Yeast/Candida and Fertility: Guest Post

I keep meaning to write something about yeast, aka candida albicans, because it's linked to fertility problems, I think largely because it's a signal of a weakened immune system. Everyone has some candida, but if you have a lousy immune system--or take birth control pills or antiobiotics or eat a lot of sugar--the candida takes over and is hard to remove. And it's not just the ol' yeast vaginal infection--yeast can get in your gut and in other parts of your digestive tract (thrush) as well.

Just in time, here's a guest post from reader Wendy at the Candida Blog . Thanks Wendy:

Candida is an issue many people, especially women deal with. Many women think intestinal candida, and vaginal yeast infections are two separate things, but in reality they are connected. Women who have vaginal yeast infections often improve when they go on a strict anti-candida diet, and go on a candida cleansing regimen with an anti-fungal.

Getting rid of candida can be tough, and I can attest to this. Candida basically ruined my life, as I aimlessly searched for what was wrong with me. I went from doctor to doctor, and was just prescribed antibiotics, which worsened the condition. Back in the summer of 2002, I discovered alternative medicine, and cleansing. I soon learned about the rich alternatives to medicine, such as http://www.colonzone.org bowel cleansing, fasting, juicing, detox baths, and rebounding.

There are 10 basic steps to getting rid of candida, and they are:

1. Follow my candida diet guidelines. Most guidelines on the 'net or in books have weird rules that are scientifically incorrect, such as avoiding vinegar. Vinegar is a yeast killer. You can use it to clean and disinfect your house even. It's nearly as thorough as bleach. Avoid foods generally thought to be healthy that aren't, such as soy milk, rice crackers, puffed cereals, fresh raw wheatgrass juice, raw veggies in general except for small cleansing salads.

2. Follow all the guidelines for digestive power. That means making sure you have adequate stomach acids, digestive enzymes, and eat small, easily digestible meals. If you don't digest it the yeast will, so even if you avoid sugar you may still be feeding the yeasties. Prepare foods so they are easy to digest with fast transit times. Most people need to avoid short-grain brown rice because it is constipating.

3. Do pungent therapy. That means eating and preparing things that are mostly cooked with hot, pungent and carminative spices such as cumin, ginger, garlic, basil, onion, cayenne, chili pepper, turmeric, curry, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves.

4. Do two weeks of anti-fungals every 3 months. Take probiotics the rest of the time, preferably as unsweetened kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar, and live acidophilus supplements from the refrigerated section of the health food store. You can also take Primal Defense in large doses for 2 weeks after the anti-fungals, small doses after that.

5. Do thorough bowel management. That means salt water flushes weekly, candida fiber shakes daily, and the occasional enema/colonic/colema. I did enemas 3x a week for months even tho I have rarely had constipation, and this kept me from getting any brain fog or die off symptoms whatsoever, so a home setup such as an enema bucket is highly recommended.

This is essential, probably the most important part of curing candida because it removes the trash that candida is living on. It's also important to oxygenate the bowels, so you should be taking liquid chlorophyll or chlorophyll tabs, and taking a super-green supplement like Perfect Food. It's also a good idea to do 2-4 weeks of Colonix or OxyPowder.

6. Practice thorough lymph management. Your immune system needs support! That means daily dry skin brushing, weekly full-body massage or near daily self-massage, and detox baths, near-daily sweating such as a sauna, regular bath, castor oil pack.

7. Oxygenate!!! light cardiovascular exercise will help you cure your candida much faster. Rebounding, walking, yoga, stretching, 5 Tibetan rites, are all good things to do. You can also supplement oxygen by drinking aerobic water and increase circulation with cayenne tincture.

8. Liver management. Since candida excretes alcohol, your liver is very overworked and needs to be dredged. Liv.52 or Dr. Cabot's Livatone Plus are great for that. It would be a good idea to do at least 2 liver flushes after a month of liver herbs. Coffee enemas done every 2 weeks are fantastic.

9. Support the body and every system, especially lymphatic and endocrine, nutritionally. Support electrolytes, and become more alkaline. Super-foods and supplements such as cod liver oil, fish oil, nutritional yeast, Emergen-C, Cal-Mag Fizz and my Protein Shake are highly recommended. Avoid synthetic vitamins for the most part, especially the "one a day" pills. Total junk.

The Candida Blog has many more tips for those who are looking to finally put an end to candida.

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A note from me: Mary Shomon, the About.com Thyroid goddess, has a great post on yeast and possible links to fertility PLUS her own scary experience with yeast. Click here.

Fertility Treatments May Cause Fertility Problems in the Next Generation

This may be an Eeeeek! Of course for fertility treatments you have to do the whole bombardment with hormones, so this isn't totally surprising. From the NyTimes:

Although the study was small and the results open to interpretation, Danish researchers have found that men born to mothers who had fertility treatments had lower sperm concentrations than other men.

...After adjusting for other factors, researchers found that men conceived with fertility treatment had on average 46 percent lower sperm concentration and their testes were 0.9 millimeters smaller.

Read more here.

Post on how smoking shortens the penis.

Obese Men and Women Have Higher Risk for Subfecundity

If you're trying to conceive, here's a thought before you consume that second doughnut (men, this includes YOU):

From MedScape:

"Both obese men and women have a higher risk for subfecundity, according to the results of a study reported in the March 7 Advance Access issue of Human Reproduction.

"Women's overweight is a risk factor for reduced fecundity, and recently men's obesity has also been linked with subfecundity, as well as reduced semen quality," write C. H. Ramlau, from the University of California Los Angeles School of Public Health, and colleagues. "Since overweight and obesity tend to cluster in couples, it is important to have risk estimates for couples rather than individuals."

The study also states that even for women who have successfully given birth, that if significant amounts of weight are retained from that pregnancy, time to next conception is delayed.

Read more here

A note About Reviews and this no-ad blog

Here's an article on blogging for $ from the LA Times, where people are covertly paid by sponsors to tout products/movies, etc. on their homey blogs. This really does a disservice to everyone (except, of course, the advertisers who get their manufactured viral marketing).

Be assured, everything I review I've tested and used and write about from the bottom of my green heart. I do this mainly by accepting samples from green companies and occasionally get annoyed when I'm told to send something back. I don't exactly have the for it as I write this blog for free, and on my own time, and, the whole point being, keeping it bias- and ad-free. One of the reasons I quit Adoption.com was those pesky click-through ads for IVF, so many ads that I could barely get my prose in edgewise. Sheesh!

Thanks Worsted Witch for the story.

Review: Jigsaw Health's Gluten-Free, Casein-Free, No Sugar, Chocolate, Coconut-Almond Jigsaw Bars

From MAN FERTILITY, bar tester extraordinaire:

I've become a bit cynical about the exploding number of food bars at my local health food store. Sure, they're convenient. But all too often the "energy bars" are glorified candy bars, while the "protein bars" get most of their protein from soy, which, as readers of GREENFERTILITY no doubt already know, is a questionable food source.

That's why I was so pleased to discover Jigsaw Health's Jigsaw Bars. These bars derive their protein from rice and whey instead of soy. For those concerned about auto-immune issues, these bars are gluten and casein free, and also contain 4 grams of omega 3 fish oils. Best of all, they are unbelievably delicious (especially the coconut almond Jigsaw bars, which are my favorites).

I still believe a sit-down meal of local, organic food is best for you and best for the planet. But for those times when you're traveling or otherwise in a rush, these bars come a close second.

Do YOU want to blog about fertility?

If you're interested in writing about fertility issues, check out the Fertility Community, a site that seems to have something for everyone, from Adoption to Zygotes. Jenna (who also wrote an awesome review of my novel--I'm touched) informed me that there's a position for a new blogger..but hurry, applications are due by TOMORROW. But check it out here.

Toddler critical after dad's smallpox shot

While we're on the subject, here's a story from the AP...

Mar 17, 2007 07:28 AM

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The 2-year-old son of a soldier deployed to Iraq is in critical condition after developing a reaction to his father's smallpox vaccination, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Saturday.

The child, being treated in a Chicago hospital, has a rare but very serious reaction to the vaccination site called Eczema vaccinatum, the CDC said. It is the first such case since vaccination against smallpox resumed in 2002, said CDC pox virus expert Dr. Inger Damon.

The toddler's father is a soldier vaccinated while on deployment to Iraq. The father was unexpectedly furloughed and evidently his wife and son touched the vaccine site and became infected, the CDC said.

"They can get a particularly noxious and sometimes fatal rash," Damon said in a telephone interview.

...The smallpox vaccine is made using a closely related virus called vaccinia. It is scratched into the surface of the skin, where it causes a mild infection that makes people much less susceptible to smallpox.

But because it uses a live virus, the vaccine can cause severe and sometimes deadly side effects. Eczema vaccinatum is one of them, although this is the first case to be reported since smallpox vaccinations resumed in the United States in 2002.

read more here.

Chickenpox Vaccine-- not as great as originally preached

It's kind of funny how one one hand, Big Pharma's all about Big Business--well, we HAVE to charge so much for our products (except, hm, in Canada where they refuse to pay overinflated prices) 'cause we have to put so much into R&D (and, of course, direct-to-consumer and direct-to-doc advertising)!

But then when their products don't work, the whole business model is conveniently forgotten. I mean, what car manufacturer would survive if you had to replace the steering wheel of its product every few years?

I got this from Medpundit about the not-so-great chickenpox vaccine (brought to us by Merck, the pusher of the the Gardasil--HPV--vaccine, read the old post here):

A Pox On Us: The chickenpox vaccine - not as great as originally preached:

Merck's chickenpox vaccine Varivax not only loses its effectiveness after a while, but it has also changed the profile of the disease in the population, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

The study confirmed what doctors widely knew -- that the vaccine's protection does not last long.

And with fewer natural cases of the disease going around, unvaccinated children or children in whom the first dose of the vaccine fails to work have been catching the highly contagious disease later in life, when the risk of severe complications is greater, they said.

This is frustrating. When the chickenpox vaccine was originally introduced and recommended, there was tremendous resistance from pediatricians and family physicians in the trenches- for these very reasons. There was the fear that the immunity would not be as good as that aquired through natural disease and that when the vaccine did wear off it would leave young adults vunerable to infection. Chickenpox is a pain to have as a child, but it's potentially life threatening to have it as an adult. Especially a pregnant adult. The experts, however, assured everyone that this was not a worry. The Japanese had been using it for years and it was effective there. Never mind that we don't live in Japan. And most of us aren't Japanese. And so, it became the standard of care to vaccinate against a childhood disease that was largely benign so we could avoid the rare death (usually in an immunocompromised child, and at a rate of 100 per year in the entire United States).

What does this mean? It means we'll be giving boosters. Good for Merck. That doubles the demand for their vaccine. And if it turns out the booster's immunity fades with time, too, there will be another booster. It also means that we will probably see an increase in the incidence of chickenpox again after a steady decline over the past ten years. Which will be all the more reason to promote the booster.

Selling the vaccine to the infectious disease community was truly a golden goose for Merck. It remains to be seen whether it was such a good thing for the rest of us.

P.S. And don't you wonder how many of those infectious disease experts who preached the gospel of Varicella vaccination had financial ties of some sort to Merck? I do.

For the record, the FertilityBitch loves this blog.

The Worsted Witch » EllaRoo Baby Carriers

Now that readers are sooo successfully procreating, I thought I'd expand a little to postpartum issues. Snagged this tidbit on organic baby carriers from The Worsted Witch :

"Snigger maniacally as you and your bambino breeze past the Sunday morning stroller gridlock. EllaRoo makes a range of baby carriers, including the Mei Hip pictured above, using organic cotton canvas, hemp/tencil twill, and organic cotton batting. While conventional cotton is still used for some of the decorative accent fabrics, the company wants to transition as many of its products as it can to sustainable fibers, despite some complications that owner Vesta Garcia details frankly in a recent blog entry. (I don’t impress easily but her principles? Impressive.)"

Hey, I just checked out their site, and they also have a version of the Korean podaegi as well (although they are kind of the mark of the frumpy put-upon housewife, at least in the soap operas I watch).

Rooibos Tea--good for pregnancy, breastfeeding, and anytime!

Melanie at The Groovy Mind told me about Rooibos (also spelled Roobois) tea.

For people worried about coffee's caffeine (I'm not!), teas' tannins and caffeine, and the myriad contrainidications (and they are out there) in different kind of herbs, especially if pregnant or breastfeeding, the Rooibos, African Red Bush tea is for you. It has a pretty red color and mild, sweet taste that I don't mind drinking all day...

It seems to be very nourishing and full of antioxidants, great for for anyone, pregnant or not. In fact, it's actually used as a colic remedy in Africa.

Here's some info I got from Cook's Corner:

• It has a very soothing effect on the central nervous system and can be strongly recommended for people suffering from irritability, stress, headaches, nervous tension and mild depression or hypertension.
• Helps with insomnia, disturbed sleep patterns and headaches. Have a cup of Rooibos before you get ready for bed to ensure a good night's sleep.
• Studies have shown Rooibos is beneficial in the management of allergies like hay fever and asthma.
• Relieves stomach and digestive problems like nausea, vomiting, heartburn, syomach ulcers and constipation.
• Helps to control your appetite thus can be beneficial in weight loss. Also helps in controlling your blood sugar level.
• Since Rooibos contains no oxalic acid it can be safely used by people suffering from kidney stones.
• Scientists have found that Rooibos tea contains a mimic of the enzyme Super Oxide Dimutase(S.O.D.), an anti-oxidant which attacks free radicals and limits their damaging effects. ("Free radicals," is the toxic by-product of natural biological processes that can damage healthy cells, weaken our immune system, lead to cancer. The harmful oxygen also contributes to aging, making us look older than we really are!and it contributes to aging.)
• Mothers find Rooibos tea to be of benefit in common infant ailments like colic, stomach cramps, fussy babies. When given in addition to babies normal feeding , Rooibos supplements the daily intake of calcium , manganese and fluoride needed by growing children for strong teeth and bones. Rooibos is effective for relieving skin irritaions such as diaper rash and eczema. Brew a cup then let cool down and apply to irrited area. Mothers can also benefit from drinking Rooibos tea. During pregnancy and breast feeding, the body’s iron levels become depleted.
  

And don't just drink it wear it:

The alpha hydroxy acid and zinc contained in Rooibos promotes healthy, smooth skin. This wonder tea is especially useful when applied to skin irritations like itchy skin, eczema, sunburns, diaper rash, acne and rosacea.

I recommend organic and fair trade Red Bush tea from The Groovy Mind (they also make great eco-conscious gift baskets...)

Get Your Cotton-Pickin' Hands off our rice!

You know how I am about rice. Well, in today's New York Times, there was this tiny, tiny tidbit tucked away in the SCIENCE section about arsenic in rice, and how much of it comes from all the crappy pesticides they put on cotton (another reason to support organic cotton, people, besides the fact that non-organic farming of cotton actually dried up an inland sea):

Arsenic Levels in Rice

Rice may be a great accompaniment to a main dish, but some rice apparently comes with an accompaniment of its own — the toxic element arsenic.

In the journal Environmental Science and Technology, P. N. Williams and colleagues at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland report on a study of rice bought at American supermarkets. Comparing products from the nation’s two major growing regions, the researchers found that rice from South-Central states like Arkansas and Louisiana had about 30 micrograms of arsenic per gram, or nearly twice the level found in rice from California.

The most likely reason for the difference, the researchers say, is that rice growers in South-Central states are increasingly using old cotton fields, where years of application of inorganic arsenic as a pesticide has contaminated the soils.

Arsenic is a carcinogen and can cause skin, reproductive, developmental and other disorders. Given that most Americans do not eat large amounts of rice, the arsenic levels in the tested rice may not result in excessive exposure to arsenic ?? What IS a "not excessive" exposure to a carcinogen???.

But the researchers note that some population subgroups — among them Hispanics, Asian-Americans and people who suffer from celiac disease and must avoid wheat products — eat much more rice on average. So for them, the researchers calculate, exposure may exceed the limits established for arsenic intake from water, the main source of the element for most Americans.

Interestingly, my parents (and other Korean parents I know) always eschewed supermarket rice and instead insisted on this one brand of rice from California, everyone agreeing it "tastes better." Thumbs down to arsenic as a condiment!

More sad rice stories.

Franken-rice: USDA approves mass planting of GM rice made with human genes

And if you aren't getting your daily RDA of arsenic on rice alone:

Chicken With Arsenic? Is That O.K.? - New York Times: "Arsenic is deliberately being added to chicken in this country, with many scientists saying it is unnecessary."

Carnival of the Green #68

Hello, Green Peeps!

Welcome to the (holy cow!) 68th Carnival o' the Green. Thank you for the very well organized and entertaining #67 from The Business of America is Business and tune in next week to the goode green blog, The Goode Life.

Let's start this one off with a biggie: according to the latest UN report, global warming is unstoppable and humans are to blame. Scary stuff, yes, but from the correspondence I receive on the blog, I am pretty sure that the people who believe global warming is NOT happening (or that humans are not to blame) aren't going to shift their views no matter what new data comes their way--even if, say, if their landlocked house gets swept away by a new inland sea as gigantic pieces of glaciers fall like huge ice cubes into the already-full glass of the ocean.

So Stephanie at Green SAHM has a sensible post on maybe we need to get beyond global warming and think instead about being nice to the earth, as, irrespective of it all, our resources (clean air, water, fuel) ARE still finite, and gee, for whatever reason, the poor people in Bangladesh ar already finding their clean water supplies being encroached on by the rising sea (eeek).

So, from Kent Swanson at Jetson Green we have 11 Suggestions for Eco-friendly Landscaping --Plant a tree!

From Suhit Anantula at The World is Green: a really cool visual representation of us (small) and earth (big) and human time scale.

From Natalie at Philobiblon, we have an idea on how to make drivers respect and share the road with energy saving cyclists.

From Anja Merret we have a post on a clever campaign by Greenpeace to make the Apple company more "green." They could change their name to Green Apple, Inc.

And here's one from Leon at Soxfirst on hitting companies in the "other green" i.e., $$$$: Will investors pay less for companies poorly positioned to compete on a warming planet?

And from Melanie at Bean-Sprouts, we have a post on how Daily doorstep deliveries of milk, a British tradition that is dying out mainly due to competition from supermarkets, can be an ethical and green choice to support your local milkman. (Are there milk ladies?) Fertility-wise, please skip the growth-hormoney milk and go organic and pastured please!

From Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn we have the answer to the the dismal increase in New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions over the years--"no policy."

From I love Postage, the "interview blog," we have two interviews: Dan Finger, a national organizer for the Rainforest Action Network, and Wendy Brawer, the founder and director of the Green Map System. I particularly liked the Composting Green Map of Manhattan.

And from Animal Planet, we have these:

From The Voltage Gate comes a post on Iranian conservation groups working to preserve the critically endangered (wow!) Asian cheetah!

Will there be enough land and forest resources to sustain humans and wildlife? Read biologist Sally Kneidel's post from Veggie Revolution about efforts to find solutions.

Thanks for reading and keep the Green Thoughts coming.

Do you want your blog to host a Carnival? Check it out here.

Change in Daylight Saving Time May Cause Medical Device Errors

I guess the Department of Energy decided to have daylight savings time begin three weeks earlier this year (why, I couldn't tell you), but, as this kind of tinkering can have unexpected effects, it might prove a mini Y2K for hospital devices. From Medscape:

Medical equipment that uses, creates, or records time or date information about a patient's diagnosis or treatment may register the wrong dates for the start and end of DST when the changes are implemented, according to an alert sent Friday from MedWatch, the FDA's safety information and adverse event reporting program.

The FDA notes that most devices currently in use are likely to be affected, unless they were manufactured after the DST change was approved (Energy Policy Act of 2005) or have been updated by the manufacturer. Read more here

Don't forget to tune in Monday for the Carnival of the Green.

Look Ma! NO MERCURY Energy Saving light bulbs!

photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Okay, regarding my earlier post about fluorescent bulbs containing mercury, I've been getting emails asking about an alternative. And yes, there is one (plus, none of that annoying buzzing, which some autistic children are very sensitive to):

From the New York Times:

By Matthew L. Wald

Q.Are compact fluorescent light bulbs the only energy-saving option?

A. You might try light-emitting diodes, or L.E.D.’s, which give out more light per watt of electricity than compact fluorescent bulbs.

Light-emitting diodes were invented in the ’50s. They are semiconductor devices — a kind of computer chip — that give off light when current is applied to them. Depending on their chemical makeup, they can emit green, blue, red or white light.

L.E.D.’s are now available with standard screw-type bases, so they can easily replace incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs in your home. They are also sold in “high-hat,” or downlighting, fixtures for the ceiling. The face of most L.E.D. bulbs looks like a circuit board and the light they put out resembles a cluster of brilliant dots, each about the size of an aspirin tablet. An L.E.D.’s light is much whiter than that of a standard incandescent bulb, or even a compact fluorescent bulb, and L.E.D.’s work well on a dimmer or a timer. But like spotlights, they cast their light in one direction, so they don’t work in table lamps.

L.E.D.’s produce about 70 lumens (the standard measure for light) per watt, whereas an incandescent bulb produces only 10 to 15 and the compact fluorescent, only about 35. Unlike compact fluorescent bulbs, L.E.D.’s have no mercury, an important environmental consideration because most bulbs end up in landfills. L.E.D.’s cost more than either conventional or compact fluorescent bulbs, but they last far longer. Whereas the average incandescent bulb costs less than a dollar and a compact fluorescent bulb can sell for a few dollars, some L.E.D.’s run as high as $90 a bulb. But L.E.D. lights are typically rated as having a lifespan of 30,000 to 50,000 hours. So an L.E.D. bulb can last for more than 10 years, if you use it 8 hours a day. Compact fluorescents are typically rated at 7,500 to 10,000 hours, and incandescents at about 1,500 hours. Rather than burning out as incandescent bulbs do, L.E.D.’s light output dims over tens of thousands of hours. L.E.D.’s are also more resistant to vibration than incandescents or screw-in fluorescent bulbs, and do not flicker or hum.

The city of Raleigh, N.C., recently announced that it will begin installing L.E.D.’s in some of its streetlights, and if they work well, will consider converting all 33,000 streetlights to L.E.D., according to Daniel Howe, an assistant city manager. Raleigh is using L.E.D. lights made by Cree Inc., of Durham, N.C., with components developed by the Lighting Sciences Group, of Dallas, which also makes bulbs for home use, shown above.

Man Burns Genitals in 'Jackass' Stunt

For this guy, hospital mistakes may be the least of his worries...

ABC News: Man Burns Genitals in 'Jackass' Stunt: "— Attempts to do a movie stunt landed one man in the hospital with burned genitals and another facing criminal charges. The men were trying to do a stunt from one of the 'Jackass' movies, in which a character lights his genitals on fire.

Jared W. Anderson, 20, suffered serious burns to his hands and genitals, according to the criminal complaint. Randell D. Peterson, 43, who sprayed lighter fluid on Anderson and lit him on fire, was charged with felony battery and first-degree reckless endangerment Tuesday in Eau Claire County Court.

Witnesses told police that Anderson, who was drunk, volunteered to do the stunt Sunday after watching the movie, the complaint said."

Today's NYT: Medication errors are rampant--especially with Children!

May I say that having a kid with cancer has been quite a singular experience, and of medication errors, I know whereof I speak--so hopefully our experience can be helpful to YOU.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was in our local Ocean State Job Lot (The RI version of the Dollar Store!) and was thrilled to find this spring water we use there, so I bought 5 cases (each with 6 glass bottles) for a dollar a bottle. So when the cashier wrote it up at $27, I (trying to be honest), said, "Uh, I have 5 cases here," trying not to point out the fact, also, that 27 is not divisible by five, or six (and, please let me note, I'm TERRIBLE at math, but I do remember 6 x 5 = 30 from Schoolhouse Rock).

"Okay," she said. "So it's 24 bottles, right?" I shook my head, and she had to (poor thing) literally take out all those heavy cases (avoiding this is why I bought them by the case in the 1st place) and literally counted them out...one...two...three...eeeny meenie miney mo, etc. 2-3 times and finally got 30 2 times out of 3.

I got a laugh out of this with MAN FERTILITY, as he knows that racial stereotypes dictate that I should be good at math, and I was proud to have finally encountered someone whose math skills were worse than mine.

This would all be funny EXCEPT, that it made us recall the time, pre-op at a very large, busy hospital in Los Angeles, that that one of the nurses asked us our son' J's weight, and my husband told them, careful to spell it out THAT'S IN POUNDS. So (nosey mom that I am) I glanced at the chart when she went off to get the pre-op sedative, and saw it was something like 66.4 kg--TOTALLY the wrong way!!!! 1 lb= .45 kilograms, which, last time I checked, was what we learned in high school chem class.

I did my war dance, and she was sort of like,"Tee-hee, oops! I thought it was 2.2 pounds per kg." (this was also after J almost got the wrong treatment bec. someone else had a name/age similar to his...)

Now, don't let me scare you, but I have dozens of stories like that, given that we've been in the hospital for months and months. I guess you could say dozens of incidents/many days in hospital only means a few incidents/day....but even one is way bad, in my book.

Let me leave you with just one more:

When J came out of surgery (a different time), and, like in the article, was handed off from surgery to intensive care, MAN FERTILITY or I was at J's bedside every minute. I was (irrationally, I know) primarily worried about those "angel of death" type nurses who intentionally give people too many meds. So when a nurse comes in with a huuuuuge syringe of Tylenol 3 to stick in J's IV bag, I was like, "Hold on there, missy, that's at least 2x as much as he usually gets."

And she said (use angry, snippy voice, "It's in a different syringe [you idiot] that's wider than it is long." And she showed me the CCs and indeed it was the same volume, and it had just been an optical illusion, and I felt bad, I guess.

....Until, when I was banging around the halls looking for some juice or something, I heard the same nurse, getting ready to go into the room with a nursing assistant. She said something to the assistant, like, "The mom in there is a huge pain in the ass, but I'm glad she questioned me about the Tylenol 3, since we make mistakes all the time and no one checks--I wish MORE PARENTS WOULD DO THIS." (Of course, her behavior toward me when she saw me in person was less than reinforcing, she still treated me like the total who-are-you-to-question-me? pain in the ass...oh well)

The moral of the story is: check your purchases at the Job Lot and your meds ALL THE TIME. Bring your calculator if you're forgetting your times tables, like me.

If it's your child, your parent, YOU, don't be afraid to be a bitch like the FertilityBITCH. Your nurses may even (secretly) thank you for it.

March 7, 2007

Medication Errors Are Studied

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Young children are the most likely victims of surgery-related medication mistakes, a new study has found, and poor communication as the patient moves from the operating room to recovery is the most likely culprit.

The study, released yesterday, was done by the United States Pharmacopeia, which sets standards for the pharmaceutical industry, and by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., and two nurses’ associations.

Medical error has been a charged topic ever since a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine, “To Err Is Human,” estimated that such mistakes led to as many as 98,000 deaths a year — more than highway accidents and breast cancer combined.

The current study did not try to estimate total error rates. Instead, it analyzed 11,000 mistakes that had been voluntarily and anonymously reported to the pharmacopeia by hundreds of hospitals since 1998.

The study was confined to errors made on patients undergoing surgery, and the rate of harm, 5 percent, was much higher than is typical for medication errors. Among children it was 12 percent.

Most of the errors involved painkillers and antibiotics. Four resulted in deaths, and one death was of a child.

Problems typically arose when a patient was handed off from the preoperative team to the operating room to the recovery room to the regular ward nurses, said Diane Cousins, a health care specialist at the pharmacopeia and one of the authors. “The system is often very fragmented,” Ms. Cousins said.

Typical dangerous mistakes were failures to administer antibiotics before surgery, failures to note allergies, errors in setting pumps that dispense blood thinners or painkillers, and giving overdoses to infants.

In several cases described in the report, poor penmanship, careless listening or bad arithmetic caused patients to get doses 10 or even 50 times as high as they should.

“It’s beyond troubling that the smallest, youngest patients are the ones most at risk,” Ms. Cousins said.

There are 10,000 drugs in the marketplace, she said, and many have never been tested on children in clinical trials, so doses are often made by guesswork based on weight, involving conversion of pounds to kilograms, sometimes by nurses who are not pediatric specialists. [or may be ex-Job Lot employees?]

“These may be back-of-the-envelope calculations not checked by anyone,” she said, “and they are often in very tiny amounts — milliliters — and that in itself breeds errors.”

The report made 42 recommendations, among them that hospitals improve communication and designate a pharmacist to be consulted for each patient.

Since 1999, committees investigating medical mistakes have routinely recommended that hospitals install computerized systems for prescribing drugs, which can sound alarms when a toxic combination is ordered for a patient. But fewer than 10 percent of all hospitals have them.

Korean Adoptee Olympian Meets Birth Father

Isn't this an amazing picture of birth father and son in profile? Toby Dawson, who was adopted at age three by a Colorado couple, meets his birth father in Seoul.

Toby's adoptive parents are ski instructors and Dawson was aa bronze medalist in freestyle moguls at the Winter Olympics.


But he certainly has his birth father's whiskers.

I got this off Twice the Rice. You can read more there.

tags technorati : Korean adoption reunion

Want a little meat w/your Antibiotics?

Found this on Microblogology:

The battle to keep antibiotics out of the food supply

By lcramer

There is truly worrisome news on the horizon. A drug company, Intervet is trying to get FDA approval for the use of a specific antibiotic to be used in the treatment of respiratory disease in cattlle. Unfortunately, the antibiotic, Cefquinome is a 4th generation cephalosporin, is a drug that has been limited in it’s use by health care providers for the treatment of serious antibiotic resistant organisms. So, by using it to treat cattle, we would protentially be exposing a wide swath of the microbial world to the workings and nature of this antibiotic, allowing the development of strains of microbes that would be resistant to this last line defender.

At that meeting, the American Medical Association and Infectious Disease Society of America joined KAW members in testifying that use of cefquinome in cattle could increase cephalosporin-resistant E. coli and Salmonella bacteria, two major causes of food poisoning in humans

This particular genie may already be out of it’s bottle:

In Europe, where Cefquinome has already been approved and used in livestock under the brand name Cobactin, E. coli and Salmonella bacteria isolated from animals have already been found to carry resistance to this and other cephalosporins. In the U.S, where 4th generation cephalosporins have not yet been approved for use in animal agriculture, resistance to these drugs is uncommon.

It is not just the FDA who must to say no to the big drug companies that are encouraging the inapropriate use of reserved antibiotics. The time has come when we no longer have the luxury to allow unchecked access to our most potent weapons in the fight against drug resistant organisms.

And then read in the Brown Daily Herald this morning that the FDA is indeed "on track" to approve the drug despite objections that it'll be really really bad for people.

Finding a local farmer for fresh meat is not as difficult as it sounds. And in my very small department at Brown, I found a number of people REALLY happy with our joint purchase, it just hadn't occurred to them to do it before. Just ask!

Eatwild.com to find stuff in your area.

Meeting the Meet, GreenFertility's local experience wherein she picks up the moniker "Beefalo gal."

The True Cost of Non-Organic Cotton

Wondering what to watch this weekend?

Want to know why the issue of organic cotton goes WAY BEYOND just toxins on your skin?

Lynda from GreenBabies sent me this:

http://www.ejfoundation.org/page321.html

202 Chemicals Linked To ADHD, Autism | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Yeeesh, this blog is getting a bit grim. Well, in a companion piece to the one on dying bees and a billion people with neurological disorders, the Onion bring us

202 Chemicals Linked To ADHD, Autism

Remember, laughter is good for the immune system!

Now we can blame autism on old sperm!

(graphic: New York Times)

From the New York Times: "When it comes to fertility and the prospect of having normal babies, it has always been assumed that men have no biological clock — that unlike women, they can have it all, at any age.

But mounting evidence is raising questions about that assumption, suggesting that as men get older, they face an increased risk of fathering children with abnormalities. Several recent studies are starting to persuade many doctors that men should not be too cavalier about postponing marriage and children.

Until now, the problems known to occur more often with advanced paternal age were so rare they received scant public attention. The newer studies were alarming because they found higher rates of more common conditions — including autism and schizophrenia — in offspring born to men in their middle and late 40s.

So why don't we see all these older men (Strom Thurmond, Donald Trump, etc.) with their autistic-schizophrenic kids running around? Plus, isn't it sad that now autism and schizophrenia are now "common"?

Definitely with age comes more DNA breaks due to toxins and oxidative stress, but to me, this is yet one more theory "blaming" the parents for autism while no one wants to look at mercury or pesticides or other environmental/pharma factors that may also be responsible for the alarming increase in all sorts of neurological disorders. Old guys have been having kids with younger women for a loooooong time (wasn't May-December from Shakespeare?) and autism and schizophrenia wasn't "common" then.