Rochdale Village Health

By Kelly Wallace, CNN (original article)

Updated 7:59 AM ET, Thu December 10, 2015

“A lot of kids at our school literally lacked the hip range motion to get into the sack and then were having difficulty jumping,” said Starrett, who lives in San Rafael, California and has two daughters, ages 7 and 10.

The couple’s company educates corporations, athletes and professional teams on movement, mobility, mechanics and injury prevention, and that day at the sack race “really freaked us out because we realized the only thing that could cause that kind of dysfunction in kids was sitting too much.”

They’d been recommending people minimize sitting and use standing desks for about seven years. The desks are no longer an anomaly in workplaces, especially after studies showed prolonged periods of sitting can be horrible for our health. But the sack race was the first time they’d considered using the desks in schools.

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Socioeconomic status didn’t explain racial disparities in life expectancy after a heart attack.

THOMAS BARWICK VIA GETTY IMAGES

From Spine-Health.com

Neck pain is usually caused by injuries and sprains associated with the muscles, tendons, and ligaments around the cervical spine (upper part of the spine, or the neck), but it can also be caused by a cervical herniated disc or cervical stenosis.

• See Neck Strain: Causes and Remedies

Follow these 10 tips to protect your neck from injury:

1. Sleep with a cervical pillow.
Cervical pillows, or orthopedic pillows, are contoured to support the spaces under the head and neck with deeper depressions where the head lies and extra support under the neck. They help keep the neck in alignment with the spine.

Read more about pillows: Different Types of Pillows

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By Alessandro Demaio

The latest dubious tactic of global soda giant Coca-Cola has now been revealed for what it is — a move by an industry with a threatened financial future to confuse science, policy and the public in order to buy time and protect profits.

On paper it seemed harmless enough; the recent founding of the Global Energy Balance Network may have even sounded like a good thing. A group of scientists wanting to bring more attention to the global and serious challenge of obesity, and encourage policy makers to recognize the importance of exercise in its mitigation. On further reading though, it becomes increasingly apparent that their focus is more about shifting our attention away from what we eat — probably the most important point for intervention in tackling overweightedness globally. Talking little about the “calories in” and focusing only on “calories out,” a leading Canadian obesity physicianwas drawn to ask the question: “What is this network really about?”

As it turns out, the network is funded indirectly by Coca-Cola. Their website is registered and administrated by Coca-Cola. Many of their scientists are linked to Coca-Cola funding, or have been funded directly by them.

This is just the latest round of sad but dangerous moves by the sugar drink giant to confuse consumers, stall policy and halt public health. The food and beverage industry have a long history of funding puppet NGOs, paying leading thinkers to sit on their “advisory boards” and even commissioning research to confuse the scientific landscape. In fact, a paper published in PLOS Medicine in 2013 found that studies funded by the sweetened beverage industry were five times more likely to find no link between sugary drinks and weight gain, than studies whose authors reported no such conflicts. From the company that has brought us summer, printed our names on their bottles, even launched a “life” labelled package in an ironic green wrapping — this latest “network” is unlikely to be a surprise to many of us, but presents a challenge for us all.
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From Huffington Post

Despite this, many states still ban needle exchange programs.

By PATRICK WHITTLE

MACHIAS, Maine (AP) — Public health agencies and drug treatment centers nationwide are scrambling to battle an explosive increase in cases of hepatitis C, a scourge they believe stems at least in part from a surge in intravenous heroin use.

In response, authorities are instituting or considering needle exchange programs but are often stymied by geography – many cases are in rural areas – and the cost of treatment in tight times.

In Washington County, at the nation’s eastern edge, the rate of the acute form of hepatitis C last year was the highest in a state that was already more than triple the national average. The problem, health officials there agree, is spurred by the surge in the use of heroin and other injectable drugs and the sharing of needles to get high.

Ryan Kinsella’s story is sadly typical. He was badly hurt in a rock climbing accident and became dependent on opioid painkillers several years ago. But when his prescriptions ran out, he sought drugs from the street, where he found heroin cheaper and easy to get, replacing one addiction for another. He’s now recovering from hepatitis C.

“It’s tough getting medical professionals to look at you as something that’s not a junkie,” said Kinsella, 33, who runs a bicycle shop in tiny Penobscot, next door in Hancock County. “There’s a little bit of social stigma, and there’s a little bit of `There’s nothing we can do for you’ that’s hard to hear.”

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Taken from Kaiser Health News

Once again, the majority of the nation’s hospitals are being penalized by Medicare for having patients frequently return within a month of discharge — this time losing a combined $420 million, government records show.

In the fourth year of federal readmission penalties, 2,592 hospitals will receive lower payments for every Medicare patient that stays in the hospital — readmitted or not — starting in October. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, created by the Affordable Care Act, was designed to make hospitals pay closer attention to what happens to their patients after they get discharged.

Since the fines began, national readmission rates have dropped, but roughly one of every five Medicare patients sent to the hospital ends up returning within a month.

Some hospitals view the punishments as unfair because they can lose money even if they had fewer readmissions than they did in previous years. All but 209 of the hospitals penalized in this round were also punished last year, a Kaiser Health News analysis of the records found.

The fines are based on readmissions between July 2011 and June 2014 and include Medicare patients who were originally hospitalized for one of five conditions: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, chronic lung problems or elective hip or knee replacements. For each hospital, Medicare determined what it thought the appropriate number of readmissions should be based on the mix of patients and how the hospital industry performed overall. If the number of readmissions was above that projection, Medicare fined the hospital.

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