So many of my friends have had some kind of a “foot thing,” it seems to be a midlife rite of passage!  Along with colonoscopies, root canals, and cholesterol tests, a visit to the podiatrist and a lowering of heel height seem to be part of the over-40 landscape.  That piercing heel pain of plantar fasciitis can be eased by consistently stretching, flexing, and rolling your feet around on a tennis ball or frozen bottle of water.  For persistent pain, a new treatment is Botox!   75% of sufferers improved with Botox injections into the heel or calf.  Then there’s the bunion that goes ballistic and needs surgery – 6 weeks to 6 months off your feet for that…and they can come back again!  Also a bundle of laughs is the persistent pain behind the toes, otherwise known as (more…)

Who knew?  A study of women ages 50-79 found that those who averaged 6 hours of sleep or less per night had up to 20% greater risk of stroke – no surprise there.  But those who slept more than 9 hours nightly were 60 to 70% MORE likely to have a stroke!  Are they depressed, on medication?  Aiming for 7 to 8 hours seems safest.

You remember when your mama said “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!”  That may be the case with the Jupiter Study, the study of 18,000 people with normal cholesterol but high CRP levels.  Test subjects taking Crestor appeared to lower risks of heart attack, stroke, and the need for bypass or angioplasty.  Perhaps the name says it all; Jupiter stands for “Justification for the Use of Statins In Prevention.”  (One of the first rules of studies is NOT to set out to justify something.)  They went into it saying “We want to justify using this drug for prevention!”  Then there’s the matter of the test subjects – they’re not a typical bunch since high CRP usually goes with high cholesterol.  They’re a fringe group,  you might say, not typical.  Then there’s the fact that the placebo group had a higher incidence of family history of high cholesterol and metabolic syndrome, and the fact (more…)

A sandwich wrap can have crap in it, like any other prepared food – hydrogenated oils, preservatives, artificial colors.  Skip the so-called spinach wraps, they’re often just seasoned with spinach powder for color.  But if you pick the right ones, you can lose weight and boost antioxidants with whole grain corn, wheat, and brown rice tortillas, wraps, and pitas instead of bread.  I’d go with two 6-inchers over one big one – it stays neater, it’s the same calorie count, but seems like more food.  Two brands at the supermarket stand out: (more…)

Lots of folks have good results for pain and stiffness in the hip and knee with glucosamine and chondroitin, but the double-blind placebo studies are piling up and saying NAY!  I kept a log for three months and didn’t see any significant results, and you should do the same.  Don’t just keep throwing stuff down because “people say it works.”  Give it a fair shot and then move on to something new – avocado/soybean unsaponifiables.  Mostly available on his web site, Dr. Theodosakis has four good clinical trials for the Avosoy supplement that show promising results for osteoarthritis.  Also make an appointment with a really excellent physical therapist, the kind who operates independently and takes a few weeks to get in to see.  Do what they tell you to do religiously, and of course, (more…)