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4A Daily News – Monday, November 28, 2011 Vitality & health Avoid common breakfast mistakes MCT — Many people start their day with diet blun- ders. Here's how to correct them, with help from Dr. Wayne Andersen, an obesity specialist in Maryland and medical director for Take Shape for Life, a weight loss program: Skipping breakfast... Dieters often use this strategy, but numerous studies have found breakfast eaters are more likely to maintain a healthy weight and make bet- ter food choices throughout the day. Even an unhealthy breakfast is almost always better than no breakfast at all. ... or eating it too late. Don't wait longer than an hour. "Thirty minutes is ideal," Andersen says. Not eating enough protein. You won't stay full long on carbohydrate-rich breakfasts such as sugary cereals or pastries. Choose cereals made from rice, oats, wheat, barley or rye; eggs and low-fat dairy such as yogurt and milk also are good protein sources. Skimping on fiber. Fiber is filling enough to lower your overall caloric intake without leaving you feeling deprived. Choose whole-grain breads and cereals and add fruits and vegetables and a handful of nuts and seeds to staples such as cereal and eggs. Taking in too many — or too few — calories. Most people should aim for roughly 300 to 400 calories per morning meal. Not reading food labels. Compare total calories, pro- tein, fiber, sugar and fat content, and pay attention to serving sizes. Remember that some "healthy" foods such as granola and cereal bars can be very high in sugar and fat. If you're eating at a restaurant, check for nutrition facts via online menus. Drinking too many calories. Fruit juices and energy drinks, along with many flavored coffee creamers, often are packed with sugar. Water and unsweetened green tea are always good choices. CHICAGO (MCT) — When Susan Sadauskas turned her back for a few moments on her 15- month-old son Max, the Ohio mom never imag- ined that the toddler would make his way to the remote control for her stereo, remove its coin- shaped battery and swal- low it. So when she later saw the disassembled device on the coffee table, she didn't think much of it. That changed when Max began to throw up at the dinner table and his parents took him to the emergency room. There staff detected the nickel- sized battery stuck in the boy's esophagus and rushed him to Nationwide Children's Hospital for emergency surgery. "Max was really lucky that we caught it within a two- to three-hour time period so he didn't have any damage to his esoph- agus," said Sadauskas, of Columbus. "But if we had waited, the damage would have been pretty bad." Last year more than 20 children suffered major injuries or died after ingesting button batteries, leading to public aware- ness campaigns this holi- day season. The batteries are often used to power small electronic devices, from remote controls and watches to musical cards and ornaments. Last week, doctors and safety experts joined Illi- nois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to discuss the issue at her annual news conference on the state's Safe Shopping Guide, which compiles information about product recalls. "The battery gets stuck in the esophagus and it starts to discharge its energy and it doesn't take a lot to cause a serious burn," said Dr. Steve Krug, who heads the emergency department at Children's Memorial Hos- pital. "It doesn't seem like a lot of energy, but it's focused in a delicate place." Krug also said that in the majority of cases par- ents do not witness the ingestion, making it hard to connect symptoms including loss of appetite, irritability and vomiting to the problem. The shiny objects are most likely to fitness Button batteries can be fatal to kids MCT photo Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan holds a press conference in Chica- go Nov. 21, about the dangers of button batteries, which are used in every- thing from singing greeting cards to t-shirts to remote control devices that Madigan is inspecting here. be ingested by children age 4 or younger. This year 80 cases of button battery ingestion become popular over the last six years. "They were stronger and had a longer life and HOW TO GET LIST OF RECALLED PRODUCTS Last week, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan unveiled her fifth annual holiday Safe Shopping Guide, listing all the products that have been recalled in 2011, including dozens aimed at children. Although most of the items are no long available on store shelves, many may still be in circulation through secondhand shops and websites like eBay and Craigslist. The 42-page guide is available at illinoisattor- neygeneral.gov or by calling 1-888-414-7678. were reported in Illinois and 3,500 cases national- ly, though authorities believe those numbers represent only a small portion of the actual cases. Ten deaths — none in Illinois — have been associated with ingestion of the batteries since 2008 nationally, Madigan said. All were children. Although the number of battery ingestion inci- dents has held steady in recent years, according to the National Capital Poi- son Center, moderate to fatal outcomes have risen sevenfold since 1985. Michael Wahl, director of the Illinois Poison Control Center, said most of the recent deaths were associated with newer lithium batteries that have you could do more with them," Wahl said. "But they also caused much more injury than the other batteries could." Madigan urged parents to look through the elec- tronic devices in their homes to be sure that bat- teries are in secure com- partments and that no spare batteries are within the reach of children. She herself recently found a button battery on the floor in a playroom in her house after her children brought it home from a Halloween party, she said. Krug has been part of a multi-party discussion — which included the Amer- ican Academy of Pedi- atrics and Consumer Products Safety Commis- sion — aimed at finding What's normal for bloodwork? MCT — Your doctor just wants to run a few tests. But when your bloodwork comes back, you're told the results are "out of the nor- mal range." Should you be alarmed? Laboratory testing is a critical and often mysteri- ous aspect of health care. An estimated 60 to 70 per- cent of the decisions related to diagnosis, treatment and hospital admission are based on samples of blood Red Bluff Garden Club CHRISTMAS BOUTIQUE ALL FRESH WREATHS, ARRANGEMENTS AND MORE and urine, according to the College of American Pathologists website. But very few medical questions can be answered by a single test. The process is also highly variable: Results can depend on fac- tors such as the lab, the instruments used, your age and gender. Moreover, the phrase "normal results" isn't com- monly used because it can be misleading. Instead, for some tests, such as the blood glucose test, labs use what's called a "normal ref- erence interval" or "refer- ence range." These num- bers — the set of values that 95 percent of the normal population falls within — help guide a doctor's inter- pretation of the results. Here are four things you need to know about refer- ence ranges: Q: How are reference ranges established? A: Ranges are set by testing healthy people — those who don't have symp- toms of the disease the test is intended to diagnose. The people whose results are used to determine the refer- ence range will vary based on factors that may include age, gender, ethnicity, geography, season and other variables, said Dr. Harvey Kaufman, senior medical director for Quest Diagnostics. Guidelines from medical associations and peer-reviewed research also can provide the basis for establishing ranges, Kaufman said. Q: Do all labs use the same ranges? 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Cedar & Madison Sts. Red Bluff Dec. 8, 9 & 10 Thu.-Fri.-Sat. High School Scholarships For Custom Wreaths & Designs Call 527-4578 or 526-4578 Former Holiday Market Proceeds go to A: No. "Labs use differ- ent sample populations, testing procedures and equipment," said Kandice Kottke-Marchant, chair of the Pathology and Labora- tory Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic. More than 20 glucose assays (tests) are available com- mercially, and they may all give slightly different results," said Marchant. In addition, "there isn't a one- size-fits-all reference range," Marchant said. Still, if the test is for pregnant women, for example, then pregnant women are used to establish the reference range, and labs are likely to arrive at comparable refer- ences ranges. Q: What does it mean if I fall outside the reference range? A: It doesn't necessarily confirm that you have a medical condition. Instead, the doctor should interpret the result in the context of your overall medical evalu- ation to determine if there is reason for concern, Kauf- man said. In some cases, the doctor may repeat the test. Abnormal test results can occur for a variety of reasons: The specimen was misidentified or mishan- dled, it was collected in the wrong tube, it sat around too long or the results were mixed up. Or perhaps you didn't fast before your glu- cose tolerance test or are taking certain medications. Your individual tests over time — your individ- ual reference range — "will often be a better barometer of disease risk than a score on a reference range estab- lished by testing others," Kaufman said. Q: Do reference ranges reflect optimal health? A: Some groups claim ranges are misleading because they reflect aver- age levels rather than opti- mal levels. But "environ- mental factors do not influ- ence the normal value for most tests, so the optimal and normal ranges are one and the same," said Arthur McTighe, Laboratory Director and Chief of Pathology at Union Memo- rial Hospital in Baltimore. Cholesterol is an exception — a standard optimal range is used for LDL cho- lesterol. If new evidence emerged to the contrary, the ranges would be re- evaluated. Q: How often do labs recalibrate reference ranges? A: In rare cases, a lab might reassess whether more research is needed if new technology emerges or the range for a specific test is slightly different than other labs, said Kaufman. Though uncommon, groups such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Kidney Founda- tion can also request adjust- ments based on current research. solutions to the problem. In June, U.S. Sens. John D. Rockefeller and Mark Pryor introduced a bill that would mandate more safety measures, but it remains in committee. Krug said he advocates a multi-pronged approach that includes public awareness and voluntary actions by industry. "But if voluntary actions don't get us to a solution," he said, "then we'll see what can you achieve through the law." Some sectors of indus- try have already respond- ed. This fall Energizer partnered with the Safe Kids USA network to launch an awareness cam- paign called "The Battery Controlled," and the com- pany is developing new packaging for button- sized batteries that is harder to open. Dr. Kris Jatana operat- ed on young Max Sadauskas as a surgeon with Nationwide Chil- dren's Hospital, and his experience with such cases has turned him into an advocate who has appeared before the Con- sumer Products Safety Commission. He said he also believes in public education and voluntary action. "These are the short- term solutions that we can focus on right now," he says, "but our hope is that there will be a long-term solution for the future and it will save lives."