Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - Happy Lunar New Year everyone! All around the world there are celebrations with feasts, fireworks and dancing dragons. It’s a time for Asian families and familes of Asian decent to get together and revel in the new year. It is Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day all wrapped into one in asian culture. It’s often called “Chinese New Year,” but this isn’t particularly accurate. While it is widely observed in China, it is also an important holiday for people throughout East Asia and of Asian ancestry all over the world. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who do not realize all Asian people are NOT Chinese. Lunar New Year is also a more accurate term. The holiday usually begins on the first day of the first lunar month. This makes the lunar calendar much more accurate than the Julian calendar. Jokes are often made about the Chinese being backward for celebrating the new year late. In reality the west celebrates the new year early. While the traditional Chinese calendar does not record continuously numbered years, 2008 is considered year 4705. So happy 4705 everyone! Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - There’s nothing like a snow day to bring a family together and give you a fabulous work out. It’s like a surprise holiday. That is if you don’t have to work. A lovely 6 inches fell over night prompting the kids to force me out of bed at the crack of dawn. First order of business was to clear the driveway of snow so we could get the car out. That’s a significant work out in itself. I had a good sweat going by the time I cut a path wide enough for our vehicle. All the while the kids romped and played on a miniature hill I created by my digging. Once we could get out the real play and exercise began. We went to the local hill for some serious sledding. There is nothing like the uncontrolled laughter of a family flying out of control down a steep snow covered hill. We think nothing of the vigourous climbs back up the hill for the next run. By the time we called it a day we had hiked miles up a steep slope. We were covered in snow and sweat. We were exhausted and giddy. The best kinds of exercise and happiness are the kinds that you don’t know you are getting. Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - I don’t usually site other writers’ work directly but I came across an article that was just too interesting to pass up. Check out an article by Sarah Robbins from Prevention. It talks about how birth order can impact your health. My initial reaction was to laugh it off, but read on and you may find some points to ponder: Your oldest child is running for class president; the baby is running away from home. Birth order theories of personality make great cocktail party fodder. Just don’t try them on the psychologist standing near the hors d’oeuvres table — experts have been arguing for years about whether family position can account for kids’ personality differences, and there’s no resolution in sight. But your oldest child has allergies? Your youngest broke yet another bone? Now you’re talking.Surprise: There’s increasing evidence that your place in the family lineup can have an impact on your physical health — sometimes small, but in some cases substantial. Of course, there’s nothing you (or your spouse or kids) can do to change your birth order. But you can make sure to enjoy the benefits that come with it — and steer clear of the risks. Here, a birth order-based cheat sheet to help you and your loved ones beat your odds of allergies, asthma, accidents, and more.FirstbornThe Good News: A study in Science magazine showed that firstborns score an average of 3 points higher on IQ tests than their younger siblings. And being brainy goes along with better health, found a study from the University of Glasgow that suggests children who scored higher on IQ tests were less likely to develop coronary heart disease and some cancers.Watch For:Allergies and asthma: In a review of over 50 studies, researchers found that oldest kids are more likely to suffer from allergies, hay fever, eczema, and even asthma. The reason might be that firstborns are overprotected: Many are exposed to few bacteria or viruses until they start school, while younger siblings battle the bugs older sibs bring home — and therefore may develop stronger immune systems.Check to see if “colds” are actually allergies: If someone is constantly congested or sneezy, remember that allergies are the real culprit in about half of chronic sinus infections. “An allergy’s most prominent symptom is an itchy nose — not a runny nose,” says Amal Assa’ad, MD, a professor of allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “And allergies don’t come with fevers, aches, or chills.”Testicular cancer: A study from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that firstborn men have a greater risk of testicular cancer. The eldest is typically exposed to higher estrogen levels in the womb than later-born sibs — which may up his risk of disease.Keep an eye out: This relatively rare cancer can strike men as young as in their teens but is curable if found at an early stage. If your husband’s family has a history of this disease, the American Cancer Society suggests monthly self-exams, after a warm bath or shower.Middle ChildThe Good News: Your risk of gum disease is 5% lower, probably because your immune system got an early workout from the germs your older brother or sister brought home and is better able to dispatch oral bacteria.Watch For:Depression: “Middle children tend to have lower self-esteem than first- or last-borns, perhaps because parents are busy with the other kids,” says Frank J. Sulloway, PhD, author of Born to Rebel. A University of Wisconsin study found that parents spent less money and nearly 10% less time caring for them, compared with older or younger kids. And a University of Pennsylvania study found middle kids reported significantly more depressive symptoms.Make sure second-born isn’t second-class:”Kids who think they don’t get enough attention may feel down or defeated, so tack on extra time for the middle,” says Jennifer Hartstein, PsyD, a psychologist at the Child and Family Institute of the St. Luke’s and Roosevelt Hospitals in New York City. “If you’re running to the supermarket, ask your middle child to come along.”Chronic fatigue syndrome:Preliminary research from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey suggests that middle kids are slightly more likely to suffer from CFS than their younger or older siblings.Know the signs: If you feel exhausted for 6 months, and rest doesn’t help, you may have CFS; for children and adolescents, it’s 3 months. “Remember, healthy kids don’t make excuses so they can skip trips to theme parks or sleepovers,” says Donnica Moore, MD, president of the Sapphire Women’s Health Group in Far Hills, NJ.Minimize your risk:Experts say CFS may be triggered by an infection — so good hygiene, staying current with vaccines, and healthy eating may offer you protection.YoungestThe Good News: Your risk of allergies is lower, thanks to those hand-me-down germs. Another benefit of being the baby: In Italian research, young adults who grew up with older siblings were 10% less likely to develop Hodgkin’s disease than only children.Watch For:Accidentsand preventable diseases: A 2005 study of childhood accidents at a Jerusalem ER found that kids with three or more siblings were 50% more likely to be injured than those from smaller families. When parents are spread thin and supervision gets lax, other important protections can fall by the wayside, too: A study of London-born children found their odds of being vaccinated decreased 20% for each additional child in the family.Be vigilant:Vaccinate your kids — and talk with your doctor about whether you should roll up your own sleeve. You may benefit from shots that weren’t available when you were younger and may need boosters for others.Risky behavior:Youngest kids go through puberty 3 months earlier on average than their older siblings, according to one analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. “Early puberty can cause an increase in risk taking,” says lead author Joseph Rodgers, PhD, of the University of Oklahoma. Youngest children start having sex about 2 months earlier than their older brothers and sisters; they’re also more likely to smoke cigarettes.Communicate: “Dabbling in risky behavior is part of being a teen,” says Hartstein. “So ask questions — and don’t shy away from any they may ask. Peer pressure is real, but parents have a huge protective influence, too.”

Kent Ninomiya - I’ve always taken care of myself. I don’t drink or smoke. I eat well and exercise every day. Still, I find it increasingly difficult to stay slim and fit now that I’ve passed 40. It’s something every middle aged person complains about, but somehow I thought I would be immune since I considered myself fit. I accept that I am getting older but I refuse to accept that means I need to get soft and flabby. A few years ago I changed my focus from being big to being lean. I traded low rep heavy weights for higher rep maintenance weights. I also cut back on my protein and calories. The diet that fed my muscles through my youth was fattening me up in my middle age. This seemed to work fine until I decreased my weight work and increased my cardio. It actually made it harder for me to keep off the pounds. I was puzzled by this until I talked to several experts in fitness and nutrition. Apparently I lost muscle mass when I stopped lifting all those weights. Muscle burns a lot of calories, apparently more than cardio work in my case. So I hit the weights again and seeing the results. I will never stop lifting again. Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - Yo quiero a healthier taco! Continuing my look at better food choices when you dine out… how about Taco Bell? That’s right. The fast food chain has a “Fresco” menu with nine items with less than 9 grams of fat. That’s still quite a bit of fat for a little taco but much less than what the regular stuff packs. There’s nothing too innovative here. They just replace the cheese and sauce with salsa. The fatty meat and fried shell are still there. No one ever went to Taco Bell looking for health food so I doubt this will make anyone change their habits. However, if find yourself in a Taco Bell and are forced to eat, try something Fresco. Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - Starbucks is finally jumping on the healthy bandwagon. They plan to introduce a line of lighter products this year. The first will be skinny lattes and mochas. They are just 90 calories for a tall compared to 190 for a regular latte and 270 in a regular mocha. The shocker here isn’t that Starbucks is introducing diet coffee. It’s that many of us have been guzzling this stuff for years without realizing how fattening it was. Oh… the new drinks have no fat compared to 5 grams for a regular tall vanilla latte and 12 grams of fat for a tall caffe mocha. Feeling coffee remorse? You would have been better off with the doughnuts! Kent Ninomiya

Kent Ninomiya - There’s a great article I came across on Yahoo health. It talks about all the extra years of life you’ll get by eating well, exercising and laying off the booze. When reading it the words “no kidding” came to mind. Someone actually did a study on that? There is no magic secret behind good health and long life. Do all the good things and avoid the bad things. So why doesn’t everyone do it? They either don’t want to live better and longer or they are too lazy to do what it takes. Everyone is looking for short cuts but study after study and real life experience tells us there are no short cuts. So here’s the article. Read it if you like but you already know what it tells you. Eat well, exercise and stay away from things that are bad for you. Kent Ninomiya

(Yahoo Health) To get an extra 14 years of life, don’t smoke, eat lots of fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly and drink alcohol in moderation. That’s the finding of a study that tracked about 20,000 people in the United Kingdom. Kay-Tee Khaw of the University of Cambridge and colleagues calculated that people who adopted these four healthy habits lived an average of 14 years longer than those who didn’t.
“We’ve known for a long time that these behaviors are good things to do, but we’ve never seen these additive benefits before,” said Susan Jebb, head of Nutrition and Health at Britain’s Medical Research Council, which helped pay for the study.
“Just doing one of these behaviors helps, but every step you make to improve your health seems to have an added benefit,” said Jebb, who was not involved in the study.
The benefits were also seen regardless of whether or not people were fat and what social class they came from. The findings were published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal.
The study included healthy adults aged 45 to 79. Participants filled in a health questionnaire between 1993 and 1997 and nurses conducted a medical exam at a clinic. Participants scored a point each for not smoking, regular physical activity, eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and moderate alcohol intake.
Until 2006, the researchers tracked deaths from all causes, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and respiratory diseases. People who scored four points were four times less likely to die than those who scored zero, the research showed.
Khaw said that the study should convince people that improving their health does not always require extreme changes to their lifestyles.
“We didn’t ask these people to do anything exceptional,” Khaw said. “We measured normal behaviors that were entirely feasible within people’s normal, everyday lives.”
Public health experts said they hoped the study would inspire governments to help people adopt these changes.
“This research is an important piece of work which emphasizes how modifying just a few risk factors can add years to your life,” said Dr. Tim Armstrong, a physical activity expert at the World Health Organization.
But because the study only observed people rather than testing specific changes, experts said that it would be impossible to conclude that people who suddenly adopted these healthy behaviors would automatically gain 14 years.
“We can’t say that any one person could gain 14 years by doing these things,” said Armstrong. “The 14 years is an average across the population of what’s theoretically possible.”
But experts worry that the new findings may still not be enough to persuade people to change their unhealthy ways.
“Most people know that things like a good diet matter and that smoking is not good for you,” Jebb said. “We need to work on providing people with much more practical support to help them change.”

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Kent Ninomiya - The United States government drastically limits the type of research that can be done with stem cells. For people suffering from debilitating illnesses and spinal cord injuries stems cells are their last, best, and only hope. This standoff is apparently forcing Americans to head to China to get the treatment they can’t get at home. The associated press wrote this thought provoking article that is worthy of note. (AP) They’re paralyzed from diving accidents and car crashes, disabled by Parkinson’s, or blind. With few options available at home in America, they search the Internet for experimental treatments — and often land on Web sites promoting stem cell treatments in China.
They mortgage their houses and their hometowns hold fundraisers as they scrape together the tens of thousands of dollars needed for travel and the hope for a miracle cure.
A number of these medical tourists claim some success when they return home:
Jim Savage, a Houston man with paralysis from a spinal cord injury, says he can move his right arm. Penny Thomas of Hawaii says her Parkinson’s tremors are mostly gone. The parents of 6-year-old Rylea Barlett of Missouri, born with an optical defect, say she can see.
But documentation is mostly lacking, and Western doctors warn that patients are serving as guinea pigs in a country that isn’t doing the rigorous lab and human tests that are needed to prove a treatment is safe and effective.
Noting the lack of evidence, three Western doctors, undertook their own limited study. It involved seven patients with spinal cord injuries who chose to get fetal brain tissue injections at one hospital in China. The study reported “no clinically useful improvements” — even though most patients believed they were better. Five developed complications such as meningitis.
Experts in the West have theories about why some people think they’ve improved when the evidence is thin. Some are often getting intensive physical therapy, along with the mysterious injections; the placebo effect may also be a factor.
John Steeves, a professor at the University of British Columbia who heads an international group that monitors spinal cord treatments, has another theory. Some patients may be influenced by the amount of money they paid and the help they got from those who donated or helped raise money.
“Needless to say, when they come back, what are they going to report to their friends and neighbors? That it didn’t work?” said Steeves. “Nobody wants to hear that.”
He and other experts have written a booklet advising patients who are considering such treatments.
Western doctors discourage their patients from seeking such treatments. They note that it’s impossible to gauge the safety and effectiveness of the treatments, or even know what’s in the injections put into brains and spinal cords.
Patients and their families say they accept those risks. They simply don’t have time to wait for more conclusive evidence. For many, the trip to China is a journey of hope.
“It’s one of the only games in town,” said Savage, 44, a lawyer who suffered severe spinal cord injuries after a canoe trip 25 years ago.
Savage spent 2 1/2 months in late 2006 and early 2007 at a hospital in the southern China city of Shenzhen to get what he was told were stem cell injections in his spine from umbilical cord blood. He made the arrangements through Beike Biotechnology Co., which offers the treatments at a number of hospitals in China.
Afterward, Savage said he was able to move his right arm for the first time since his diving accident; a video made at the hospital appears to show slight movement. He also said he noticed greater strength in his abdomen and more sensation on his skin.
Just how many foreigners like Savage are coming to China for treatment isn’t known; and China is only one of several countries where such techniques are being offered.
Many Chinese doctors don’t wait for results of rigorous testing before treating patients and they offer what they say are stem cell or other cell treatments to those willing to pay.
What is known about the procedures being performed comes from material on their Web sites or from patients who give detailed accounts of their visits. Little has been published in scientific journals for other doctors to scrutinize.
The use of stem cells for treatments isn’t new. For decades, doctors around the world have been using adult stem cells from blood and bone marrow — and more recently from umbilical cord blood — to treat cancers of the blood like leukemia and lymphoma and blood diseases like sickle cell anemia.
Scientists have been exploring whether such adult stem cells and other cells such as those from the retina or fetal brain tissue could be used to replace cells lost because of injury or disease. And they are trying to figure out if there’s a way to stimulate the body’s own stem cells to make repairs.
But those strategies are still being investigated in the lab in animals; there have been very limited tests in people.
Whether any clinics in China are using the more controversial embryonic stem cells — doctors in some other countries claim to be — isn’t clear. These stem cells are taken from days-old embryos. They can develop into all types of cells, but research into their usefulness is in early stages.
Patients seek out these unproven treatments after hearing about them from other patients, patient groups or Web sites for the medical companies. The patients’ stories posted on the Internet usually tell of some kind of improvement from the treatments — slight movements in arms or legs, fewer spasms or tremors, a feeling of sensation, an ability to sweat.
Chris Hrabik, 21, has been disabled since a 2004 car crash left him with limited use of his hands and legs. His father took out a second mortgage on their Oak Ridge, Mo., home to help pay for $20,000 worth of stem cell injections at a Beike facility in China.
More than a year after returning home, Hrabik says he has nearly complete use of his left hand, with improvement in the right. He can work on his customized 1993 Nissan 240SX, a modified number complete with hand controls and racing seats.
He said he was able to move his left fingers within days of that first injection of umbilical cord stem cells into his spinal cord. There’s been little progress since he left China, but he called the incremental changes significant.
“I just wanted something back, no matter what it was,” said Hrabik, who attributes some of the changes to the physical therapy that he had in China.
Beike founder Sean Hu, who returned from abroad in 1999 with a doctorate in biochemistry, said the company has treated more than 1,000 patients, including 300 foreigners from 40 different countries. The only side effects have been slight fevers and headaches among a small percentage of patients, according to Hu.
He said patients with trauma injuries experience the most dramatic improvements; those with degenerative diseases such as ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, tend to improve initially but then slide back to their former condition within months.
“Patients shouldn’t have their expectations too high,” Hu said. “For patients to think they can walk again may be too much at this stage,” he said.
He’s now seeking venture capital to expand his web of treatment centers, labs and doctors and adapt proprietary techniques from researchers overseas.
“There is real potential here for China to take the lead in stem cells,” Hu said.
Also offering treatments is Tiantan Puhua in Beijing, a joint venture between Asia’s largest neurological hospital and an American medical group. Tiantan’s sunny, sparkling rooms are a far cry from the dour facilities and staff at most Chinese hospitals. Diseases treated there range from stroke and spinal cord injuries to cerebral palsy and ataxia, a rare neurological condition that can cause slurred speech.
The hospital says its stem cell injections are combined with daily, three-hour doses of intravenous drugs designed to stimulate production of the patient’s own stem cells. Physical rehabilitation and Chinese medicine are also part of the plan. A standard two-month course of treatment costs $30,000 to $35,000.
“We want to see actual improvements,” said Dr. Sherwood Yang, head of the hospital’s management team. “We are giving them another option at the highest level of safety.”
Yang contends that 90 percent of patients show some results, with the rest suffering disabilities that are too far advanced to respond to treatment.
“We are making no promises,” he added. “It’s impossible to say exactly how any given patient will respond.”
Western experts point to the lack of documented evidence that cell treatments have any benefit for spinal cord injuries or degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.
“All of us in the so-called Western world, if there was something valid, we’d be the first to be offering it,” said Steeves, the Canadian professor and director of the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries, known as ICORD.
Three other experts were involved in the study that found no improvement in the seven spinal cord injury patients who went for fetal brain tissue injections in China. The patients were evaluated before and after their surgery.
The doctors stressed their observations were no substitute for a larger, more strict investigation.
“People are looking for a cure,” said Dr. Bruce Dobkin, a neurology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, one of the study’s authors. “They may come to do something based more on a gut feeling. It’s like looking for a religious miracle.”
Along with the patients’ booklet of advice about exploring experimental treatments, Steeves and other researchers have drawn up a set of guidelines on how to do research in spinal cord injuries. Another researcher, Dr. Wise Young of Rutgers University, is assembling a network of Chinese medical centers and universities to train researchers and conduct studies that meet international standards.
Dr. Michael Okun, medical director of the National Parkinson Foundation, said his group discourages patients from seeking out experimental treatments unless they’re being done under the most rigorous research protocols.
“Stem cell therapy … is a really interesting area that has a lot of promise for therapeutic approaches. But we’re just not ready to be putting stem cells into people’s brains at this point in time,” said Okun.
But such warnings don’t dissuade people like Penny Thomas of Captain Cook, Hawaii. She sought treatment for Parkinson’s disease at Tiantan, where doctors drilled into her skull and injected what she was told were cells from a donor’s retina. One year later, she said her tremors are almost gone and her medication has been cut to one-half of a single pill.
“I have no regrets and would do it all over again if need be,” said Thomas, 53.
So would the parents of Rylea Barlett of Webb City, Mo. The family raised nearly $40,000 from friends and neighbors to spend a month in China at a Beike facility last summer, hoping treatments would cure their daughter’s blindness. The child was born with an optic nerve disorder.
Dawn Barlett said her daughter responded to lights shone in her eyes within a week after the first of a series of five stem cell injections and can now make out blurry images on TV.
“She had no vision whatsoever before we left,” the mother said. “There was no hope otherwise.”
The girl’s optometrist, Larry Brothers, said: “It truly is a miracle.”
But when pressed for details, he said he detected “subtle differences” in Rylea’s optic nerve after her return from China. Asked if he would characterize her progress as incremental, he said that “might be too optimistic.”