Jonah Gomez, 7, dreams of becoming a professional soccer player. But he has a blood-related cancer — and needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. So far, no compatible donor has been found.

In May, a biopsy revealed that Kara, 18, also has a form of lymphoma. Her best chance for survival is a bone marrow transplant – but she cannot find a donor, either.

Jonah and Kara are far from alone. Every year, thousands of adults and children with life-threatening illnesses need bone marrow transplants — a procedure in which diseased or damaged bone marrow is replaced with healthy bone marrow.

While some people have a genetically matched family member who can donate, most do not. As a result, their lives depend on finding a tissue-compatible stranger who is willing to help. Unfortunately, more than 30 percent of patients requiring transplant therapy are not able to find compatible donors, according to a study published in the journal Blood.

Because most donors are Caucasian and matches are usually found between people with the same racial background, people of color can have an especially difficult time. Finding a compatible donor is “like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Katharina Harf, Chief Operating Officer of DKMS Americas, a national center that recruits bone marrow donors. “It’s a race against time.”

Ms. Harf has very personal reasons for making expanding the donor pool her life’s mission. Because a suitable donor could not be found, her mother, Mechtild, died of leukemia in 1990. In Mechtild’s memory, Katharina’s father, Peter Harf, and his wife’s doctor, Gerhard Ehninger, founded DKMS (German Bone Marrow Donor Center in English) in Germany.

In 2004, Katharina led the expansion of DKMS into the U.S., opening an office in New York City. Since then, DKMS Americas has registered over 230,000 donors in the U.S., which has allowed more than 500 patients to receive lifesaving transplants, according to Harf.

But more donors are needed. If you are between the ages of 18 and 55 and are in good health, consider becoming a bone marrow donor. It’s easy to get started. Just log onto the DKMS Americas website at www.dkmsamericas.org and request a free tissue-typing kit. When you get it, simply swab the inside of your cheek with a long Q-tip, and return the sample. If there is a match, you will be contacted.

CONNECT THE DOTS

To find out more about bone marrow and bone marrow donation, check out the University of Maryland Medical Center, American Cancer Society, and this special ABC news clip.  You might also like these Healthy Outlook Blog articles: “Adult Stem Cells Reboot the Immune System,” and “An Adult Stem Cell Makeover for Sickle Cell Anemia.”

If you go off your diet on a holiday, all the diet gurus tell you don’t get discouraged, just go right back on it the next day.     But compulsive eating experts believe that dieting to make up for overeating is self-defeating.  If you’re approaching food in a healthy way in the first place — i.e. eating whatever you want (but in moderation), paying attention to your body’s signals of hunger and satiety, and not eating out of emotional rather than physical hunger — you won’t feel like overeating on the holidays.   Studies have shown that willpower is limited and eventually you run out of it, which is one reason why diets don’t work in the long run.

“Every diet triggers an equal and opposite binge,” say Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter, co-authors of the anti-diet classic Overcoming Overeating.  “Most people have binges or mini binges on holidays because the rest of the year they’re constantly telling themselves they should, or shouldn’t, eat this or that,” says psychoanalyst Munter, who also co-authored When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies with Hirschmann.   “As soon as you put a food off-limits, start dieting, or restrict intake, those foods start to ‘glitter.’”

When food glitters, it becomes special; it becomes a tranquilizer rather than a fuel.   Many of us have gotten out of touch with the fact that food is a fuel we need to keep going, just like a car needs gas.   Your body not only tells you when it needs gas, it even tells you what kind of gas it needs, and when it’s full   Those of us who have dieted for a lifetime have lost those natural signals. This is why study after study has shown that diets can actually cause weight gain.

“Food is the centerpiece of early human life,” Munter explains.   “When a baby is hungry, she experiences terrible distress, which gets relieved when a bottle or breast is put in her mouth.  We get confused because later on we feel that eating relieves psychological as well as physical distress.”

The answer is to feed ourselves the way we feed infants.  Munter calls it “demand feeding for adults.”  If someone legalizes all foods and doesn’t choose foods according to what’s fattening, but rather pays attention to when she is physically hungry, asks her body what kind of fuel it needs and starts paying attention to when she’s had enough, binges aren’t going to happen.   “Each time you feed yourself out of physical, rather than emotional hunger you take care of yourself and strengthen yourself,” says Munter.   “You actually re-mother yourself by learning to distinguish emotional from physical distress.”

If someone is using the overcoming overeating approach, she is looking forward to, not dreading, that extravagant holiday dinner.  She might have a little snack earlier, but when she gets to dinner she asks herself, “What does my body most want?”   That might actually be turkey breast and vegetables, not stuffing or pumpkin pie.  Our bodies actually tell us when we need healthy food.   The best way to avoid cramming down the pie and cookies is to promise yourself that you’ll have them around during the year.   If you know you’ll always have your favorite foods available and that they’ll never be off-limits, you won’t feel the need to eat the 3,000-calorie average Thanksgiving dinner.    If your hostess keeps pushing you to have more, the greatest compliment is to say, “I’m too full, but I’d love to take some home.”

Demand feeding takes commitment and practice, and it’s very scary.    Unrestricted eating terrifies dieters who are afraid they will go on an endless binge and gain a ton of weight.  Surprisingly, that’s not what happens.    Having your favorite foods around is very comforting.  After feeding yourself on demand for a while you’ll know when you’re emotionally rather than physically hungry, and start eating what your body needs instead of stuffing your face with whatever is in front of you.  When you eat mindfully, you’ll know when you’re satisfied and be able to stop eating.

“The key to demand feeding is, when you want to eat for emotional reasons, ask yourself, ‘What part of me is upset?’  Each time you do that you learn to turn to yourself instead of food,” explains Munter.    “You have to become competent at all kinds of self-soothing,” not just eating for comfort.

CONNECT THE DOTS

For more information, here’s an article about mindful eating, an important part of the overcoming-overeating approach. To learn more about smart eating habits, take a look at these Healthy Outlook Blog posts: “Small Steps Can Lead to Long Term Weight Loss,” “A Weight Loss Diet Based on DNA,” and “Pic Healthy Photo Food Diary Mobile App.”

Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum is a formidable champion of resilience and optimism in the face of adversity. In February of 1991, when she was a flight surgeon during Operation Desert Shield in the Persian Gulf War, Brig. Gen. Cornum survived a harrowing week which included a fiery helicopter crash, bullet wounds, two broken arms, enemy capture and an abusive assault. She was one of three who survived the ordeal: five others did not. She recounts, “I just approached that particular little stressful week as any other event. Events happen: you make every effort for events like that not to happen, but when they do, you just deal with it.”

As her military career progressed, Brig. Gen. Cornum, says, “I realized when I was responsible for the health of large groups of soldiers that not everyone approaches adversity with resilience and optimism and that we should do something to help people realize that how they respond to adversity is really modifiable by them.” Brig. Gen. Cornum, M.D., is a urologic surgeon and she also holds a Ph.D in nutrition and biochemistry from Cornell University.

In October 2009, she launched Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, a $145 Million U.S. Army program that trains thousands of soldiers, family members and Department of Defense civilians. The goal of the program is preventive: to arm soldiers with psychological fitness tools in advance so they are better able to face high levels of sustained stress.

The program was designed in consultation with positive psychology experts at the University of Pennsylvania, notably Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman and Dr. Karen Reivich. “The Penn Resiliency Project was demonstrated to be successful in improving performance and preventing negative outcomes in 17 different studies in replications over 20-25 years, so it’s pretty clear it works,” says Brig. Gen. Cornum.

Two of the four pillars of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program are the Global Assessment Tool and Master Resilience Trainers. The other two pillars are online Comprehensive Resilience Modules in each area of health based on individual needs, and an Institutional program that seeks to reduce barriers for those seeking help.

1)      Global Assessment Tool – the GAT is a mandatory, confidential online test that measures four key dimensions of emotional strength: emotional; social; family; and spiritual. Consisting of 105 questions, the annual test takes about 15 minutes to complete and was developed from measures previously validated in peer-reviewed scientific journals. So far, the test has been taken over 1.4 million times, of which 300,000 times are second assessments. Each person receives a confidential report with their GAT score and recommendations about how to develop strengths and improve weaknesses.

2)      Master Resilience Trainers – To date, over 6,000 soldiers have been trained as MRTs, leaders who have taken the comprehensive 10-day training course on building, sustaining and enhancing performance using resilience theory, cognitive behavior therapy and positive psychology principles. Each MRT returns to their unit to deliver training in small group settings.

Is the program working? Brig. Gen. Cornum reports that in a study comparing four brigades with training to four brigades who had not yet received training, results showed a statistically significant improvement in a variety of measures: increased optimism and adaptability; more positive coping skills; greater emotional and social fitness; and less catastrophic thinking.

The key to the CSF program is that it’s preventive. Brig. Gen. Cornum says, “Everybody can improve. It is not just aimed at someone who is clinical, high risk, or floundering. I have taken the 10-day MRT course in order to see what I was sending people to do. I learned some things, and I am pretty stinkin’ resilient to start with.”

CONNECT THE DOTS

Watch a short video where BG explains how CSF builds resiliency. Find out more about the psychological fitness tools used in Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. If you want to learn more about positive psychology, check out Martin E.P. Seligman’s Authentic Happiness site where you can register and take confidential questionnaires to measure your personal character strengths and aspects of happiness. Seligman is Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and author of bestsellers Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism and the recently published Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. Dr. Karen Reivich is Co-director, Penn Resiliency Project and co-author of The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles.

You may also like our earlier posts, New Frontiers of Military Medical Research, and Journaling for Health and Peace of Mind.

Breast cancer. I feel numb; afraid… I wrote those words in my journal just hours after getting the diagnosis.

During the following weeks, I found myself pouring out my fears on paper: I’m so scared. I feel as if a bowl has covered my life, shutting me in, shutting out light…

As I moved through treatment, I wrote daily. Often, after pages of dark musings, something lighter would break through…today, the sun is shining and I am aware of a feeling of pleasure. Life is fragile and tenacious. Maybe accepting that duality is key to integrating cancer into my life…

By the time I finished treatment, I’d filled two notebooks. I also learned from researchers like James Pennebaker that getting my thoughts and feelings down on paper could improve my health and even strengthen my immunity.

Then I wanted to share what I had learned. “Wouldn’t it be useful,” I said to friends, “if there were a place people with cancer could go – people who don’t make writing a regular habit – to get the tools they need to tell their stories and explore their feelings?”

It occurred to me that with my 20-plus years of experience as a health writer and editor, perhaps I could create such a place.

Three months later, I was at a cancer support organization leading my workshop, Write On! Twelve people had gathered with notebooks and pens. As they called out words – nouns and action phrases that described their cancer experience, I wrote them on a large newsprint pad: Tumor, Biopsy, and Undergo surgery. I was surprised when some of the offerings were more upbeat: Courage, Gratitude and Pray.

Next, I instructed everyone to write the word or phrase that felt most personally meaningful at the top of a clean notebook page. “Using that as a starting point,” I said, “Write for 10 minutes. Don’t edit yourself, or worry about grammar or neatness. Just keep your pen moving, and trust yourself to go where you need to go.”

As I looked around the room and saw people battling the darkness with words, I realized that none of us has been destroyed. In some ways, in fact, we were stronger than ever.

Writing your cancer journey

You don’t have to be a “good writer” to use writing as a healing tool. All you have to do is write. Here are some suggestions:

* Carry a notebook and pen in your pocketbook or briefcase so you can jot down experiences and feelings as they occur.

* During chemo sessions or when you’re waiting for appointments, use the time to write.

* Use your notebook to write down questions for your doctors — and their answers.

CONNECT THE DOTS

To find out more about the benefits of expressive writing, check out the American Psychological Association, and this article from Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. You may also be interested in the healthymagination article, “Journaling for Health and Peace of Mind.”

Guest blogger Andrea Campbell is the author of Your Corner of the Universe: A Guide to Self-Therapy Through Journal Writing and other books. She is a member of American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Neurologist Richard Restak observed that dealing with the daily raw emotions of patients can be stressful and at times discouraging for him and other doctors involved in similar specialties. He believes that writing things down has helped him to make order out of life’s chaos, and that switching between two very different career activities, physician and author, has given his life stability.

Traumatic experiences such as the death of a loved one, fighting a recurring disease or surviving abuse create anxiety. When people suffer an illness or emotional upheaval they have an inherent need to discuss or confront the experience. Consistent journal writing can serve as stress relief. The act of converting emotions into words changes the way a person thinks—and this personal narrative helps them to summarize, store and cope with their feelings more efficiently. Here’s a look at other potential benefits:

* Better Health – Writing about their chronic conditions can help boost the health of patients who suffer from asthma and arthritis. “We looked at writing about the most stressful experience of one’s life in an emotional way,” says Arthur A. Stone, Ph.D. at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and co-author of this study. Over four months, one group wrote about their plans for the day, while the others wrote out feelings about a stressful event, all the while continuing their regular medical treatment. After being evaluated, researchers found that 47% of the patients who wrote about their feelings showed improvement after 4 months, while only 24% of the other group did. However, the study did not evaluate whether these health improvements would persist beyond 4 months.

* Better Coping Skills – According to a recent Baylor University study, men with testicular cancer demonstrated improved mental health after five weeks of writing positive thoughts. “There’s a lot of research that takes this writing-based approach…but we applied this line of research to the testicular cancer context for the first time that we are aware of,” says Mark T. Morman, Ph.D. and director of graduate studies at Baylor University. “We think writing about the experience could add to the therapy and can help with recovery and quality of life issues after treatment, as the men try to get on with their lives.”

* Handling Grief – After a loved one dies, the emotional devastation for family and friends may be accompanied by an upset stomach, frequent headaches, shortness of breath or a tightening in the throat and many other physical symptoms. Much has been written about the various stages of grief, but an article in the Mayo Clinic Health Letter suggests that keeping a journal and writing a letter to the deceased may help to alleviate feelings of anxiety and the associated discomfort. Writing out words left unsaid, regrets, and thoughts about loss isn’t a cure for grief, but the process can help people cope with feelings that may be too painful to express verbally.

* Making Sense of Emotions – The world may feel unsafe or out of control but venting on paper is not enough. A study of the effects of journaling on students at the University of Iowa showed that if someone only writes about stressful emotions, doing so might actually make things worse. The study found the combination of writing down one’s feelings about traumatic events, and initiating efforts to understand and make sense of them offered greater benefits than simply writing down negative emotions.  In other words, a key to better health is to free-flow write about feelings, then try to make sense of your reactions to life events and learn from them. By journaling, you give yourself permission to be totally honest and review your experiences in a thoughtful manner in order to enhance feelings of control and mastery over the traumatic event.

CONNECT THE DOTS

For additional information on how to write about traumatic experiences download “Emotional Processing of Traumatic Events,” or pick up “Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative.” For tips on journal writing see “Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice.” For a look at how keeping a food diary may help with weight loss, check out our blog post, “Free Weight App Combines Calorie Counter and Food Diary.”

You know hiking is good for your health. But do you know just how good it is?

For adults, regular aerobic exercise such as hiking leads to:

* Improved cardiorespiratory fitness (heart, lungs, blood vessels)

* Improved muscular fitness

* Lower risk of coronary heart disease and stroke

* Lower risk of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes

* Lower risk of high cholesterol and triglycerides

* Lower risk of colon and breast cancer, and possibly lung and endometrial cancer

* Increased bone density or a slower loss of density

* Reduced depression and better quality sleep

* Lower risk of early death (If you are physically active for 7 hours a week, your risk of dying early is 40% lower than someone active for less than 30 minutes a week.

* Weight control; hiking burns up 370 calories an hour (154-lb person)

Kids get many of the same benefits, including:

* Improved cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness

* Better bone health

* Less chance of becoming overweight

* Less chance of developing risk factors for heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes

* Possibly reduced risk of depression and feeling less stress, more ready to learn in school

* Sleeping better at night

What’s more, hiking exercises almost every part of your body: legs, knees, ankles, arms, hips and butt, abdominals, shoulders and neck. “Hiking exercises your body and your mind, and nourishes your imagination,” says Ignacio Malpica, a certified fitness instructor and personal trainer in Boulder, Colorado. “It creates awareness in your eyes and ears and the rest of your senses.”

How much activity do you need to reap these incredible health benefits? Experts say getting active for just 150 minutes a week – doing “moderate-intensity” aerobic exercise such as moderate hiking or brisk walking – leads to most of these benefits (reducing risks of colon and breast cancer requires another hour a week). That’s only 2½ hours a week. And you don’t have to do it all at once. Sneaking in a lunchtime hike up the hill near your office counts toward your total, as long as you’re active for at least ten minutes.

If you take part in more vigorous aerobic activities, such as running, dancing, or hiking uphill or with a heavy pack, you need only half that amount of time, or 75 minutes a week, to get health benefits.

What’s moderate exercise? You can talk, but you can’t sing during the activity. Vigorous? You can’t say more than a few words with pausing for breath. “When you are doing moderate exercise, you can continue for a long time, and you are breathing rhythmically,” explains Malpica. “With vigorous exercise, you can’t do it for more than a few minutes at a time.”

And if you rack up even more time, the benefits keep growing too. For even more substantial health benefits, such as an even lower risk of heart disease, aim for 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, or 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise each week.

Of course, there are other kinds of physical activity. It’s also important to do some muscle-strengthening activities, such as lifting weights or doing push-ups. The experts say do those at least twice a week. You also need to get in some bone-strengthening activity, which occurs when force on your bones promotes bone growth and strength. Here again, hiking fits the bill.

Another plus: you don’t have to be in perfect shape to start. Even if you are overweight, getting physical can lead to health benefits. But don’t run out and climb a steep peak if you’ve long been inactive. The experts say if you’re 35 or older and have been inactive for several years, or you already have a condition such as high blood pressure, check with your doctor first. “Hiking is a great way to start exercising,” says Malpica. “Start with easy hikes and work up to steeper hikes that work your legs more.”

Kids (age 6-17) need 60 minutes of physical activity each day, mostly aerobic. They also need regular muscle-strengthening (playing on playground equipment, climbing trees) and bone-strengthening (running, playing basketball, jumping rope) exercise.

Track Your Workouts

Keeping track of your activity can help you rack up the minutes. Note what you did as well as the length of each workout, and tally it up at the end of the week. Watching your progress can be a great motivator.

Use a calendar to track your workouts. Or try one of the many online options, such as MapMyHike.com, where you can map your own hikes and share your routes with others.

CONNECT THE DOTS

For more on the health benefits of exercise and to download an activity tracker, see the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines. To learn more about hiking (including a state-by-state directory of parks), see the American Hiking Society site, and read about some enticing hiking trips on Call of the Wild. Introduce your children to hiking safety and trail manners with GoodHiker’s resources. Track your hiking miles on MapMyHike. Find out more about the exercise for kids on MedlinePlus.

“It’s easy to quit smoking,” quipped writer Mark Twain. “I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

If he were alive today, Twain might be interested in a new use of a widely available tool – text messaging – that shows promise in helping those trying to stop smoking. A recent study published in the journal Lancet found that receiving motivational text messages doubled quitting rates during the 26-week study.

Researchers randomized 5,800 British smokers who wanted to quit into two groups: a txt2stop intervention group (containing 2,915 smokers) and a control group (containing 2,885 smokers). Smokers in the txt2 stop group were told to pick a quit date within two weeks.

People in the txt2stop group were free to take part in other smoking cessation services and additionally received five text messages a day for the first 5 weeks and then three messages a week for the rest of the study. They also could text the word “crave,” whenever they wished to receive instant messages to distract and support them during a craving episode. Motivational texts included such messages, as, “why not write an action list of your reasons why you want to quit. Use it as your inspiration.”

People in the control group received one neutral message every two weeks about the importance of the study. These texts said things like, “Thanks for taking part! Without your input, the study could not have gone ahead!”

At the end of study, saliva tests showed that 10.7% of those in the txt2 stop group had quit, compared with only 4.9% of controls.

Bill Blatt, MPH, director of tobacco programs for the American Lung Association, credits the study’s success to the power social support. “It was a continuous reminder to make an effort,” he says. “It lets people know someone’s thinking about them.”

Blatt says smokers should never feel they have to quit alone. “Many folks think smoking is a character flaw, and they try to quit in secret,” he says.

Study authors say their findings suggest that motivational texting should be added to existing quit-smoking therapies, such as counseling, behavior therapy, support groups, and nicotine replacement therapy.

Quitting smoking is one of the best things people can do for their health. Just 20 minutes after quitting, a smoker’s heart rate returns to normal, and after a few weeks, lung function begins to improve and heart attack risk starts to drop.

CONNECT THE DOTS

Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW to connect to a tobacco-quit line in your state. Counselors can help you design a personalized quit plan. The service is free of charge. Find more stop smoking resources at the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society and the Mayo Clinic. Check out tips for how to quit smoking without gaining weight.

You probably know that bats and dolphins use echolocation to navigate, but did you know that some blind people use it to mountain bike, play soccer, or navigate cities? They make clicking sounds with their tongues and listen to the returning echoes to sense information about the position, size, shape and texture of objects.

A new study, the first in its field, found that blind echolocators process the clicks and echoes by using brain areas that sighted people use to process visual information.  Published recently in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, the study examined brain activity in two expert blind echolocators using functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (fMRI). The Early Blind and Late Blind subjects lost their sight at 13 months of age and 14 years of age respectively. Two non-echolocating sighted subjects were also evaluated for control purposes, matched with the test subjects by sex and age.

The study design required a creative approach to measure brain activity, given that a test subject needs to be completely still to produce a good fMRI scan. To address this, researchers made sound recordings of the subjects’ own clicking noises and played them back while using an fMRI scanner to detect BOLD, or blood-oxygen-level dependent activity.

Surprisingly, when the echolocators listened to test sounds that contained clicks and echoes, compared to test sounds that contained only clicks, researchers measured activity in the subjects’ visual cortex areas known as the calcarine, but not the auditory areas. Lead author Lore Thaler, postdoctoral fellow at The Centre for Brain and Mind at the University of Western Ontario says, “This was exciting for us! With this comparison, we saw differences in the visual parts of the brain without differences in the auditory. I expected to see brain activity in both the auditory and the visual cortex of the brain.”

Both the Early Blind and Late Blind test subjects showed brain activity in their middle temporal and nearby brain areas when they were listening to sound recordings of moving objects. Those are the brain areas that activate when sighted people view an object in motion. The Early Blind test subject showed more proficiency in distinguishing the angular position of a pole compared to the Late Blind tester, but both were excellent.

Daniel Kish was the Early Blind test subject in Thaler’s study. He is able to mountain bike, navigate in the wilderness alone and can sense a building 1,000 feet away. He founded World Access for the Blind, a non-profit organization with a mission to help blind people learn echolocation so that they can participate and achieve at the same level as sighted people. Daniel and his colleagues have worked directly with over 500 blind students to teach them how to use echolocation.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are 39 million people worldwide who are blind. In the United States alone, there are 937,000 adults over the age of 40 who are blind. Kish says that there are no hard statistics available about how many blind people are using echolocation, but from his experience, “about 50% of blind people may use some form of echolocation to help them interact with the environment.” He continues, “this is usually rudimentary, and they are usually unaware of what they are doing, or how. Perhaps around 5% actually develop an advanced form of echolocation whereby they typically use some form of self-generated sonar signal.”

Thaler says that echolocation can be a useful tool for sighted people, to sense objects in the dark or behind them. She is trying to learn the technique herself, and can sense the difference in objects placed in front of her while blindfolded. She admits that she needs to find an uninterrupted stretch of time to refine her learning.

The basic skills of echolocation can be learned in 2-3 days and refinement takes place over time for each individual. Kish says, “It is a skill much like any other. It definitely takes practice for refinement, and inherent talent does help, but is not required. It is easiest for young ones to learn, but older folks can also learn if they are motivated. Our motto is “the earlier the easier, but it’s never too late.”

Since the study was published, Thaler has received many emails from blind people who have never heard about echolocation before. She hopes that future studies will continue to unravel the mysteries of how echolocation works so that more can learn to live their lives with no limits.

CONNECT THE DOTS

Visit the site for World Access for the Blind to learn more about the organization, including training, workshops, services and advocacy efforts to help blind people live their lives with No Limits. Watch World Access for the Blind’s You Tube channel to hear Daniel Kish and his associate Brian Bushway discuss and demonstrate echolocation. You may also like our earlier post, Innovative New Apps for the Blind.

Stacy Szucs faced that question after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. With proper care, her prognosis for recovery was bright. But just five minutes into her first infusion of a chemo drug called Taxotere (docetaxel), she had an adverse reaction. According to Szucs, she began having chest pressure, saw stars and almost passed out. It turns out that Szucs was allergic to the chemotherapy drug her oncologist had prescribed.

Until recently, Szucs’ only option would have been to switch to another chemotherapy drug that may have been less effective. Now, there is a step-by-step process that can desensitize cancer patients to the drug to which they are allergic. Desensitization is a carefully controlled method of helping patients temporarily tolerate medications from aspirin to antibiotics to chemo that their bodies once rejected.

“We have, in more than 98 percent of patients, been able to desensitize people to give them the optimal treatment,” says DeKalb Medical Center allergist, Dr. George Gottlieb.

The night before and morning of their infusion, patients take a prescribed amount of certain over-the-counter and prescription allergy medications as directed by their physicians. To help patients tolerate their chemo medication, it is delivered in stages. First, the chemotherapy is diluted and divided into several bags. The strength of the dosage increases with each successive bag.

Because the desensitization lasts only as long as the patient is taking a daily dose of that medication, chemotherapy patients must undergo desensitization before each treatment cycle. The process takes time and lasts roughly six hours instead of the usual two.

Initially, Szucs was reluctant to trying the drug therapy that had made her so sick. However, she underwent another round because it was believed to be the best option. When she had no reaction after the first bag, she had the courage to keep going. She is now cancer-free. To date, 60 patients have gone through the program with a 93% success rate.

CONNECT THE DOTS

Learn more about how Dekalb Medical Center’s Rapid Chemotherapy Desensitization works. Fewer Americans are being diagnosed with cancer and the survival rate has increased for those who are thanks to breakthroughs in cancer treatment. No doubt, you’ve heard the term “chemo brain.” Learn more about it and its causes.

Conventional wisdom has long been that picturing a gooey cinnamon roll or a pizza oozing with cheese will rev up your appetite and set you up to binge on those goodies. But the lead author of the study, Carey Morewedge, Assistant Professor of Social and Decision Sciences, says that simply imagining the consumption of a food can have the opposite effect.

“The mental imagery of actually eating that food decreases our desire for it,” Morewedge explains. “These findings suggest that trying to suppress one’s thoughts of desired foods in order to curb cravings for those foods is a fundamentally flawed strategy.”

To conduct the study, Morewedge and his colleagues divided the participants into two groups and asked them to imagine eating either cheese cubes or M&Ms, one a time. The first group was asked to imagine eating just three of the morsels, while the second group imagined eating 30. Then, they were allowed to eat those foods for real.

“People who imagined eating 30 units of the food one at a time ate about between 40 and 50 percent less than people who imagined eating three units of the food,” said Morewedge.

The experiments showed that the reduction in actual consumption following imagined consumption was caused by a gradual reduction in motivation to eat more of the food. They also demonstrated that, in order to reduce the amount of food eaten, the mental imagery had to be about that particular food.

Morewedge believes that this research may have many valuable applications in the future. “We think these findings will help develop future interventions to reduce cravings for things such as unhealthy food, drugs and cigarettes, and hope they will help us learn how to help people make healthier food choices.”

In the meantime, I’ll try it to see if I can drop a few pounds. Do you think imaging yourself eating your favorite goodies would help you lose weight?

CONNECT THE DOTS

This healthy food diary mobile app can also help get your diet in check. Anti-obesity crusader, Barry Popkin, says we must address the root causes of obesity. Check out the self compassion diet and a free iPhone app can help you make better food choices.