it.

Studies have also shown that dogs living in a smoking household are susceptible to cancers of the nose and sinus area, particularly if they are a long-nosed breed, because their noses have a greater surface area that is exposed to carcinogens and a greater area for them to accumulate. Dogs affected with nasal cancer normally don’t survive for more than one year.

Birds are also at risk for lung cancer, as well as pneumonia, because their respiratory systems are hypersensitive to any type of air pollutant.

While I’ve heard some interesting arguments for banning smoking outright, I still fall on the libertarian side: as long as you’re not harming me (which means no smoking in public places, thank you), you should be allowed to do, for the most part, whatever you please. This study, though, complicates things: where does a person’s right to harm themselves end and the rights of an animal begin? The same goes, even more so, for kids.

So, will I smoke a cigar the next time one of my buddies gets hitched? Despite my better judgment, I probably will. But ask me this: Will you smoke that stogy in front of Weasley, Eric’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel? No sir, I won’t. Why? Not just because I don’t want to harm the poor thing, but because what in the hell is his puppy doing at a wedding reception? That’s just not right.

Health Care v. Who Cares?

Last week, after the President’s State of the Union address, there was a photo taken of Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. She is reaching over either to shake his or Ted Kennedy’s hand. He turns away just as the picture is being taken, making it look as though he is rejecting her handshake.

But you know that already. The reason I know that you know that is because you are reading this blog which means that you are probably interested enough in world events that you turned on the tube sometime that week, and regardless of whether you were watching FOX, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, or Nickelodeon (OK, maybe not that one), you saw pundits discussing it, analyzing it, and doing whatever else they could do to it for nearly three days. It was Christmas in January for the media.

If you’re like me, you were more than a little irritated that this got so much press coverage. That 99% of voting-age Americans knew about the “handshake snub,” but hardly any could tell me about the differences in their health care plans, is enough to make me want to throw my 38″, 300-pound television through my window. But instead, I decided to even those numbers out, if only a little bit. So below are the health care plans of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Take a minute to read them over.

But most importantly, VOTE! And when you do, base your decision on who you think has a better health care plan, who will strengthen America’s middle and lower classes, and who will improve our standing in the world. Don’t make it based on a picture of a handshake.

• Barack Obama’s Health Care Plan
• Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Plan

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This pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole thing.

And end to AIDS might be on the horizon.

According to a recent article posted on the website for Channel 11 out of Atlanta, there might be some very strong hope for the future of an AIDS vaccine:

The world could have a new vaccine designed to kill the AIDS virus in as little as three to four years according to an Atlanta-based group working on the vaccine.

It is a scientific advance that could save tens of millions of lives, and it is being developed on the campus of Emory University.

I’m a bit confused about how this vaccine works, but you need to bear in mind that I really have no idea how a smoke detector, my microwave, or aspirin works. I don’t even know how the next tissue pops up out of a box of Klennex when you grab one to blow your nose.

But apparently, the vaccine employs a “decoy virus” which contains minuscule amounts of HIV, amounts so small no one would actually get AIDS from the injection. This sets up “memory cells,” which would attack the actual virus should you become exposed. In a scientific nutshell:

The vaccine works using a one-two pharmaceutical punch to prime the body then kill the virus.

“It raises both antibodies that can block the virus and it raises white blood cells called t cells that can kill the virus infected cells,– said [Dr. Harriet Robinson, Ph. D., of the Emory Vaccine Center].

I hate to build up false hope, but steps like this on a small level (according to the article the lab where this powerful work is getting done is smaller than my garage), where progress, at times surprisingly, seems to be made.

How important could this next step in defending and treating AIDS be? Well, according to ADVERT, an international AIDS charity, “the UNAIDS/WHO AIDS Epidemic Update [estimates] around 37.2 million adults and 2.3 million children were living with HIV at the end of 2006.” Combined that would be like every single person in California having HIV. Or everyone in Canada and New Zeland put together. Or all of Spain.

Let’s hope, and pray, and hope some more that there’s an end in sight.

To keep yourself informed about HIV and AIDS, just click the red ribbon. Remember, friends, knowledge is progress.

This treatment's not just “for the dogs–

Being married to a veterinarian who absolutely loves her job means that I get some of the most interesting “pillow talk– that one could imagine. I think it could only be more interesting if she were a CIA agent. I'm not outing her; she doesn't work for the CIA (at least, I don't think). Some of what I hear about when I pretend to understand what the H-E-double hockey sticks she's talking about, are the newest treatments being developed for humans that are already being used on animals.

Last week, she pointed this one out which I found on MSNBC.com:

Human volunteers (are) testing a vaccine for melanoma – ” a potentially fatal skin cancer that strikes 60,000 Americans a year.

The human results at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are not in yet, but a few blocks away in New York at the Animal Medical Center, veterinarians heard about the vaccine and asked to try it in dogs.

What makes this study so intriguing (other than the fact that it is curing cancer) is that the vaccine was originally intended to reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence of melanoma in patients that have already been treated for the skin cancer. But when the treatment was used on a dog that currently had the fatal disease, the dog:

Underwent complete disappearance of his tumor. Since then, more than 100 dogs have been treated– ¦ The vaccine works so well that the U.S. department of Agriculture is about to license it as a treatment of melanoma in dogs.

It'll take some time before it's deemed safe for regular treatment of human melanoma, but it's nice to know what's on the medical horizon. It's also nice to know that the newest acquisition of our family (pictured – right) will have a better chance of living a full and healthy life, and that his kind could help his partner in crime (left) do the same.

This Wednesday: Ten Essential Pints

PROBLEM:

Okay, we’ve got a two-parter for you this week, and it’s got everything to do with that stuff giving our hearts a practical purpose (though I suppose you could argue that its other “purpose” is nearly as practical, nearly as required). Anyhow, I’m talkin’ ’bout blood. My fellow Potter fans, I’m not referring to the “Half-Blood Prince.” Though I’m pumped for that book to make it to film, I’m writing this Wednesday about the ten pints we all have pulsing through our Muggle bodies.

So here’s the problem: we don’t have enough of it in our hospitals; we don’t offer enough help to those with deadly and painful disorders. That’s it. It’s that black, it’s that white. Let’s do something.

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MAKE PROGRESS:

We’re going to ask you to do the same thing twice: give, baby, give.

• Donate, Part I
• Donate, Part II

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DONATE, PART I:

So, we need you to bleed. Though not for a vampire or a voodoo ceremony, but rather for, you know, your fellow humans. Why? Here's why:

• According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, every year in the United States, almost 5 million people are saved by blood transfusions. That's more than the populations of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont combined.
• Someone needs blood in the United States every two seconds. Put another way — three gallons of the stuff is used every minute here in the Red, White, and Blue.
• Approximately 20% of all patients entering hospitals require blood.
• 38,000 blood donations are needed every day to maintain our supply.
• Giving blood just once can save the lives of three people. I'm pretty sure that throws the “I don't like needles– excuse out the proverbial window.
• It's not just people in car accidents who need your blood. People with sickle-cell anemia, cancer, and leukemia require large amounts of transfusions. Severe burn victims need transfusions, as do folks undergoing organ transplants and many premature infants.
• Here's a final troubling statistic: only five percent of those who could donate blood do so (yours truly included… though that will change, and I mean pronto).

In case you’re at all concerned, you can't get an infectious disease from donating blood, and the process won't decrease your strength. And how often can you give blood? Every 56 days, baby. Just click this sentence for the blood donation eligibility guidelines from the Red Cross.

So give. And don't give until it hurts, because, if you're not a complete pansy, it really won't. If you'd like to donate blood through the Red Cross, just click this sentence. You can even watch an online presentation of the process. But if donating cabbage is more your speed, click right here, yo..

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DONATE, PART II:

Here we're going to tackle three blood diseases that tend to fly under the radar but are serious nonetheless, or maybe they're still serious because we let them fly under the aforementioned radar. (Please Note: I don't really think we've all got some sort of mythical and magical radar pulsing in our brains, though it might be cool if we did.) So, what illnesses?

– ¢ Malaria

1. The World Health Organization estimates that “every year more than 500 million people become severely ill with malaria.” To give that a little perspective, that’s more people than live in Canada (33 million), Mexico (103 million), and the United States (303 million) combined.
2. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “over one million people die [each year from malaria],” and most of them are infants, young children, and pregnant women.
3. While we’re facing a resurgence of the disease, it remains preventable (since we can whack the mosquitoes who transmit it) and treatable.

If you’ve got a fiver burning a hole in your pocket, consider donating it to the Malaria Foundation International.

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– ¢ Sickle cell disease

1. Lest I forget to mention it since I just learned it myself, this broader illness is frequently (and incorrectly) referred to as “sickle cell anemia.” So what is it? In brief, it’s an inherited blood disorder: sufferers have an abundance of an abnormal hemoglobin. Hemoglobin, for those of you keeping score, helps our bodies transfer oxygen to our various parts. Sickle cell hemoglobin dies sooner than normal hemoglobin, and it also doesn’t travel well through blood vessels, and you know, that’s kind of important.
2. A sufferer faces infection, severe pain episodes, hand and foot swelling, stroke, acute chest syndrome, and vision problems.
3. And here’s one of the biggest problems when it comes to the funding of new treatments and the possibility of a cure: racism. According to the NIH, most U.S. cases occur with African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, and “about one in every 500 African-Americans has sickle cell disease.”

Since we can’t count on the racists raging in our culture, let’s do something ourselves. Please consider a donation to the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America.

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– ¢ Hemophilia

1. First, let’s clear up what we’re dealing with here. According to the National Institutes of Health, “hemophilia is [an] inherited bleeding disorder in which blood doesn't clot normally.” 18,000 Americans have inherited hemophilia. When you grow up in the boondocks like I did, you realize that 18,000 is a surprisingly large number of people (it’s about 12 times the population of my old hometown).
2. But the NIH also points out that “hemophilia also can be acquired… if your body forms antibodies to the clotting factors in your bloodstream.”
3. I realize that only 1 in 10,000 are born with hemophilia A and 1 in 50,000 are born with hemophilia B, but this rare disease bends my heart a bit because one of my favorite writers, Tom Andrews, died from complications from hemophilia when he was only 40.

So, please consider making a small donation (Who needs that Big Mac Value Meal today?) to the National Hemophilia Foundation.

Would you like to Super-size your antibiotics?

Last month we asked you to sign a petition urging Congress to pass The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007, preventing the use of therapeutic antibiotics in healthy food animals. As it is now, 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs in the United States are used in the feed and water of healthy animals and account for more than 80 percent of all antibiotics used.

Why is this important? Bacteria that are exposed to these antibiotics build up immunity and are rendered ineffective in human treatment, requiring the use of stronger antibiotics; it's a vicious and deadly cycle. You can read more about it here and here and, if you haven't already, sign the petition here.

But if I thought we should wait for Congress every time action was needed, well, I'd run for Congress. Thankfully there's one food company that shares my feeling on the subject. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Tyson Foods recently announced it will produce all of its fresh chicken without antibiotics, selling it in grocery stores under a “Raised Without Antibiotics” label. Tyson has set an important precedent by protecting the health of their customers. Now is the time for fast-food companies to establish strict policies against nontherapeutic use of antibiotics by their meat suppliers.

In that light, UCS has started a petition asking our nation's fast food industry to follow suit. The petition will be sent to all of the major fast food chains urging them to demand that their meat suppliers stop using human antibiotics to treat food animals. Of course, we don't recommend eating at fast food restaurants at all. That would be the first step in making America a bit healthier. But since most Americans eat McMeals several times a week, getting human antibiotics out of the meat would at least mean that the doctor won't have to use a drug so strong it could kill a small horse the next time my daughter scrapes her knee.

So, for my daughter's sake and yours, please hop on over to the UCS website and sign their petition.

Thanks for the pic goes to this Tyson chicken eater

Monday Morning Motherhood: Non-Discriminatory

212,920 total. 40,970 dead.

Violent crime statistics? Nope. The numbers above represent something much scarier to some of us. They are, respectively, the number of estimated new cases of breast cancer cases in women in 2006, and the estimated number of women who die each year from the disease. And it doesn’t just afflict women: 1,720 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.

I bring all this up because last week I received some very disturbing news: my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and later this week she will undergo a mastectomy. Since I refuse to reveal another woman's age, we'll just say that she's young. Too young. She's also one of the toughest women you will ever meet. She and her husband had five children in nine years, and raised them to be tough and loving, smart and a little cocky, and they taught their kids to stick by each other. Her oldest son announced his engagement about three weeks ago. Her youngest two are still in high school. My aunt is tall, beautiful, elegant and strong. But cancer, of course, doesn't discriminate, as my whole family knows all too well. My Great Aunt Dean died many years ago from cancer. My father has been battling several different forms of cancer since I was thirteen. When I was pregnant, my great aunt Joanne died from breast cancer that had metastasized into bone cancer. All good people, none of whom deserve the pain and suffering that cancer brings. But then, no one does.

While there’s no cure-all for cancer, there is good news to be had. In 2006, Gardasil, the first-ever vaccine for cervical cancer, was released. And a few years back, my sister worked for the NIH, doing research on a vaccine for pancreatic cancer. Specific risk factors for different types of cancer have been identified, and there are even tests that can tell you what your chances of developing breast cancer are. One of the most important things about cancer is to find it early, treat it early. According to The Breast Cancer Site: “If detected early, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer exceeds 95%.–

So how can we be proactive and progressive when it comes to breast cancer? Maybe these four steps that follow can help with that:

1. Get screened: Getting a mammogram reduces the mortality of breast cancer by 20-30%. The earlier you are diagnosed, the earlier you can treat cancer. The NCI and Department of Health and Human Services recommend that women over 40 years old get a mammogram every 1-2 years.
2. Screen yourself: At Komen.org you can download a breast self-exam card which is offered in over 8 different languages. They recommend that women over age 20 do a monthly self breast exam. Once again, early detection is the key to fighting cancer.
3. Talk to your doctor: Even if you are perfectly healthy, talk to your physician. Let her/him know of any family history of cancer, especially breast or cervical cancers. If you have found a lump in your breast through one of the above screening methods, or if you are currently going through treatment, communication is important. Staying involved in your treatment is important: know what is happening, know your options, stay informed, get healthy.
4. Tell a friend: This is a Progressive Wednesday staple. Tell a friend what screening methods you use, or if you don't feel comfortable with that (we understand), click here to send a Breast Cancer Awareness Month greeting card. Also, you can click here to help fund free mammograms. If you know someone who is battling breast cancer, or any cancer, please let them know they have your support. Trust me when I tell you, they'll need it.

While not a solution, these tips can help with early detection and help those currently waging a battle against cancer. That, my friends, can help at least put a dent in this awful disease.