New Warning Label for Children's Cold Medicine

The pharmaceutical industry has taken the pre-emptive step of adding an extra warning label to their children's cold medicine. The label will advise parents not to use the products in children under 4 years old. The following quote from the New York Times will shed some light on how we got to this point:

Safety experts at the agency recommended a year ago that it consider banning use of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines in children under 6, and an advisory panel concurred. Manufacturers agreed at first only to warn against the products’ use in children under 2 and vowed to fight further restrictions... Despite the products’ extraordinary popularity, every study performed in recent years shows that they have no therapeutic effect beyond sedation, and a growing number of reports have concluded that they can be dangerous. The risks are as varied as hives, neurological problems and, in rare cases, even death.

Chinese medicine effectively treats all kinds of pediatric complaints, from common respiratory illnesses to skin irritations and bedwetting.

Previously on Everyday Health TCM:

• Tylenol Puts Children At Risk For Asthma
  
• Over-The-Counter Medicine Ban for Children

Cyberdyne Makes a H.A.L. Suit

The long-awaited day is here! Rise up out of your wheelchairs for just $2200 a month! This robot suit is built by Cyberdyne (let's hope this is just a coincidence) and uses signals from your brain to activate robotic parts which assist your nonfunctional limbs as necessary.

The suit is called the H.A.L., for hybrid assistive limb (let's hope this is just a coincidence).

Note that it's powered by a delicious buttery pack (see above), so fuel is as close as your nearest grocery store.

Late Summer

In Chinese medicine, the five elements - Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood - can be used to describe all patterns that occur in nature, including the change of seasons. Spring is the season of the Wood element, of new growth and fresh movement. Summer is related to the Fire element, being the hottest season of the year, and Fall to Metal, the time of contracting and consolidating. The Winter season is associated with the Water element, the most dark and yin time of the year.

So where does the Earth element fit into the seasons? Some people say that the Earth element is represented in the change of seasons from one to the next, that time when things feel kind of still and grounded as hot turns to cold and dark turns to light. Another idea is that Earth is represented in the Late Summer, the time of the big harvest when the days are no longer unbearably hot, but the leaves have yet to turn and blow away in the autumn wind.

Walking through the Mar Vista Farmer's Market this morning made me feel like Late Summer really is the time of the Earth. As the last of the berries, peaches, and plums were being sold, their seasonal decline marked by the smaller and smaller tables taken up by the farms that grow them, there have been some new arrivals to the market to take their place. Today there were baskets full of summer squashes of all kinds - zuchini, cousa, yellow, and those cute little flat ones that look kind of like UFO's. There were also the first of the pomegranates, persimmons, asian pears, and so much delicious corn. Huge yams the size of my cat were pulled from the Earth and placed for sale in delicious piles of deliciousness.

The Earth element in the human body is related most closely to the digestive system, the place in which we take in from our surroundings and process what we need. It is the foundation of our bodies, being anatomically the physical center of ourselves as well as the center in which we can spiritually "stomach" what the universe gives us.

In celebration of my Spleen and the spirit of late summer, here's a simple recipe for a delicious seasonal soup I had for supper. All the produce can be found at the farmer's market, and ingredients in the soup have the Chinese nutritional properties of tonifying the Spleen and Stomach:

4 Garnet Yams, cut into large chunks
3 cloves Garlic, chopped
1 bunch Spinach, cleaned and cut
1 bunch of Baby Bok Choy
1 bunch On Choy, cut into thirds
2 large handfuls of mushrooms
6 slices fresh Ginger
6 pieces of Da Zao
3 pieces of Huang Qi
1 lb Jumbo Shrimp
*serves 3 hungry people who can really get down, with enough left over for lunch the next day

Put the cubed yams and garlic in a pot with plenty of water (at least a gallon). Bring to a boil and cook until the yams darken in color. Turn the heat down halfway and throw in the spinach and baby bok choy. Add the ginger, da zao and huang qi and cook for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms. You can season to taste with some salt, lime, or soy sauce, or nothing at all if you like it the way it is (I happened to have some prepared nước mắm for such an occasion. I am Vietnamese... that stuff runs in my veins!). Right before serving, blanch the on choy until it just gets soft, and cook the shrimp just long enough for it to get pink. Enjoy with some rice or noodles!

Chinese Medicine in Central Jersey

Take a look at this newspaper article about a Chinese medicine practice in New Jersey. Candace Jania (above) has relocated her practice to a new, larger facility. She has used acupuncture and Chinese herbs effectively in her own life to treat migraines and boost her fertility - and as the article says: "It worked. That baby is now 2 years old."

Over-The-Counter Medicine Ban for Children

Facts about children:

• They are dirty

• They like to stick things in their mouths

• They are little sacks of germs that get colds all the time, and pass them amongst each other because they are dirty and like to stick things in their mouths

Facts about colds:

• Most colds clear up on their own after a few days

• The best remedy for a cold is rest and fluids

Facts about over-the-counter cold medications for children:

• They were approved by the FDA only 30 years ago without any separate studies done to prove their safety or efficacy in children

• To date, there are still no studies that show the medications to be effective, even though there have been some research into the serious side effects (such as death in some cases)

• Thousands of children are sent to the emergency room every year from the administration of these drugs

• There is very little known about what the potential unknown side effects of these drugs are

• Despite the urgings of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Food and Drug Administration officials to remove these OTC cold remedies from the market, they are still being manufactured and sold across the country

• Families in the US spend over $286 million a year on these cough and cold medications for kids, of which there are over 800 different kinds on the market... That's a big market!

Condition-Specific Websites, Diabetes, HFCS

This article in the New York Times led me in turn to this website by and for people with diabetes, which in turn led me to this blog post that follows up on the "Sweet Surprise" ad campaign that we let you know about last month. Isn't the web great?

The Times article gives you some good links for online health information, beyond what you might find with a typical Google search.

One Doctor's View of Health

There was a revealing essay in the New York Times the other day. It's by an M.D., and the subject is the definition of health. The author shows that, despite modern integrative medicine bringing Western and Eastern models of health closer together, there is still a wide gap in how we view the body.

Women who get a diagnosis of breast cancer, for example, are usually quite healthy. It is the appendage that is sick. After they lose the appendage, they must take treatment that makes them very sick, so they can stay healthy. But, of course, some never quite make it back to that shore, for the terror of recurrent illness can itself negate health.

Rub your eyes and read it again: women who get a diagnosis of breast cancer are usually quite healthy. It's the "appendage" that is sick, so it follows that all you have to do is lop off the offending appendage and the problem is solved. This quote illustrates what Efrem Korngold and Harriet Beinfield call the "mechanistic" view of the body.

The findings of the early anatomists validated the mechanistic view that the body is made out of distinct and separate parts, connected and yet autonomous... for the mechanic, it is best if the parts of the machine are standardized and uniform. That way the parts are interchangeable, easily replaced, and the ways in which they break down become predictable from one body to the next. Standardized diseases develop from established causes, and protocols of treatment are fixed. Uniform parts sit on the shelf. This view focuses entirely on the ways in which all people are alike and tends to overlook the ways in which people are unique and dissimilar. When a group of people receives the same diagnosis, they receive the same treatment. Science and industry have enabled medicine to be practiced on a mass basis. The same mechanistic philosophy that inspired mass production in industry also inspired mass medicine and health care. --Between Heaven and Earth

By comparison, the Chinese medicine doctor views the body as a garden, an innate part of nature. This view both simplifies and complicates treatment.

On the simple side, if your garden isn't doing well, what is the first thing you think of, even if you've never done any gardening? Water and sun. Is the plant getting enough water and sun? Is it getting too much? Each plant is different - some like the shade and some like blazing heat. Almost all of your plant problems can be traced back to water and sun. It's the same with people: nearly all of our problems can be found in our immediate environment, in what we take in on a daily basis, whether that be food, air, water or emotions.

Then again, nature is an incredibly complex subject, and if knowledge of the body requires knowledge of nature, we are all far behind. For all of humanity's great achievements and machines, there is little we can do when faced with the tremendous power of nature. We still can't predict earthquakes or hurricanes.

Gardening is one of those "a little bit every day" kind of disciplines. If you take the time to weed a little every day, water a little every day, talk to your plants and tell them that you love them, your garden will be fine. You can't wait until the blackberry bush has taken over the entire fence before you start trimming - at that point the fence itself may have toppled over. You can't save up all your watering and do it all at the end of the month - some plants will have died already, and watering dead plants only gets you mud. So tend the garden of your body with a little bit of exercise every day, fresh food (maybe some vegetables from your actual garden, eh?) and clean water. Tend the garden of your mind with meditation to quiet the mental garbage you accumulate. And tend the garden of your soul with good friends, good music, and whatever spiritual or religious tradition you connect with. Don't wait until your fence needs to be torn out and rebuilt.