Health A-Z

Football ‘can tackle male obesity’

Football participation is a good way to get men to slim down, a Scottish study published in The Lancet shows.

Some 374 overweight soccer fans were invited to take part in a 12-week program of training sessions at their local football club.

A year later, the men had lost and kept off about 11lb (5kg) each compared with 374 overweight fans put on a waiting list for the programme.

The Glasgow researchers say it proves male-friendly weight loss plans work.

All 748 men in the study were offered healthy-eating advice and tips on weight management, but only half were invited to professional football clubs for weekly training sessions.

Thirteen clubs took part: Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United, Dunfermline Athletic, Hamilton Academical, Heart of Midlothian, Hibernian, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Rangers, St Johnstone and St Mirren.

As well as losing weight when they were on the 12-week programme, nearly 40% of men who participated in the programme maintained a weight loss of at least 5% of their original body weight 12 months later.

Co-author Prof Kate Hunt, from Glasgow University, said: “Weight management and dieting are often wrongly viewed as women’s issues, meaning that some men do not want to take part in existing weight management programmes.”

But given the right circumstances, men are also keen to slim, she says.

“Participants really enjoyed being with other men like them, with a shared interest in football and similar health issues to address. They loved having the opportunity to spend time at the club, using parts of the stadium that they couldn’t ordinarily access.

“And they appreciated the chance to be encouraged, trained, and informed by the club’s coaches. This model has real potential for the future.”

Source: BBC news

Fever-reducing meds encourage spread of flu

Taking over-the-counter medications for the aches, pains and fever caused by flu may make people feel somewhat better, but it also could make them more contagious — resulting in increased cases and more deaths among the population, a study suggests.

Researchers at McMaster University say medicines like ibuprofen and acetaminophen can ease some flu symptoms, including bringing down fever.

“People often take — or give their kids — fever-reducing drugs so they can go to work or school,” said David Earn, a professor of mathematics who led the study.

“They may think the risk of infecting others is lower because the fever is lower,” said Earn. “In fact, the opposite may be true: the ill people may give off more virus because fever has been reduced.”

That’s because fever has been shown in a number of studies to lower the amount of some viruses in the body. Suppressing that uptick in temperature — one way the immune system fights infection — appears to leave a person with a greater amount of virus to shed, making them more infectious to others.

“We’ve discovered that this increase has significant effects when we scale up to the level of the whole population,” said Earn, who specializes in mathematical projections of infectious disease transmission.

“I think it’s really something that people should consider,” he said Tuesday from Hamilton. “And all they need to do is remember that they could be more infectious if they take this medication and so should be cautious.”

Using complex mathematical modelling, Earn and his co-authors estimated that fever-reducing medicines could raise the number of flu cases by five per cent, a figure that would account for tens of thousands of cases and an estimated extra 1,000 deaths across North America each year.

In other words, an estimated 1,000 of the roughly 40,000 annual flu deaths might not have occurred, the study suggests.

But the researchers, whose report is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, say that doesn’t mean people should stop taking medicines to get relief from flu symptoms.

“That’s not what we’re saying,” stressed Earn. “Our paper isn’t about whether or not you should take medication to reduce your fever. That’s something that ideally you should decide in consultation with a physician — for you, individually, whether it’s good or bad for your health.

“The point that we’re making is that if you take the medication, then there’s an effect on others that people don’t realize. And that’s that you could be more infectious than you were without taking the medication. So you need to be extra cautious about transmitting the infection to others.”

To come up with their estimate, the researchers used data that included experiments on ferrets — considered the best animal model for human influenza — showing increased virus shedding in the absence of fever-reducing drugs, called antipyretics.

They then used the mathematical model to compute how the increase in the amount of virus given off by a single person taking fever-reducing drugs would increase the overall number of cases in a typical year, or in a year when a new strain of influenza caused a pandemic, such as H1N1 did in 2009.

“This research is important because it will help us understand how better to curb the spread of influenza,” said Dr. David Price, chair of family medicine at McMaster.

“As always, Mother Nature knows best,” he said. “Fever is a defence mechanism to protect ourselves and others. Fever-reducing medication should only be taken to take the edge off the discomfort, not to allow people to go out into the community when they should still stay home.”

Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, agreed the study raises important questions that need to be answered.

“I don’t think you can take away from this, though, that antipyretics increase the spread of human influenza or that we can in any way quantitate that,” McGeer said.

“The data, for instance, on increased shedding is in ferrets. And ferrets are not humans. It might well be the same in humans … but it’s not something we know the answer to.”

The study’s conclusions also hinge on the idea that people who take fever-reducing medicines are more likely to interact with others, she said, but that research has not yet been done.

“We know substantially how to prevent seasonal flu — it’s called vaccination,” said McGeer.

“It’s clearly an important question, but I don’t think that should change what we’re telling people to do at the moment: vaccinate, hand-wash and stay home when you’re sick.”

Earn agreed that more research is needed to pin down the magnitude of the fever-reducing effect on flu spread, but he would not be surprised if it is even slightly higher.

He suggests that if parents give children a fever-reducing medicine for flu, they should be discouraged from visiting older people or those with underlying medical conditions, who are more prone to complications if they contract the infection.

“If they feel better, they might go and sit on Granny’s lap,” he said. “There’s no problem if you take the medication if you stay at home. You can’t infect them.”

Source: yahoo news

Sleep During the Day May Throw Genes Into Disarray

Sleeping during the day a necessity for jet-lagged travelers and those who work overnight shifts disrupts the rhythms of about one-third of your genes, a new study suggests.

What’s more, shifted sleep appears to disrupt gene activity even more than not getting enough sleep, according to the research.

For the new study, which was published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British researchers put 22 healthy, young volunteers in a dimly lit sleep lab for three days.

During the first day, they disrupted the participants’ sleep at regular intervals to reset their body clock to its innate rhythm. On the second and third days, the volunteers ate and slept on a 28-hour schedule, so their longest period of sleep was from noon until about 6:30 p.m.

The researchers drew blood samples all three days so they could watch what happened to the timing of gene activity.

During the first day, when the body reset its circadian rhythm, nearly 1,400 genes — about 6.4 percent of all genes that were analyzed — were in sync with that rhythm. On the days of shifted sleep, however, the number of genes tied to the body’s clock dropped dramatically, to 228 genes, or only 1 percent of genes analyzed.

The researchers estimated that the sleep disruptions would ultimately impact about a third of a person’s genes.

That’s an even greater disruption than scientists saw in a previous study when they tested the effects of sleep deprivation on gene activity. In that study, which had study volunteers sleeping about five and half hours each night, the number of genes that were in sync with the body’s clock dropped from about 9 percent to 7 percent.

“These are quite fundamental processes that are being affected,” said senior study author Derk-Jan Dijk, a professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey, in the United Kingdom.

“We think that may be related to the negative health outcomes associated with long-term shift work,” Dijk said. Shift workers are at higher risk for many health problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, disrupted menstrual cycles and cancer, he said.

This study didn’t directly connect health problems and night-shift work, but experts said it does start to help them understand why sleep might have such a powerful influence on a person’s health.

“This study suggests that mistimed sleep can alter circadian rhythms, so the cycling of many, many genes is impaired,” said Dr. Mark Wu, assistant professor of neurology, medicine, genetic medicine and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. “What this could cause, they can’t really say — except it’s probably not good.” Wu was not involved in the new research.

Genes carry the instructions for making proteins. Proteins make up just about every kind of chemical signal, hormone and tissue in the body, the researchers said.

The timing of when proteins are made is important because their production should correspond to our behaviors, said Frank Scheer, a neuroscientist at Harvard and director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

When the body anticipates a meal, for example, the liver has to stop releasing into the blood the carbohydrates it has stored and the pancreas has to make more insulin, while the muscles have to become more sensitive to insulin that’s released so they can take in blood sugar, Scheer said.

Source: web md

Device uses heartbeat to create electrical source in body

Imagine if one day, a person’s heart and other organs could be used to power medical devices in their body that they need to survive.

That day may be closer than you think. Researchers have developed a tin, flexible device that generates electricity when moved. Then, they implanted the item directly on animal hearts, lungs and diaphragms to see if the natural processes of the body could create power.

“If you look at the trends these days, you’re seeing more and more electronic implantable devices,” author John Rogers, director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, said to New Scientist. “I think there’s going to be a growing demand for in-body power.”

The researchers relied on the concept of the piezoelectric effect, which is when electricity is created in certain kinds of solid materials when something puts continuous force on it. In this case, they created nanoribbons made from a piezoelectric-able material called lead zirconate titanate. These nanoribbons were placed on a flexible silicone surface that could be put on an organ and move as it moved.
The researchers found that the best place to put these devices without interfering with the body’s natural processes and movements was on one of the heart’s ventricles. At its best, the device created 0.2 microwatts per square centimeter, which was enough to power an average pacemaker.

While this isn’t the first study to look at this kind of technology, it was the first time it was tested in animals that had organs that were comparable in size to humans. This device can also be stacked on top of each other to create more electrical power if necessary. Rogers said it was a good start but further research needs to be done.

“I think the concept of creating electrical power from motions in internal organs is really interesting,”Rogers said. “The key thing is, if you’re going to do this, you need to be able to achieve efficiency and ultimately power output that is of practical use.”

Their research as published Jan. 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Michael McAlpine, a professor of mechanical engineering at Princeton University who was not involved in the research, told The Scientist that the technology is important because it could mean less surgery for people who have battery-powered devices like pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, neural devices and cochlear implants.

“A pacemaker runs off a battery and it’s installed in your body. Every time the battery dies, they actually have to open up your chest to replace the pacemaker completely,” he explained. “If there was some way that you could . . . harvest power from (organ) motion, maybe you could prolong the life of the battery or even replace the battery all together.”

Some experts voiced concern that the device was made out of a lead-based material, and even though it is sealed up, it could leak. However, McAlpine said there are other non-lead based piezoelectric materials that are almost as efficient as lead zirconate titanate, and further research in this area may reveal a better alternative.

“The innovation of this paper is taking what has been done on a small scale and integrating it up to a much more significant scale,” McAlpine.

Source: one news page

Many hospitalized older people need decision help

When the time comes for making critical medical decisions while in the hospital, a new study says older people often rely on family members or other surrogates to make those calls.

Researchers found that about half of the older patients they tracked needed help making decisions within two days of being admitted to the hospital.

Considering the aging U.S. population and the mental burden borne by the family and friends making those decisions, the study’s lead author told Reuters Health that hospitals should work to accommodate surrogate decision makers.

“The long-term goal would be to improve hospital processes,” Dr. Alexia Torke, a center scientist at the Indiana University Center for Aging Research in Indianapolis, told Reuters Health.

Previous studies have examined the role of surrogate decision makers in some medical settings, but Torke and her colleagues write in JAMA Internal Medicine that they couldn’t find research showing how often people rely on others to make decisions while in the hospital.

“We set out to describe the scope of the problem as a whole,” Torke said.

For the study, she and her fellow researchers analyzed data on people who were over 65 years old and admitted to either of two hospitals in one Midwestern city between November 2008 and December 2011.

To be included in the study, a person had to have been hospitalized for 48 hours. After that time, a doctor was interviewed about the decision making process for that patient. Other information was taken from the patient’s medical record.

Of 1,598 study participants, the researchers found that 1,083 faced at least one major medical decision that was discussed with the patient or a surrogate.

Of those cases, about 570 patients made all of their decisions alone, 264 made their decisions with the help of a surrogate and surrogates made all of the decisions for 249 patients.

Most patients with surrogates were in the hospitals’ general wards, not the intensive care units.

Surrogate decision makers were most often the patients’ daughters, followed by sons and spouses.

Within the first two days of patients being admitted to the hospital, the researchers found that about 60 percent of surrogates had to make decisions about life-sustaining treatments and about half had to make decisions about operations and where the patients would go after leaving the hospital.

The study participants who required the help of a surrogate were also most likely to have worse outcomes. They were more likely to need a ventilator or a feeding tube, to be sent to a nursing home and to die.

“It’s not so much that having a family member make decisions for you makes things worse,” Torke said. “It’s that people who need decision makers are sicker.”

In a commentary accompanying the new study, Drs. Yael Schenker and Amber Barnato from the University of Pittsburgh write that the frequent use of surrogate decision makers across hospital settings suggests there are ways to broaden how doctors approach these types of decisions.

“I think there are multiple ways that we can support both patient and family involvement in decision making,” Schenker, an assistant professor, told Reuters Health.

For example, she and Barnato write that doctors should ask about people’s preferences when they are admitted to the hospital. That includes asking people who they want involved in the decision making process and how they want that person involved.

Doctors should also be trained in how to facilitate discussions between themselves, the patients and their chosen surrogate, they write. Part of that may include overcoming a tendency to only consider short-term outcomes instead of a patient’s overall illness and goals.

“I think it’s always helpful for patients and families to start conversations about these things,” Schenker said. “I think it’s also important for patients when they’re hospitalized to let doctors know how they want to approach decisions. It’s also unfortunately the case that they won’t always be asked.”

In the study, the researchers found that only about 25 percent of the patients had living wills or some kind of advanced directive to explain their choices. Torke said those documents may help some people but will not cover everything a surrogate may encounter.

“For older adults and their family members, I hope people will have more conversations about the possibilities about going into the hospital and what the older people’s preferences are,” she said.

Source: Chicago tribune

Middle Schoolers Snorting Smarties Candy Lead To Death

A dangerous trend among middle schoolers may soon prompt parents, convenience stores, and pharmacies to hide their Smarties candy stash. Kids have adopted a new extracurricular activity: crushing up and snorting the chalky, round candies to mimic the effects of getting high. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these child snorters are at risk for dangerous side effects such as nasal maggot infestation, nasal scarring, lung irritation or infection, and allergic reactions that can be fatal.

School officials from a school in Scarborough, Maine, have warned parents to watch out for kids snorting Smarties, claiming it is a “widespread phenomenon” that has circulated in videos featured on YouTube. In a document titled “Important Health Information for Parents Regarding the Candy, Smarties,” parents were advised students not only snort, but also smoke Smarties.

“To smoke Smarties, students crush the candies into a fine powder while it is still in its wrapper, tear off an end, pour the powder into their mouths, and blow out the smoke. Some are able to put the powder into their mouths and blow it out their noses,” according to the document. Scarborough school officials remain unclear about the “benefit” for students engaging in this practice.

Although snorting Smarties has recently become a predominant issue in middle schools across the U.S., the dangerous trend is anything but a new phenomenon. YouTube videos traced back to 2007 show kids snorting the Smarties among their peers, resulting in extreme coughing after inhaling the candies.

In 2007, Radio DJs Tyler Kruze and Ryan Walker from Z-104 in Madison, Wisc., attempted to snort the round candies live on air, which was later uploaded to YouTube. The DJs did this taping to warn kids snorting Smarties can have detrimental health effects. “It hurt so bad, dude. It got up there and it was like so much …so fast,” said Kruze. Upon snorting the candy, Walker experienced watery eyes and simply warned kids, “Don’t do it.”

School officials in Portsmouth Middle School in Rhode Island sent a note to parents last Thursday to warn them to watch out for students snorting Smarties. The note, sent via email, elaborated on the methods in which students have been snorting the sugary candy. Also, parents were warned about the possible medical issues that can occur as a result of snorting Smarties.

Portsmouth blogger and parent John McDaid, contacted a former Mayo Clinic doctor on the other possible health dangers of using Smarties as a drug. Dr. Oren Friedman, associate professor of otorhinolaryngology at the University of Pennsylvania, told McDaid on his blog “hard deadlines,” “There’s no way to verify the claims about respiratory arrest, laryngospasm, or leading to drugs.” However, he believes patients with foreign materials in their noses can face a variety of problems, even years after the insult occurs.

Nasal maggot infestation, or nasal myiasis, occurs when flies lay larvae eggs inside the nose as a result of the Smarties rammed up inside the lining, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Parents can check if their children begin to feel a tickling sensation inside their noses, and also be on the lookout for a foul smell coming from the inside of their nasal passage. Symptoms of nasal maggots include sneezing and a sticky discharge that can lead to coming from the patient’s eyelids, possibly leading to septicemia and other serious infections.

The candies can also lead to death in extreme cases, especially in those who are allergic to sugar or the contents of Smarties. “It is an irritant; it can cause wheezing and maybe chronic cough and asthma and sinus complications. And, ultimately, if someone is allergic to sugar or the contents of Smarties, then they could end up having an anaphylactic reaction and dying,” Dr. Gail Burstein, Erie County health commissioner told The Sun. Last year, 15 students were identified as participating in snorting Smarties at the Frontier Middle School in Erie County.

Smarties candy consists of dextrose, citric acid, calcium stearate, flavoring, and coloring agents but does not provide any high for consumers.

Source: medical daily

China pollution crossing Pacific to U.S.

Pollution from China travels in large quantities across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, a new study has found, making environmental and health problems unexpected side effects of U.S. demand for cheap China-manufactured goods.

On some days, acid rain-inducing sulfate from burning of fossil fuels in China can account for as much as a quarter of sulfate pollution in the western United States, a team of Chinese and American researchers said in the report published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a non-profit society of scholars.

Cities like Los Angeles received at least an extra day of smog a year from nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide from China’s export-dependent factories, it said.
“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at University of California Irvine, said.

Between 17 and 36 percent of various air pollutants in China in 2006 were related to the production of goods for export, according to the report, and a fifth of that specifically tied to U.S.-China trade.

Beijing’s air pollution at dangerously high levels
China’s December exports slow, imports accelerate
One third of China’s greenhouse gases is now from export-based industries, according to Worldwatch Institute, a U.S.-based environmental research group.

China’s neighbors, such as Japan and South Korea, have regularly suffered noxious clouds from China in the last couple of decades as environmental regulations have been sacrificed for economic and industrial growth.

However, the new report showed that many pollutants, including black carbon, which contributes to climate change and is linked to cancer, emphysema and heart and lung diseases, traveled huge distances on global winds known as “westerlies”.

Trans-boundary pollution has for several years been an issue in international climate change negotiations, where China has argued that developed nations should take responsibility for a share of China’s greenhouse gas emissions, because they originate from production of goods demanded by the West.

The report said its findings showed that trade issues must play a role in global talks to cut pollution.

“International cooperation to reduce transboundary transport of air pollution must confront the question of who is responsible for emissions in one country during production of goods to support consumption in another,” it said.

Air quality is of increasing concern to China’s stability-obsessed leaders, anxious to douse potential unrest as a more affluent urban population turns against a growth-at-all-costs economic model that has poisoned much of the country’s air, water and soil.

Authorities have invested in various projects to fight pollution, but none so far has worked.

Source: cbs news

Common heart valve problem may be fixed without open-heart surgery

heart2

Researchers are closing in on techniques to fix the most common valve problem in the heart without having to resort to open-heart surgery.

Mitral valve regurgitation, which causes blood to flow backward into the lungs, affects about four million adults in the U.S. For many patients, the condition never causes serious harm. But for others, mitral regurgitation causes extreme fatigue and shortness of breath. In serious cases, patients’ hearts have to pump twice as hard to move the same amount of the blood to the body, leading to heart failure.

To avoid open-heart surgery, doctors are looking to less-invasive ways to implant medical devices that could replace or repair the valve. Some devices are on the market and others are being developed.

When the mitral valve is in need of repair or replacement, open-heart surgery is generally performed. About 50,000 such operations take place in the U.S. a year. But many patients are reluctant or too frail to undergo the surgery. Doctors are also hesitant about recommending the procedure in some older patients with heart disease because surgery hasn’t been shown to prolong life, though doctors believe it improves patients’ quality of life. Permanent heart damage and more heart problems can result if the valve isn’t repaired.

Source: fox news

Sit less, move more to improve health and quality of life

A team of researchers have claimed that people decreasing their sitting time and increasing their physical activity have a lower risk of chronic disease.

The researchers – Sara Rosenkranz and Richard Rosenkranz, both assistant professors of human nutrition from Kansas State University – studied a sample of 194,545 men and women ages 45 to 106.

The data was from the 45 and Up Study, which is a large Australian study of health and aging.

Richard said that not only do people need to be more physically active by walking or doing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, but they should also be looking at ways to reduce their sitting time.

The twofold approach — sitting less and moving more — is key to improving health, the researchers said.

People often spend the majority of the day being sedentary and might devote 30 to 60 minutes a day to exercise or physical activity, Sara said. Taking breaks to stand up or move around can make a difference during long periods of sitting.

Sitting for prolonged periods of time — with little muscular contraction occurring — shuts off a molecule called lipoprotein lipase, or LPL, Sara said. Lipoprotein lipase helps to take in fat or triglycerides and use it for energy.

For the study, the researchers wanted to take a positive approach and see if increasing physical activity helped to increase health and quality of life. The researchers want to motivate people — especially younger people — to sit less and move more so they can age easier with less chronic disease

The research has been published in the journal BMC Public Health.

Source: dna india

 

Kids get uneven tonsil care, study finds

Getting your tonsils out: It’s a rite of passage for hundreds of thousands of U.S. kids every year.

Yet a study released Monday shows hospitals vary greatly in just how they handle this common procedure. And kids fare differently depending on which hospital they go to. At the best hospitals, just three percent of kids came back for complications like bleeding. But at others, close to 13 percent did.

It is the latest in a series of studies showing that Americans get vastly different care depending on where they live.

It’s not clear why, but the researchers who did the study say it will be worth looking into so that all hospitals can make sure children recover well from the operations. New guidelines issued in 2011 may help get all hospitals and pediatric surgeons on the same page, other experts said.

It’s something in the public eye with the case of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, who died after complications from a complex tonsil operation in December at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Calif. McMath had her tonsils out, along with her adenoids and parts of her upper throat to try and improve serious sleep apnea.

She started bleeding profusely and went into cardiac arrest shortly after. Doctors said Jahi was brain dead, but the family sued first to keep their daughter on life support, then to remove the body to a facility where her body will be kept on life support.

McMath’s operation was a complicated one. Researchers who did the study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics looked at simpler cases.

Dr. Sanjay Mahant of the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and colleagues across the United States, looked at the records of nearly 140,000 children who got simple, uncomplicated tonsillectomies at 36 children’s hospitals between 2004 and 2010. All got same-day operations and were sent home on the day of their procedure.

Over that time, about 8 percent had to go back to the hospital within a month, usually for bleeding.

The researchers also looked at the use of two common drug types — dexamethasone, which can reduce complications such as nausea, and antibiotics.

New guidelines issued in 2011 advise giving dexamethasone to children before the operation, and they recommend against giving any antibiotics.

In the study before the guidelines came out, 76 percent of the children got dexamethasone, and at some hospitals almost none did. And 16 percent of children got antibiotics, although at some hospitals 90 percent of patients did.

“More than 500,000 tonsillectomies are performed each year in children in the United States, most commonly for sleep-disordered breathing and recurrent throat infections,” the researchers wrote. There shouldn’t be such variation from one hospital to another, they said.

It’s one of the reasons the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) issued practice guidelines based on what the studies show – that giving kids dexamethasone before the operation helps, and that giving them antibiotics doesn’t.

“These recommendations are based on evidence gathered from trials over the past two decades, which showed that dexamethasone, administered on the day of surgery, reduces postoperative nausea, vomiting, and pain, whereas perioperative antibiotics do not reduce postoperative bleeding,” Mahant’s team wrote.

Tonsillectomies are mostly done now to help sleep disorders. “There is an increased focus on sleep health in children,” said said Dr. Emily Boss, an assistant professor with the Johns Hopkins University Department of Otolaryngology and a member of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.

Children can start bleeding as the scab formed after the operation naturally sloughs off, Boss added. “It’s one of the well-known complications,” she said. “It’s hard to predict who will have bleeding and who will not.”

It’s almost certainly nothing the child or parents are doing, Boss added. She said there’s no evidence to support common beliefs about what causes it, such as that eating scratchy food breaks off the clot.

Children do prefer soft, cool foods because their throats are sore, she added. And yes, popsicles or ice cream are not just allowed, but recommended.

“I think this study will force the issue of practicing according to evidence-based guidelines,” Boss said.

There were not any established guidelines before, Boss told NBC News. “People practiced based on their own experiences for a long period of time,” she said.

Other medical organizations are also starting to stress clear practice guidelines. And the Obama administration is also encouraging them, to help make care more consistent and to help lower costs.

A study published by the Dartmouth Atlas project last October found variation in all sorts of treatments. For example, in San Angelo, Texas, 91 percent of heart attack patients filled a prescription for a beta-blocker drug to lower blood pressure in 2008 or 2009, the study found. But in Salem, Ore., just 62.5 percent did. For a statin drug to lower cholesterol, the rates ranged from 91 percent of patients in Ogden, Utah to 44 percent in Abilene, Tex.

Prices vary, also, often with little apparent rhyme or reason. Last week another study found that the hospital charges in California for giving birth can vary from $3,000 to $37,000 – and that’s for a simple, uncomplicated delivery.

In May, the federal government said it would start publishing data on hospital charges. Their first numbers confirmed what health reform advocates complained about for years: The charges vary enormously, and for seemingly unclear reasons.

Source: nbc news