Tips for Cervical Health Awareness Month

BY SANDRA GUY

Don’t be a statistic. January – the month dedicated to cervical cancer awareness – affords the perfect time to get a PAP test to ensure you’re healthy.

Nearly 13,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, but 93 percent of the cases are considered preventable with the appropriate vaccination and screening (Pap and HPV tests), experts say.

Chicago has some of the highest rates of HPV – the virus that causes genital warts and abnormal PAP smears, and the most common type of sexually transmitted disease. Women of color are most affected, partly because they have lower rates of getting vaccinated for HPV.

The University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine and UI Health (the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System) is aiming to identify patients at risk for a delayed or late diagnosis, as part of a two-year, $500,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“These patients might have a suspicious lesion on an X-ray or an abnormal finding. We’ll be able to work within existing protocols to carve out a rapid diagnostic pathway,” said Dr. Heather Pendergast, associate dean of clinical affairs for the UIC College of Medicine and vice chair of academic affairs for the UI-Health Department of Emergency Medicine.

About 79 million Americans are infected with HPV (the virus), and about 14 million become infected each year. It’s so common that at least 75 percent of sexually active men and women will get it at some point. People often have no HPV symptoms.

Here’s how to stay aware:

·       Guidelines for how often to have PAP smears vary, depending on age, medical history and other factors, so ask your doctor the proper protocol, and follow it.

·       Ask your doctor, ‘What other tests should I have?’

·       Eat a diet high in antioxidants. An article titled “Cervical Cancer and Antioxidants” concluded “the literature clearly establishes both a protective and a therapeutic advantage in selected antioxidants including vitamins A, C, and E, CoQ10, EGCG, resveratrol, and vegetable lycopenes. Similarly, it may be contended that the higher incidence of disease in lower socioeconomic groups may be related to dietary deficiency of those same substances.”

Which essential oils are best to help you sleep?

By Sandra Guy

Experts say essential oils – mixtures of 20 to 100 compounds extracted from plants – can help you relax and sleep.

With so many of these essential oils on the market, the key questions are: Which ones work, and how can they be taken safely?

Amy Galper, a certified aromatherapist and founder of the New York Institute of Aromatic Studies, recommends using lavender, frankincense, clary sage and geranium, either singly or as a combination.

You can buy pre-blended oils, too.

Galper, who started one of the first essential-oils based skincare products – Buddha Nose – in the early 2000s, said research supports using the essential oils for relaxation, to de-stress one’s body, relax the nervous system and ease the mind of active thoughts and over-thinking.

“The research shows how powerful they are by quieting the mind, slowing down our breathing, and easing physical discomfort and pain,” Galper said. “They’re anti-inflammatory, quieting, relaxing and meditating.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linda L. Halcon, a registered nurse and an associate professor emerita at the University of Minnesota, recommended lavender (Lavandula angusifolia) because she said it’s the best-researched of the essential oils aimed at helping people sleep.

Since no independent body certifies products as “therapeutic grade,” Halcon said it’s best to be conservative in using the oils.

So, for example, one drop of lavender can be put on an inhalation patch that can be worn at night. Or you can inhale a drop of lavender essential oil dropped on a cotton ball.

Halcon also cautions that it’s important to use only one to two drops to inhale, and to dilute an essential oil to 3 to 15 percent for a massage.

That’s because essential oils are about 100 times more potent than their whole plant form, so failing to dilute them can cause burns or a rash.

Essential oils are usually diluted with a “base” or “carrier,” which might be a vegetable oil or a fixed oil from nuts, seeds, or trees such as coconut or jojoba. The carrier decreases the concentration and “dose,” and protects the skin from a reaction. Other precautions when handling essential oils:

  • Never dilute essential oils in bathwater without using a dispersant, or a substance that helps water and oil mix more easily.
  • Never apply any essential oil to the eye area or mucus membranes.
  • Stop using essential oils if you develop an allergic reaction.
  • To avoid sensitization, don’t apply oils to the same area of skin every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Relax away holiday stress — use your brain

BY SANDRA GUY

The key to staving off stress – whether you’ve had a computer meltdown at work or a life-altering panic at home – is to change your brain pathways, and that can be as simple as recognizing that April is Stress Awareness Month.

It’s a matter of near-constant awareness – boosting your ability to recognize your own feelings and thought processes, then slowing down those processes so you can make different choices, experts say.

It doesn’t require extra time – only a good night’s sleep.

“Research shows our brains are re-wiring themselves every night as we go to sleep,” said Dr. David H. Baron, the medical director of YellowBrick, an Evanston-based mental-health services provider that’s published a blog reviewing apps aimed at helping people control stress. The blog post is at

https://www.yellowbrickprogram.com/resources/tech-and-mental-health.html.

“At night, the brain decides, ‘What’s important? I’ll reinforce that. The brain is making decisions about what’s going to stick – and pruning and re-wiring neurons all the while,” Baron said.

Practice makes perfect.

The more we cope with stress in healthy ways – exercising, eating a healthy diet, staying in contact with friends and allies – the stronger those brain connections become, said Fabiana Souza Araujo, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences.

It’s about increasing your resilience.

“We all will fall. It’s part of life. What makes the difference? How fast and how well you bounce back,” Araujo said.

One way to rewire your brain in a healthy direction is to use social media wisely.

Ask yourself: Does social media stress you out?

If so, it could be because social media can create personal and family pressures that are grounded in unreality, said Dr. Olu Ajilore, an associate professor in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s psychiatry department.

“Social media can give us a filtered version of reality that shows others doing well and having fun, [and that can] create competition to keep up with that image,” said Ajilore, who works with patients at UIC’s Center for Depression and Resilience.

So it’s important to do a reality check. How are you letting social media influence your emotions? Do others’ beachfront vacation photos make you angry and jealous or happy and contented?

One coping method: Take a social-media “fast,” Ajilore said. “Take a break for a couple weeks from Twitter or Instagram. Use that time to reconnect with people in real life, face-to-face.”

Or turn off the messaging function from your phone so that you only see messages or notifications only on a desktop or laptop.

Another overlooked step is to ask for help.

“It doesn’t make the situation worse to speak honestly about how you’re feeling,” Baron said.

That might mean sitting down with your family and comparing lists of each person’s responsibilities, said Felicia Houston, a licensed clinical professional counselor with UChicago Medicine at Ingalls Memorial in Harvey, who leads stress-reduction workshops.

“Be honest and say, ‘I need some help. Which [responsibilities] can you take off of my plate?’” Houston said.

Other quick brain changers that Houston uses in her stress-reduction workshops, and which other experts recommend, include:

  • Take 15 minutes to list your daily routine on a time wheel. Most people fill in a big portion of the wheel with the hours they spend working. What about time spent doing something that gives you joy and high energy? What about ‘me’ time?
  • Take care of yourself – and, by extension, your brain. Dehydration and lack of sleep can contribute to feeling irritable, irrational and unfocused.
  • Try something new. Research shows it helps minimize stress level. I’ve heard some interesting things. One guy said, I took a cooking class. I didn’t know how to stress. I’m so focused, I’m prepping, I’m cutting.
  • Set realistic expectations — for others as well as for ourselves. For people who like to keep ‘to do’ lists, stick with 10 items and see if that’s do-able.
  • Learn what you can and cannot control. You cannot control other people. You can control yourself.
  • Get outside and get fresh air. If there’s a park nearby, swing on the swings or go down the slide.
  • Keep a journal. Write in an app such as Evernote. Or color with crayons or markers. Adult coloring pages are available online and can be downloaded for print.
  • Use apps to your benefit. Try searching the “Calm” app for stress relief by topic, such as for kids or for certain times of the day. Search online for recommendations for the best mental-health apps — https://outsider.ie/lifestyle/best-mental-health-apps/? The list includes Chicago-based SuperBetter, a game that lets you create an identity and choose a pre-loaded experience, design your own adventure, and complete quests – all aimed at helping you build psychological strength by achieving personal goals, taking committed action and experiencing positive emotions.
  • Make time for opening and paying bills; scheduling and going to doctors’ and dentists’ appointments; and checking in on your own well-being in a conscious way.
  • Keep a stress box at work and at home with your favorite go-to stress relievers – bubblegum (research shows it can relieve stress); small bites of chocolate, bags of soothing hot tea; or lavender oil and a diffuser to spread calming scents.

 

 

 

Think new foods for healthy holiday eating

The Oh She Glows Cookbook: Over 100 Vegan Recipes to
Glow from the Inside Out
https://www.amazon.com/Oh-She-Glows-Cookbook-
Recipes/dp/1583335277

The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook:
Entertaining for Absolutely Every Occasion
https://www.amazon.com/Superfun-Times-Vegan-Holiday-
Cookbook/dp/0316221899/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1
542726733&sr=1-
2&keywords=the+superfun+times+vegan+holiday+cookbook%2C
+by+isa+chandra+moskowitz

BY SANDRA GUY
Want a wonderfully inconspicuous way to
garner that ever-elusive praise at family get-
togethers this holiday season?

Chicago dieticians and health-food adherents
offer this suggestion: Bring healthy foods that
you want to eat and that won’t undermine your
New Year’s wellness resolution, or take the
family out for a vegan or vegetarian restaurant
meal.

You  can even take the one-upmanship a step
farther by noting that eating meat might just be
sacrilegious for the holidays.
African Hebrew Israelites, including the founder
of Original Soul Vegetarian restaurant on the
South Side — one of the oldest African-
American vegan soul-food restaurants in the
country — cites Scripture as the basis for eating
plant-based food instead of meat, including on
holidays many people consider meat
extravaganzas.
“My dad and the initial pioneers of the African
Hebrew Israelites cited Genesis 1:29 — “And
God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb-
bearing seed which is upon the face of all the
earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a
tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat,’”
said Arel Ben Israel, who runs the 37-year-old
restaurant with his sister, Lori Seay.
In fact, the holiday season also has a religious
overtone.
“We call this the season of gluttony,” Ben
Israel said.

That’s the season from Thanksgiving to New
Year’s.
Original Soul Vegetarian, at 203 E. 75 th St., and
its Fulton Market spinoff, Vegan Now carryout
at 131 N. Clinton St., have started a program in
partnership with Dr. Terry Mason, chief
operating officer of the Cook County
Department of Public Health, called “Restart Your Health and
Restart Your Life.”
The goal is to go vegetarian or at least vegan
starting with the New Year — but the idea is to
ease into the transition.
“We’re not trying to take things away from
people,” Ben Israel said. “We don’t tell you,
‘Don’t eat meat.’ We say, ‘Add some broccoli,
add some greens.’”
“We start with people where they are,” he said.
“As time goes on, the idea is you’ll lose some of
the things you’d normally eat based on what
you’re adding, based on your own experience
[of feeling healthier],” he said.

Original Soul Vegetarian’s holiday menu –
made with no refined sugars, flours or rice –
includes chemical- and additive-free cornbread,
macaroni and cheese, roasted gravy, cranberry
sauce, cornbread, candied yams, sweet potatoes,
and pumpkin and apple pies.
The restaurant, which plans to open a new take-
out eatery in the Boystown neighborhood in late
2019, also offers no-salt dishes, as well as a
juice bar and a salad bar.
The carry-out locations make it easier to
counterbalance a family holiday spread with
salt-, sugar- and processed-meat-filled artery-
and kidney-clogging delicacies, local dieticians
say.
It’s a serious issue for people with heart failure,
kidney disease or other conditions.
That’s because ham and other processed meats
are packed with sodium; pot roast and fresh
turkey may be injected with salt or brine; and
certain desserts contain baking soda that’s rich
in bicarbonates.

Those ingredients can cause people to retain
fluid, said Ratna Kanumury, director of
physician assistants’ services at Cook County
Health and Hospitals System.
Even Tofurkey (faux turkey made of vegetarian
protein, often from tofu or wheat protein) can be
chockful of sodium if it’s manufactured,
Kanumury said.
“Think of healthy sources of the ‘good’ sugars
that our bodies use for energy: fruits, milk and
unprocessed yogurt,” she said. And even frozen
vegetables are better than none.
Another solution would be to substitute salmon
for other meats, especially for vegetarians who
eat fish, said Dr. Stephen Devries, executive
director at the Gaples Institute for Integrative
Cardiology in Deerfield.
Think of foods in season, such as acorn squash
stuffed with spices, cranberries and whole
grains, he said.
“Whole grains can be very flavorable, too,”
Devries said. “Barley can be a terrific side meal
if spiced appropriately, and pre-cooked Farro

can be boiled in 10 minutes. Bulger is another
grain that’s often overlooked.”
For children, roasted vegetables tend to be more
appetizing than the boiled or microwaved kind,
Devries said.
Kids especially love vegetables sliced into
spirals, he said.
“You can buy a device cheaply (a vegetable
spiralizer sells for $9.99 on Amazon) that, when
you twist a knob, creates ribbons of spiral-
shaped carrots or zucchini,” Devries said. “The
results are exotic-looking and kids find them
irresistible.”
If you’re not a vegan or vegetarian, be mindful
of others who may be by bringing putting
toppings or cheese on the side of a main dish of
broccoli and cauliflower, said Kirsten
Straughan, clinical assistant professor of
kinesiology and nutrition at the University of
Illinois at Chicago’s College of Applied Health
Sciences.
Straughan, herself a vegetarian, is also alert to
others’ lactose-intolerance or food-allergy

issues. She searches online for recipes using
dairy alternatives such as olive oil instead of
butter.
What else to do?
Here’s some advice from Devries, Kanumury
and Straughan:
* Go to holiday parties or family get-
togethers with a plan in mind – and never
starve yourself beforehand. Eat an apple or
a piece of toast before you go, or even a
salad so you don’t snarf down everything
in sight.
* Chew, talk and mingle. Put down your
fork between bites.
* Avoid salt-laden dips, gravy and dressings.
Bring or choose hummus instead.
* Choose relish instead of cranberry sauce.
*  Substitute white potatoes with sweet
potatoes, whole grains or cauliflower
mash.
* Start or keep family hiking or sledding
traditions that get you moving, or go
outside and walk the dog together.

“Don’t throw exercise out the window,”
Straughan said. “Have some family fun that’s
not focused on food. Our family divides into
teams to play games like Wii or keeping a ping-
pong ball up in the air by blowing on it while
crawling on the floor. It gets everyone to laugh
and get into the spirit of the season.”

Herbal teas help soothe holiday jitters

BY SANDRA GUY

Researchers are finding evidence that tea and tea extracts can have intriguing health benefits, ranging from lowered cholesterol levels to anti-cancer properties to boosting metabolism.

The results aren’t definitive, but some experts say they’ve seen plenty of anecdotal evidence.

“The uses [of herbal teas as remedies] are based on what I’d call traditional knowledge,” said Stefan Gafner, a pharmacist with a doctorate in natural product chemistry and the chief science officer at the American Botanical Council.

Gafner remembers his grandfather taking him on hikes in his native Switzerland where he would collect plants for specific remedies.

“People like my grandfather, who knew which herbs were used for which condition — that’s more the kind of evidence we have,” he said. “It’s based on hundreds of years of trial and error.”

The Swiss often use herbal tea to soothe colic in infants, and Americans are accustomed to drinking teas for upset stomach and colds and coughs.

Research on the website for the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health shows:

  • One study concluded that “one possibility is that tea may inhibit cholesterol synthesis (formation) in the liver.”

“Both green tea and black tea extracts decreased cholesterol synthesis in rats’ liver cells — green tea by 55 percent and black tea by 78 percent,” the study said. “Both extracts appeared to cause this decrease by acting on enzymes involved in cholesterol synthesis.”

  • Another study in mice found that antioxidants found in green tea may help repair DNA damage caused by sun exposure – a risk factor for developing skin cancer.
  • White tea extract increased a specific type of cell death in laboratory cultures of two types of non-small cell lung cancer cells, indicating that the tea may have an anti-cancer effect, according to a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
  • And sarsaparilla, an herbal remedy used for thousands of years in Central and South America, has become known for helping relieve problems ranging from coughs to fluid retention to stomach bloating – but only if it is safrole-free. That’s because sassafras’ root bark contains safrole, a volatile oil that the FDA banned as a potential carcinogen decades ago.

 

 

 

 

 

World AIDS month highlights need for community activism: Expert

BY SANDRA GUY

With December’s designation as World AIDS Month, a leading expert says the HIV/AIDS stigma remains a tremendous holdback in stemming the epidemic.

“We have exquisite scientific tools in our toolkit of treatment and prevention,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, known for his long-standing contributions to HIV/AIDS research.

“If you identified everyone who was HIV infected and put them on medication, you could save their lives and make it impossible to transmit it to their sexual partner,” he said. “And if [Americans] at-risk took a single pill of [Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)], it could decrease by more than 99 percent the likelihood they’ll acquire HIV infection.”

Yet fewer than four in 10 of the estimated 1.1 million Americans who need pre-HIV infection treatment have adequate access to proven therapies and healthcare, Fauci said.

Research shows the problem is concentrated in rural areas in seven Southern states, he said: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Fauci is one of three healthcare leaders who have compiled a 10-year plan to deal with the issue. It’s called Ending HIV Epidemic (https://www.hiv.gov/federal-response/ending-the-hiv-epidemic/overview).

The initiative seeks to reduce the number of new HIV infections in the United States by 75 percent within five years, and then by at least 90 percent within 10 years, for an estimated 250,000 total HIV infections averted.

The solution isn’t a cookie-cutter one because the at-risk groups are so diverse, Fauci said. “Men who have sex with other men who are African-American (one of the at-risk groups) are not the same as transgender white women, who are not the same as injection drug users, who are not the same as commercial sex workers.”

One key step is to create teams of local community people to help expand HIV prevention and treatment services with an aim to end the stigma.

“Stigma is really the big enemy of public health,” Fauci said.

Globally, 37.9 million people live with HIV, but because of gaps in care, 770,000 people died from HIV-related causes and 1.7 million became infected in 2018, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO issued new guidelines on Nov. 27 that recommend people do self-testing; endorse using social networks for HIV testing to reach high-risk people with inadequate access to testing services; and encourage countries to adopt a standard HIV testing strategy using three consecutive reactive tests to confirm a diagnosis, rather than two.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, issued a statement lauding activists and community members who campaign for services and work daily to raise awareness.

Byanyima said in a statement that governments have committed to ensure that at least 30 percent of HIV services be community-led and that 6 percent of all HIV funding go to community mobilization, promoting human rights and changing harmful laws that act as barriers to ending AIDS.

“Let’s be clear,” she said, “defending human rights and challenging discrimination, criminalization and stigma is risky work today.”