Is Your Student Safe?

The beginning of another school year means the beginning of school sports including football, soccer, cross country and swimming. All too often, school sports result in injuries to athletes and, in some cases, incidents of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). Although SCA in athletes makes the headlines, it’s important to know that SCA can happen to anyone including a seemingly healthy child.

Sudden cardiac arrest in a young person usually stems from a structural defect in the heart or a problem with the heart’s electrical circuitry. The most frequent cause, accounting for about 40% of all cases, is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or HCM.

HCM is a genetic heart condition that affects 1: 500 individuals, including men, women and children of all ages. HCM is characterized by a thickening of the heart muscle and can lead to sudden cardiac arrest.

Approximately 50% of individuals with HCM experience no symptoms, and don’t even know they have the condition, until tragically, sudden cardiac arrest occurs.  In 9:10 cases the outcome is fatal, resulting in unimaginable grief for families and fellow students.  Yet better outcomes can be achieved with early electrical stimulation of the heart – delivered by a small, fully automated, easy to use box.

Given that educational institutions house more than 20% of the American population every day, you’d think they would be fully prepared for this eventually. But sadly, they are not.

At the time of writing, only 19: 50 states in the U.S. require that at least some of their schools have automated external defibrillators [AED’s].  In some states, AEDs are required in public, but not private schools. In other states, AEDs are required in high schools, but not elementary schools. Some states require AEDs only in schools offering athletics. Only two states – Hawaii and Oregon – require AEDs in colleges.

To find out whether your state requires AEDs in schools, click here to view an interactive map.

Although schools and colleges are ideal and obvious locations for AED deployment, concerns regarding legal liability and litigation have been perceived as a barrier to purchasing and deploying AEDs.  Fortunately this is slowly changing.  Recognition of the need to protect youth from sudden cardiac arrest is gaining momentum in many states:

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Andrew Dinniman has sponsored Senate Bill 606, Aidan’s Law, named for Aidan Silva, a seven-year-old Chester County resident who succumbed to SCA in September 2010.  Aidan had no symptoms of a heart condition prior to his death. Aidan’s Law will help ensure that every public school in Pennsylvania has an AED that is up to date and ready to use.

Rep. Connie Pillich, of Cincinnati, has introduced a bill focused on SCA in student athletes. House Bill 180 requires the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Department of Education to jointly develop guidelines and materials to educate students, parents and coaches about SCA. The measure bans a student from participating in a school-sponsored athletic activity until the student submits a signed form acknowledging receipt of the guidelines and materials created by the health and education departments. Individuals would not be allowed to coach a school-sponsored athletic activity unless the individual has completed, within the previous year, a sudden cardiac arrest training course approved by the health department.

John Ellsessar, whose son Michael died during an Oxford High School football game in 2010 from cardiac arrest, believes automated external defibrillators should be as readily available at school settings as fire extinguishers.

Ellsessar, is pushing for legislation to require all schools to have defibrillators, said he and his wife were horrified when they learned that at most schools that have the medical devices, but they are locked away in nurses’ offices, instead of being ready for emergencies.

And in Rhode Island, high school seniors will be required to be trained in CPR and the use of a defibrillator before they can graduate. Under the legislation signed into law by Gov. Lincoln Chafee, students will receive training that includes a hands-on course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and an overview of the use of an AED.

The National Parent Teacher Association has also adopted a resolution calling for public schools to develop emergency response plans that include summoning help, performing CPR and using automated external defibrillators to save lives. The PTA also called for ongoing CPR-AED training in schools and legislation that would fund placement of AEDs in every school, while providing immunity for people who use the lifesaving devices in good faith.

To learn more about sudden cardiac arrest and how you can help please visit http://www.sca-aware.org

Sleep Better, Look Better

Getting treatment for a common sleep problem may do more than help you sleep better – it may help you look better too. So says new research study from the University of Michigan Health System and Michigan Technological University.

And it’s more than just being being bright-eyed after a good night’s rest.  For the first time, researchers have shown specific improvement in facial appearance after at-home continuous positive airway pressure [CPAP] treatment for sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea affects millions of adults, many of them undiagnosed.  It is a condition marked by snoring and breathing interruptions and can put sufferers at higher risk for heart-related problems and daytime accidents.

Using a sensitive “face mapping” technique usually used by surgeons, and a panel of independent appearance raters, the researchers detected changes in 20 middle-aged apnea patients just a few months after they began using CPAP to help them breathe better during sleep and overcome chronic sleepiness. CPAP also helps to stop snoring, improve daytime alertness and reduce blood pressure.

While the research needs to be confirmed by larger studies, the findings may help sleep apnea patients comply with their treatment.  Compliance is a challenge for some because of the cumbersome breathing mask they have to wear to bed.

Sleep neurologist Ronald Chervin, M.D., M.S., director of the U-M Sleep Disorders Center, led the study, which has just been published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

Chervin says the study grew out of the anecdotal evidence that sleep center staff often saw in sleep apnea patients when they came for follow-up visits after using CPAP.

“The common lore, that people ‘look sleepy’ because they are sleepy, and that they have puffy eyes with dark circles under them, drives people to spend untold dollars on home remedies,” notes Chervin. “We perceived that our CPAP patients often looked better, or reported that they’d been told they looked better, after treatment. But no one has ever actually studied this.”

They teamed with U-M plastic and reconstructive surgeon Steven Buchman, M.D., to use a precise face-measuring system called photogrammetry to take an array of images of the patients under identical conditions before CPAP and again a few months after.

“The technology used in this study demonstrates the real relationship between how you look and how you really are doing, from a health perspective” says Buchman.

The researchers also used a subjective test of appearance. 22 independent raters were asked to look at the photos, without knowing which were the “before” pictures and which the “after” pictures of each patient. The raters were asked to rank attractiveness, alertness and youthfulness – and to pick which picture they thought showed the patient after sleep apnea treatment.

About two-thirds of the time, the raters stated that the patients in the post-treatment photos looked more alert, more youthful and more attractive. The raters also correctly identified the post-treatment photo two-thirds of the time.

Meanwhile, the objective measures of facial appearance showed that patients’ foreheads were less puffy, and their faces were less red, after CPAP treatment. The redness reduction was especially visible in 16 Caucasian patients.

However, they didn’t see a big change in facial characteristics often associated with sleepiness. “We were surprised that our approach could not document any improvement, after treatment, in tendency to have dark blue circles or puffiness under the eyes,” says Chervin. “Further research is needed, to assess facial changes in more patients, and over a longer period of CPAP treatment.”

I don’t have sleep apnea but if CPAP makes you look younger, more attractive and alert, tell me where do I sign up?!?

NSAID’s in the News (again)

Let me start by saying, that despite spending the last 20-something years in or around the pharmaceutical industry, I don’t like taking pills. That said, I’m not particularly partial to pain either. So when my knees or back hurts or I’m doubled over with dysmenorrhea, like many other people, I’ll reach for the ibuprofen.

But that may be about to change. Results from a new, large international study of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), showed that high doses of them increase the risk of a major vascular event such as heart attack, stroke or death from cardiovascular disease by around a third.

In other words, for every 1,000 people with an average risk of heart disease who take high-dose ibuprofen for a year, about three extra would have an avoidable heart attack, of which one would be fatal, the researchers said.

This puts the heart risks of generic NSAIDs on a par with Vioxx – the painkiller that U.S. drugmaker Merck famously pulled from sale in 2004 because of links to heart risks.

The study team from Oxford University in the UK, gathered data, including on admissions to hospital, for cardiovascular or gastrointestinal disease, from all randomized trials that have previously tested NSAIDs.

This allowed them to pool results from 639 trials involving more than 300,000 people and re-analyze the data to establish the risks of NSAIDs in certain types of patients.

In contrast to the findings on ibuprofen and diclofenac, the study found that high doses of naproxen, another NSAID, did not appear to increase the risk of heart attacks. The researchers said this may be because naproxen also has protective effects that balance out any extra heart risks.

Researcher, Colin Baigent stressed that the risks are mainly relevant to people who suffer chronic pain, such as patients with arthritis who need to take high doses of for long periods. “A short course of lower dose tablets purchased without a prescription, for example, for a muscle sprain, is not likely to be hazardous,” he said.

He also warns patients not to make hasty decisions or change their treatment without consulting a doctor.

“For many arthritis patients, NSAIDs reduce joint pain and swelling effectively and help them to enjoy a reasonable quality of life,” he said. “We really must be careful about the way we present the risks of these drugs. They do have risks, but they also have benefits, and patients should be presented with all those bits of information and allowed to make choices for themselves.”

Donald Singer, a professor of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics at Warwick University, who was not involved in the study, said its findings “underscore a key point for patients and prescribers: powerful drugs may have serious harmful effects.”

In the meantime, I for one, will be revising my pain versus pill-popping habit, or switching to naproxen.

Bypassing Genetic Obesity Genes?

Fact. Obese mothers tend to have kids who themselves will become obese.

Fact. In 2012, 35.7% of US adults and 16.9% of US children age 2 to 19 were obese, according to the CDC

Fact. Half of all U.S. adults will be obese by 2030 unless they change their ways, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Fact. Obesity raises the risk of numerous diseases, from type 2 diabetes to endometrial cancer, chronic heart disease and stroke.

So we were extremely interested to learn of new research that suggests the unhealthy cycle could be broken by weight-loss surgery.  In a first-of-a-kind study, Canadian researchers tested children born to obese women prior to weight loss surgery and their siblings conceived afterward.

The surprising results?  Kids born after mom lost lots of weight were slimmer than their siblings. They also had fewer risk factors for developing diabetes or heart disease.

Even more intriguing, the researchers discovered that numerous genes linked to obesity-related health problems worked differently in the younger siblings than in their older brothers and sisters.

Although diet and exercise will play a huge role in how fit the younger siblings will continue to be, the findings suggest the children born to mothers who have undergone weight loss surgery might have an advantage.

“The impact on the genes, you will see the impact for the rest of your life,” predicts lead researcher Dr. Marie-Claude Vohl of Laval University in Quebec City.

So why would there be a difference? Clearly weight loss surgery doesn’t change a womans’ genes.  However, it seems as if either the surgery or more likely the subsequent weight loss can change how certain genes operate in her child’s body. The researchers suggest that factors inside the womb seem to affect the chemical  ‘dimmer switches’ that make the fetus’ genes speed up or slow down or switch on and off.

Dr. Susan Murphy of Duke University wasn’t involved in the research says it makes biological sense that the earliest nutritional environment could affect a developing metabolism, although she cautions that healthier family habits after mom’s surgery may play a role, too.

The research has implications far beyond the relatively few women who undergo gastric bypass surgery before having a baby. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, more than half of pregnant women are overweight or obese. Tackling obesity before or during pregnancy can provide a lasting benefit for both mother and baby.

It’s not just a matter of how much moms weigh when they conceive, gaining too much weight during pregnancy increases the child’s risk of eventually developing obesity and diabetes. Overweight mothers have higher levels of sugar and fat in the bloodstream, which in turn makes it to the womb.

How much weight loss is needed to have a healthy baby?

In the study, researchers took blood samples from children born to 20 women before and after the complex gastric bypass surgery, who, on average, lost about 100 pounds. They compared differences in more than 5,600 genes between the younger and older siblings and found significant differences in the activity of certain genes clustered in pathways known to affect blood sugar metabolism and heart disease risk.

Only time will tell if the children born after mom’s surgery really get lasting benefits. Meanwhile, specialists urge women planning a pregnancy to talk with their doctors about their weight ahead of time. Besides having potential long-term consequences, extra pounds can lead to a variety of immediate complications such as an increased risk of premature birth and cesarean sections.

Tee-Total but Drinking Yourself to Death?

According to research presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism meeting last week, sugar-sweetened sodas, sports drinks and fruit drinks may be associated with a staggering 180,000 deaths around the world each year,

Researchers calculated the quantities of sugar-sweetened beverage intake around the world by age and sex.  They also looked at the effects of this on obesity and diabetes. Using data from the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases Study, they linked intake of sweetened beverages to 133,000 diabetes deaths, 44,000 cardiovascular disease deaths and 6,000 cancer deaths.

78% of these deaths were in low and middle-income countries.  But that doesn’t mean America is off the hook.

“In the U.S., our research shows that about 25,000 deaths in 2010 were linked to drinking sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Gitanjali M. Singh, PhD, co-author of the study.

Of nine world regions in 2010:

• Latin America/Caribbean had the most diabetes deaths (38,000) related to sugar-sweetened beverages
• East/Central Eurasia had the largest numbers of cardiovascular deaths (11,000) related to sugary beverage consumption

Among the world’s 15 most populous countries, Mexico had the highest death rate due to these beverages, with 318 deaths per million adults.

Japan, one of the countries with lowest per-capita consumption of sugary beverages in the world, had the lowest death rate associated with the consumption of sugary beverages, at about 10 deaths per million adults.

“Because we were focused on deaths due to chronic diseases, our study focused on adults. Future research should assess the amount of sugary beverage consumption in children across the world and how this affects their current and future health,” Singh said.

In the meantime, the American Heart Association recommends adults consume no more than 450 calories per week, from sugar-sweetened beverages.

And don’t assume you’re OK just because you drink diet, rather than regular soda. According to research presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in  2011, drinking diet soda daily is linked to a higher risk of stroke, heart attack and vascular-related deaths, compared to those who don’t drink soda.  Even though you are avoiding the sugar calories, the high salt content may double the risk of ischemic stroke, independent of sodium’s role in hypertension.

Here at SRxA’s Word on Health we’re canning the cans and from now on it will be water all the way!

Teaching your child the ABC’s of Heart Health

Heart disease is not a major cause of death among children and teenagers, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention it is the largest cause of death among adults in the United States. In fact, someone in America dies every 37 seconds from some form of cardiovascular disease.

Certain factors that play an important role in a person’s chances of developing heart disease. Some of these life-style risk factors can be changed, treated, or modified, and some, such as congenital heart disease cannot.

Zachary Stone M.D, a primary care physician at the University of Alabama, agrees that it’s possible to build a future free from cardiovascular disease by starting heart-healthy habits at a young age. Most of the risk factors that affect children can be controlled early in life.

“The process of atherosclerosis, which is the hardening of the arteries and is known to cause heart attacks, strokes and sudden death, has been shown to begin in early childhood,” says Stone. “It’s important to concentrate on healthy lifestyles in children to prevent adult cardiovascular disease.”

The three main areas to watch are diet, activity levels and smoke exposure.

Diet: Good nutrition can help to decrease cardiovascular disease. It can help prevent hypertension, high cholesterol and obesity. Obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease. 1 out of every 3 American adults is obese and obesity is linked to more than 110,000 deaths in the United States each year. Childhood obesity in the United States is also on the rise. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, between 16% and 33% of children and teenagers are obese. Because obese children are more likely to be obese adults, preventing or treating obesity in childhood may reduce the risk of adult obesity.  A young person’s diet should be low in saturated fats and primarily consist of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Activity: One easy way to increase physical activity in children is to limit their sedentary activities.  Parents should limit television and multimedia to 1-2 hours per day and ensure that their kids participate in at least one hour of moderate activity daily.

Smoke exposure:  Exposure to smoke is dangerous to the health of a child for many reasons, including that it can increase the risk of developing heart disease as an adult. According to the CDC, more than 3.6 million middle and high school students smoke cigarettes, and nearly 4,000 kids under age 18 try their first cigarette every day.  More than 90,000 people die each year from heart diseases caused by smoking. Among young people who would otherwise have a very low risk of heart disease, cigarette smoking may cause as many as 75% of the cases of heart disease. And, the longer a person smokes, the higher the risk of heart disease. Parents should talk openly to their kids about both the dangers and bad effects of smoking, such as yellow teeth, bad breath, smelly clothes, shortness of breath and lung damage.  Parents also need to act as a role model for their children, by not smoking or allowing others around them to smoke, thereby reducing their exposure to second-hand smoke.

Keeping kids heart healthy is an investment in their future and yours, and may be the best gift you can ever give.

Papal Poor Health

On February 11, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the Catholic Church and the world when he announced his resignation by saying he no longer had the mental and physical strength to carry on.

At 8pm local time yesterday, he ended his difficult reign, marking the first time in six centuries a pope has resigned instead of ruling for life.

But what do we really know of his health or that of other popes before him?

The Vatican recently confirmed Benedict had a pacemaker for years, indicating a long-standing heart problem. And his older brother told the press that age had taken its toll.

Other observers have noticed the pope’s reduced energy. The press reported that he was ferried to the altar at St. Peter’s for Midnight Mass Christmas Eve on a wheeled platform and then appeared to doze off during the service.

Visiting Mexico last year, he awoke at night and couldn’t locate a light switch in his room, then fell and bloodied his head when he hit the bathroom sink.

Beyond these few facts, we know very little about the health problems that led Benedict to announce his retirement. We don’t even really know if his flagging stamina was the true reason behind his resignation.

And while Pope Benedict XVI might be the first Holy Father to voluntarily resign because of old age and deteriorating health, the papacy has a past medical history of poor health.  According to the history books, these ailments range from depression to gout to cancer.

According to church law, as long as a pope is able to conduct Mass, he can continue in his role even if he is suffering, in pain or even bedridden, as was the case with Pope Alexander VII.

Pope Alexander VII’s surgeon and confessor tried to persuade him not to go before the crowd on Easter Sunday of 1667, but he did it anyway. The pope died three days later, according to author Wendy J. Reardon in The Deaths of the Popes.”

More than a century later, Pope Clement XIV became known as the pope who drooled and had eyes that “darted in their bulging sockets” as he fearfully clung to walls for fear of a Jesuit assassination attempt. He died after correctly predicting his own death in 1774.

In 1958, Pope Pius XII died after enduring recurring bouts of hiccoughs for five years. At one point, his hiccoughs became so intense, that they tore the lining of his stomach. He died of complications from pneumonia at 82 years old.

Pope John Paul II, was sick until he died on April 2, 2005 at 85 years old. He lived with Parkinson ‘s disease for decades, but he died of cardio-respiratory failure, kidney failure and septic shock.

“Death has never been an issue that has worried popes,” says papal historian Anura Guruge,  “Popes talk about no purgatory for popes.” Instead they believe if God is ready for a new pope, he will simply call the current one home to heaven where they will immediately be admitted to God’s house and be in the presence of the Holy Father. Not surprising then, that many popes have gone so far as to express enormous amounts of joy on their death beds.

Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, was one of the oldest popes when he was elected in 2005 at age 78. In 1991 he had a stroke that reportedly temporarily affected his vision. He fell in 1992 and again 2009. He was also thought to have either arthritis or arthrosis, a similarly painful and debilitating joint condition.

Father Virgilio Elizondo, a professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said he thinks Pope Benedict XVI made a very difficult but wise decision by resigning. He added that the papacy has a history of unpredictability, and the surprise resignation fits right in.

“I think when you consider the sincerity of the man, when you consider the weight of the universal church, and the greatest variety of issues affecting the church and the rest of the world, I could see how he could come to that decision,” says Elizondo. “What’s really needed is a younger person with more vigor and up-to-date knowledge about what’s happening. I think that’s the rationality behind this pope.”

But not everyone agrees.  “This pope’s resigning is essentially overriding God’s will,” said Guruge. “We had suspected that he had more health issues than had been made public. … A pope resigning is really not the right thing to do.”

Pope Benedict XVI was just 73 days away from being the third oldest pope. However, he will remain the fourth oldest pope because his resigned before his 86^th birthday. The three older popes were Pope Clement X, who lived to be just over 86 years old; Pope Clement XII, who lived to be 87; and Pope Leo XIII, who before his death at 93 was known as the “eternal pope” because he kept on living! Back then, it might be argued, the job was less demanding because the pope didn’t have to be on television or travel the world or tweet.

An Aspirin A Day…Takes Your Sight Away?

SRxA’s Word on Health has frequently reported on the health benefits of aspirin.  So we were more than a little shocked to read a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine which suggested that people who regularly use aspirin may be at increased risk of age-related macular degeneration [AMD].  This eye condition is common  among people age 50 and older and is a leading cause of vision loss in older adults.  AMD gradually destroys the macula, the part of the eye that provides the sharp, central vision needed for seeing objects clearly. 

In some people, AMD advances so slowly that vision loss does not occur for a long time. In others, the disorder progresses faster and may lead to a loss of vision in one or both eyes. The vision loss makes it difficult to recognize faces, drive a car, read, or do close work, such as sewing.

But don’t go tossing out your Bayer’s just yet!

In this study, researchers at the University of Sydney looked at a large group of  people who took  daily low-dose aspirin as a preventive measure for cardiovascular disease.

Of nearly 2,400 elderly people studied over a 15-year period, 10% were regular aspirin users. Of that group, 25% developed  macular degeneration over that time frame, compared to 9% who developed it but were non-aspirin users.

While these results were statistically significant, more research needs to be done before  recommending that patients stop taking doctor recommended aspirin.   Despite their results, even the researchers admit that there’s just not enough evidence to support stopping aspirin therapy unless a person already has strong risk factors for age-related macular degeneration.

Ophthalmologist Justis Ehlers, MD, agrees, “Aspirin has clearly been shown to have good secondary prevention for different cardiovascular diseases. We need to sort this out over time to see what it means.”

Don’t Ignore the Snore

Think for a moment about the factors that influence health.  Chances are you thought about: smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and insufficient exercise. Maybe you added in family history of disease, and stress. How about snoring?

What!?!  Well, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, snoring may put your health at a greater risk than any of the above.

Their study revealed that isolated snoring may not be as benign as first suspected.  The trauma and subsequent inflammation caused by the vibrations of snoring can lead to changes in the carotid arteries – the pair of blood vessels that deliver blood to your brain and head. Snoring can cause a build-up of plaque which can eventually block the blood supply to the brain and increases the risk of stroke.

“Snoring is more than a bedtime annoyance and it shouldn’t be ignored. Patients need to seek treatment in the same way they would if they had sleep apnea, high blood pressure or other risk factors for cardiovascular disease,” says lead author Robert Deeb, M.D., with the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford.

Obstructive sleep apnea– a sleep disorder that occurs due to the collapse of the airway in the throat during sleep and causes loud snoring and periodic pauses in breathing – has long been linked to cardiovascular disease, along with a host of other serious health issues.

But the risk for cardiovascular disease may actually begin with snoring, long before it develops into obstructive sleep apnea.

Investigators reviewed data for 913 patients aged 18-50, who had participated in a diagnostic sleep study, none of whom had sleep apnea.  54 patients completed a survey regarding their snoring habits, and underwent a carotid artery ultrasound to measure the thickness of the innermost two layers of the carotid arteries. This test is able to pick up the first signs of carotid artery disease.

What they found was that snorers were had significantly greater thickening of the carotid arteries, compared to non-snorers.  Interestingly, no statistically significant differences in carotid artery thickening could be found for patients with or without some of the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease – smoking, diabetes, hypertension or hypercholesterolemia.

“Snoring is generally regarded as a cosmetic issue by health insurance, requiring significant out-of-pocket expenses by patients. We’re hoping to change that thinking so patients can get the early treatment they need, before more serious health issues arise.”

The Henry Ford research team plans to conduct another long-term study on this topic, particularly to determine if there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular events in patients who snore.

In the meantime, instead of kicking your snoring bed partner out of bed, seek out medical treatment for him…or her.

Ho Ho Ho: health hazards for Santa

After weeks of harried holiday shopping, when the stores finally close on the evening of December 24, it will be a welcome reprieve from the madness. Families and friends gather together and enjoy a relaxing day or two of rest.

But for one man, the real work is just beginning. That’s right – Santa Claus is coming to town!

And while he spends most of the year enjoying a flexible work schedule, monitoring naughty-and-nice behaviors around the world and occasionally checking in on his elves and reindeer, things are about to get frantic for Old Nick.

And to be honest, this year we’re a little concerned about his health.  That belly fat!  The all-nighter he’s about to pull!  All those cookies!

He may know when you are sleeping, but the only way for Santa to get the job done is to stay up all night on December – and that can lead to some serious health concerns.
Studies have suggested that drowsy driving is as dangerous as drunk driving.  Even if he manages to get Rudolf and his friends safely parked on the rooftops, sleep deprivation could cause his judgment to become fuzzier, leading to the wrong presents traveling down the wrong chimneys.
What’s worse is that sleep loss has a cumulative effect. So while people in the Southern hemisphere might do OK, those of us in Northern climes, and especially those on the West Coast aren’t so lucky. Chronic sleep deprivation could mean he could fly over some houses altogether.

But even if we manage to keep him awake with coffee and Red Bull rather than the usual glass of milk, we’ve got to change Santa’s sack. By carrying something that weighs more than 10% of his body weight, one shoulder is going to end up taking on most of the burden, which could lead to back strains, sprains and spasms.
If you’re thinking of getting Santa a gift this season maybe you could consider a backpack, or better still, a rolling suitcase.

That’s not to say Santa doesn’t need the exercise of his Christmas Eve jaunt. Like 70% of adult men in the US, he is severely overweight. The health risks linked to obesity include Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, certain types of cancer and osteoarthritis.

With his giant waist comes the risk of belly fat associated problems such as insulin resistance, high triglycerides, heart disease and metabolic syndrome.

Then there’s that beard to worry about. After a month or so of letting thousands upon thousands of kids sit on your lap at the mall, we wouldn’t be surprised if he’s harboring some germs in his whiskers.  So if Santa touches his beard followed by his eyes, ears or mouth, he’s pretty much bound to catch something, especially in the midst of this cold and flu season.

We suggest leaving some hand sanitizer next to the milk and cookies this year to give him a fighting chance.

And finally we’re worried about that thin Red Suit. While we’ll give Santa props for covering his head with a hat, traveling outside all night in December in a red velvet suit and a touch of faux fur seems ill advised. In addition to the hat, he should probably throw on a scarf or knit mask, mittens, thermals and a water-resistant coat to ward off hypothermia.

So whether you’ve been naughty or nice, there’s still time to give some thought to Santa’s Health, as well as your own this Christmas season.