Waste Water Monitoring
PodcastDX
Wastewater monitoring is a valuable, efficient, and robust tool that public health officials can use to guide public health decision making across the nation. When we turn on the tap or flush the toilet, we often don’t think about where all that water goes. Wastewater, the used water from our homes, schools, and businesses, holds valuable information about the health of our community. Wastewater monitoring can help cities manage wastewater effectively and also creates a safer, healthier, and more responsive living environment for their communities. This blog takes a closer look at five...
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Health & Human Services
PodcastDX
The Public Health Agencies are created to deliver on the Government's commitment to help protect the health and safety of all people and communities in whatever country they live in. For example: Canada's activities focus on: promoting health, well-being and equity protecting against threats to public health preventing and reducing diseases and injury Health Canada is responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health. It ensures that high-quality health services are accessible, and works to reduce health risks. The UK supports ministers in leading the nation’s...
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Fluoride and Healthy Teeth
PodcastDX
Fluoride has been in the news recently with some people questioning the worth of adding this vital mineral to the water supplies in the United States. Fluoride repairs and prevents damage to teeth caused by bacteria in the mouth. Bacteria in the mouth produce acid when a person eats or drinks. The acid dissolves minerals in a tooth's surface, making the tooth weaker and open to cavities. Fluoride replaces the minerals lost from a tooth due to acid breakdown. Some fluoride can replace minerals in the tooth surface, making the outer enamel layer harder to dissolve. Fluoride also may...
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Cannabis and the Heart
PodcastDX
Many people assume that ingesting cannabis — whether through edibles, oils, or tinctures — eliminates the cardiovascular risks associated with smoking it. While it's true that edibles avoid the harmful byproducts of combustion (such as carbon monoxide and tar), ingested cannabis still carries significant heart health risks due to the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), its main psychoactive compound. When THC is absorbed through the digestive system, it can cause substantial increases in heart rate and blood pressure — sometimes more dramatically than when cannabis is smoked or...
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Stress and the Immune System re-run
PodcastDX
This week we have re-posting a brief insight to the fact that stress can play havoc on the immune system and we hope to have a new guest soon to discuss this weighty problem. If you are a member of the health care community and would like to be a guest on our show to discuss how stress affects the immune system, please drop us a line at . Remember chronic stress = excessive cortisol and too much cortisol = a host of medical ailments. Poor sleep Cortisol levels are supposed to drop at nighttime, allowing your body to relax and recharge. But if your...
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Navigating the VA
PodcastDX
This week's episode is very special for all of the veterans out there... We welcome back three previous guests to discuss receiving healthcare at the Veteran Health Administration (VHA) a component of the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). Our main guest (from left to right above) is Mark Frerichs, a Navy veteran who was held captive by the Taliban while working as a government contractor in Afghanistan. His battle didn't end with his eventual release and he was home trying to get the health care services he deserved. Supporting him are: Kristal Kent, an Army veteran...
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Dangers of Nitrous Oxide
PodcastDX
Nitrous oxide, also sometimes known as “laughing gas,” is used in medicine for its sedative and anesthetic (pain prevention) properties. Joseph Priestley, an English chemist, and multidisciplinary scholar, first synthesized nitrous oxide, which has the chemical formula N2O, in 1772. After Priestley’s initial discovery of this substance, fellow chemist Humphry Davy performed various tests on the substance, including breathing the gas alone, with oxygen, and with air. Through this testing, it became clear that nitrous oxide had psychogenic properties, including as a sedative and...
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Vaccine Safety
PodcastDX
Vaccination is one of the best ways to prevent diseases. Over the past 50 years, essential vaccines saved at least 154 million lives (1). During the same period, vaccination has reduced infant deaths by 40%. Together with governments, vaccine manufacturers, scientists and medical experts, WHO's vaccine safety program is constantly helping monitor the safety of vaccines. This helps ensure that vaccines are safe for you and your family. In the United States, a number of safeguards are required by law to help ensure that the vaccines we receive are safe. Because vaccines are given to millions...
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Whooping Cough or Pertussis
PodcastDX
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a highly contagious respiratory infection caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis. It's characterized by severe, persistent coughing fits, often ending with a high-pitched "whoop" sound. The disease can be very serious, especially for infants, and is preventable through vaccination. Whooping cough is an illness that can spread easily. It's also called pertussis. An infection with bacteria causes it. Many people with the illness get a serious hacking cough. Breathing in after coughing often causes a high-pitched noise that sounds like a...
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Summer Health and Safety
PodcastDX
What’s your plan for this summer? Enjoying the water? Going camping? Firing up the grill? Whatever you prefer, we have safety steps to follow. And don’t forget your furry friends. There are steps you can take to help keep them safe too. Skin safety Children's skin is more susceptible to sunburns and UV damage from the sun than adults. Before going outside, and dress your kids in protective clothing like rash guards and hats. Choose a sunscreen with a minimum SPF of 30 with broad-spectrum protection that blocks both UVA and UVB rays. Sunscreen is only safe for children over 6 months...
info_outlineOur guest today is Chelsea Weaver, a 31-year-old living in Tennessee. She has a beautiful little girl that is just over 2 years old, a wonderful husband, and they all live on a quiet farm property. Before coming down with COVID, she was a surgical technologist. She used to assist in open heart surgery as well as some other specialties but hasn't been able to function in her career for about two years now. Unfortunately, her COVID symptoms have morphed into Long COVID (specifically POTs or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.)
While the global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections has slowed, many people suffer long-lasting symptoms, a condition known as post-acute sequelae of COVID 2019 (COVID-19) (PASC), or long COVID. Even though PASC is not widely described, it is most commonly defined as COVID-19 symptoms that continue longer than 30 days.
PASC can manifest as a wide range of symptoms, many exhibiting autonomic characteristics. An autonomic nervous system illness, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), strongly connected with a prior viral infection, is the most prevalent autonomic diagnosis correlated with PASC.
The most prevalent symptoms were brain fog, exhaustion, shortness of breath with exercise, headache, palpitations, body pains, tachycardia, and lightheadedness, consistent with previous research that found many of the same symptoms in individuals with PASC.
A COMPASS-31 score of above 20 was found in 67% of PASC patients, indicating autonomic dysfunction with moderate to severe. The COMPASS-31 consists of 31 questions that fall into 6 domains of dysautonomia: orthostatic intolerance (4 items), vasomotor dysfunction (3 items), secretomotor dysfunction (4 items), GI dysfunction (12 items; includes gastroparesis, constipation, and diarrhea), urinary dysfunction (3 items), and pupillomotor dysfunction (5 items). An answer was scored as zero when it was not assigned a point. A raw domain score was obtained by adding together points within each domain. The total score within each domain was weighted as previously described15 and then added together to give a total score ranging from 0 to 100. The maximum weighted scores for each subdomain are as follows: 40 for orthostatic intolerance, 5 for vasomotor dysfunction, 15 for secretomotor dysfunction, 25 for GI dysfunction, 10 for urinary dysfunction, and 5 for pupillomotor dysfunction.
CONCLUSIONS: "Our study finds that 67% of individuals with Long COVID are developing dysautonomia. That’s an estimated 38 million Americans with Long COVID dysautonomia, and millions more around the world,” says Lauren Stiles, President of Dysautonomia International and Research Assistant Professor of Neurology at Stony Brook University. (CREDITS: https://bit.ly/3VzS7BQ & https://bit.ly/3VPnU1u )