Category: Health

Falling Over

Health

For once, I discovered an interesting article in the ghastly New York Times — motto:  “Other Than That, The Story Was Quite True” — because it has nothing to do with politics, for once:

Public health experts have warned of the perils of falls for older people for decades. In 2023, the most recent year of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 41,000 Americans over 65 died from falls, an opinion article in JAMA Health Forum pointed out last month.
More startling than that figure, though, was another statistic: Fall-related mortality among older adults has been climbing sharply.

I don’t know quite when I started to lose my balance.  I think it was in my early sixties, when for no reason at all, I would stagger a bit when turning a corner (walking, not driving, of course).  I wouldn’t fall over, but it nevertheless alarmed me.

And when getting dressed, specifically putting on pants or briefs, I suddenly found myself unable to balance on one leg without toppling over;  which means that now I pretty much have to either brace myself against a wall with one hand, or else make sure that if I do fall over, there’s a bed close at hand to catch me.  It’s irritating.

Going down stairs has a similar effect.  Where once I could bound down a staircase with no effort at all, I find myself having to grip the banister like my life depends on it, which it does, now.

Of course, I’m very familiar with the fact that we Olde Pharttes tend to have brittle bones, hence the distressing number of said group suffering things like broken hips, skulls or limbs after toppling over. (see:  novelist Jilly Cooper, dead following fall)

The famous expression “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”  is not so funny anymore.

The NYT article suggests this:

The author, Dr. Thomas Farley, an epidemiologist, reported that death rates from fall injuries among Americans over 65 had more than tripled over the past 30 years. Among those over 85, the cohort at highest risk, death rates from falls jumped to 339 per 100,000 in 2023, from 92 per 100,000 in 1990.
The culprit, in his view, is Americans’ reliance on prescription drugs.
“Older adults are heavily medicated, increasingly so, and with drugs that are inappropriate for older people,” Dr. Farley said in an interview. “This didn’t occur in Japan or in Europe.”

Some other guy opines:

The difference, he believes, is Americans’ increasing use of medications — like benzodiazepines, opioids, antidepressants and gabapentin — that act on the central nervous system.
“The drugs that increase falls’ mortality are those that make you drowsy or dizzy,” he said.
Problematic drugs are numerous enough to have acquired an acronym: FRIDs, or “fall risk increasing drugs,” a category that also includes various cardiac medications and early antihistamines like Benadryl.

Which might be plausible, except that in my case it’s not a reason because I don’t take any of the above drugs, or even drugs that are similar.

Of course, we all know that some meds like Benadryl can cause dizziness — FFS, it says so right on the pack — which is why if I do ever take one of those, I take it right before going to bed.

No, I have no idea why I’m suddenly so tottery on my feet, when in the past I always had excellent balance.

It’s also a well-known fact that Olde Pharttes are more likely to experience vertigo when faced with extreme heights or drops.  Just a photo of some idiot hanging from a sheer cliff face by only their fingertips will actually cause my stomach to heave;  I have no idea how I’d feel if facing a sheer drop in person, but I’m perfectly prepared to believe stories about elderly people inexplicably toppling over a cliff as through drawn to it.

I’ve said it before and I repeat it now:  this getting old business is not for the young.

Another Pointless Panic

Health

Some doctor bloke has come out with a chilling warning about two everyday analgesics, taken by… well everyone except him, it seems:

Dr Dean Eggitt, GP and CEO at Doncaster Local Medical Committee, warns patients against taking paracetamol, which is also known as acetaminophen in some countries, and ibuprofen anything more than occasionally, saying that they can cause serious harm. 

He said: ‘All these simple over the counter medications can actually prove fatal in the wrong doses—and some, like paracetamol, within a week. 

‘It’s a huge problem and people just don’t recognise the risk.’

I should point out that the article also says this:

Paracetamol and Ibuprofen—used by millions daily to treat everything from headache to fevers—[are] safe when taken correctly.

No kidding.  As my good friend Doc Russia always says:  “Dosage is important.”

The whole point of analgesics is that they offer temporary relief from pain — e.g. a headache — so popping a couple for that purpose poses no problem to pretty much anyone.

But if you’re suffering from a permanent raging headache, the solution is not to pop ten pills a day ad infinitum; in that situation, you need to get checked by a doctor toot sweet because you may have a brain tumor or similar.

Excuse me for asking, but what fool doesn’t know this?

Of course, if you’re suffering from permanent crippling pain — from sciatica or some other ailment that isn’t curable by surgery or therapy — then you have a different kind of problem, and I feel terribly sorry for you.  (My own gout — since mercifully abated — made me quite sympathetic to this situation, believe me.)

But let’s face it:  overdosing on anything is going to have a bad effect on your health, whether aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen or even water.

The old saying “Everything in moderation” is as valid today as it ever was.  There’s no need for “chilling warnings” unless people are being completely stupid about the situation.

Wait…

No Big Deal, Then

Illegal immigrants, Lies and Untruths, Plagues and Poxes

Speaking of those manky ICE detainment centers, it seems that some illegal aliens have been dying of Covid.  Of course, that’s just terrible, according to the Usual Suspects, but some smart guy at Blueberry Town has taken a look at the actual numbers, applied some appropriate statistical methods and inferences, and sucked the air right out of the narrative:

The upshot is that ICE has been testing the heck out of the detainees in its facilities. As of September 11, there are only 20,138 detainees in ICE facilities (down from an average of >50,000 in 2019), and ICE has administered more than 35,000 Covid-19 tests. Recognizing that people cycle through these facilities at varying rates, it is safe to assume that ICE has tested a solid majority of its detainees during the last six months, and possibly the vast majority.

The agency has found 5,810 cases of Covid-19, for a “positivity rate” from testing at an ugly 16.6%. That is the sort of rate that gets journalists screaming at governors, fun banned, and schools firmly virtual.

Sounds horrible, right?  Nazzo fast, Guido:

But only 6 detainees have died of the Covid. That is a case-fatality ratio of… 0.1%. Compare that number to the observed case fatality rates in various countries, which are massively higher. The Covid-19 case fatality rate in ICE detention centers is right in line with the seasonal flu. That made us curious.

There might be several explanations for this. ICE facilities might have excellent health care. Well, maybe, but that would be a narrative-buster of the first order. Indeed, a recent whistleblower has contended that at least one ICE facility has under-reported Covid-19 cases, which would suggest an even lower case-fatality rate than indicated by the dashboard.

Through the same link, there seems to be data that says that the median age of people deported from ICE facilities is 30. By comparison, the median age in the United States is about 38. The population in ICE facilities, therefore, is almost certainly significantly younger than the United States in general.

Furthermore, eyeballing that chart above, the ICE facilities seem to have very few people over the age of 70, which represents the preponderance of Covid-19 fatalities in the general US population.

There’s all sorts of other geeky goodness in the article, and I would earnestly recommend that you read all of it.  But the executive summary?

There’s not a whole lot to panic about — not on this topic anyway.

Sorry, Commies.  Find another issue to care about.

Miracle Pill?

Health

Most vitamins are useless — at least, they’re at best harmless (unless overdosed, of course) — because most of it is just passed through urine.  It must be true because I read that in an encyclopedia (my Junior Readers can ask their grandparents to explain how the Internet was once all contained on paper, in leather-bound books — also ask for an explanation of “books”).

Where was I?  Oh yeah, vitamins.

Turns out that some are actually quite useful, at least until next week, when another group of “scientists” will tell us that Vitamin D gives us congenial herpes or something.

As you can probably guess from the above, I don’t set much store by vitamins;  the only one I do take religiously is the aforesaid Vitamin D, because I don’t go out into the sunshine a lot (I can get sunburned walking to the mailbox, hello Texas), and my doctor said I should or else Bad Things would most certainly happen to me.  In fact, when I go for my annual checkup, it’s the one thing he’s most careful to ask me about.  “Still taking that Vitamin D 1000u each day?  Good.  Keep doing that.”

Turns out that’s a Good Thing, for all the reasons explained in this little piece (via Insty once more;  thankee, Squire).

Of course, there’s a catch.  No, not the herpes thing, I just made that up.  Turns out that for my age, a daily 800-1000u is just the ticket;  but too much can make the telemores too long, which is a Bad Thing.

No, I don’t have the foggiest either;  you’ll just have to read it all for yourself.

Never Mind That Yellow Snow

Bad News, Food & Drink, Health

…watch out for the radioactive shrimp instead:

The Food and Drug Administration is warning U.S. consumers not to eat certain frozen shrimp products sold at Walmart over concerns they contain radioactive isotope Cesium-137.

In a press release Tuesday, the FDA said they were investigating reports of Cs-137 contamination in shipping containers and frozen shrimp being imported by Indonesian company BMS Foods after it was detected by customs officers at four US ports.

Now to be sure, this is being done in an excess of caution:  there’s no actual proof that WallyWorld sold any radioactive shrimp, and the levels are well below what the FDA considers as harmful.

But if you’ve got that big shrimp boil scheduled for the weekend family reunion and you bought the stuff from Sam’s Club or its cousin, you may want to consider replacing it from somewhere else.

#WoodstockBrownAcidWarning

Smart Move

Culture, Health, Immigration

To many people, this little move would be astonishing, nay even incredible:

France will ban smoking in all outdoor spaces frequented by children, including beaches, parks and bus stops, the country’s health minister said.

The restrictions will involve creating a perimeter outside schools where members of the public will not be able to smoke a cigarette.

“Tobacco must disappear where there are children,” Catherine Vautrin, the health minister, said in an interview with the Ouest-France newspaper.

The freedom to smoke “stops where children’s right to breathe clean air starts”, she said.

The ban on smoking outdoors will come into force on July 1.

As one of many who has had to endure the clouds of smoke from the Gitanes/Gauloises that form a permanent fixture of any French establishment, I first asked myself:  The French?  Of all people, the French?

It’s like asking them to have only one kind of cheese, or banning wine.  C’est incroyable!

But they’re sneaky, the Frogs, as any old doughboy or G.I. will tell you.  Note this little wrinkle:

Café terraces will be excluded from the ban.

So that lifestyle choice — essentially, involving most of the places outside the home where Frogs would be found smoking — can carry on as before.

It’s the “outdoor spaces frequented by children” that’s the kicker.

If anyone loves them a good strong cigarette more than the French, it’s the… Arabs.  And where there are Arabs, you’ll always find hordes of screaming ill-behaved… children.

If you put those two facts together:  I think that this smoking ban is a subversive move to get Arabs to leave France in disgust.