Watch out for the FLU

I started this column last week.  Talking about the flu and all.  Then I woke up in the middle of the night with all this chest congestion.  The next day wasn’t too bad but that night it hit me.  Hard.

I didn’t waste any time, seeing my Dr. Kevin Turner early that next morning.  The verdict?  The flu.  He actually had me diagnosed when he walked in the door.  Temperature 101.2.   Blood pressure…well, let’s not talk about it.

This thing kicked me in the butt.   I’m in pretty good health.  Exercise daily.  I can’t imagine what it would do to someone not so healthy.   That’s why it is so dangerous.

The hospital is pretty full of folks with the flu.  Not to be taken lightly, I see a lot of folks taking extra precautions to avoid getting sick.

I see masks on a lot of people, both in the hospital and around town.  Of course, hand sanitizer can be found all over the place.  There have been a number of deaths, usually among the oldest and youngest among us.  The most vulnerable.

How do you know if you have the flu?  You usually have a fever (but not always).  Cough, sore throat, runny nose, body aches, chills, and fatigue are all signs that you might have the flu.

Does everybody with the flu need to head to the emergency room?  Probably not.  Emergency rooms are great places for serious medical issues but flu and virus can often best be handled by your primary care physician.

What should you watch for?  In children, you may see fast breathing or trouble breathing, signs of dehydration, lethargy, fever, persistent cough.  If your child exhibits those, seek medical care immediately. 

This stuff has a weird tendency to get better then return with a vengeance.  If that happens, that’s might really be the reason to head for the emergency room.

This flu stuff is anything but ordinary.   In adults, if you have difficulty breathing, pressure in your chest, dizziness or confusion, you need to get it checked.  Immediately. 

As for me, there was no way I was going to work.  I had legitimate concerns about exposing my patients to it but the bottom line is that I felt like crap.  In 40 years of clinical practice, I had missed 2 days due to illness.  Because of this episode of the flu, I missed days 3, 4, 5, and 6. 

I had to argue with my wife about returning on that next day.   But I felt fine and was no longer contagious.  And I’d like to think that my patients needed me.

So.  What do you do?   If you have to be around folks that have flu-like symptoms, wear a mask.  Yeah, it looks silly but you don’t want to mess around with this stuff.

Use hand sanitizer all the time.  And keep your hands out of your mouth.  Always. 

Don’t drink after others.  Don’t share food, plates, or utensils.  As much as it pains me to say it, be careful who you kiss.

Trust me on this one.  I don’t want to go through this again.  Ever.

Live a Life of Significance

I want to make a difference in this world.  Always have.  Always will.

If you've only known me as an adult, I hope that would come as no surprise to you.  But if you knew me growing up, it might be a complete surprise.

I was a good kid.  Decent grades.  Respectful.  Boy Scout.  Active in my church.  But nothing about me growing up would get you too excited.  Painfully average, I would say.  Boring maybe.

I guess I had my moments.  I remember one time one of my high school teachers spread the rumor that Ronnie McNabb and I had egged her house one Saturday night.  We didn't do it. 

I dropped by her house the next morning after church with my mom in the car and asked her why she was spreading those rumors. (Yes, the rumor was already out there the next morning--I heard about it at church before I could even get in the door.  Such is life in a small town.)

She came to the door but had one of those chain things like hotels have so she only opened the door a little bit.  "You did it Joe Black!  I saw you!"

Honestly, I didn't do it.  But the next weekend her house got seriously egged but I have no earthly idea how that could have happened.

We didn't have a lot but we always had food on the table and a roof over our heads.  We had bee hives, cherry trees, and a good sized garden.  And I was gainfully employed from age 10 on.

But you know what?  All that means nothing.  Even the infrequent naysayer that I encountered along the way couldn't stand in the way of me pursuing my dreams.

Play football?   Too slow to be a back, too little to be a lineman.  Somehow I made it work pretty well.

First one in my family to attend college?  No problem.  I was actually never NOT going to college.  I still have no idea how my parents did that. 

The perfect family and great kids?  Got that one in spades!  Married to the same person for almost 42 years now.  I've got great kids and the best grandkids ever.   I actually knew when I was a child that I wanted to be a father.   It's the best gig ever.

A job that let me do something I loved?   Been doing it for over 40 years now.  Sometimes I want to pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming.

Rich?  Travel?  Famous?  None of those things was in my dreams.  I just wanted to be happy and healthy.

So, how do you get there?  How do you have the life you want?

First, dream big.  Don't let anyone limit your dreams.  Anybody that tells you that you can't--cut them out of your life. 

Give yourself a road map to get there.  Pursue those dreams with vigor and determination.  Whatever they may be.

And never give up.  If a door closes, look for a window.  If you make mistakes (and you will), learn from them, grow from them, and move on.  Have no regrets.  Leave no stone unturned on your path to what you want out of life.  Live a life of significance.

Using Technology in the Pursuit of Good Health

Do you remember when we used to have to call a phone number to get the time & temperature?  We really used to do that.  Really. It was most often provided by a bank.  A lot of those same banks listed the time and temperature on a sign out front. 

And the weather radar...you used to have to wait until the 6 o'clock news to see a weather radar.  We used to make our plans for the next day based on Margie's weather predictions.

Not so much anymore.  Now we just look at our phone.  Want to know the weather in Singapore?  Three clicks and you've got it.  See if it is going to rain this afternoon?  It's in there.

Oh, and maps.  We used to use maps to tell us how to get where we wanted to go.  Now we just punch a button, give our destination, and the directions are provided to us as we travel.  "Turn right in 100 yards."  Or punch one button and tell Siri "find the nearest Starbucks" and she will do it for you and tell you how to get there.

Did you know that the same phone can help you achieve your health and fitness goals? 

A lot of people are counting their steps these days.   I see lots of reports about that.  "I got 15,000 steps today!"   That one's pretty cool.

A lot of bikers use Strava to give them the data from their ride such as distance, speed, average speed, and total climbed.  (BTW, none of these apps pay me anything for listing them here.)

I've got Strava but don't use it much for a couple of reasons.  One, most of the time all I'm trying to do is keep up with Steve Bright.  That takes about all I've got.  I don't need data to help me there.  Secondly, I don't like to carry my phone on the bike.  That is my time to escape the phone.

I've got an app on my phone that gives my walking/running distance, steps taken, and flights of stairs climbed.  Every day.  I don't have to do anything.  On any given day, it is there.  Since my phone is in my pocket pretty much all the time I'm not on my bike or asleep, it's pretty accurate. 

I use another to chart my blood pressure.  The cool thing about this is that I can drop the data to my Primary Care Physician. 

There are a bunch of apps to help you with your diet.  You can monitor what you eat, when you eat it, count your calories, and remind you to hydrate.  With the help of a watch or chest strap, you can monitor your sleep, the quality of your sleep, and can measure your heart rate during sleep. 

You can get a personal fitness coach, a workout of the day, or a link to the closest gym.  You can get an app to help you daily with stretching, meditation, or yoga.  The list is endless.

Healthier Tennessee is a program that has several parts that will help you with developing better health habits.  Their app is a free download.  It's really handy and offers a feature called "Small Starts" that is an easy way to take those small steps that seem necessary to get started.  It encourages better hydration, better eating, more sleeping, and more activity.  Try it.  I think you'll like it.

Like any tool, these things only work if you use them.  But the technology is out there for you to use.  Won't you take that first step today?

Backpacks Back Again

She walked into my clinic, her backpack seeming to be as big as she was.  In one hand was a gym bag and in the other was a purse.  Somewhere in there was a laptop in its own case.

I didn't know if I was watching some beast of burden or a new form of weightlifting.  It turns out that she was there for me to take care of her back pain.  Go figure.

Thus begins another episode in my personal tirade about what we are asking our kids to do to get an education:  Carry a backpack every day that is more suited to a week in the wilderness.

I'm a firm believer that if you are going to point out a problem, you should be prepared with a solution.  I thought that was what computers were going to do.  So I'm not sure what to do.

But I know it is a problem.  The first time that I addressed this topic (I've been back there several times), I had just weighed the backpack on one of my student trainers--a 95 pound high school sophomore. That pack weighed 35 pounds and talks had started at her school about the transition to computers for everything. 

Computers arrived but it didn't solve the problem.  I'm not sure why not but I see these school backpacks every day.  They're full of books (which I thought would be obsolete by now).

So what can you do?  First, make sure they fit well.  They're not meant to be slung across one shoulder.  Both straps are supposed to be in their proper place.   The backpack should be in the upper middle part of the back.  It helps to have compression straps around the backpack to keep the load inside from shifting.

The straps should be loose enough so that the wearer can move their arms and shoulders easily.  Those straps should be contoured and fit the wearer.  A strap across the chest connecting the two straps is a great idea.

The American Physical Therapy Association recommends that the weight of a backpack be no more than 10-15% of the weight of the wearer.  That student trainer I mentioned?  Her backpack was 37% of her bodyweight!

The backpack should match the size of the wearer.  I've seen some backpacks that were more like what you would expect to see in a 3rd world country on market day. 

Don't  ask your son or daughter to wear a hip belt.  They will quickly tell you that it isn't cool.  I'm not sure that's a battle you can win.  Same thing with backpacks on wheels.  Even though both of those are good ideas.

Bad posture is the first thing I notice with a too heavy backpack.  The head and neck crane forward to counter-balance all that backward and downward pull.  Back pain happens but what worries me more is the chronic back problems that can happen with long term abuse.

And if your back hurts, see a physical therapist.  This is the type of problem that we see every day.  But in the meantime, what about those computers?