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So, New York City has now received permission to fine chain restaurants for serving up too much salt, or for not using icons to warn customers of salty food. This ruling allows me to segue into a topic I've been meaning to get into for quite some time: What if they are wrong? What if too much salt is not harmful? If salt is proven to be safe, will New York change this ruling? This subject kind of touches home with me because my mom suffered for many years with hypertension, and still does. She used to have to drink these horrid tasting drinks to keep her blood pressure in check. I think they were potassium drinks, but I'd have to ask her. My mom was also encouraged not to eat foods that contained salt, so she never added salt to anything she cooked. She never ate foods like potato chips, and used a salt substitute. The science makes sense. The theory has it that eating salt raises the level of sodium chloride in your bloodstream, and this salt is absorbed into cells lining the ...

I like the idea of respiratory therapists being better educated. I like the idea of having us obtain a Bachelor's Degree. However, the way it is set up right now, there is not really an incentive to do this. Here, allow me to explain.  Right now, I'm a respiratory therapist. I have an associates' degree. Every other RT I know has the same qualifications that I do, including a license. Most of us are great at what we do, and further education will not make us better. However, further education "might" garnish more respect for us.  However, that said, I actually thought about getting a BA. Two colleges near where I live now offer the program. I discussed this with a good friend of mine who said this: "Why would you get a BA in respiratory therapy when you are not going to get paid more. If you are going to get a BA in something, you might as well choose a program that, when you graduate, you can get a job that pays you $75,000 a year." That point stuck. I ...

I like the idea of  best practice medicine . These are the recommendations or guidelines by which we live with when treating patients.  The problem with these is that many of the guidelines are based on consensus and not science.  This results in healthcare providers offering profligate or surreptitious treatment to our patients, and often with the side effect of frustration, burnout, and apathy. If you know that what you are ordered to do is a complete waste of time and money, and you have no choice but to do as you are told in order to keep your job, chances are that you are well aware that medicine is not based on science but consensus.  As John described a while back, a consensus is not science .  If it comes to a vote, it's not science, it's a consensus. If it's believed because it's popular, it's not science. Science is infiltrated with consensus.  So how do you know if it's science or consensus?  When you go to school, teachers must teach you th...

A giveaway sign of COPD is the development of a chronic (it’s always there) cough. So what makes a cough chronic, and what can be done about it? First, what is a cough?   It’s a natural, primitive reflex. When foreign irritants and mucus enter the back of your throat it causes a tickle.  The Mayo Clinic says this causes nerves in the area to send an impulse to your brain to cause muscles in your abdomen and chest to contract and push a strong force of air through your airway to expel the unwanted particles or mucus. The force of air in a healthy person can reach up to 500 miles per hour. A cough is part of a complex immune response that also involves: Goblet Cells : These are cells that are scattered throughout your airways. When foreign particles get into your airways, your immune system sets off a series of reactions that cause goblet cells to produce sputum. This helps to ball up particles. Cilia .  These are  fine hair-like structures that wave in rhyth...

There have been accusations, including some by our president, that doctors sometimes order procedures just to make a profit.  For instance, that doctors are more likely to cut out tonsils, or cut off legs, or perform c-sections, just because these make more money and are easier than trying to find out why the tonsils are swollen, why a leg is rotting off, or waiting for birth to be natural. They say the cure for this is supposed to be government run healthcare and not for profit healthcare, as these evils are the result of capitalism. Yes, if you are a doctor, and you are cutting out tonsils or cutting off legs just to make a profit, than you are a despicable doctor.  Still, government run healthcare will not solve this problem, only make them worse.  I can give you some real life examples to make my point. According to modern healthcare regulations, if you come to the emergency room with generic dyspnea, and the doctor even thinks you should be admitted, you will receive...

You know, among the respiratory therapy community you often hear grumbling about breathing treatments being ordered that aren't needed. Sometimes we're overburdened by them, although, for the most part, we're fine with it because it allows us to keep our jobs. What becomes a problem is when patient's question the need for treatments. For instance, recently I walked into a patient's room, and I said, "How are you feeling? Are you short of breath?" The patient said, "They think I am." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, I feel fine. But the doctors keep telling me I'm short of breath." So I stayed with the patient long after her treatment was done and reviewed her chart with her. The patient truly was no longer short of breath, and various doctors noted this fact. However, one doctor noted that he suspected the patient was in heart failure and was very concerned about it. He offered a variety of treatments, includin...

The following was originally published at healthcentral.com/asthma on May 4, 2015.  While it was published for last years event, it still applies today.  World Asthma Day: You Can Control Your Asthma World Asthma Day is May 5, 2015. This is an annual event sponsored by the Global Initiative for Asthma ( GINA ) since 1998. This is one day of the year specifically dedicated to improving asthma awareness and care throughout the world. This year’s theme is “You Can Control Your Asthma.” Asthma, or asthma-like symptoms, were recorded in some of the earliest writings. The disease was relatively ignored by the medical profession, mainly because it was considered more of a nuisance (like a head cold) than a serious disease . So they ignored asthma in favor of diseases like tuberculosis and diptheria. So now that those diseases are tackled, it’s our turn. Since the 1950s researchers have made great strides in asthma research. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, asthma guidelines...