What is Epidemiology - A Joke

Statistics, one photo vs. a movie

You use statistical data in your argument; you give the number of specific incidents and assume that it’s done! You have completely won the argument with scientific facts!

Think again.. Did you really use science in a scientific way? Let’s say I told you I have posted 3000 blog entries, would you say wow, or: over what period of time? Would you be as impressed if I said in 10 years as if I said 10 months?

Won’t you be asking me how long the average blog entry is? Or if I searched the scientific contents in each entry or just posted cute animal photos?

Science is tricky, my point today is to discuss if we used all the possible information at one specific time, would that be enough to draw a conclusion? Or do we need more?

Let me start with an example: if I told you that between Monday and Friday last week I posted 3 blog entries about 500 words in length and that I needed an average of 30 – 90 minutes materials search for references and scientific resources. Would that be enough?

I would say: Nope. That’s a small picture of a long movie that involves posting statistics from many weeks in the past.

The same is exactly true for health statistics; some numbers are not enough, all the numbers for one time period is not enough: it does not give us the trend, the ability to see if these numbers are the norm, or if they represent decrease or increase in the overall estimate.

Statistics are multiple small sets of photos; they can be better understood- just like animated movies - when seen in order and over a period of time.

FIT

Snapshot from Fit Kids page

I have recently come across a very nice website that was developed by WebMD and Sanford Health. It aims to” Empower children and parents to make healthy lifestyles choices that help prevent childhood obesity.”

It has sections for juniors (2 – 7), kids (8 – 12) and teens (13 – 19) as well as parents. There were four main areas the website has in each section:

• FOOD: Nutritional Fitness
• MOVE: Physical Fitness
• MOOD: Emotional Fitness
• RECHARGE: Behavioral Fitness

 The site is well designed and it is fun to navigate through its interactive features, and has lots of fun activities and healthy food suggestions. In this time where children are experts at navigating the web, such a site might prove useful at teaching them some healthy behaviors and at the same time have fun with songs and stories and exercise advices.

Pay it a visit and check if you like it as I did, maybe your children will like it too!

FIT 

Cancer prevention: Is it really that hard?

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and many of cancer survivors continue suffering its consequences. Although there are advances in cancer treatment leading to better survival, prevention is the best option since cancer treatment is not without complications.

Cancer prevention is relatively easy, it involves changes in lifestyle and screening for early lesions where treatment would be easier and could stop cancer from developing and progressing.

Different methods of cancer prevention include:

Change in lifestyle: Obesity and physical inactivity contributes to many types of cancer, by changing your diet, practicing more and being active you reduce your risk of cancer. Smoking is a risk factor for many cancers, quitting smoking reduces your risk of cancer, still the risk in never-smokers in some types of cancer still lower than those who quit smoking.

Healthy diet: Enjoy a healthy diet; your body needs all the nourishments that it could get. Fruits and vegetables are essential in the prevention of cancer and a balanced diet should contain all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

Cancer screening: many tests are available to assess the presence of pre-cancerous lesions, these tests are easy and any insurance companies cover them. Check with your health insurance company and your physician about what test you need to do and when to do it.

These links could be of help to you to rad more about cancer prevention & screening:

American Cancer Society - Stay Healthy

American Cancer Society Guidelines for the Early Detection of Cancer

National Cancer Institute: Cancer Information Summaries: Screening/Detection

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month 2013

© 1996-2013 The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Better And Brighter Years - BABY

Hello Dear Friends,

I am happy to announce that I have created a facebook page to share health tips and health-related news concerning maternal and child health. Please visit the page, and I hope that you will enjoy and benefit from it as well as participate by adding  materials and posts.

Bests

Better And Brighter Years - BABY

The World Breastfeeding Week 2013

Your pregnancy is finally over! You’ve got your body back and besides you have your own baby resting in your arms! Miraculous lovely being that you love and want to protect.

Feeding the baby is an enormous task; it takes lots of the mother time and effort. But what diet to choose? Baby formula or breastfeeding? Each has its advantages and disadvantages, formula is easier, most of the babies like it more than the breastfeeding and sometimes you tried to breastfeed your baby but the milk is simply not enough, the baby is always hungry! Some of the babies are even allergic to any kind of milk.

Let’s get back, what if your child does not have any allergy or problem. A normal healthy child (and I wish all babies much health and no problems at all). The choice of feeding the child is yours and yours alone, you have to remember that, but the researchers can advice you based on their observations and scientific findings. Breastfeeding is healthy both for the newborn baby and for the mother. Let me list the advantages below:

Benefits of Breastfeeding for Baby:

• The physical closeness, skin-to-skin touching, and eye contact all help your baby bond with you and feel secure.
• Breast milk provides the ideal nutrition for infants. It has the perfect mix of vitamins, protein, and fat.
• Breast milk contains antibodies that help your baby fight off viruses and bacteria.
• Breastfeeding reduces your baby's risk of having asthma or allergies.
• Babies who are breastfed exclusively for the first six months, without any formula, have fewer ear infections, respiratory illnesses, and bouts of diarrhea.
• Breastfeeding has been linked to higher IQ scores in later childhood in some studies.
• Breastfed infants are more likely to gain the right amount of weight as they grow rather than become overweight children.
• Breastfeeding plays a role in the prevention of sudden infant death syndrome.
• Breastfeeding is thought to lower the risk of diabetes, obesity, and some cancers later in life.

Breastfeeding has some advantages to you as well:

• Breastfeeding burns extra calories, so it can help you lose pregnancy weight faster.
• Breastfeeding releases the hormone oxytocin, which helps your uterus return to its size before pregnancy and may reduce uterine bleeding after birth.
• Breastfeeding lowers the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
• Breastfeeding may lower your risk of osteoporosis.

As I mentioned earlier, the decision rests with the mother only, but the advantages of breastfeeding are worth your time and consideration.

Wishing the mothers and their infant babies all the health.

To know more about breast feeding and its advantages please visit:

Your Guide to Breastfeeding 

Breastfeeding - Office on Women's Health 

Why breastfeeding is important 

The Role of Social Media in Health Promotion

Whenever we like or need, we can enjoy an easy access to the internet through our laptops, smart phones or even smart TVs. We connect with our friends and family through facebook or twitter beside the good old emailing system. Text-messaging is a worldwide behavior, you can rarely walk in the street or in the metro without being nearly-hit (or hit) by someone who is busy texting.

This passion about the internet and web-applications can be beneficial to our health as well. Let’s imagine a pop-up email or a message reminder on your phone telling you its exercise-time of the day; you can program it to fit your schedule. You can also link the reminder to a page showing you various exercises.  

What about a facebook or twitter page spreading information about healthy behavior or disease prevention, or a texting system reminding the mothers of the child’s immunization schedule, or how to quickly prepare a healthy food of the day for your family?

Many of what I am mentioning is actually available. The problem though is that they are not on everybody’s top list. Facebook campaigns could help promote cancer screening for example, let’s start a page for people who did colonoscopy to share their stories, or mammography, or PSA. Let us think of the positive impact of hearing from other people who did this test and benefited from it, or let them tell you how hard or easy they though the test was, people can ask others who went through a test about what’s frightening and stopping them, physical or social.

As I mentioned earlier, many of what I am suggesting is available but not as widely known as it should be. But we can change that; let us share with our friends at least a health website, a post or a message whenever possible. Let us start today and at least, at the very least, share one healthy site/ page today .. it’s the bless of the social media that we can share what we think can help us and those we love stay healthy and happy.

One important thing though that’s worth mentioning here: some of the sites or pages spread faulty or inaccurate information, maybe unintentionally. Please check and investigate what you read, it helps you either way. If the message was accurate then you know it and the science of it, otherwise you are not mislead by it and you know why as well. Be inquisitive, it helps to ask and check especially with the abundance of information we are witnessing nowadays, and if needed ask an expert, they will be happy to help.

And if you know a website or a page that you think is very important and useful, you can share it here as well.

Stay healthy, stay well .. and enjoy surfing the net.