Alzheimer’s Disease, which scatters microscopic deposits throughout the brain that impair memory and other mental functions, is a terrifying prospect that looms larger as people age.

While the jury’s out on whether it can be prevented, some medical studies suggest that diet, exercise and cognitive stimulation may help defend the brain against Alzheimer’s Disease and associated diseases, including vascular disease and diabetes.

One advocate of this is physician Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California/Los Angeles. Small is the co-author, with Gigi Vorgan, of “The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program: Keep Your Brain Healthy for the Rest of Your Life,” (Workman Publishing, $13.95). It offers a pro-active approach aimed to decrease your risk factors for Alzheimer’s Disease and other cognitive impairment disorders.

While his book doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee, his pragmatic recommendations will help followers improve their physical health, and possibly reduce risk factors for cognitive problems.

His book offers self-assessment tests for mental and physical fitness, and a week-long program that incorporates nutrition and exercise. Nothing is radical, and anyone who familiar with other preventive maintenance programs will recognize familiar rules — eat more lean protein, exercise more, eat less fatty and processed foods. Smalls includes what he calls (a little redundantly) “Mental Workouts to Sharpen Your Mind,” with suggestions that range from making puzzles a part of your daily routine to deliberately socializing with others.

A day after Gov. John Hickenlooper announced proposals to strengthen mental health services, a new crisis line has been announced on the Western Slope.

Colorado West introduced the new crisis response service for the 10-county area including Eagle, Garfield, Grand, Jackson, Mesa, Moffat, Pitkin, Rio Blanco, Routt and Summit counties.

A toll-free call to 1-888-207-4004 will now connect people directly to trained clinicians to evaluate and help. Clinicians can then connect callers to appropriate community services to manage a mental health crisis. The emergency services number is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without exception.

Colorado West, a not-for-profit mental health services center, has been providing emergency services for more than 40 years. In the last year, the organization responded to nearly 7,000 crisis episodes in its 10-county area.

The governor held press conferences at the Capitol and in the Western Slope on Tuesday to announce his plans. Colorado would streamline involuntary mental health commitments and speed that information to gun-sale registries as part of a comprehensive, $18.5 million psychiatric overhaul aimed at preventing violence and improving care, the Denver Post reported Wednedsay.

The governor said the package would “reduce the probability of bad things happening to good people.”

We’ve just published a story on the CU researchers’ $11 million grant for important nutrition studies, and just wanted to add a graph or two that won’t make it into the paper.

One additional issue I asked Drs. Hambidge and Krebs about was the difficulty of combatting local suspicion — understandable given how past research has been abused — of Westerners asking test subjects to eat something foreign during their delicate pregnancy stage. The pre-conception nutrition research involves giving women a fortified, 100-calorie block or tube of food to eat that will boost their health and that of their potential baby.

That possible suspicion or resistance is why it’s key to link with local medical and health providers in each country, the researchers said. It won’t be a white Westerner in a lab coat prescribing an odd-looking supplement. Instead, it will be men and women from partner agencies and groups in the underdeveloped nations, giving advice and nutrition to their peers.

“We certainly keep our fingers on the pulses of these communities through our collaborators,” Krebs said.

Following is the rest of the grant story:

Two University of Colorado doctors have won an $11 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further nutrition research aimed at helping babies grow even before they’re conceived.

Dr. Michael Hambidge and Dr. Nancy Krebs, both with the nutrition section of the University of Colorado School of Medicine pediatrics department, will use the money to boost pregnancy nutrition in Guatemala, Pakistan, India and Zambia.

Early evidence shows intervening in undernourished societies even before women get pregnant can boost baby size and health in the long term. The researchers will look at what happens when women start taking a fortified, power-bar type square three months before they get pregnant, compared with women who don’t start until their 12th week of gestation.

One big trick, of course, is to “guess” which women will be getting pregnant in 90 days. To find enough comparison subjects, local clinics and health sites have to enroll a lot of women, the researchers said.

The five-year grant can help answer vital nutritional questions in societies where many people long assumed cultures were genetically shorter or smaller than Western nations. On the contrary, research has shown that Guatemalan or other families who move to the U.S. reach the U.S. average size within a generation, Hambidge said.

“There is irreversible damage to stature potential after just two years of age” in the absence of good nutrition, Hambidge said.

“So much of the programming for later outcomes occurs in the very earliest days and weeks of gestation,” Krebs said.

Read more: CU nutrition doctors get $11 million Gates grant for pregnant moms – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22210235/cu-nutirtion-doctors-get-11-million-gates-grant#ixzz2FLuav8BJ
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Update: with photo and quotes

Centura Health will add 92 flexible-space beds to its burgeoning far-north campus in Westminster, nearly doubling the beds at its nearby St. Anthony North hospital, and thrusting the growing chain into the general health-building frenzy in northern Colorado.

Centura’s newest hospital and medical space will go up next to the recently-opened St. Anthony North Medical Pavilion, at 144th and I-25 (hospital handout)

Centura announced Friday it will spend $177 million beginning this spring to expand its just-opened St. Anthony North Medical Pavilion at 144th Avenue and I-25. (St. Anthony’s original north hospital is at 84th and Zuni, near the U.S. 36 Boulder Turnpike.) The newly-announced addition will include 60,000 square feet of physician clinic space, as Centura furthers the national movement of hiring more doctors in-house; outpatient treatment rooms, day surgery, women’s delivery and baby care rooms, a level III trauma center with ER, and 92 inpatient beds in a flexible configuration.

St. Anthony’s original north hospital has 138 beds.

Centura says it is building the new space to emphasize an integrated, patient-centered approach with a continuity of care, a model both public and private health organizations are moving toward.

Centura said the $177 million cost is through financing with Catholic Health Initiatives, co-owner of the Centura hospitals in Colorado with the Adventist Health System. The 13 hospitals in the group are Colorado’s largest system, and are non-profit.

Centura is also expanding its network to metro south, currently building the first full service hospital for Castle Rock. That 50-bed hospital, for $128 million, is expected to open in 2013.

Health care construction and hospital group mergers have been some of the most active economic sectors for Colorado in recent years. Exempla St. Joseph is rebuilding its central Denver hospital in a massive $630 million project that includes relocating city streets. St. Anthony Central moved its west Colfax facility to a brand new building overlooking Lakewood.

In northern Colorado where Centura’s new facility will chew at the edges, Banner Health and Poudre Valley Health, now part of the growing University of Colorado Health system, are also competing hard for patients. Those systems are vying with new construction, standalone ERs in each others’ back yards, and purchases of physician practices from Fort Collins to Greeley to Loveland. Banner has a pact to provide hospital space for Kaiser Permanente HMO’s northern patient expansion, while Poudre Valley/UCH has linked up with the major insurer Anthem.

A Centura spokesman said the new project is in line with recent trends of hospital staff physicians and adding beds, but the added space provides a chance to practice medicine differently. “Putting primary care, specialists, lab, imaging and other services together in a single location, along with acute care and inpatient services, is going to make a big difference both in terms of convenience and coordination of care,” Centura’s Andrew Wineke. “We call it the ‘health neighborhood’ concept – we want to meet as many of our consumers’ needs as possible at this one location. We expect this new campus will be a model for the rest of Centura Health in the coming years.”

In other southern expansions, Children’s Hospital Colorado will on Monday hold a topping out party for a new inpatient and outpatient branch in Highlands Ranch.

Addictions with the double-whammy of pain pill abuse and anti-anxiety overuse are soaring throughout the U.S., according to a new report from the federal substance abuse agency.

Hydromorphone pills at a local pharmacy (Denver Post, Joe Amon)

Combined use of opiate painkillers and the kind of anti-anxiety, insomnia drugs called benzodiazepine are especially dangerous. The cocktail of bodily depressants can sharply reduce breathing and heart rate, to a factor the user isn’t prepared for.

The federal substance abuse agency SAMHSA said treatment center admissions for addiction to combined opiates and “benzos’ rose nearly six-fold from 2000 to 2010, to nearly 34,000 people. The number of admissions in the “all other” categories rose less than 10 percent over the same period, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

In addition to the dangers for ongoing users, withdrawal from each substance is a great public health danger, agency officials said. Trying to withdraw safely from both at once is a tremendous physical and mental challenge.

The statistics add to a drumbeat of worries over growing misuse of narcotic, opiate-based painkillers. We have written about various state and federal efforts to educate doctors on prescription practices, make better use of a database of all painkiller prescriptions, and to spread availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Some physician groups are making an education push; whether anything translates to new policies in Colorado is still up in the air.

The American Academy of Dermatology is offering tips to help children with eczema, an itchy, dry skin condition that often has no clear cause.

Especially when doctors can’t pinpoint an allergy causing a child’s skin irritation, good skin care is the best option, dermatologists said.

Here are the academy’s best tips to reduce the severity and frequency of eczema flare-ups:

– Bathe your child in warm – not hot – water, and limit the bath time to five or 10 minutes.
– Use mild cleanser, minimally, and never bubble bath.
– Consider twice-per-week baths with bleach, but ask your child’s dermatologist.
– Choose a thick cream or ointment for moisturizer, with no fragance. Consider petroleum jelly.
– Apply moisturizer twice a day, at least.
– Talk to your child’s dermatologist about wrap therapy to reduce swelling and decrease the desire to scratch.
– Keep your child’s fingernails short and smooth.
– Use a laundry detergent for sensitive skin.
– Buy clothes without tags.

The academy also posted a video called “Tips to Help Your Child Feel Better.”

Okay, so not only is Colorado so far behind Alabama in football that we barely play the same game, now it turns out we’re also behind the Sweet Home state in Medicaid research.

University of Alabama-Birmingham researchers have carefully tallied up how many people will join Medicaid under the proposed federal expansion, what it will cost Alabama to administer given the feds’ offer of a 100 percent underwriting, and what the state would get back in new tax money and economic development. That last part is innovative, acknowledging that a new influx of federal money will go to pay doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, supply companies, supply deliverers, even cafeteria workers who will sell more salads and burgers to paying patients.

This is not to argue Colorado should slap together some partisan research claiming the expansion is brilliant. Remember that the federal money doesn’t come out of thin air — it comes out of taxes or debt that we all pay. And a story in our Business section today details some of the little-known tax increases and fees that were part of the Affordable Care Act’s self-financing scheme when it was passed in 2010.

But the Alabama study does show those numbers are available, and should be put out there so we can start arguing about it intelligently. Colorado officials disputed an earlier Kaiser Family Foundation study claiming to show the Medicaid expansion would cost Colorado $858 million in its own funds in the first 10 years of the program. The Hickenlooper administration, though, didn’t offer any alternative with any proof. So state health advocates are operating on just their say-so until the Medicaid division or some other government department comes up with some calculations.

So what did Alabama researchers find? They say a mid-level scenario of the numbers of Alabamans signing up for new Medicaid would generate $20 billion in economic activity for the state. While state costs would be minimal during the first three years when the feds pay 100 percent of new patient costs, the influx of money would generate $935 million in new state tax revenues.

Today’s story on dental care gaps in Colorado tells only a portion of the tale from a deep report by the Colorado Trust and the Health Access Survey.

Regional disparities glare in a new survey on oral health in Colorado (The Colorado Trust)

The trust’s 11-page study plumbs the gaps in great detail. Twice as many people in one region of southwest Colorado, for example, lack dental health insurance as those in Douglas County. About 29 percent of people in Douglas lack oral health insurance, the lowest region outlines, versus more than 60 percent in a region that includes Gunnison, Ouray, Delta, Montrose, San Miguel and Hinsdale counties.

And the insurance status appears directly correlated with who gets their teeth taken care of. It’s not as if there are hordes of extra dentists offering to provide care to those with no insurance. Only about 23 percent of Douglas County residents told the surveyors they had not seen a dentist in the past year. In the San Luis Valley, that no-services rate was just under 51 percent.

Food Safety News

New steps taken to keep poultry safe for eating.

The federal government is taking new steps today to protect people from contaminated chicken and turkey.

Companies that produce raw ground chicken and turkey must reassess their safety plans within the next 90 days, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said today.

Turkey and chicken manufacturers are being targeted because of several salmonella bacteria outbreaks associated with ground poultry. The companies must re-do their “hazard analysis and critical control points” plans, which identify areas of hazard during production.

In today’s notice, federal officials also announced other improvements for food safety:
– Expanding the federal sampling program that randomly tests poultry products for salmonella to include not just ground products but other poultry products.
– Increasing the sample size when testing for salmonella and campylobacter.
– Sampling for the prevalence of salmonella in not-ready-to-eat poultry products and using the results to develop new performance standards for those products.

Federal officials estimate that within two years of the new standards, about 5,000 illnesses caused by campylobacter will be prevented each year and about 20,000 salmonella illnesses will be prevented each year.

The pain of surgery recovery will likely be sweet endurance for a baker’s dozen of patients this week at Porter and Parker Adventist hospitals.

Arthur Kendrick, after double hip replacement donated by doctors and device companies, meets one of the surgical staff during recovery at Porter. (Hospital handout)

Fifty-four year old construction worker Arthur Kendrick was the first patient to undergo surgery this week as part of national Operation Walk, which gives free joint replacements to those with severe limitations but no government insurance program to help them pay. Kendrick, suffering from severe hip arthritis, had both hips replaced by Dr. Todd Miner. Both the devices, which can run tens of thousands of dollars, and the expensive surgeries are donated. Miner is part of Porter’s Center for Joint Replacement.

Kendrick, a former construction inspector, could no longer walk as a result of his pain. Doctors believed he would have had to resort to a wheelchair soon, without the joint replacements.

Operation Walk USA, inspired by similar volunteer and donation efforts in other nations, will do dozens more such surgeries across the country this week. Porter and Parker have another dozen scheduled for a big day this Friday.

We’ll try to get Kendrick on the phone Thursday for a post-op interview.