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Protect Those Eyes on the Sky

On April 8, a solar eclipse — when the moon blocks the sun — will be visible in North America as the sun crosses Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. A total eclipse will occur in certain locations in the U.S., and a partial eclipse will be visible in other areas of the country, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. While the eclipse is a momentous occasion, it’s something eye experts say you need to enjoy safely.

Eye safety during the eclipse

Looking into any type of eclipse — partial or total — poses severe risks to your eyes. You could permanently damage your retina or even cause blindness. It’s not safe to look directly at the sun without specialized protective eyewear.

If you plan to take part in the solar viewing, you need to use solar eclipse glasses or a solar viewer to be completely safe. Solar viewers or glasses labeled as ISO 12312-2 compliant reduce the sunlight to a safe level for viewing.

Regular sunglasses and homemade solar filters are not safe for use. Regular sunglasses don’t provide adequate eye protection like eclipse glasses, no matter how dark the sunglasses are.

The eclipse can be viewed directly without eye protection only when the sun is entirely covered by the moon, which is called totality. During this period, you’ll no longer be able to see any part of the sun through your eclipse glasses or solar viewer.

It’s crucial to immediately put on your eclipse glasses or use the solar viewer again as soon as the sun’s first light is visible behind the moon.

Safety tips for eclipse viewing

Eclipse viewers should follow these safety tips from the American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Astronomical Society:

Always read and follow all directions that come with the solar filter or eclipse glasses.
Carefully look at your solar filter or eclipse glasses before using them. If you see any scratches, tears or damage, don’t use them.
Before looking up at the bright sun, stand still and cover your eyes with your eclipse glasses or solar viewer. After glancing at the sun, turn away and remove your filter — don’t remove it while looking at the sun.
Help children use handheld solar viewers and eclipse glasses correctly.
Never look at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun through an unfiltered camera, telescope, binoculars or similar devices. This is important even if you’re wearing eclipse glasses or holding a solar viewer at the same time. The intense solar rays coming through these devices will damage the solar filter and your eyes.
Talk with an expert astronomer if you want to use a special solar filter with a camera, a telescope, binoculars or any other optical device.

Have fun watching the solar eclipse, but be sure your eyes are properly protected.

Contributor: Robert Friese O.D. – Mayo Clinic

Research Says: Drinking This Red Juice May Lower Blood Pressure

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the biggest cause of mortality worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases were responsible for 15.2 million deaths around the world in 2016. Sadly, even if one does not die from a cardiovascular event, it places a tremendous burden on the body and can drastically reduce the quality and duration of life.

The good news is, there are several lifestyle changes that can be made to lessen the risk of a cardiovascular event, including using non-pharmacological methods to reduce blood pressure. A recent study points to a familiar vegetable juice as a possible dietary measure to keep blood pressure in check.

What is blood pressure?
Blood pressure is the measurement of the force of the bloodstream against the inside walls of the arteries. Arteries are blood vessels that transport blood from the heart to the rest of the body. The responsibility of the veins is to bring the blood back to the heart.

Out of control blood pressure damages your arteries. When arteries become weak, they are not as effective at moving blood around the body. Cholesterol plaque can also form in the scar tissue that is created by long-term hypertension.

High blood pressure increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, and cardiovascular problems in general. It is certainly something you don’t want to leave untreated.

What causes elevated blood pressure?
Essential hypertension, also known as primary hypertension happens when high blood pressure develops over time without any apparent cause. Secondary hypertension can be traced to a specific secondary cause including:

Kidney problems
Thyroid disease
Obstructive sleep apnea
A heart condition
Rare metabolic disorders

In addition, your risk of high blood pressure may also increase with the following factors:

Being overweight
Smoking
Drinking too much alcohol
Eating too much sodium
Being older
Family history of hypertension

How to treat high blood pressure
There are a number of ways that you can help to lower your blood pressure by making some changes to your lifestyle including:

Dropping weight
Reducing sodium intake
Exercising regularly
Getting more sleep
Reducing alcohol consumption

Medications
Some medications can help to decrease blood pressure; however, they come with risks. The following drugs are commonly prescribed:

Beta-blockers
Diuretics
Calcium channel blockers
Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors
Angiotensin receptor blockers ( ARBs)

What about statins?
It is possible that your doctor may prescribe stains for you to help control your blood pressure. These drugs are generally used to lower cholesterol by lowering the amount of cholesterol plaque that builds up in the arteries.

Statins inhibit the proper functioning of the body at a cellular level. By blocking LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol, statins also block essential nutrients such as CoQ10, beta carotene, and vitamin E from reaching the mitochondria of the cells. CoQ10 is essential for a healthy heart, and cholesterol itself is key for brain function and hormonal balance, along with other system-wide processes.

The documentary Statin Nation: The Great Cholesterol Cover Up presents a great deal of research supporting the hypothesis that lower LDL cholesterol does not lower the risk of heart disease. In fact, it creates many additional problems.

Statin Nation references a study from Japan that found that individuals with the lowest cholesterol levels had three times the risk of dying of cancer than those with higher cholesterol. Another large-scale study from Hawaii found that those with low cholesterol levels had a higher risk of early death.

As you can imagine, there is much controversy around the use of statins and whether or not they do, in fact, help lower blood pressure. One thing is for certain, these drugs are not without risks.

Adverse Impact of satins
A paper published in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs makes note of 900 studies indicating the adverse effects of statins. However, one issue with statins is that side-effects don’t appear immediately. A person may take a statin drug and experience the desired effect of lowered cholesterol and have the false impression that the drug is doing “all good.”

As side effects of the drug begin to appear, they are often not associated with the drug but rather diagnosed as new problems requiring treatment. This may result in additional drugs and therapy and even more side effects.

Some people who take statin drugs over a long period experience such things as:

Cognitive decline
Fatigue
Neuropathy
Anemia
Acidosis
Cataracts
Sexual Dysfunction

In addition, other serious and sometimes life-threatening side effects have been found and include:

Immune system suppression
Increased risk of cancer
Muscle tissue degeneration
Pancreatic dysfunction

Could tomato juice be the answer?
As mentioned earlier, a new study published in Food Science and Nutrition, found that drinking unsalted tomato juice lowered blood pressure and “bad” cholesterol in Japanese adults at risk of cardiovascular disease. Study authors noted, “To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first to investigate the effects of tomato or tomato product intake on cardiovascular disease risk markers over the course of a year and over a wide age range.”

The study included 184 males and 297 female participants who were provided with an unlimited supply of unsalted tomato juice throughout the course for a year. When the study was finished, the blood pressure in 94 participants with untreated prehypertension to hypertension dropped significantly. The systolic blood pressure lowered from an average of 141.2 to 137.0 mmHg, and the diastolic blood pressure lowered from an average of 83.3 to 80.9 mmHg.

What’s so great about tomatoes?
Tomatoes contain a number of potent bioactive compounds including carotenoids, vitamin A, calcium, and gamma-aminobutyric acid which all play a part in maintaining physical as well as psychological health, including the prevention of CVD.

Lycopene is a carotenoid in tomatoes that gives pink and red-colored fruits and veggies, including tomatoes their hue. Lycopene has been widely studied for its role in protecting against cancer, and has also been found to improve heart health.

Research from the University of Cambridge found that lycopene improves blood vessel function in patients with cardiovascular disease. Patients who took 7 mg of oral lycopene improved the widening of blood vessels by 53 percent. This improvement was comparable to other studies that found improvement with 20 mg of the drug simvastatin.

There have also been studies indicating that lycopene can have a positive impact on blood pressure. Previous reports have shown that drinking unsalted tomato juice for eight weeks improved elevated triglyceride levels in middle-aged Japanse women.

How much tomato juice should I drink?
Most of the participants in this new study consumed about 7 ounces of unsalted tomato juice per day over the course of one year. Be sure that you purchase organic, unsalted tomato juice with no additives. As always, enjoy a diet that is loaded with colorful fruits and veggies.

Contributor: The Alternative Daily

As More Young People Get Colon Cancer, it May Be Time for a Colonoscopy

Colon cancer may seem like a distant concern for some, but with the growing trend of younger people being diagnosed, staying informed and proactive is crucial. March marks Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, a time to educate people about this prevalent and potentially lethal disease on the rise.

As a surgeon, I’m acutely aware of the impact cancer can have. I lost a dear friend — a doctor, father and husband, just like myself — to colon cancer in 2017. He was only 38. His memory is a constant reminder of the importance of awareness and early detection in the fight against colon cancer.

Just one year after I lost him, I started experiencing sharp abdominal pain and a change in my bowel habits. Never mind that I’m a urologist; I still freaked out and feared the worst. I consulted my doctor and underwent a CT scan, which thankfully showed no major cancers. Still, my doctor recommended that I have a colonoscopy.

I was in my 30s, so I didn’t meet the criteria for a screening colonoscopy, but he needed it for diagnostic purposes to complete my workup for abdominal symptoms. Technically the colonoscopy was optional, but with my friend’s memory always on my mind, I did not hesitate.

Most people should start screening with colonoscopies by age 45, experts recommend. A select group may need to start earlier than 45; beginning a conversation with your primary doctor can help with a road map on when to start and at what frequency.

The risks of colon cancer

The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be about 106,590 new cases of colon cancer in the United States this year, nearly evenly split between men and women. The rate of diagnosis for colon cancer has been dropping overall since the mid-1980s, mainly because people are getting screened and changing lifestyle-related risk factors. However, this downward trend is mostly seen in older adults. For individuals younger than 55, rates have been increasing by 1% to 2% a year since the mid-1990s.

Overall, the lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1 in 23 for men and 1 in 25 for women. However, each person’s risk might be higher or lower than this, depending on their risk factors for colorectal cancer. Not everyone needs an early colonoscopy, but everyone should be aware of the signs, symptoms and benefits of screening.

Understand your colon

The colon, or large intestine, plays a crucial role in our digestive system, acting essentially as the waste processing and recycling center of the body. After the stomach and small intestine break down food and absorb nutrients, the colon manages what’s left. Its main job is to remove water and salts from this material, transforming it from a liquid state into solid waste or feces, or as my kids like to call it, poop.

Beyond waste management, the colon also houses a complex microbiome, which plays a key role in overall digestive health, immune function and even mood regulation. The entire colon is about 5 feet (150 centimeters) long and divided into five major segments, with the rectum as the last anatomic segment before the anus. That’s why it’s called Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and not just colon cancer awareness. Cancer can occur in any of these segments, highlighting the importance of a comprehensive colonoscopy when indicated.

The great colonoscopy prep adventure

The preparation for a colonoscopy might be the most memorable part of the process. It’s less of a medical procedure and more of a rite of passage. The day before, you start on a bowel-cleaning cocktail meant to clear out the colon for optimal visualization during the colonoscopy.

The “prep” is not as bad as one might think. Dehydration and exhaustion can occur, and I remember being unable to sleep the night before, still feeling the need to “go.” It was quite the experience but essential for a successful colonoscopy.

The colonoscopy procedure

A colonoscope, a camera on a flexible tube, takes a tour through your colon, transmitting live images that allow the doctor to spot any abnormalities. It’s akin to sending a rover to explore the moon or Mars. If doctors find something suspicious, such as a polyp, they can biopsy and/or remove it on the spot, preventing potential future complications. This proactive approach isn’t just diagnostic; it’s a powerful form of prevention that can offer peace of mind and actionable insights into your health.

Fortunately for me, the colonoscopy revealed no signs of cancer, and my symptoms had already resolved by then. Although my procedure was primarily for diagnostic reasons, regular screenings are essential for many, serving as a key preventive measure.

What should you do next?

The US Preventive Services Task Force advises adults ages 45 to 75 to undergo regular colorectal cancer screenings, emphasizing the importance of early detection.

Those with an elevated risk, perhaps due to family history or other factors, should consult their health care provider to determine the best screening schedule and methods tailored to their specific needs.

Despite these recommendations, a significant portion of the eligible population hesitates to participate in screenings. Common deterrents include the discomfort associated with stool-based tests, the preparation required for procedures, and anxiety surrounding colonoscopy examinations.

This apprehension may contribute to only about 60% of those eligible for colorectal cancer screenings staying up to date on the recommended tests. If it weren’t for the memory of my friend, I would have likely been in the “I’ll skip all this” group.

In a promising development, a new blood-based screening test for colon cancer boasted an 83% effectiveness in detecting the disease, according to a study published March 13 in The New England Journal of Medicine. This test identifies DNA markers released by cancer cells in the blood, specific to colorectal cancer. While not a replacement for a colonoscopy, a positive result from this test indicates the need for further examination. The hope is, once approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, this blood test would increase screening for colorectal cancer.

If you have any abnormal symptoms anywhere in your body, get checked. The earlier you do so, the longer you will likely live thanks to getting proactive care.

Contributor: Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, CNN

L.A. County Has it’s First Measles Case Since 2020: What to do if You’re Exposed

L.A. County Has it’s First Measles Case Since 2020: What to do if You’re Exposed.

A recently arrived traveler at Los Angeles International Airport is the source of the first case of measles in L.A. County since 2020.

Measles is a highly infectious disease, and health experts say the best way to evade infection is immunization.

The Los Angeles resident was a passenger on a Turkish Airlines flight that arrived at 5 p.m. Jan. 25 at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, Gate 157. Anyone who was at Terminal B from 5 to 9 p.m. may have been exposed and could be at risk of developing measles.

L.A. public health officials are notifying Turkish Airlines passengers who sat close to this flier about possible measles exposure.

The measles virus can live in the air for up to two hours after an infected person has left the area, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which works with the L.A. Department of Public Health to investigate communicable disease exposure on international flights to the U.S.

Following the flight, the infected person made a stop at a Northridge Chick-fil-A.

Patrons who were at the restaurant at 18521 Devonshire St. between 8 and 10:30 p.m. may be at risk of developing measles, county health officials said.

Additional locations where possible exposures may have occurred are being investigated by the health department.

“Measles is spread by air and by direct contact,” said Muntu Davis, Los Angeles County health officer, in a news release. “Even before you know it, you have it, and [it] can lead to severe disease.”

Those who haven’t been immunized against measles, or are not sure whether they’ve had the vaccine, and were at these sites during the date and times listed above are at risk of developing measles. Symptoms appear from seven to 21 days after exposure to the virus. Those who have been free of symptoms for more than 21 days are no longer at risk.

The CDC reported a recent rise in domestic measles cases. Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 23, the agency was notified of 23 confirmed U.S. cases of measles, including seven direct importations of measles by international travelers and two outbreaks with more than five cases each.

If you think you were exposed

Public health officials recommend:

Review your immunization and medical records to determine whether you’re protected against measles. People who have not had measles infection or received the measles immunization previously may not be protected from the virus and should talk with a healthcare provider about receiving the measles, mumps and rubella immunization.
Contact and notify your healthcare provider as soon as possible about a potential exposure if you’re pregnant, if you have an unvaccinated infant who may have been exposed or if you have a weakened immune system.
Monitor yourself for illness: a fever and/or an unexplained rash from seven days to 21 days after exposure.
If symptoms develop, stay at home and avoid school, work and any large gatherings. Call a healthcare provider immediately. Do not enter a healthcare facility before calling and making the provider aware of your measles exposure and symptoms.

Last month, the CDC released an alert for healthcare providers for measles cases after there were 23 confirmed cases throughout the U.S.

The best way to prevent measles infection is by getting the MMR vaccine, which covers measles, mumps and rubella. Children need two vaccine doses, one when they are 12 to 15 months old and the second between the ages of 4 and 6. Teenagers and adults who have not yet been immunized need one dose.

How measles can spread

The virus is highly contagious and lives in the nose and throat mucus of an infected person, according to the CDC. It can spread through coughing and sneezing.

The CDC says the virus is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of the people who are not immune and are in close proximity to that person will also become infected.

Measles can also spread when other people breathe the contaminated air or touch an infected surface, then touch their eyes, nose or mouth.

The infection can be spread four days before symptoms begin or four days after signs of the virus.

Measles symptoms

The first symptoms of measles infection will appear in seven to 14 days of contracting the infection.

We know measles as a rash on the skin, but it can be dangerous especially for babies and young children. Measles typically begins with high fever (which could spike to more than 104 degrees), cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes.

Two to three days after symptoms begin, tiny white spots may appear inside the mouth.

In three to five days after having symptoms of measles infection, a rash breaks out. It usually begins as flat red spots that appear on the face and at the hairline, then spreads downward to the back, trunk, arms, legs and feet.

Contributor: Karen Garcia – Los Angeles Times