New Obamacare benefits begin today - These are good changes - check them out

According to Web md in their article published on line today (http://www.webmd.com/medicare/news/20100922/latest-round-of-health-reform-benefits-kicks-in), some of the new health care requirements kick in today.  These are good for Americans.

Highlights include

• Removing lifetime dollar limits on essential benefits
• Giving people a right to appeal to an external party if denied coverage for a treatment
• Preventing insurers from dropping coverage of people when they get sick
• Limiting the use of annual spending limits of health plans
• Allowing consumers to use ob-gyns in their networks without needing a referral
• Prohibiting extra charges for using emergency care that is out of network
• Guaranteeing full coverage of many preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, without a co-pay, co-insurance, or deductible

 These are wonderful for the public.  Personally, just the idea that preventative costly procedures such as colonoscopy will finally be more affordable is great, since many people are finding this preventative service is expensive and with many newer plans, often put off due to afford-ability because it costs thousands due to high .  Great news.

For many people with job-based coverage, the insurance changes will arrive Jan. 1, 2011, at the start of the new benefits year.


At the same time, the resistance is notching up. This week, as the consumer protections kick in, media reports have revealed that some major insurers, at least in part, will sidestep one new provision: denying coverage for children under age 19 who have pre-existing medical conditions.

Why anyone in government (you know who you are) would want to prevent this or repeal this is beyond me.

What do you think?  As always, I value your opinion.

Osteoporosis drugs causing fractures - another promise that does not add up

I was reading in the Star  Ledger about how the often prescribed osteoporosis drugs like Boneva and Fosamax have been found to create fractures (http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6786125-osteoporosis-drugs-like-fosamax-and-boniva-linked-to-hip-fractures).

Years ago, we would spot osteoporosis on an x ray and it would tell us that certain people are prone to having possible problems with fractures.  Hip fractures in the elderly can be devastating.  Earlier generations in many ways were less active in retirement ( I remember my grandmother and her card games as activities vs. my parents who played tennis and go to the gym.).  We had less sophisticated tools to look at this such as x rays vs. our Dexxa Scanners that are much more sensitive to detecting early bone loss.  The drug companies worked on medications they could sell us as being preventative for bone loss when loss was occurring as per these very sensitive scanners and they sold doctors on the idea through their drug reps.  Many people now found their doctors managing their health by the numbers on the scan.  I have seen hundreds of people who  were placed on these drugs to prevent the yet disease (the one that did not happen or may never happen yet).  Many of our patients who went on these drugs promptly went off when the side effects hit.  I am sure these numbers are underreported.

The bottom line is that this is clearly interventional, not preventative and dispite the billions made by the drug companies on this supposedly preventative health regimen, in the end, it is side effects, over doctoring and then having pecuilar types of fractures that may not have occurred if you were not on the drug.

I have a better protocol; Stay active, eat right and play the odds (very few people actually have problems related to osteoporosis when considering the entire populace)  In other words, leave it alone.

What do you think?  As always, I value your opinion

USATF evaluates if stretching prevents running injuries - Science says it doesn't, their study agrees and more

Yesterday, the NY times reported on a study performed by USA Track and Field, the organization that credentials the race's and many of the running events throughout NJ (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/phys-ed-does-stretching-before-running-prevent-injuries/)

I have been working with runners and have been involved with USATF in NJ and I have always maintained that stretching does not prevent injuries.  For years, stretching had been the gold standard and even today, many running coaches who were brought up with this concept continue to teach stretching to their new and developing athletes.

Years ago, when I was in chiropractic college in Illinois, a company called SPRI who performed rehab and  the owners, Richard Dominguez, Robert J Gajda, wrote about their methods in a book entitled Total Body Training.  The book, written in the 80's told about how exercises rather than stretching gets the best performance out of athletes.  SPRI now produces tubing kits for exercise as well as other products.  Many other studies have also shown that stretching has little benefit and now the USATF study also shows that those who stretch and those who do not have about the same amount of injuries.

An interesting note in all this is that those who were used to stretching and then stopped had an increase in the amount of injuries that had the endure.

Looking past the surface of this, there is a benefit to stretching which is in young and developing children.  As bones grow, so do muscles in response to that growth.  Stretching during those young years will yield greater flexibility in adulthood which is why I will never be able to perform a split while my daughter who has done gymnastics since she was 4 years old can.

When we look at the motivation of stretching which is injury avoidance, I believe those who did it regularly and then stopped and experienced more problems had bio-mechanical issues which likely were never properly identified.  In our office, patients find out that it is firing patterns, myofascia and muscular coordination of movement which actually are the reasons for tightness.  Once these issues are properly addressed, the person tightens much less, has much greater flexibility and their overall gait improves.  The more efficiently they move, the more flexible they are and the fewer injuries they sustain.  The discussion should not be about weather or not to stretch.  The argument is about body mechanics and its relationship to injuries in runners.

What do you think?  As always, I value your opinion