A blog by
Christina Elston
Healthy isn't something you are or aren't. It's a hundred little things: eating a banana, walking in the park, putting a bandage on a boo-boo, playing tag, reading up on ways to keep you and your family well and safe. It's a balance between living well and taking care, and you can start right where you are.
If you’re going to buy a frozen bird and don’t already have it, now’s the time for a trip to the market. Buying your bird today means you’ll have time to defrost it in the least labor-intensive way, by leaving it in the fridge.
The USDA says to allow about 24 hours of thawing time for every four to five pounds your turkey weighs. That means a 16-pound bird needs about three to four days to thaw.
The agency also says to leave your turkey in its original wrapper, but I’ve got a better idea. Since your bird has to cool its heels (do turkeys have heels?) for a few days while it thaws, kill two birds with one stone and flavor the meat at the same time!
Russ Parsons described a great technique called dry-brining in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times Food section. It’s like regular brining but without the bucket. You basically rub the meat with a mixture of salt and herbs, bag it and let it rest a few days while the flesh soaks in the flavor. Click here to read Russ’s article!
Whether or not you dry-brine, as a health writer I feel compelled to remind you to take care when slinging that raw bird around the kitchen. Bag it up tight if you’re brining. And either way, keep it refrigerated and put it on a tray big enough to catch any juices that leak out. You don’t want that possibly-bacteria-laden poultry juice all over the rest of your food. It could bring you a nasty stomach bug otherwise known as “foodborne illness.” Remember to scrub down hands, counters, and anything else the raw meat touches.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the Saturday kitchen scrubdown.
Ready for the beginning of the holiday madness? That’s how I always think of Thanksgiving. But of course those thoughts are quickly eclipsed by visions of the delicious turkey dinner I’ll be preparing! “Preparing” is a key word here, because it takes lots of preparation to pull off the annual feast.
How sad it would be if you collapsed of hypertension before even carving the bird. Or how awful if your family and friends spent the holiday weekend suffering from food poisoning they picked up at your table!
The fine folks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have kindly offered up a timeline that puts food safety first, and might even help reduce your stress level. If Turkey Day has your blood pressure rising, follow along with me.
To Do Today:
Plan your menu and gather recipes.
Check your pantry to see what ingredients you have.
Make a shopping list of what you need.
Do an equipment check. Do you have a pan large enough for your bird? Do you have a food thermometer? (This is a must!)
Make room in the fridge and freezer. Clear out and start using up foods that are taking up space you’ll need for your turkey and other dishes. If family and friends will be bringing dishes that need refrigeration, make sure you account for those as well.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about buying and (if needed) defrosting your bird.
The human body has 206 bones, and half of all kids break at least one, or seriously injure a joint, ligament or muscle keeping those bones together. How do you keep your children on the right side of that statistic?
Don’t sit them on the sidelines! “Physical exercise is extremely important to maintain adequate bone health,” says Mauricio Silva, M.D., associate medical director at Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital Medical Center. Instead, make sure kids get a diet that includes plenty of calcium and vitamin D, and at least 35 minutes of physical activity a day. Then provide supervision, take appropriate safety precautions – and teach them to your kids. That’s what Silva says he tries to do with his 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.
Here are Silva’s tips:
At home, use non-slip rugs, appropriate stools or ladders with non-skid legs, and child-safety locks on cupboard doors and drawers so children cannot climb them.
Make sure playground equipment your kids use has a protective surface surrounding it.
Keep children’s bicycles in good working order, with proper reflectors and lights. Teach your kids to wear their helmets and adhere to the rules of the road.
Gear your children up with helmets, wrist guards, braces and kneepads for other sports activities.
Mauricio Silva, M.D.
To get kids to use the gear, appeal to their sense of style. Silva’s son said he didn’t like his first bicycle helmet, “but when I got him a Spider Man helmet, he loved it.” Because children learn best through example, wear your own helmet, too.
If your child is injured, here’s your to-do list:
Clean any abrasions with soap and water, and look for any swelling or deformity.
Elevate injured extremities and apply ice.
Seek medical attention if:
Your child has deep abrasions, or the surrounding skin becomes red and warm.
Your child has swelling or deformity.
Your child can’t stand on a foot or leg injury.
Your child complains of headache after a head injury.
To decide how urgent those calls for help should be (a 9-1-1 call versus a chat with your pediatrician) “think about the amount of energy involved in the trauma,” Silva says. A car accident or a fall from a horse (high energy) means a call to 9-1-1. You’ll also want to call an ambulance any time bone is protruding from skin, or if your child’s limb is really out of shape. Paramedics have the proper equipment to let them immobilize the limb, which means your child will have much less pain on the way to the hospital than she would in the back of your car.
Minor falls or a spill on the playground (low energy) probably means just a visit to the pediatrician. Don’t skip that visit, because there could be damage you can’t see. For instance, a child who can put weight on an injured limb still could have a small fracture.
Follow your doctor’s advice during recovery, because your child will be a bit more vulnerable during the months following the injury. “You’ll be surprised how many patients re-break the bone within the first three months,” Silva says. With a little extra caution, and time to heal, the broken bone will be good as new.
I’m 42 and had my first mammogram this year. At my annual exam, my gynecologist didn’t hesitate to recommend it (and scold me for not having done it sooner), because yearly mammograms for women over 40 have been the standard since at least 2002. Yesterday, the panel that created that standard, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, announced a change. It no longer recommends routine mammograms at all for women under age 50.
That announcement touched off a heated debate, and the two sides fall into line something like this:
The task force and those who support its recommendation say women in their 40s are at very low risk of breast cancer, and that their risk from unnecessary biopsies due to false-positive mammograms outweighs the early-detection benefits of the mammograms themselves.
Those opposed to the change, including the American College of Radiology, say that women in their 40s account for 25% of all breast cancer diagnoses, and that their cancers are often the aggressive type. Removing mammography as an early-detection tool, they say, would reverse the progress that has been made over the past 20 years and increase deaths from breast cancer.
I haven’t seen enough evidence to tip me firmly toward either side of the debate, but one aspect of the USPSTF guideline change does bother me. Usually a guideline isjust that, and doesn’t force your hand either way. But because insurance companies tend to cover procedures and screenings recommended by the task force – and not to cover those the task force doesn’t recommend – they could be making decisions for millions of women.
Which means that next year, my doctor and I might not be deciding whether I have a mammogram. My insurance company might already have taken care of that.
Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow (Tuesday, November 17) or set your DVRs for The Doctors! In this special episode, Oscar the Grouch, Zoe, and some of their pals from Sesame Street turn up to talk with kid members of the studio audience –and kids and families at home — about “eating the rainbow,” the proper treatment of boogers, and other ways to stay healthy. I was at the taping, and can tell you it’s a great opportunity to have fun watching with your children, and learn something to boot!
Check out one industrious mom’s attempt to keep her child flu-free. While the message here applies to seasonal influenza, there’s still too little H1N1 vaccine available to make it relevant to swine flu. Most folks can’t currently protect their kids from H1N1 simply by getting vaccinated right now! For the time being, we’ll have to trust in preventive measures like hand washing, getting plenty of rest, eating well, and staying home if we get sick.
Treatment of scoliosis – a condition that creates a sideways curve in the spine – is a wait-and-see proposition. For the more than 100,000 kids diagnosed each year, it goes something like this: wear an embarrassing back brace daily, visit a spine specialist every four to six months for a checkup and X-rays, and when you’ve stopped growing you’ll find out whether or not you need surgery.
“There is often a great deal of anxiety, and it’s so universal,” explains orthopedic surgeon Baron Lonner, M.D., director of Scoliosis Associates in New York City. While he maintains that bracing is still a good form of treatment, and still necessary for many kids, he acknowledges the stigma kids in braces can feel. “They feel incarcerated,” he says.
But a new genetic test called Scolioscore has the potential to put an end to the waiting and wondering. For some kids it could mean less time in the brace and fewer doctor visits, while others get needed surgical treatment sooner. Read on …
Laila Ali hits the speed bag with a pal from Kentwood Elementary School in Los Angeles as part of the Live Like a Champion Tour.
It’s tough to believe that Laila Ali wasn’t into sports as a kid. Anyone who’s seen the Super Middleweight boxing champion, youngest daughter of legendary boxing champ Muhammad Ali, in action would imagine her as a lifelong athlete. But she didn’t take up sports until adulthood, something she says she regrets. So she’s out to share the many benefits of being active with children, recently taking part in the Live Like a Champion Tour staged by the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. “It always feels good to inspire and motivate kids,” says Ali, “because they’re like little sponges.” She adds that most kids want to be active, and just need to be pointed in the right direction.
That direction, however, might be different for different kids. If things don’t work out with the first sport your children try, encourage them to try others. “Kids need to realize that we all have our own special gift,” says Ali. She’s a big fan of competitive sports, but realizes that’s not for everyone. “Some people just aren’t competitive, and that makes it hard,” she admits. But with everything from swimming to dance, skating and biking to karate now available, the possibilities for active kids are endless. Read what Laila has to say about working out and eating right …
I don’t report every recall I hear about, but this one involves lots of products, and a potentially serious consequence.
Following a dozen reports of children’s fingertips being amputated by the hinge mechanisms in their strollers, Maclaren USA today announced it is recalling about one million of its products. Models being recalled include Volo, Triumph, Quest Sport, Quest Mod, Techno XT, TechnoXLR, Twin Triumph, Twin Techno and Easy Traveller. The strollers were sold at Babies “R” Us, Target, and other retailers from 1999 through this month. The recall is voluntary.
The company is advising anyone who has one of these strollers to stop using it immediately and contact them for a free repair kit. Call 877-688-2326 or visit www.mclaren.us/recall for information.
Me, Oscar and Carroll Spinney, who has brought Oscar to life since the his very first day on Sesame Street.
Sometimes as a journalist I get to do pretty cool stuff. Last week I, a Sesame Street kid from the beginning, got to meet childhood hero Oscar the Grouch. He and some pals from the show, now celebrating it’s 40th year, came out to Hollywood to tape an episode of The Doctors and give their current generation of viewers some tips about staying healthy.
The conversation, laced with plenty of characteristic Muppet fun, ranged from “eating the rainbow” for a healthy diet, to the benefits of exercise, from tips for a fear-free doctor checkup, to the proper way to get rid of boogers (with a tissue, and a demonstration including a giant nose). The episode airs November 17, and offers a great chance to sit down with your little ones and chat about being healthy.
If you’re going to buy a frozen bird and don’t already have it, now’s the time for a trip to the market. Buying your bird today means you’ll have time to defrost it in the least labor-intensive way, by leaving it in the fridge.
Ready for the beginning of the holiday madness? That’s how I always think of Thanksgiving. But of course those thoughts are quickly eclipsed by visions of the delicious turkey dinner I’ll be preparing! “Preparing” is a key word here, because it takes lots of preparation to pull off the annual feast.
The human body has 206 bones, and half of all kids break at least one, or seriously injure a joint, ligament or muscle keeping those bones together. How do you keep your children on the right side of that statistic?
I’m 42 and had my first mammogram this year. At my annual exam, my gynecologist didn’t hesitate to recommend it (and scold me for not having done it sooner), because yearly mammograms for women over 40 have been the standard since at least 2002. Yesterday, the panel that created that standard, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, announced a change. It no longer recommends routine mammograms at all for women under age 50.
Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow (Tuesday, November 17) or set your DVRs for The Doctors! In this special episode, Oscar the Grouch, Zoe, and some of their pals from Sesame Street turn up to talk with kid members of the studio audience –and kids and families at home — about “eating the rainbow,” the proper treatment of boogers, and other ways to stay healthy. I was at the taping, and can tell you it’s a great opportunity to have fun watching with your children, and learn something to boot! 
Treatment of scoliosis – a condition that creates a sideways curve in the spine – is a wait-and-see proposition. For the more than 100,000 kids diagnosed each year, it goes something like this: wear an embarrassing back brace daily, visit a spine specialist every four to six months for a checkup and X-rays, and when you’ve stopped growing you’ll find out whether or not you need surgery.
I don’t report every recall I hear about, but this one involves lots of products, and a potentially serious consequence.
