Healthier Way to Stay Awake?

I have been aware of the fact that the blue light from smart phones and computers has a tendency to keep you awake more and affects the melatonin in your brain. I was warned about it before going to college as part of a preparation session that my high school provided. However, I just brushed it off as something that people said to scare us from using our computers or smartphones too much and failing. This was reinforced even more by the fact that I have had a couple of roommates who fall asleep a lot while watching Netflix on their laptops or videos on their phones. As the news story that I have posted above reports, however, the connection between staying awake and using smart phones and computers is 100% real. In fact, the blue light is actually more effective than coffee at keeping people awake as found by researchers at Mid Sweden University.

One question this raises for me is would using the blue light from computers or smart phones be healthier than caffeine? Obviously from a dietary stand point it would. From personal experience, I can only drink coffee when it has a ton of sugar in it too and my usual alternative to coffee is Mountain Dew, which is REALLY sugary. Also, energy drinks contain tons of sugar too plus lots of other chemicals that keep you awake, but are not that great for your body either. Using blue light would eliminate this unhealthy aspect of trying to stay awake, but would also be negative in terms of eyesight (staring at a screen too long) and because people are usually not walking around when using devices with blue  light. Still it would be interesting to see if using blue light could be an overall healthier way of staying awake and a better alternative than heavily caffeinated drinks. It’ll be something to keep an eye on over the next couple of years.

Comedy: The Best Way to Get Attention

http://www.hulu.com/watch/559526

So I had heard about Matt Lauer and Al Roker getting prostate exams on the TODAY show to raise awareness about cancer and as part of the Movember movement. However, this didn’t really leave any lasting impression on me and I quickly forgot about it. Soon afterward, I was watching the Colbert Report and Stephen Colbert apparently had also seen that Matt Lauer and Al Roker were getting their prostates checked in order to raise awareness. In typical Colbert fashion, he decided to one-up them with his “November Sweeps Prostacular.” If you haven’t seen the entire video already, please watch it (linked above). It has tons of memorable moments and several notable celebrity cameos, such as John Lithgow, Katie Couric, and the band, The Black Keys. Although it might not be the most accurate when it comes to informing people about prostate exams (kittens?), it does do an amazing job of getting the general idea of raising awareness and creating something that really sticks in your memory (or at least mine). Comedy is such an important part of today’s culture because a lot of the time, it’s the funny things that really create a lasting impression (just look at any Superbowl ad). Thing that using comedy to raise awareness on important topics, such as Colbert does with prostate cancer and exams, should happen more often because I believe it is the best way to raise awareness in America today.

When Something Obvious Apparently Isn’t

I know that I talked about head injuries in soccer a couple of weeks ago, but I just needed to talk about what happened in the Tottenham versus Everton game last weekend. Towards the end of the game, Tottenham’s goalie Hugo Lloris came out to get a 50/50 ball played towards him and ended up getting kneed in the side head by the challenging forward, Romelu Lukaku (who is 6’3″, weighs 220 lbs, and was running at full speed at the time). Lloris was knocked unconscious on the field and lay there for a minute or two. Once the trainers and doctor finally helped him to get up, you could see him arguing with them to let him stay in. There is a culture of trying to tough stuff out in soccer, so I half expected that. However, I was absolutely incredulous to the fact that the trainers and doctor actually let him back on the field and let him finish the game.

There are certain times when you see players hit their heads and wonder if they suffered a head injury or not. This was not one of those times. There was no doubt Lloris suffered a head injury (probably serious) when he was knocked out cold on the field for a while and looked completely dazed when he did finally get up. How anyone could think that he could finish that game is beyond me. But it wasn’t just Lloris who wanted to stay on the field (although who knows how clearly he could think after experiencing a hit like that). His coach, Andre Villas-Boas, left him in the game, even though he has one of the best back-up goalies in the league on the bench and a substitution to use. And after the game, Villas-Boas defended his decision of leaving Lloris in, basically saying that Lloris said he was fine, therefore he was fine to stay in the game. The most perplexing part of the entire thing was how the medical staff for the team allowed him to stay in the game. They definitely  argued for a little bit for Lloris to leave the game, but in the end let him stay in after he argued against leaving.

This incident just highlights how soccer needs to reform and reform pretty quickly. As Taylor Twellman points out in the video above, soccer really needs to join the 21st century when it comes to dealing with injuries on the field. Twellman points out that Lloris could have died had he gotten another concussion while finishing that game. While toughness should still be applauded, there needs to be a point where trying to be tough is just stupid. And as for the medical personal of Tottenham and for the rest of soccer, they need to re-watch the whole Hugo Lloris injury and be taught that the way that they dealt with him is the worst way to deal with something like that. He should have been told that he could not play and they should not have budged. Luckily Lloris did not suffer any more damage during the rest of the game, but it turned out that he had a concussion (surprise!) and has not played since then. The soccer world needs to learn from this incident and needs to make the right changes before something worse happens on the field.

When Surgery Goes Too Far

So I am a big fan of this Youtube channel called Sourcefed, which is a news show that highlights 5 news stories (usually funny or random news events) that happened over the last 24 hours. The video posted above was one such story that caught my attention last week. The story is about a 33 year-old man who has spent over one hundred thousand dollars on cosmetic and plastic surgeries in order to look like Justin Bieber (yes, you read that correctly). I could go off on a rather long rant, similar to the REALLY!? segments done in SNL, but I won’t. Within the context of healthcare in America, however, there is still a lot to be said. It says a lot about our society that there are doctors and surgeons who can and are willing to turn someone into a Justin Bieber look-a-like, but not enough to help in understaffed clinics and hospitals. And yes, the man is free to do whatever he wants with his money, but I find it hard to believe that someone would waste money on procedures like the ones he went through (“smile surgery?”). It also brings up the question: Why are medical resources (which a lot of other places really need)  being used for something so trivial when they could go to something 1,000,000 times more helpful (like a life-saving surgery)? I get that plastic surgery can help a lot of people who need things like facial reconstruction after an injury. However, cases like this one really drive me crazy because of how stupid and unnecessary they can be. There really needs to be some type of regulatory system on getting surgeries like this. If there is no good reason for actually getting the surgery, then it shouldn’t happen and a lot of time, money, and resources will be saved in the process.

Following the Money Trail

http://tracking.si.com/2013/10/16/pink-nfl-merchandise-breast-cancer-research/

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/9125446/rethink-giving-athlete-charities

Through the course of October, it’s impossible to see an NFL game without seeing players decked out in pink. The NFL advertises it as breast cancer awareness month for the league and puts that advertising everywhere. Fans across the country have the opportunity to buy pink NFL gear in order to support this cause. Or, at least that’s what we think. According to the first article linked above, only 8.1% of all profits from NFL breast cancer awareness merchandise actually goes towards cancer research. The rest of the money goes to the retailer, the manufacturer, and to the NFL itself.

I saw this article last week and it reminded me of another article that I read a few months ago about athletes and charities. Many charities run by athletes a poorly run and most of the money doesn’t go to the causes they advertise. In the case of the athletes, several of them blatantly used their charities to fund other projects or used them to get out of paying certain taxes. Lamar Odom, who runs a cancer charity, has not donated a single dime to cancer research. Instead, he used the money donated to fund an AAU basketball team instead. The NFL isn’t bad when compared to athletes such as Lamar Odom. The NFL doesn’t hide their numbers and does donate the same percentage every year to breast cancer awareness. However, most people do not know ahead of time how much of their support actually goes towards breast cancer research. I knew that not all the money raised by NFL during breast cancer awareness month would actually go toward breast cancer research, but I did think that at least a good percentage of it would (like around 40%).

I know that the NFL and some athletes that run charities have their hearts in the right place and are really trying to help raise money for their respective causes, but they all need to be a lot more transparent about where the money that is donated goes. Athletes and sports organizations, such as the NFL, are well known across America and are great platforms for trying to raise money for good causes, such as breast cancer research. However,  the NFL and other athletes can’t just be a charity in name only. They need to be more responsible with where the money that is donated goes and they need to better inform fans who want to help so they can make an educated decision about where to donate their money.

Wish I Had Known This Earlier…

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/11/repetitive-soccer-ball-heading-could-lead-to-brain-injury/

As someone who has played soccer competitively over the last 17 years (super-competetively from ages 9-18), the article posted above is a bit of a concern for myself. I have known for a while that playing soccer isn’t great when it comes to head injuries. Just a week or two ago (and the reason I decided to talk about this topic), my brother was knocked out during a varsity soccer game after accidentally getting hit in the side of the head with an elbow during a play. He, thankfully, did not get a concussion from this, but still sported a swollen cheek for a few days. Another example of this was one of my favorite players as a kid, Taylor Twellman. He was a great goal scorer for the New England Revolution, but had to retire at a very early age (29 or 30 I believe) in 2010 due to a severe concussion he suffered from getting kicked in the face in a game in 2008. Since his retirement, Twellman started a foundation, THINKTaylor, that studies and tries to help those with sports-related concussions and has also agreed to donate his brain after death for studies on concussions. The article above, however, points out that a major factor in head injuries and brain problems from soccer isn’t random elbows or kicks to the face (which don’t happen too often in soccer), but from heading the ball.

I’ve always had the notion that head injuries in soccer came from something dramatic, like an elbow to the head or a kick to the face. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that headers do take a toll on players. Heading a soccer ball that was kicked between 40 and 60 feet in the air definitely leaves some sort of damage (according to some people I’ve talked to, it is around the equivalent of getting into a small car crash). And the repeated nature of heading can also do a lot of damage.

I, thankfully, have never suffered a major head injury during my entire playing career. I have had a half a dozen bloody noses from various plays and have felt woozy a few times from hard tackles or knocking heads with someone else, but I have never been diagnosed with a concussion. However, heading the ball was one of my specialties when I played. As a defender and as someone who is way above average in height for a soccer player, I was a perfect candidate to head the ball. For anyone not familiar with soccer, heading the ball consists of a player basically head-butting the ball in the air to move it. When playing in high school, I would head the ball between 10-20 times a game and a bunch of times during practice too. So this article directly applies to me in the fact that I frequently headed the ball over the course of a year. I really hope that the long term effects of heading don’t come back to bite me in the future in terms of memory or other brain related injuries. I don’t think they will because I’m pretty sure that I haven’t played long enough to (I headed the ball a lot during a 5-6 year stretch), but I can never be sure. This article is a great reminder that a sport that doesn’t just have to have physical contact between players to the head (like football and hockey) in order for there to be head injuries. Something as innocuous as heading a soccer ball over time can have major effects to the brain over time.

P.S. This blog post by no means should discourage people from playing soccer (I still play, I will always keep playing it, and it’s an amazing sport). It is just meant to help those who enjoy playing it to be more aware of head injuries and to take the necessary precautions in preventing them.

Rethinking How We Eat

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/chipotle-commercial-sustainable-food-truth

The article linked above was brought to my attention a couple of days ago (shout out to Mary Alice for showing  me it) because I had seen and enjoyed Chipotle’s new ad campaign with a video called. I thought the commercial was put together extremely well (it reminded me of Pixar a tiny bit) and it was very memorable. It also did a very good job of getting the message across that Chipotle was using only “organic” foods and using meat from animals that were not grown and raised in terrible conditions or with added chemicals such as steroids and antibiotics. The linked article goes about showing how this depiction of Chipotle isn’t exactly 100% accurate. Chipotle does not get all of its produce from local farmers that are “organically” grown and it does not use antibiotic-free or free range animal meat all the time either. The main thing that I took away from the article is that Chipotle is really trying to work towards the goal as advertised in their “Scarecrow” commercial. They are going more and more toward fully organic and local produce and toward meat that isn’t raised in bad conditions or is treated with unnecessary chemicals. I also appreciate how Chipotle is trying to be more transparent with all of their ingredients. As the article says, if their ingredients aren’t up to their standards, Chipotle will at least tell people and be honest about it. The stat at the end, where a simple burger at McDonald can have up to 60 ingredients in them, astounded me because I had no idea that you could fit that many ingredients into something that should be simple to make. Also, the fact that Chipotle is trying to go organic and to use free range animals, but can’t, raises a lot of question marks about food in America in general. If a major food chain can’t use 100% organic produce or free range animals because there aren’t enough of those resources around (implying that cooped-up, antibiotic-fed animals and produce that is grown with pesticides are the norm), then the way we get our food should definitely be questioned more than it currently is.

I do not like green eggs and ham! (and how it made its way into a national debate)

You know those times when you’re not sure whether to cringe or to laugh at something you see? I had one of those moments today when I saw this video today of Sen. Ted Cruz reading from “Green Eggs and Ham” during his filibuster of Obamacare. I mostly laughed when I saw it because of how ridiculous it is to have a U.S. Senator read a children’s book in front of the entire Senate. However, I also had that cringing reaction afterwards due to the fact that it is a US SENATOR reading a CHILDREN’S BOOK in front of our NATIONAL SENATE. Now I don’t care which side of the debate you are on, but I know for a fact that “Green Eggs and Ham” has nothing to do with the pros and cons of a national health care system. It just reflects poorly on our country when we have our elected leaders do this type of thing and it kind of embarrasses me. In order to make a decision on a national health care system, our elected officials need to be talking about a national health care system. As much as I love Dr. Seuss, there is no place for his books in the context of this debate.