Archive for July 2012
Pill Power Trumps Will Power Against Migraines
By James Gaffney
Mature Life Features
Migraine sufferers take note: don’t try to stave off that encroaching headache through sheer will power. Most people who treat their migraines with triptans, among the most popular and effective medications, will find they work best if taken early in the attack, before skin sensitivity develops, according to Harvard Medical School research.
As their headaches progress, nearly four out of five migraine sufferers develop skin hypersensitivity. Merely touching their hair, scalp, or skin around the eyes causes pain. A Harvard study shows that, once this hypersensitivity takes root, it’s too late to abort the painful attack. However, if a triptan is taken before sensitivity develops, it is likely to completely relieve the pain.
Other research from Florida’s Palm Beach Headache Center suggests two-thirds of the people with migraines are pain-free within four hours if they take sumatriptan early enough in the attack.
If the triptans are taken before the skin becomes hypersensitive, they can completely alleviate the pain, Harvard researchers reported. They point out that it is vital that patients learn to recognize the first signs of skin hypersensitivity and to take their triptans before a migraine goes too far.
More than 28 million Americans get migraine headaches. Many are reluctant, for a variety of reasons, to take medication at the first sign of the attack for various reasons. Among them is the feeling that they should be abort their own headaches without medication. The irony, however, is that if a migraine sufferer waits until the headache is bad, the or she may need more medication to try to get rid of it.
People who are having more than two or three migraines a week need to see their doctors so they can be prescribed preventive medication, according to the Palm Beach researchers, who studied 691 migraine sufferers. They all were required to take medication within two hours of the start of the migraine — 236 were given a placebo, 233 were given 50 milligrams of sumatriptan, and 222 were given 100 mgs. of sumatriptan.
After four hours, 71 (30 percent) of the placebo group were pain-free, compared with 142 (61 percent) of the 50 mg. group and 151 (68 percent) of the 100 mg. group. The study also revealed that side effects,such as dizziness and nausea, were less if the medication was taken earlier than later.
A similar study by the American Academy of Neurology focusing on a different medication supports those findings. Of 250 patients studied, 60 percent of those who took the medication within 15 minutes of the onset of symptoms were pain-free two hours later.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2004
A politician is someone who proclaims ..
… he serves his constituents responsibly
because they told him
he’s responsible for all their problems.
Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
When you come to a fork in the road …
… drive around it because it could puncture your tires.
Cecil Scaglione, Mature Life Features
Timeless Melbourne Keeps Up With the Times
By Tom Morrow
Mature Life Features
MELBOURNE —- A visit to Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is more than just a jaunt 600 miles south from its big brother, Sydney. It’s a leap back to the mid-20th-century of electric-powered trolley cars and a Victorian England ambience emanating from government buildings and churches that trumpet the town’s history from amidst its gleaming new high-rise complexes.
An age-old tradition in Melbourne is meeting with friends at the copper-domed Flinders Street Station for a day of shopping and dining. This Victorian/Edwardian-designed structure built in 1910 is the most popular gathering place in this city of 4 million. All of the city’s suburban and cross-country trains flow into this terminal overlooking the Yarra River that runs north-south through the city. The Victoria state government launched a $1 million international design competition that closes Aug. 1, 2012, to refresh and rejuvenate this iconic hub.
Melbourne is the capital of the state of Victoria and is to Sydney what San Francisco is to Los Angeles. Like the City by the Bay, it offers just about any type of cuisine to satisfy both gourmet and gourmand. You’ll seldom meet a stranger here. Nearly everyone is eager to visit with visitors and ask if they’re enjoying the city and country. Melbourne offers everything you can buy in Sydney at lower prices. A new downtown showpiece is the sprawling riverside Crown Entertainment Complex, which includes a large casino, luxury hotel, restaurants, and shopping center with such luxury labels as Gucci, Prada, and Versace.
While half of the Australian population of 20 million live in the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas, there is an abundance of wild life and open spaces. The best place to see most of the fauna native to this continent is the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary 35 miles northeast of Melbourne. You can drive there, but beware of a traffic twist besides having to adjust to the left side of the road. There are toll roads in the freeway system but no toll booths. Maneuvering your way through this system even gives residents rashes so check online and with your rental-car agency to see about prepaid passes and other methods of payment.
Much of Australia is still what early America was like several decades ago — rugged with non-paved roads. Guide books caution about passing Outback “road trains.” These are huge trucks pulling three and four trailers. That’s how remote regions of the nation get their supplies.
It might take a while to learn about their games, which are mainly Old World — cricket, soccer and rugby. They also play and watch basketball, baseball, and football — they call it “gridiron” — but the national passion each fall and winter is Australian Rules Football. It’s a cross between rugby and soccer with just enough gridiron tossed in to create an exciting contact sport the locals call “Footy.”
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Saving a Buck Here and There Adds Up
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
Every so often, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine publishes lists of such need-to-know topics as how to keep more cash, invest $1,000, or retire as a millionaire without having $1 million. Among the most prevalent pieces of advice is how to get out of debt. You start by paying off all credit cards and then shopping around for cards with lower interest rates. You might consider a no-points home-equity line of credit to pay off those cards and then pay off the loan, which should be at a much lower interest rate than the credit-card debt.
Opportunities to save around the house are legion: switch to flourescent light bulbs, turn down the thermostat on your water heater, unplug that old refrigerator in the basement or garage, and install low-water-use shower heads and faucets. You can make a buck or two by holding an on-line yard sale.
Review your insurance premiums. Get rid of mortgage insurance if you don’t need it. Shop around to see if consolidating your auto and property coverage will cut down on premium costs.
Clip coupons for shopping and buy store brands as well as generic drugs. You can save a lot of money by buying a used car rather than new one. The higher the price of a new car, the more you save on a used model.
Also add to your assets by consolidating your investment portfolio to avoid multiple management fees. Tax breaks are available in the form of medical expenses, charitable donations, and mileage deduction for volunteer work. Don’t forget to deduct business expenses if you do any type of work or business out of your home. This includes phone bills, dues for professional memberships, and subscriptions, stationery, computer equipment, and postage.
Bear markets are an excellent time to make investments because stock prices are low. Lean times are good times to fatten your portfolio. Remember the first rule of business and investing: buy low, sell high. You also can invest small amounts of cash in items that you think might appreciate – wine, Persian rugs, or other collectibles-to-be.
Consider investing some time and money expert economic advice. Have a financial planner review your investments and prepare an opinion for you on which direction you should follow.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Movin’ Madness ‘n’ Manners
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
The next person requesting assistance for a move will have to speak with my attorney. Everything in, on and around me hurts from dragging boxes, lifting furniture, climbing stairs, jumping off trailers, dodging characters carrying stuff, and just trying to stay alive. The soft warm rain we had Wednesday made the entire week survivable. As an aside, on our way to Phoenix, the saguaros that began appearing alongside Highway 8 east of Gila Bend looked scrawny and scorched. On our return trip to our soft and comfortable beds, they appeared saucy and sated and green with the water soaked up during the week’s storms.
Having moved into a half dozen homes during my married-with-kids period, several rules and reminders popped up as we transferred a household acquired by two adults and two youngsters over the past decade.
1 – If you’re not carrying anything, get out of the way.
2 – If you are carrying something:
don’t drop it
don’t bang the walls with it, especially in the “new” house
don’t leave it sitting in the middle of the floor — get it out of the way
3 – Make sure relatives, friends and neighbors who volunteer to help show up.
4 – Make sure they show up on time.
5 – Start early; moving stuff after dark is boring, tiring and unnecessary…
6 – … unless you’re moving in the desert, in which case you should start early, take off for siesta during the heat of the afternoon, and resume in the cool of the evening.
7 – Move ALL the big stuff first (see No. 8).
8 – The exception is COMPUTERS. Get them up ‘n’ runnin’ asap.
9 –Stay out of discussions on where things should go – “put the dining table there, the big mirror on that wall, the entertainment center in this room, etc” Let the moving family square up on that stuff.
10 – Before moving, measure all your beds and dressers and appliances and furniture to see if they will fit where you would like to put them. (e.g. The fridge hole in the new house was almost a quarter-inch too small for the fridge being moved. It had to be squished into its stall. A sofa set was too large and bulky for the site the family selected originally so it had to be taken back down the stairs it was laboriously manhandled up and replaced by a less formidable sectional set.
11 – Don’t forget the moving dolly at the “new” house because you need it to manhandle stuff onto the trailer or truck (or moving vehicle) at the old house.
12 – Plug in a fridge at the new house to cool water, lemonade, beer and other refreshments to make the experience more bearable.
13 –Pack a toothbrush in your pocket so you can handle that chore on the first night and morning in the new house without having to scramble through piles of boxes, bags and bins to find it.
These rules apply primarily to short moves done by families and relatives and friends and neighbors who know nothing about moving and for which moving vans and moving people have not been hired.
Still Sizzlin’
Made it Monday through the heat accompanied by dozens and dozens of sand spouts that erupted about mid-way between Yuma and Gila Bend and kept decorating the landscape right into the southern portion of metro Phoenix. We even drove through one that danced onto Highway 8. Fortunately it was a baby but it did “whump” the Highlander a good one.
Moved the kitchen fridge with a dolly onto a trailer and to the new home right after our arrival. It had to be squeezed into the fridge space created by the kitchen designers. We creased the fridge but didn’t break it or jeopardize its integrity and operation.
Tuesday was up-and-down-stairs day with sectional sofas, an exercise anyone who’s moved that type of furniture will readily ID with. And you’ll also recall that sectional furniture — just like refrigerators — fits best only into the first place it was purchased for. After squeezing the massive three-section corner sofa/sleeper out of the old house and into the new house, it was decided (after a lengthy committee meeting) that it would fit and feel best upstairs in the new house. So that’s where it is now. It took with it several thousand calories, a few quarts of sweat, an aching arm, and a dead shoulder .
Most of the kitchen cupboards have been cleared in the old house and filled in the new. Next come beds and computer furniture and nits and gnats. The old house has to be ready Thursday for a week-end real estate open house. Wish us luck.
MTK
This is crazy!
It’s one thing to take pride in not following the crowd but it’s stupid to head into a burning building just because everybody is running the other way. So we announce with profound pride — and substantial stupidity — that we’re going against the flow.
We’re leaving our pleasant Pacific Ocean-cooled community to spend the week of the frying Fourth in Phoenix at a time when the cosmic collective has known for decades that ‘Zonies have been escaping the Hades heat of Arizona by flocking to California beaches since wheels were round.
We’re dashing headlong into the Valley of the Sun to help kids and grandkids move into a new home. The mission is meaningful, but the brain boggles just visualizing heat waves shimmering off the simmering stuff being toted from one set of closets to another.
There is some good news: the new place has a pool and it’s filled with fresh water.
MTK
Slip, Slop, Slappin’ Your Sun Tan
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
As long as a tan is considered cool, the risk of contracting skin cancer will continue.
More than 1 million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed annually. Malignant melanoma, which is easily preventable by wearing sun-protective clothing, using sun screen and seeking shade, will kill some 7,500 Americans this year. While melanoma accounts for only 5 percent of skin cancer cases, it causes 80 percent of skin-cancer deaths.
Social acceptance — indeed, favor — of tanning is at fault, said Dr. Martin Weinstock, chairman of the American Cancer Society’s skin-cancer advisory group. More than half the population believes people look better with a tan.
“A hundred years ago it was a very unfashionable thing,” Weinstock said. “It signified that you were the type of person who had to work for a living, usually out in the field under the sun. People who owned farms and big plantations could spend the day inside.” Industrialization changed all that, as workers moved inside large manufacturing plants and the wealthy began lolling along tropical beaches. So tans became a fashionable sign of leisure.
That image must be changed and Weinstock thinks there are signs of a pendulum swing. A tan is evidence that your skin has been damaged and this damage accumulates with each tan. “Unfortunately, a lot of people simply do not use sun screen correctly. One of the findings in a survey we did was that a lot of people, when they got the worst sunburn of the summer, were using a sun screen of SPF (sun protection factor) 15 or greater. If someone goes to the beach, plays a couple of games of volleyball and then says, ‘My skin is turning red, I’d better put on some sun screen,’ well, obviously that’s too late. Most of the damage has already been done.”
Added problems are that too little sun screen is used or it may be washed off by sweat or swimming. An SPF of 30 or greater is Weinstock’s recommendation. He also emphasizes that “it’s not the tan that’s the problem; it’s the ultraviolet radiation used to get a tan. ” What causes the problem is the ultraviolet radiation from the sun that triggers a reaction in pigment-producing skin cells to produce a browner color in the skin. This same radiation “causes damage in the DNA of skin cells as well as other types of damage to the skin, and that is what has been related to the risk of skin cancer” as well as premature aging of the skin.
There are two reasons tanning salons are not safe, even though they may advertise that they use innocuous UVA radiation and not the UVB that causes sunburn. First of all, UVA is not totally harmless. Secondly, most tanning booths give users some UVB also.
If you use an artificial tanner – tan in a bottle – it probably will give you a tan in color only. “They don’t protect you against sun exposure,” he said. ” They don’t protect against ultraviolet light.”
“We have a slogan at the American Cancer Society. ‘Slip, Slop, Slap:’ slip on a shirt, slop on sun screen, slap on a hat. “
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Mature Life Features 