PakMed Info Forum

‘Play Lady’ Encourages Everyone to Play (watch video report)

WASHINGTON — In the era of electronic games and DVDs, playing outside has become a lost art for many children, especially in urban areas. A former school teacher believes in the benefits of old-fashioned play, though, and encourages kids and adults to do it as a regular part of their lives. The ‘Play Lady’ organizes regular Play Days in the Washington suburbs.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, a street in a neighborhood outside Washington has been closed to traffic and transformed into a playground. Children and adults of all ages came outside.

“That is my exercise. It is a gorgeous day. So we come out to play. I like to play. We all love to play. That’s why we are here,” said Ping Fahn, a Takoma park resident.

It is play day in Takoma Park, Maryland, hosted by longtime resident Pat Rumbaugh and her volunteer group. Rumbaugh founded Takoma Plays five years ago.

“We invite everyone, not only residents in Takoma Park, but people beyond. Because really what we care about is encouraging everyone to play,” she said.

Rumbaugh is known as ‘The Play Lady’ in the neighborhood. She recently retired, after teaching physical education at a Washington high school for 30 years. She said people deserve to play every day, especially if they work hard.

“Recent research does show that society, people in general, would feel so much better if they play. When people play they are less stressed, they are happier, they are more content with life,” said Rumbaugh.

She said children benefit the most from unstructured, or free play.

“Children learn to get along with one another, they learn to negotiate, they learn to be kind. Children learn new experiences, they learn how to play new games,” said Rumbaugh.

And they get to make up new adventures, costumed in clothes donated by neighbors.

Three kids play pirate in dress-up clothes.

“That is treasure, right?” asked one.

“Right,” confirmed another.

“Where did you find the treasure?” asked a reporter.

“When we sunk to the bottom of the ocean,” said one kid.

“So we’ve got a new ship, right?”

“Yeah.”

“When they play with dress-up clothes, they become creative and imaginative, which they may not have tried before,” said Rumbaugh.

Takoma Park resident Tony Castleman brought his two young sons out to play.

“They are both enjoying it. I think it is nice for kids to [have] this type of good old-fashioned play. Often times these days activities are very structured a lot of times, based on electronics and something like that,” he said.

Castleman said it also helps neighbors get to know one another better.

“I think it is a great way for the neighborhood just to sort of bond and to spend time together,” he said.

Jamie Raskin, who represents Takoma Park in the Maryland state Senate, also thinks it’s a great idea.

“I think it can be reproduced in cities and towns all over the state and across the country eventually. But it really does take people in the neighborhood to get out and invite kids to come play,” said Raskin.

This is Rumbaugh’s next big goal.

“I decided that I would form a non-profit called Let’s Play America that helps facilitate play in communities, towns, cities all over America,” she said.

Rumbaugh hopes schools embrace the initiative and that everyone in the country makes time to play and enjoys the benefits.

Female Genital Mutilation Still Widespread in Egypt (watch video report)

CAIRO — Egyptian activists are concerned that the rise of Islamist politicians could undermine years of work to discourage female genital mutilation. The practice, and the movement against it, however, have far deeper roots in the country.

To its supporters, it is a sign of purity, community and religious devotion. To its opponents, it marks the physical manifestation of a woman’s degradation.

Female genital mutilation, FGM, is an ancient custom in Egypt, with references pre-dating both Islam and Christianity. The practice remains widespread, with estimates today suggesting as many as 90 percent of Egyptian women are affected.

Egypt criminalized all forms of FGM in 2008 and rights monitors say the number of girls undergoing the operation has dropped by about one third.

But Nehad Abud Komsan, director of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, said the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and more conservative Salafist politicians threaten those gains.

“They come to say ‘we may have a law to make it [legal] in a certain condition, or to say it is good for protection. They are destroying years of efforts to protect girls and women in Egypt and, unfortunately, by using religion,” said Komsan.

A counselor talks to a group of women to try to convince them that they should not have female genital mutilation performed on their daughters, in Minia, Egypt

Courts have rejected legal challenges to the current ban, but with the judiciary and the government of President Mohamed Morsi at odds, worries are growing. Adding to concerns are predictions that Salafists are poised to do well in parliamentary elections later this year.

Komsan says non-governmental work on the ground and respect for motivations are key to changing attitudes about FGM.

She divides people who support FGM into three groups: those who see it as social and cultural ceremony; those who believe it will help women control their sexuality; and those who believe it is mandated by religion.

She said offering alternatives is easiest in the first two groups. By substituting different, non-invasive rituals that celebrate either womanhood or community, the spirit of the occasion is preserved, without the damage to a woman or girl’s body.

Political activist and filmmaker Hala Galal described the efforts of one village that chose to reject FGM.

“Even the lady who was supposing to do this operation herself, by her hand, she also swear and she also stopped and now she is doing something like weddings. I mean she changed her career also,” said Galal.

As for those who think FGM will keep women from expressing their sexuality, Komsan argues that training the mind is a far more effective, and humane approach.

“They have to understand that protection is not by cutting a part of our body but by educating them, and ourselves, how to control our life and by sending our girls to school,” she said.

It is the third part, said Komsan, that is the hardest.

“I always joke and say FGM is a sign of unity between Muslims and the Christians in Egypt because most of them believe it is a part of their religions,” she said.

It is not, and even though both the head of the prestigious al-Azhar Institute and Christian leaders have spoken out against the practice, the link to religion remains.

Political activist Galal said there is yet another issue anti-FGM advocates face: the charge they are trying to impose western values on Egypt. “I tell people who accuse us of making this and serving the western agenda, I tell them. ‘What is the other agenda, to oppress women?’”

It is an uphill battle for anti-FGM activists, but one marked by both legal and grass-root successes so far. Their worry now is that in the current political climate, the road ahead may be even steeper.

Scientists Say New Bird Flu Poses Serious Threat

A child wears a mask near the closed poultry section at the Huhai agricultural market where the H7N9 bird flu was detected by authority in Shanghai, China

LONDON — A new strain of bird flu that is causing a deadly outbreak among people in China is a threat to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on Wednesday.

The H7N9 strain has killed 24 people and infected more than 125, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), which has described it as “one of the most lethal” flu viruses.

The high mortality rate, together with relatively large numbers of cases in a short period and the possibility it might acquire the ability to transmit between people, make H7N9 a pandemic risk, experts said.

“The WHO considers this a serious threat,” said John McCauley, director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Influenza at Britain’s National Institute for Medical Research.

Speaking at a briefing in London, experts in virology said initial studies suggest the virus has several worrisome characteristics, including two genetic mutations that make it more likely to eventually spread from person to person.

“The longer the virus is unchecked in circulation, the higher the probability that this virus will start transmitting from person to person,” Colin Butte, an expert in avian viruses at Britain’s Pirbright Institute, said.

Of the some 125 people infected with H7N9 so far, around 20 percent have died, approximately 20 percent have recovered and the remainder are still sick. The infection can lead to severe pneumonia, blood poisoning and organ failure.

“”This is a very, very serious disease in those who have been infected. So if this were to become more widespread it would be an extraordinarily devastating outbreak,” Peter Openshaw, director of the center for respiratory infection at Imperial College London, told the briefing.

Scientists who have analyzed genetic sequence data from samples from three H7N9 victims say the strain is a so-called “triple reassortant” virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia.

Recent pandemic viruses, including the H1N1 “swine flu” of 2009/2010, have been mixtures of mammal and bird flu – hybrids that are likely to be milder because mammalian flu tends to make people less severely ill than bird flu.

Pure bird-flu strains, such as the new H7N9 strain and the H5N1 flu, which has killed about 371 of 622 the people it has infected since 2003, are generally more deadly for people.

Human cases of the H7N9 flu have been found in several new parts of China in recent days and have now been recorded in all of its provinces.

Last week a man in Taiwan became the first case of the flu outside mainland China, though he was infected while travelling there. The H7N9 strain was unknown in humans until it was identified in sick people in China in March.

Scientists say it is jumping from birds – most probably chickens – to people, and there is no evidence yet of the virus passing from person to person.

Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University’s research unit in Vietnam, said the age range of those infected so far stretched from toddlers to people in their late 80s – a range that appeared to confirm the virus is completely new to the human population.

“That suggests there truly is no immunity across all ages, and that as humans we have not seen this virus before,” he said. “The response has to be calm and measured, but it cannot be taken lightly,” he said.

FDA Makes Contraceptive Pill Available to Girls 15 and Older

Packaging for the Plan B One-Step (levonorgestrel) tablet, one of the brands known as the “morning-after pill

U.S. officials have decided to make an emergency contraceptive pill available to women 15 years and older without a prescription.

The Food and Drug Administration ruled Tuesday that the Plan B One-Step be available to anyone who can show proof of age.

The FDA says studies show that women 15 and older are able to understand how Plan B works and how to use it properly.

But the Center for Reproductive Rights says it will continue fighting to make Plan B available to all girls of reproductive age.

Earlier this month, a New York judge overturned the Obama administration’s ruling that girls younger than 17 get a prescription for Plan B. The judge called it “politically motivated” and “scientifically unjustified.”

Secondhand smoke more harmful to teen girls than boys

Secondhand smoke more harmful to teen girls than boys

Washington: When exposed to secondhand smoke at home, teenage girls tend to have lower levels of the “good” form of cholesterol that reduces heart disease risk, according to a recent study

High-density lipoproteins (HDL) pick up excess cholesterol in the blood stream and take it to the liver where it can be broken down. Unlike low-density lipoproteins that can create a waxy build-up that blocks blood vessels, HDL cholesterol can play a key role in combatting heart disease risk.

“In our study, we found 17-year-old girls raised in households where passive smoking occurred were more likely to experience declines in HDL cholesterol levels,” said the study’s lead author, Chi Le-Ha, MD, of the University of Western Australia.

” Secondhand smoke did not have the same impact on teenage boys of the same age, which suggests passive smoking exposure may be more harmful to girls. Considering cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in the western world, this is a serious concern,” the researcher added.

Researchers studied a longitudinal birth cohort of 1,057 adolescents who were born between 1989 and 1992 in Perth, Australia. The study gathered information about smoking in the household beginning at 18 weeks gestation and leading up to when the children turned 17. During that time, 48 percent of the participants were exposed to secondhand smoke at home. Blood tests were performed to measure the teenagers’ cholesterol levels.

“The findings indicate childhood passive smoke exposure may be a more significant cardiovascular risk factor for women than men,” Le-Ha said.

The study has been accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM).

Longer sleep duration linked to raised cancer risk

Longer sleep duration linked to raised cancer risk

Washington: A new study has found a significant positive association between long sleep duration and the development of colorectal cancer, especially among individuals who are overweight or snore regularly.

The results raise the possibility that obstructive sleep apnea may contribute to cancer risk.

“Our current study adds to the very limited literature regarding the relationship between sleep duration and/or sleep quality and colorectal cancer risk,” said lead author Xuehong Zhang, MD, ScD, instructor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The study utilized data from two prospective cohort studies, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) and the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS). A biennial questionnaire is sent to participants in each cohort to collect information on demographics, lifestyle factors and disease endpoints. Participants estimated their total hours of sleep in a 24-hour period and were asked if they snore.

A total of 76,368 women and 30,121 men formed the baseline population for this analysis. At baseline the median age was 53 years for women and 56 years for men. The researchers documented a total of 1,973 incident colorectal cancer cases: 1,264 cases in NHS (1986-2008) and 709 cases in HPFS (1988-2008).

In subgroup analyses, men or women who were overweight or who were regular snorers and who reported sleeping 9 hours or more per day had approximately a 1.4 to 2-fold increased risk of developing colorectal cancer compared to overweight or regular snorers with 7 hours of sleep per day.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine reports that individual sleep needs vary. However, the general recommendation is that most adults should get about seven to eight hours of nightly sleep.

The researchers suggest that the association between the self-reported long sleep duration and incident colorectal cancer may be explained by obstructive sleep apnea, which involves repetitive episodes of complete or partial upper airway obstruction occurring during sleep despite an ongoing effort to breathe. The major predisposing factor for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is excess body weight, and loud snoring is a common symptom of sleep apnea.

According to the authors, sleep disruption caused by OSA may reduce sleep quality and increase sleepiness, resulting in longer reported sleep durations. Furthermore, intermittent hypoxemia similar to that which occurs in OSA has been shown in animal models to promote tumor growth.

“Future studies should focus on different populations and evaluate to see whether sleep duration and sleep quality is a novel risk factor for colorectal cancer and to understand the mechanisms behind this association,” said Zhang.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women combined in the U.S.

The study appeared in the May issue of the journal Sleep.

More vitamin D may not confer any benefit

More vitamin D may not confer any benefit

Washington: A new research from Johns Hopkins has found that blood levels of vitamin D or so-called “sunshine vitamin” higher than the top of the range suggested by the Institute of Medicine confer no additional benefit.

This finding, combined with results of a previous study by the same group noting potential harm from higher vitamin D levels in healthy people, has urged investigators to prescribe caution.

“Healthy people have been popping these pills, but they should not continue taking vitamin D supplements unchecked,” said study leader Muhammad Amer, M.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“At a certain point, more vitamin D no longer confers any survival benefit, so taking these expensive supplements is at best a waste of money,” he added.

Amer stresses that there are some groups of people – elderly, postmenopausal women, and people with kidney disease – who do benefit from higher blood levels of a vitamin vital to bone health. Such groups may need to take supplements.

Amer and Rehan Qayyum, M.D., M.H.S., also of Johns Hopkins, conducted a review of data from more than 10,000 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2001 to 2004. They matched those data with mortality data from the National Death Index through Dec. 2006.

When they looked at deaths from all causes and cardiovascular disease specifically, those with blood levels of 21 nanograms per milliliter of 25-Hydroxyvitamin D – at the top of the range that the IOM considers “adequate” and at the low end of “normal” – cut their risk of death in half. Above 21 nanograms per milliliters, the data suggest that the protective effect appears to wear off.

The primary source of vitamin D is the sun, and although it is found naturally in very few foods, commercially sold milk is usually fortified with it.

Amer said as people spend more and more time indoors and slather their bodies with sunscreen when outdoors, concern is rising that many are vitamin D-deficient. But he stated that there is no set amount of supplementation that can bring someone up to 21 nanograms per milliliter because the way people process vitamins varies.

In research published in January 2012 in the American Journal of Cardiology, Amer and Qayyum found that increasing levels of vitamin D in the blood are linked with lower levels of a popular marker for cardiovascular inflammation – c-reactive protein (also known as CRP).

Beyond blood levels of 21 nanograms per milliliter, any additional increase in vitamin D was associated with an increase in CRP, a factor linked to stiffening of the blood vessels and an increased risk of cardiovascular problems.

The team’s unpublished research also suggests a link between excess vitamin D and elevated homocysteine levels, another danger sign for cardiovascular disease.

People should consult with their doctors, Amer said, before starting vitamin D supplements and should have their blood levels checked.

The researchers described their work in an article published online in the American Journal of Medicine .

Why women tend to binge eat more than males

Why women tend to binge eat more than males

Washington: Female rats are much more likely to binge eat than male rats, a new study has revealed.

The study, by Michigan State University scientists, is the first to establish sex differences in rates of binge eating in animals and has implications for humans.

Binge eating is one of the core symptoms of most eating disorders, including bulimia nervosa and the binge/purge subtype of anorexia nervosa, and females are four to 10 times more likely than males to have an eating disorder.

“Most theories of why eating disorders are so much more prevalent in females than males focus on the increased cultural and psychological pressure that girls and women face,” Kelly Klump, lead author and professor of psychology, said.

“But this study suggests that biological factors likely contribute as well, since female rats do not experience the psychosocial pressures that humans do, such as pressures to be thin,” she said.

Klump and colleagues ran a feeding experiment with 30 female and 30 male rats over a two-week period, replacing the rodents’ food pellets periodically with vanilla frosting.

They found that the rate of binge eating “proneness” (i.e., the tendency to consume the highest amount of frosting across all feeding tests) was up to six times higher in female as compared to male rats.

The tendency to binge eat may be related to the brain’s natural reward system, or the extent to which someone likes and seeks reward, Klump said.

The answers could ultimately help improve therapy – both counseling and medications – for those with eating disorders.

“This research suggests there is probably a biological difference between males and females that we need to explore to understand risk factors and mechanisms,” Klump said.

The study is published online in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.