ALERT! Day 2013–Learning more to stop Diabetes

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Nina

logo-alert-day

 

Today is the Amer­i­can Dia­betes Association’s ALERT! Day.

Today through April 9, 2013, there’s a free online test you can take to help you fig­ure out your risk fac­tors, and for every test that’s taken there will be $5 donated to help fight dia­betes by a large food com­pany. My risk fac­tor comes up as 4–who can beat me?

Dia­betes effects a stag­ger­ing 14% of San Anto­ni­ans, which is dou­ble the national aver­age (!), caus­ing numer­ous health prob­lems and putting its vic­tims at risk of ampu­ta­tion, blind­ness and even death. And the most tragic thing about type II dia­betes is that it’s almost com­pletely pre­ventable. We all know that we need to eat right, exer­cise, etc.…consult with your doc­tor to help address any of your risk fac­tors and see how you can help pre­vent Pre-Diabetes and Type II Diabetes.

DIabetes Infographic

To quote from our local ADA office: “The Amer­i­can Dia­betes Association’s San Anto­nio office is so com­mit­ted to find­ing a cure, edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about how to Stop Dia­betes and pro­vid­ing sup­port for those liv­ing with the dis­ease are cen­tral to our mis­sion. We are here to help.

To receive local infor­ma­tion or learn more about events occur­ring in and around San Anto­nio sign up for our free newslet­ter! Con­tact Jose Macias, Online Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­ager, at jmacias@diabetes.org to sign up!”

There are also a lot of local oppor­tu­ni­ties to vol­un­teer and help fight Diabetes!

There’s even a free Expo com­ing to San Anto­nio in May. They’re adver­tis­ing nutri­tion info, cook­ing demon­stra­tions and health screen­ings. What would you like to see at the expo?

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Friday fun fact–Do your ears continue to grow as you age?

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Nina

Prince Charles may worry about this very question.

There are def­i­nitely some changes in the face that occur with aging.  First some facial mus­cle tone is lost, caus­ing that saggy look.  Then you get the dreaded dou­ble chin.  The nose can also lengthen a bit, and the skin on the face becomes thin, dry, and wrin­kled.  Then there are longer, thicker eye­brows and gray hair.  We haven’t even men­tioned droopy eyes, reced­ing gums, miss­ing, teeth, and last but not least — big­ger ears.  Yes, your ears do con­tinue to grow as you age, but only slightly.  This is prob­a­bly due to car­ti­lage growth.

What a list of won­der­ful things to look for­ward to as we enter our golden years.

Excerpt from Why Do Men Have Nip­ples? by Mark Leyner and Billy Gold­berg, M.D.

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Seven tips to beat spring allergies

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Nina
Beautiful but potentially sneeze-inducing.

Beau­ti­ful but poten­tially sneeze-inducing.

Spring has sprung! And with it comes aller­gies galore. How do you know it’s aller­gies and not a cold? The most notice­able dif­fer­ence is that, while a cold will com­monly last less than two weeks, aller­gies will drag on as long as you’re exposed to what­ever it is you’re aller­gic to.

Here are some tips and tricks to make your allergy sea­son a lit­tle more bear­able. And if you’re still not feel­ing well, you can always come see us at IUC.

  1. To avoid aller­gens, sim­ply keep your win­dows closed while you’re inside.
  2. Take a shower when you come in from the great out­doors to wash off any poten­tial pollen that’s made you its home.
  4. Wash your clothes and bed­ding as often as pos­si­ble. Aller­gens tend to stick to fab­rics, and you can eas­ily track them inside.
  5. Drive with the win­dows up to avoid pollen-laden air.
  6. If your pet spends time out­side, keep it out of your bed­room to avoid any pollen it may bring in on its fur.
  8. Pollen is at its peak in the morn­ing, between 5AM and 10AM, so avoid the out­doors dur­ing those hours.
  11. Treat any poten­tial symp­toms before you go out­side. Speak with your doc­tor to deter­mine which over-the-counter or even pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tions could help you.

Do you have any tips of your own to share? We’d love to hear from you!

Sneeze!

Sneeze!

Photo cred­its: Oak­ley­O­rig­i­nals / Foter.com / CC BY; James Gath­any / Foter.com / Pub­lic Domain Mark 1.0

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Dr. Gutierrez weighs in on National Youth Violence Prevention Week

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Nina

Today, our own Dr. Gutier­rez takes a look at National Youth Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion Week.

Dr. Gutierrez

Dr. Gutier­rez

 

As spring break ends and most stu­dents reluc­tantly return to class, the very seri­ous sub­ject of youth vio­lence will be one of the top­ics at the forefront.

March 18–22 marks National Youth Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion Week.  This nation­wide cam­paign is designed to raise aware­ness and edu­cate stu­dents, teach­ers, coun­selors, par­ents and the gen­eral pub­lic on effec­tive ways to pre­vent or reduce youth violence.

Vio­lence affects all peo­ple regard­less of age, gen­der, race, eth­nic­ity or reli­gion, but vio­lence dis­pro­por­tion­ately affects young peo­ple.  The young per­son can be a vic­tim, offender, or wit­ness to the vio­lent act.  Accord­ing to the CDC, youth vio­lence is the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death for young peo­ple age 15–24.

Each day of the Youth Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion Week focuses on dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties in regards to vio­lence prevention:

Day1:  Pro­mote Respect and Tolerance

Day2:  Man­age Your Anger, Don’t Let it Man­age You!

Day 3:  Resolve Con­flicts Peacefully

Day 4:  Sup­port Safety

Day 5:  Unite in Action

Much of the focus is to remind us that while anger is a nor­mal human feel­ing, vio­lence is not a nor­mal human reac­tion.  The activ­i­ties of this edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tive help to demon­strate the pos­i­tive role young peo­ple can have in mak­ing their school and com­mu­nity safer.

The ulti­mate goal is to stop youth vio­lence before it starts.

Take some time this week to find out more about Youth Vio­lence, and what you can do to help pre­vent it. There’s even some chap­ters of Stu­dents Against Vio­lence Every­where in San Anto­nio.  And some great sug­ges­tions of activ­i­ties to do this week to pro­mote aware­ness can be found here. What will you be doing this week to help spread aware­ness of Youth Vio­lence Prevention?

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Friday fun fact–What’s up with the ear hair?

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Nina

Aging can be cruel. You lose the hair where you want it, and gain it in all those other unsightly places.  Bushy eye­brows, exces­sive nasal hair, and hairy ears cer­tainly don’t make you anx­ious to get older, do they?

 

Some­times the exces­sive growth of hair on the ears is genetic and is linked to the Y chro­mo­some, the sex chro­mo­some found only in males, which explains why don’t see many hairy-eared females, except in The Lord of the Rings movies.

 

And what would this excess hair growth be with­out a com­pe­ti­tion?  The Gui­ness Book of World Records record for the longest ear hair was bro­ken again in 2002.  A sev­enty year old from Tamil Nadu state in India, Anthony Vic­tor, broke the record with his ear hair mea­sur­ing 11.5 centimeters.

Excerpt from Why Do Men Have Nip­ples? by Mark Leyner and Billy Gold­berg, M.D.

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Your amaaaaaaaaazing kidneys!

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Nina

Ask not what your kid­neys can do for you, but what you can do for your kid­neys? It’s World Kid­ney Day and that means it’s time to learn a lit­tle more about what your kid­neys do and why they’re so important!

We heart Kidneys!

We heart Kidneys!

I’m sure we all know that your kid­neys pro­duce urine, but what else do they do?

Your Kid­neys:

Those are all impor­tant things! Imag­ine if you had Chronic Kid­ney Dis­ease (CKD) and had to have dial­y­sis sev­eral times a week to fil­ter your blood. That doesn’t sound like much fun.

If you detect it early, though, kid­ney dis­ease is treat­able. If you’re at risk, your doc­tor can order a sim­ple test to deter­mine if you need treatment.

How can you reduce your risk of devel­op­ing kid­ney dis­ease? Just live an active, healthy lifestyle, and get your kid­ney func­tion checked if you’re at risk.

Those who are at more of a risk for devel­op­ing kid­ney dis­ease include:

The World Kid­ney Day site is a great site to find out more about your amaz­ing kidneys!

Resources:

World Kid­ney Day site

World Kid­ney Day 2013 video

World Kid­ney Day on FB

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Brain Awareness Week (or how to avoid Zombification from a concussion)

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Nina

This week, be aware of your brain. Your deli­cious, deli­cious brain. Not only are they great for feed­ing your zom­bies, the gooey cen­ter in all of our skulls are extremely impor­tant! Here’s our own Dr. Rat­ner weigh­ing in on why con­cus­sion base­line screen­ings are so important:

Delicious gooey brains!

It is amaz­ing that we are gen­er­ally so unaware of the organ that does the most for us. Here at Impact we value your brain! Well, most of your brain, any­way. One of the best things you can do as a teenager who is involved with sports is to get a base­line con­cus­sion screen­ing. We do not charge for this test. It involves play­ing a com­puter game for about 25 min­utes. There are no nee­dles, no radi­a­tion, or tubes to be stuffed into your nose.  If you ever sus­tain a head injury or con­cus­sion, we repeat the test post-injury and the results help us to deter­mine when it is safe to return to nor­mal activity.

We know so much more about this sub­ject than we did ten years ago. I com­pare it to seat belts. There was a time when seat belts were not used, but at some point we learned that with­out a doubt they save lives. It was not easy to con­vince some peo­ple, but now the major­ity of Amer­i­cans believe it and wear seat belts. It won’t be long before the same type of par­a­digm shift occurs when it comes to con­cus­sion aware­ness and management.

So come on by either loca­tion, any day between 8AM-8PM for your base­line con­cus­sion screen­ing BEFORE you get hurt. That way if you should have a head injury, we can make sure you’re back to nor­mal before  you run off into another poten­tial head-bashing opportunity.

Posted in Awareness, Concussions, Health Tips, Impact Urgent Care, Sports Injuries | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Friday fun fact–Is there really a medication that acts like a truth serum?

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Nina

Action heroes like Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger often find them­selves faced with an inter­roga­tor who uses a truth serum to get the hero to reveal his secrets.  In the movies, our heroes are able to resist these potions and hid the truth.  Hid­ing the truth seems to also pre­pare action heroes for a suc­cess­ful career in politics.

Con­tinue read­ing →

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Breakfast: The Yummiest part of School!

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Nina

The yum­mi­est part of school!

March 4–8 is National School Break­fast week. Here are a few words of wis­dom from our own Dr. Gutier­rez about the impor­tance of break­fast for children:

We have all heard it said, “Break­fast is the most impor­tant meal of the day”.  With that in mind, the week of March 4 rec­og­nizes National School Break­fast Week.

Con­tinue read­ing →

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Zzzzz…It’s National Sleep Awareness Week

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Nina

 

Did you know that sleep (which is so lux­u­ri­ous and won­der­ful any­way) greatly impacts your health? Not get­ting enough sleep can cause or con­tribute to obe­sity, dia­betes and depres­sion, all of which are wide­spread through­out the US. And being sleep-deprived can also cause traf­fic acci­dents and even impaired per­for­mance at school and work. There’s even a “Maggie’s Law” (named after a young woman killed by some­one dri­ving while sleep-deprived) in New Jer­sey mak­ing dri­ving while drowsy ille­gal. In fact, once you’ve been awake for 17+ hours, you’re con­sid­ered just about as impaired as some­one dri­ving while intoxicated. 

Try this quick list of tips to help you sleep well:

  • Estab­lish a reg­u­lar bed and wake time
  • Avoid nico­tine alto­gether and avoid caf­feine close to bedtime
  • Avoid alco­hol
  • Exer­cise reg­u­larly (but com­plete the work­out at least 3 hours before bedtime)
  • Estab­lish a con­sis­tent relax­ing “wind-down” bed­time routine
  • Cre­ate a sleep-conducive envi­ron­ment that is dark, quiet and comfortable
  • Dis­cuss the appro­pri­ate way to take any sleep aid with a health­care professional

Check out the National Sleep Foundation’s site for more info (like the above list) and to find out if you’re “Sleep­ing Smart”

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