What Is Osteoarthritis?
Osteoarthritis (AH-stee-oh-ar-THREYE-tis) is the most common type of arthritis, especially among older people. Sometimes it is called degenerative joint disease or osteoarthrosis.
Osteoarthritis is a joint disease that mostly affects the cartilage (KAR-til-uj). Cartilage is the slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones in a joint. Healthy cartilage allows bones to glide over one another. It also absorbs energy from the shock of physical movement. In osteoarthritis, the surface layer of cartilage breaks down and wears away. This allows bones under the cartilage to rub together, causing pain, swelling, and loss of motion of the joint. Over time, the joint may lose its normal shape. Also, bone spurs--small growths called osteophytes--may grow on the edges of the joint. Bits of bone or cartilage can break off and float inside the joint space. This causes more pain and damage.
People with osteoarthritis usually have joint pain and limited movement. Unlike some other forms of arthritis, osteoarthritis affects only joints and not internal organs. For example, rheumatoid arthritis--the second most common form of arthritis--affects other parts of the body besides the joints. It begins at a younger age than osteoarthritis, causes swelling and redness in joints, and may make people feel sick, tired, and (uncommonly) feverish.
How Is Osteoarthritis Treated?
Most successful treatment programs involve a combination of treatments tailored to the patient's needs, lifestyle, and health. Osteoarthritis treatment has four general goals:
This segment was taken from Handout on Health: Osteoarthritis from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Much more information can be found here: Osteoarthritis Handout
May 02, 2008 | /Chiropractic/ | permanent link
TiddlyWiki - A Personal Organizer
I used to spend a lot of time trying to organize my thoughts using my computer. It started out with a single text file full of thoughts and lists and URLs that I wanted to save. I attempted to convert to using a Word document at some point so I would have a bit more control over the layout, but eventually went back to the simple text file format. I ended up with several text files that were getting progressively longer and slightly more unfriendly to work with, so I was keeping an eye out for a better solution.
Wiki. A new word that you may or may not have heard of. The most famous example is the giant user-created encyclopedia that is Wikipedia. It seemed to me like an excellent way to store and organize data, but any Wiki software that I had found out there seemed not-too-simple to implement. Most required some type of database to store your information in as well as a web-server to get the data out to you. That wouldn't have been horribly difficult to set up, but much more involved than my simple .txt file was.
And then I found Tiddlywiki, which labels itself as "a reusable non-linear personal web notebook". It did just about everything which I needed a "personal notebook" to do, and to top it off, the whole thing exists in one small .html file which you are able to use in your web browser. Thanks to some excellent javascript programming by the author, it is able to handle all of the functions of manipulating the data as well as storing all the data inside that one file. As far as programs go, I consider this to be one of the more elegant ones that I've seen in a long time.
To connect information, TiddlyWiki uses the concept of Tiddlers, which is a highlighted word or group of words that link to another entry in the wiki. This provides the non-linear aspect of this wiki. You can apply tags to each entry to organize your entries into categories. It is able to store backups of your wiki each time you save changes, and it also provides several methods for extended formatting to changing the size, color and appearance of your text. Another excellent option is that you can put this onto a flash drive to make your wiki portable.
So if you're looking for some type of personal information management system or if you just want to check out a really neat little javascript program, take a look at the Tiddlywiki. Go through all the options on the webpage. Try all the indexing methods on the right side. If you like it, you can download and save an empty version to use on your own. I think you'll be impressed.
Dec 02, 2007 | /Computers/ | permanent link
Newsletters 1 and 2
I've been sporadically writing a newsletter that's been outside of my office. In case you miss any of them, I'll also be publishing them here in PDF format.
Newsletter #1 Contains a good explanation of what I believe both Chiropractic and Wellness are.
Newsletter #2 Information about osteoarthritis as well as several treatment options, most of which are self-administered.
Dec 02, 2007 | /Wellness/ | permanent link
What is healthy?
On the subject of vegetables, you should read this post called
What is healthy? on
Cookthink.
When you're done with that, scan through
some
of
their
archives
and check out all the excellent recipes that they share.
Dec 02, 2007 | /Wellness/ | permanent link
Glucosamine & Chondroitin Sulfate Usage for Knee Pain
A teaching brief written about a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine evaluated different methods of treating knee osteoarthritis. For 24 weeks, patients were either given Glucosamine, Chondroitin Sulfate, both Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate, celecoxib(Celebrex) or a placebo. The goal was to achieve a 20% reduction in pain, and for mild knee pain they found that glucosamine(64.0%), chondroitin sulfate(65.4%), and both(66.6%) worked a bit more often than the placebo(60.1%), but it wasn't a statistically significant amount. What is notable is that for moderate to severe knee pain, the combination of the two worked 79.2% of the time, versus 54.3% with the placebo. This is a significant result that hopefully will provide the incentive for further studies of these two nutritional supplements.
Dec 02, 2007 | /Chiropractic/ | permanent link
Vertebrae --> Nerve --> Organ Chart
Here's an decent Flash-based interactive anatomy guide that I found on the web. It shows correct postures, organ/nerve charts, and subluxation & degeneration examples. The postures were helpful and showed both good and poor posture in various positions. I found the organ/nerve charts to be quite good. It is interesting to see which parts of your spine control the different internal organs. The subluxation and degeneration section was more of a slideshow, but it has some good graphics, but seems to be missing some text in different locations. Overall, it has some good information, and I'd recommend that you check it out.
Dec 02, 2007 | /Chiropractic/ | permanent link
Osteoarthritis Links
WebMD: Osteoarthritis Basics
Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy: Osteoarthritis
MedicineNet Information on Osteoarthritis
Cochrane Reviews of Osteoarthritis Treatments - A listing of osteoarthritis systematic analyses done by the Cochrane Collaboration, a not-for-profit organization that provides current information on health care issues.
Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate - A National Institute of Health report on GAIT, the Glucosamine/chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial.
Acupuncture for osteoarthritis of the knee - A study published in the December 21, 2005 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine concerning acupuncture treatment for knee osteoarthritis.
Selenium and osteoarthritis - A study linking the deficiencies in the trace mineral selenium to an increased risk of osteoarthritis.
Dec 02, 2007 | /Chiropractic/ | permanent link
Pesticides in your Produce
When dealing with your own body, it is important to be aware of exactly what you are putting into it. This was made easier by the mandatory labeling of ingredients on packaged food, which takes away some of the mystery as to what exactly you're getting when you buy a box of Rice Krispies. But what about the produce section? No labels. No ingredients. If I am buying a pear, I'd like to assume that the imaginary sticker on the side would simply say:
Ingredients: Pear
Sounds tasty to me. But actually if the sticker was being completely truthful, it might say something like:
Ingredients: Pear May contain trace amounts of Azinphos methyl, o-Phenylphenol, Phosmet, or Thiabendazole.
Suddenly this pear doesn't sound quite as appealing.
If I look up these four( 1,2,3,4 ) chemicals in a Pesticide Database, I find that there is evidence that two are neurotoxins and the other two are both carcinogens and developmental toxins. Suddenly that pear doesn't sound appealing at all. It's true that your chances of getting cancer from eating this one pesticide covered pear are extremely low. But what if you eat a pear every day? Or a pear and an apple every day. I ask you this: What do you consider to be an acceptable level of a carcinogen that is to be applied to your food? I believe that my answer to that question would be: Zero.
So what can you do about this? Well the first step is to be aware of which foods are the main sources of pesticides in your diet. An organization called the Environmental Working Group ranks pesticide contamination in fruits and vegetables by using results of about 43,000 tests done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Next, make sure that you are removing as much of these pesticides as possible when you are preparing your food. This means rinsing all produce before you eat it. Vegetable wash solutions started popping up in stores in the past few years and are a good way to help remove surface chemicals. I've read that you can make your own version of a vegetable wash using 1 teaspoon of a mild dishwashing detergent added to 1 gallon of water. I also found recipes on the web requiring various combinations of cold water, lemon juice, white vinegar, salt and grapefruit seed extract. Peeling vegetables will also reduce the amount of pesticides that are ingested, although the lack of skin may reduce their nutritional content.
Buying organic fruits and vegetables is probably the best method of staying pesticide free, but it does tend to be more expensive and it may be difficult to find everything you'd like. Organic produce generally means no pesticides, fertilizers, additives or ionizing radiation were used on your food. I found one organic grocery that delivers and they seem to have a decent selection: Diamond Organics There are most likely others. The prices are currently higher than regular produce, but that gap has been narrowing for the past few years as more farms switch over to growing organic. Illinois currently has no state standards or certification for organic foods. I found a UIUC-written paper called What does it mean to be organic.
My recommendation is to use the list as a guide as to what priority your organic produce should be purchased. Nectarines, peaches, celery and apples have the highest percentage of samples with detectable pesticides, while potatoes, plums, spinach and peaches had the highest concentrations of pesticides found. Try to buy these as organics while not worrying as much about the ones at the low end of the list, like pineapples, sweet corn, avocados and onions. Rinse all your produce thoroughly in cold water before you eat it. Scrub or peel hearty vegetables such as potatoes.
The Full List: 43 Fruits & Veggies
|
RANK |
FRUIT OR VEGGIE |
SCORE |
|
1 (worst) |
Peaches |
100 (highest pesticide load) |
|
2 |
Apples |
89 |
|
3 |
Sweet Bell Peppers |
86 |
|
4 |
Celery |
85 |
|
5 |
Nectarines |
84 |
|
6 |
Strawberries |
82 |
|
7 |
Cherries |
75 |
|
8 |
Pears |
65 |
|
9 |
Grapes - Imported |
65 |
|
10 |
Spinach |
60 |
|
11 |
Lettuce |
59 |
|
12 |
Potatoes |
58 |
|
13 |
Carrots |
57 |
|
14 |
Green Beans |
53 |
|
15 |
Hot Peppers |
53 |
|
16 |
Cucumbers |
52 |
|
17 |
Raspberries |
47 |
|
18 |
Plums |
45 |
|
19 |
Grapes - Domestic |
43 |
|
20 |
Oranges |
42 |
|
21 |
Grapefruit |
40 |
|
22 |
Tangerine |
38 |
|
23 |
Mushrooms |
37 |
|
24 |
Cantaloupe |
34 |
|
25 |
Honeydew Melon |
31 |
|
26 |
Tomatoes |
30 |
|
27 |
Sweet Potatoes |
30 |
|
28 |
Watermelon |
28 |
|
29 |
Winter Squash |
27 |
|
30 |
Cauliflower |
27 |
|
31 |
Blueberries |
24 |
|
32 |
Papaya |
21 |
|
33 |
Broccoli |
18 |
|
34 |
Cabbage |
17 |
|
35 |
Bananas |
16 |
|
36 |
Kiwi |
14 |
|
37 |
Sweet peas - frozen |
11 |
|
38 |
Asparagus |
11 |
|
39 |
Mango |
9 |
|
40 |
Pineapples |
7 |
|
41 |
Sweet Corn - frozen |
2 |
|
42 |
Avocado |
1 |
|
43 (best) |
Onions |
1 (lowest pesticide load) |
Please don't let things like this discourage you from eating fruits and vegetables. I believe the advantages of getting enough fresh servings do generally outweigh the negative aspects such as possible pesticide contamination.
Aug 17, 2007 | /Nutrition/ | permanent link
Increasing your Basal Metabolic Rate
If you're interesting in losing weight, one of the best approaches is to try to raise your basal metabolic rate which is the amount of calories that your body uses at rest in order to
maintain the basic functions needed to live. Redbook magazine has published a list of 14 suggestions to help you get started.
Apr 08, 2007 | /Wellness/ | permanent link
Vegetables, Not Fruit, Help Fight Memory Problems in Old Age
Eating vegetables, not fruit, helps slow down the rate of cognitive change in older adults, according to a Rush University study published in the October 24, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
In determining whether there was an association between vegetables, fruit and cognitive decline, researchers from Rush University Medical Center studied 3,718 residents in Chicago, Illinois, who were age 65 and older. Participants completed a food frequency questionnaire and received at least two cognitive tests over a six-year period.
"Compared to people who consumed less than one serving of vegetables a day, people who ate at least 2.8 servings of vegetables a day saw their rate of cognitive change slow by roughly 40 percent," said study author Martha Clare Morris, ScD, associate professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. "This decrease is equivalent to about 5 years of younger age."
Of the different types of vegetables consumed by participants, green leafy vegetables had the strongest association to slowing the rate of cognitive decline. The study also found the older the person, the greater the slowdown in the rate of cognitive decline if that person consumed more than two servings of vegetables a day. Surprisingly, the study found fruit consumption was not associated with cognitive change.
Jan 08, 2007 | /Wellness/ | permanent link
Garmin Training Center screenshots
Jun 08, 2006 | /Exercise/Running/ | permanent link
Q: How far and how fast? A: Garmin Forerunner 301
In preparation for my 2006 running season, I bought a Garmin Forerunner 301. I'm occasionally a fan of gadgets, but I've never had anything to use before when running. I generally don't listen to music and used to dislike wearing a watch while I ran. The Garmin is a heart rate monitor and a GPS, so it requires a chest strap for the heart rate and an oversized wristwatch for the GPS and the display. Then when I get home, it plugs into a USB port to recharge and also to transfer the data from my run over so it can be processed by the Garmin software. Their program gives me a nice map of points showing the route I took, and also gives a chart showing up to 4 of the variables calculated (heart rate, heart rate as a percent of max, speed, pace, elevation) graphed over time or distance. It keeps track of your runs for each week and gives you a good idea of how far and how fast you've been running.
I had some problems initially with the GPS not being able to find a good signal, but I spoke to Garmin's customer service and they had me reset the unit, which seemed to help the problem. Now I can get a signal within 60 seconds or so of turning the unit on. Other than that minor glitch to start, the 301 has worked flawlessly. The software does leave a little to be desired though. It'd be nice to be able to mouse to a point on the plotted course and show what your speed/heart rate was at that time. Just a minor feature or two that I'd like and I confidently assume that programmers at Garmin are hard at work on the next version of their software. Don't get me wrong; it's quite functional as it is. Also, if you're a dataphile, you are able to export the data from your run into an XML file. XML is a decent format for that type of info though, and should be a sufficiently accessible way to store your data. There are most likely other software programs out there that you can import your data into, but as of now I haven't found any.
The wrist unit is a bit bulky to wear, and is wide enough to contact the back of my hand on full extension of the wrist. Other than that, I don't really notice it while I run. The watchband is a 1 inch wide black strap with a velcro connector. Fairly comfortable and doesn't slip or absorb too much sweat.
Other than the slightly primitive software, my only other complaint is
that at times during my runs there aren't that many GPS data points.
Sometimes it'll record a point every 100 feet or so and other times it will go for 800-1000 feet before it hits another point.
I also found Motion Based which is a web-based service that will store and analyze your run data. They do have a limited free service which I may try in the future, but their full-feature pay service costs $12 per month or $96 per year.
The 301 is the previous generation Garmin Forerunner model. Recently they have also introduced the 305, which has a smaller wrist unit as well as a more complex display.
The Forerunner 301 has an MSRP of $214, but I was able to find it online for about $165 shipped.
Website: Garmin Forerunner 301
Rating so far: 7 out of 10
Pros: Excellent training tool for runners. More data that you'll know what to do with and fairly decent software to do it with.
Cons: Wrist piece is bulky to wear. Software interface could use a bit of refining.
Jun 08, 2006 | /Exercise/Running/ | permanent link
The Great Back Debate
Here in the United States, back pain is the second most common reason
for doctor's visits. While surgery has increasingly become a common solution, many patients find themselves less than satisfied with
the results. Because of this, both doctors and patients have been looking at less invasive solutions to lessen their pain. Newsweek
currently has an
interesting feature story called The
Great Back Debate. Massage, chiropractic
and acupuncture are briefly discussed in the article, with a section describing Dr. John Sarno's innovative approach to back pain.
May 01, 2004 | /Chiropractic/ | permanent link
A Healthier You
1713 1/2 E. 55th Street
Chicago, IL 60615
773-263-6530
Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12:00pm - 7:00pm
Walkin Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 4:00pm - 6:00pm
A Healthier You is a chiropractic clinic located in the Hyde Park
neighborhood of Chicago. It is run by Chris Wagner D.C..
Jan 01, 2004 | /About/ | permanent link