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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Wednesday, March 13, 2013
AGING GRACEFULLY: SUPPLEMENTS
HEALTHY INSIGHT
Panel questions value of calcium, vitamin D pills
Submitted by Contributing Community Author
Theresa Parent Base Camp CPR basecampcpr@yahoo.com 978-0265
By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer
The “Dirt” on Hand Sanitizer The kids just came in from playing outside all afternoon and are hungry for a snack. Sitting on the counter is a bottle of hand sanitizer, so they get a little squirt from the bottle, a quick rub of the hands and they are ready to eat. Or are they? Guess what the kids are getting ready to ingest. To be effective, the sanitizer must contain at least 60% alcohol. That’s about 4 shots of whiskey in one little bottle. Take a look at the ingredients on your bottle, does it contain Triclosan? Triclosan is an antibacterial chemical that can lead to weakened immune systems and may damage muscle function. We assume that if we give our hands a quick rub with sanitizer, we are protecting ourselves from the germs of the world. That’s not quite so. That little ‘kills 99.9% germs’ on the corner of the bottle, means that it kills 99.9% of the germs in laboratory conditions. Most of our homes don’t meet ‘laboratory conditions’. Actually, most sanitizers effective ‘kill’ percentage is about 40% to 60% depending on the conditions. To be applied properly and get the best results, your hands need to be clean of noticeable residue. Enough needs to be applied so the user can thoroughly rub their hands front and back, in between the fingers, under any jewelry and under the fingernails until dry. This should take about 20 seconds. By the way, that sanitizer you just properly applied? It lasts only for a few minutes, not hours. So what is our fascination with hand sanitizer? Besides becoming a society of convenience, over $117 million dollars was spent on advertising last year for sanitizer. And advertising works. As parents, what are we to do? We want to keep our kids healthy, but at the same time, we don’t want to expose them to harmful chemicals. • Only use hand sanitizer when soap and water is not available • Use it properly, about a dime sized portion rubbed into the hands until dry • Do not use sanitizer before food preparation and eating • Finally, send the kids out to play, get dirty, make mud pies, explore the great outdoors, and when they come in from their grand adventures, send them to the bathroom to wash up, there is a bar of good old soap by the sink. 12406316-3-13-13H&W
Our thanks to Theresa Parent for contributing this column. The article is intended to be strictly informational.
Khosla of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. Those people should consult a doctor, said WASHINGTON — Popping cal- Khosla, a bone specialist at the cium and vitamin D pills in hopes of Mayo Clinic who wasn’t part of the strong bones? Healthy older wom- panel’s deliberations. en shouldn’t bother with relatively low-dose dietary supplements, say new recommendations from a govCalcium and vitamin ernment advisory group. Both nutrients are crucial for healthy bones and specialists advise D work together, and getting as much as possible from a good diet. The body also makes vita- you need a lifetime of min D from sunshine. If an older person has a vitamin deficiency or both to build and mainbone-thinning osteoporosis, doctors often prescribe higher-than-normal tain strong bones. doses. But for otherwise healthy postmenopausal women, adding modest Calcium and vitamin D work supplements to their diet — about together, and you need a lifetime of 400 international units of D and both to build and maintain strong 1,000 milligrams of calcium — bones. V don’t prevent broken bones but can itamin D also is being studied for increase the risk of kidney stones, possibly preventing cancer and certhe U.S. Preventive Services Task tain other diseases, something that Force said Monday. Monday’s guidelines don’t address It isn’t clear if those doses offer and that other health groups have bone protection if taken before cautioned isn’t yet proven. menopause, or if they help men’s For now, national standards bones, the guidelines said. advise the average adult to get What about higher-dose supple- about 1,000 mg of calcium, 1,300 ments that have become more com- for postmenopausal women, every mon recently? There’s not enough day. For vitamin D, the goal is 600 evidence to tell if they would pre- IUs of vitamin D every day, moving vent fractures, either, in an oth- to 800 after age 70, according to erwise healthy person, the panel the Institute of Medicine, which set concluded. It urged more research those levels in 2010. to settle the issue. The nutrients can come from It’s a confusing message consid- various foods, including orange ering that for years, calcium and juice fortified with calcium and D; vitamin D supplements have been dairy foods such as milk, yogurt widely considered an insurance pol- and cheese; certain fish including icy against osteoporosis, with little salmon; and fortified breakfast down side to taking them. cereals. “Regrettably, we don’t have as Harder to measure is how much much information as we would like vitamin D the body also produces to have about a substance that has from sunshine. been around a long time and we Most people should get enough used to think we understood,” said calcium from food, said Mayo’s KhoDr. Virginia Moyer of the Baylor sla. But while he cautions against College of Medicine, who heads the too high doses, he frequently tells task force. “Turns out, there’s a lot his patients to take a multivitamin more to learn.” because it’s harder to get vitamin D The main caution: These recom- from food and during the winter. mendations aren’t for people at While supplement science gets high risk of weak bones, including sorted out, the task force’s Moyer older adults who have previously advises healthy seniors to exercise broken a bone and are at risk for — proven to shore up bones and doing so again, said Dr. Sundeep good for the rest of the body, too.