Tuesday, December 10 - Christmas countdown!

A very good chilly morning to all,
We have a fresh skiff of sleet on the patio this morning but work must go on! The Center and schools in Central Arkansas are retuning to normal this morning. A heartfelt thanks to those who held the fort at the Center, schools, and facilities around the state during the storm. Sometimes we are so engrossed in our own world we forget those who sacrifice and stay on the job!
It is hard to believe Christmas is 15 days away! There is a short shopping season this year. I saw yesterday there are only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas for shopping. Now that our local retailers have lost 4 more days due to ice, it will be crucial to attract customers. Hopefully that will translate into savings for consumers. No doubt the popularity of on-line shopping impacts small businesses. I have bought the majority of my gifts on line for several years. What is not to love about buying items with no sales tax and having them delivered to my front door? I save the 10% sales tax plus the cost of gas!
Stay warm, dry and check on each other!
Dr. Janet

Great dental article

(CNN) -- For all intents and purposes, we really get only one shot to take care of our teeth.
The good news is, science and research have taken a front seat in dental education, making today's dentist savvy on "prevention" dentistry rather than the "drill, fill and bill" mentality of decades ago.
Things like adhesive dentistry, recalcification and dental implants have given dentists more options. But for many patients, it's a lot of information to process.
Here are five ways you can ensure that you hang on to your teeth as you age:


Educate yourself on dental care
Dentistry today has taken a much more conservative approach. But it can be hard to know what your options are. Here are some key points that you should know about dental treatment.
• Small cavities can be recalcified. Strong doses of fluoride, or something called MI Paste, applied directly to small cavities can actually recalcify or rebuild the enamel, removing the need for a filling.

That said, the key to recalcification is early detection. Regular dental visits and staying on top of your annual X-rays are crucial to early detection.
• Fillings, crowns or any dental restoration should be replaced or heavily scrutinized every eight years, as recommended by the American Dental Association.
Some patients are of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" era. But the reasoning behind this advice is to eliminate the spread of recurrent cavities that lurk under dental restorations.
The longer you wait to replace dental restorations, the more problems you can run into. If the decay spreads undetected, it may eat up too much healthy tooth structure and need the support of a crown or reach the nerve and need a root canal.
• Make sure your children are getting fluoride treatments until at least the age of 15. Kids, especially, consume a lot of sugar, which breaks down into a biproduct of acid that erodes teeth, quickly causing cavities. Fluoride is a great treatment in rebuilding enamel and neutralizing those acids.
Use an electric toothbrush
In dentistry, the electric toothbrush has been one of the biggest advances in home dental care. Ninety-nine percent of patients don't really know how to brush with a manual brush and, more important, don't brush for the full two minutes needed.

Electric toothbrushes remove the confusion and have a timer to ensure that the full brushing is done at each session. Improper brushing can lead to plaque buildup, swollen gums, cavities and overall poor oral health. The sonic brushes remove plaque and get into hard-to-reach places like in between teeth and under the gums to ensure a healthy mouth.
If you grind or clench, wear a night guard
Grinders can wear away a millimeter of tooth structure per year if undiagnosed. Clenchers may not see any immediate signs of wear on their teeth, but the pressure that clenching puts on your teeth is destructive. It slowly breaks down the supporting bone around the teeth, leading to gum recession, bone loss and inevitably tooth loss.
If you feel that you may fall into either of these categories, you should be wearing a night guard. It may not be sexy, but it's much sexier than missing teeth.
Know what oral hygiene regimen is right for you
Today, there has been a lot of money and research into better oral care products. But understand that there is an actual regimen of toothpaste, mouth rinse and "extra-care" products that's right for you.
The first step is defining what "type" of patient you are. I like to break it down into four basic types: cavity-prone, sensitive, stainers and those with bad gums.

You can ask your dentist which category you fall into. Each product in the sea of dental products in the drugstore has key ingredients tailored for each category of patient. Using the right oral care products can make a big difference in the longevity of your teeth.
Choose the right dentist
Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- your dentist has a lot to do with the preservation of your teeth. Make sure your dentist is up on all current research and his office is updated and state-of-the-art, but most important, make sure your dentist is taking time and looking after you. It sounds simple, but it's probably the most important item on your checklist.

December 8 a Happy Monday

Good morning friends,
I am ready for spring! Can you believe it is not even winter yet and we are still thawing from this ice storm? Main streets are in good shape around Central Arkansas but side streets still have ice patches. Any place with tree coverage, shade or coverage is still dangerous. Calling off school was a good idea as sidewalks are still treacherous and falls are a liability.
If you are getting cabin fever, it should warm up nicely this afternoon and travel should be safe.
As you may have noticed, I have posted multiple items for the past few days, be sure to scroll down to keep updated.
Stay warm and check on each other,
Dr. Janet

Weather update from my corner of the world

Hello everyone,
It is after noon here in Saline County and only 26 degrees. I don't think we will make the 39 the weatherman promised. Margaret, what is it like in Paragould? Dina, give us a report from Conway.
We had what I call frozen fog this morning. It did make the drive wet again which looked very slippery. I am really getting cautious in my old age- I refuse to venture out and take a chance on falling. I remember what that felt like!
We had a couple of hours of sunshine yesterday and I went out. Parking lots were a mess but roads were passable. No word as of yet on school for tomorrow. I really hope it is in session. I really hate going into June!
Take care, stay arm and check on each other!
Dr. Janet

Sunday tech tidbit

We have been promised a so-called paperless office and home for many years, but it has never quite happened. Printers, photocopiers, scanners and even fax machines still play a role in many of our working lives, although they feel more 20th century by the day.

Perfect OCR can “read” a scanned document and save it as text.
But with the right mobile apps, you should be able to eliminate some of that paper and use some of those devices less. Document scanner apps can capture an accurate image of a paper document, save it securely as a PDF, email it and in some cases even recognize the printed text.

Readdle’s Scanner Pro, $7 on iOS, is perhaps the best app for quickly scanning and saving a digital version of a paper document. The interface is easy to use, showing you a preview image of documents you have scanned so you can easily choose the document you want to work with.

The app automatically detects the edge of the paper, then rotates and straightens the image. Adjusting the image quality to make the text easier to read is easily done by changing brightness and contrast with simple sliders. When you are ready to save your document image, you can keep a color version, a grayscale version or a pure black-and-white version. Clicking the Done button creates an archived image file. You can share the image file by email, print it out, store it in cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive or send it to another app like a word processor.

Scanner Pro is feature-rich, but also reliable, simple and works well. It is expensive, however.

Genius Scan, free on iOS, is very similar. Its interface looks different but it has the same straightforward and businesslike feel that Scanner Pro has. This app has a few extras, like the ability to tag documents with keywords to make it easier to search by type of document, like scanned receipts. It also has Wi-Fi sharing of scanned files, which makes it easy to transfer scans to a PC connected to the same wireless network.

But navigating its interface requires many more taps than Scanner Pro’s. And for the ability to export files to Dropbox, use wireless AirPrint printouts and banish ads, you must pay $3 for the “plus” edition.

A great Android app to try is Mobile Doc Scanner, which captures images and automatically aligns them, as Genius Scan and Scanner Pro do. This app stands out from many other Android apps for its interface design.

Mobile Doc Scanner is also excellent at cleaning up the images of documents you have captured so you can see the text better. There are many preset options, like noise removal or color inversion (which is good for color documents with white text). You can save the image as a PDF and send the documents over email as PDFs or zipped files.

The app does suffer from a somewhat complex menu system, however, and sometimes it is not clear what the control icons do. There is a free “Lite” edition you can try, though it has ads and adds watermarks to every scanned file. The $1 version is more useful.

If you need a scanning app that can identify the text in a scanned document, a good option is Perfect OCR, $4 on iOS. It captures a photo of a document much as the other apps here do, but it doesn’t save a simple image of the document. Instead, you press the OCR button and the app automatically recognizes the text for you and stores it as text. For plain black text on white, this works well, and I have found that it can successfully identify most words if you are careful when scanning the document.

The app does make mistakes. You will often need to manually fix a word or two in a sentence. This can be time-consuming, and if you have scanned an important document, the onus is on you to make sure the app has read the words correctly.

The final text file is saved in the app, or it can be sent as an email with just a couple of clicks.

On Android, the Google Drive app can perform some excellent document scanning tricks. It can also export scanned and image-enhanced files as PDFs, and it even recognizes text using Google’s systems over the Internet. This app has the advantages of Google’s cloud storage system, but it’s not necessarily the easiest app to use. And you need to open your files in a separate app to edit them.

Hopefully you will find that these apps reduce your paper burden a little. And remember: Don’t just throw away paper documents you have scanned — put them in the recycling bin.

Quick Calls

Amazon’s Kindle e-reader app for Windows Phone 8 has been updated with some fixes and new features. It restarts more quickly after you leave the app and return, and your reading progress can be displayed in the Live Tile. If you haven’t tried using your Windows Phone as an e-reader, now is a good time.

Healthy gift ideas

Subject: Article from Fox News Health 2013 12 07

If someone you love is trying to lose weight, you want to support his or her efforts to get healthy. And the holiday is no exception. In fact, giving a healthy gift is a wonderful way to show anyone how much you care, and there are great options in every price range. Here are some gifts I think nearly anybody would love to receive this season, whether or not they are trying to lose weight-and a few you should skip. Best: Gourmet goodies You can spend as much as you'd like, or less than $20 on one or a basket of nutrient-rich healthful treats. My favorites include: fresh organic fruit, nuts, extra virgin olive oil, herbs and spices, organic teas, or even heirloom seeds for planting a garden.Health.com: 16 Ways to Lose Weight Fast Worst: Unhealthy treats It should be obvious that a box of chocolates or cookies is a poor choice for someone who is watching his or her weight. Even if you think they might want to splurge a bit for the holidays, there will be plenty of options at the office holiday party or just about anywhere else. You may have the best of intentions, but such a gift may be perceived as undermining their get-healthy efforts. Best: Kitchen gadgets There are a number of kitchen tools I rely on to craft healthy meals that make terrific gifts. Higher end options include a crock pot and wok (both about $75-100), and in the mid-range ($25-50) a water filtering pitcher or iced tea maker. Great choices under $25 include a zester, oil mister, citrus juicer, vegetable steamer, and avocado slicer. Health.com: Best Superfoods for Weight Loss Best: Cooking class For $50-150 you'll find a wide variety of healthy cooking classes at culinary schools and gourmet markets across the country. (They even offer them at Whole Foods.) Options include classes on very specific dishes, like vegan soup, or based on cuisine, such as Mediterranean meals, or focused on various benefits, like anti-inflammatory eating. And to spend more quality time with your friend or family member, you can purchase a spot for yourself, so you can attend together. Worst: A scale I think we can all agree that unless a friend or family member specifically asks for one, it's never ever OK to give a bathroom scale as a holiday gift (unless you're looking for a quick way to end the relationship!). Health.com: 25 Surprising Ways to Lose Weight Best: Fitness or activity gear If someone you love is already involved in a specific activity, such as walking or gardening, it's a nice idea to get them some of the gear that supports that activity. For example, a well-made pair of gardening gloves, pedometer, resistance bands, or watchband (if they don't already have one), are thoughtful and will be appreciated. Just steer clear of anything that seems like a hint to get more exercise: If they don't currently lift weights, skip the dumbbells or CrossFit gear. Best: Nutritious gift certificates I know that gift certificates or gift cards may seem impersonal, but when they're for a healthy restaurant or food market, they're one of my favorite gifts to receive. When I'm shopping or ordering, and not footing the bill myself, I tend to try new things, which really is a treat. And when I give this gift, I love it when friends tell me the same, especially when they fall in love with something new. For example, one bought an exotic spice she'd always wanted to try but never did, which immediately became a how-did-I-ever-live-without-this staple. Best: Weight-loss membership or products Unless they specifically ask for it, avoid getting a gym membership, signing them up for a weight-loss program, or anything targeted to shed pounds.Health.com: 20 Snacks that Burn Fat Best: Useful knowledge In addition to a magazine subscription like Health, you can also bestow expert advice. I've had people order my services for others as gifts, like a coaching session or grocery store tour, and there are lots of wellness-oriented resources that make wonderful gifts, from A-Z superfood guides to yoga videos and guided meditation CDs. Cynthia Sass is a registered dietitian with master's degrees in both nutrition science and public health. Frequently seen on national TV, she's Health's contributing nutrition editor, and privately counsels clients in New York, Los Angeles, and long distance. Cynthia is currently the sports nutrition consultant to the New York Rangers NHL team and the Tampa Bay Rays MLB team, and is board certified as a specialist in sports dietetics. Her latest New York Times best seller is S.A.S.S! Yourself Slim: Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds and Lose Inches. This article originally appeared on Health.com. 

Saturday - post #2. Cost of a healthy diet (scroll down for post 1)

Eating right really does cost more, according to a new review study that analyzed diet and price information from 10 countries.

People who eat a very healthy diet, like one rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts and fish, end up spending about $1.50 more per day, on average, than those who eat a less healthy diet, like one focused on processed foods, meats and refined grains, the study found.

That adds up to about $550 extra dollars yearly for those who eat healthy, a cost that could represent a real burden for some families, said study researcher Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor at Harvard School of Public Health. "We need policies to help offset these costs," Mozaffarian said in a statement. [12 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget]

However, Mozaffarian pointed out that the price of healthy eating is small compared with the lifetime cost of diet-related chronic diseases (such as diabetes and heart disease), which a recent study estimated cost $393 billion per year in the Untied States, or $1,200 per year for each person.

The price of healthy diets

People often say that healthy diets are more expensive, but "until now, the scientific evidence for this idea has not been systematically evaluated, nor have the actual differences in cost been characterized," said study researcher Mayuree Rao, also of Harvard.

For their new study, the researchers analyzed information from 27 previous studies. The majority (52 percent) were conducted in the United States, but some took place in Canada, Europe, South Africa, Japan, Brazil or New Zealand. Researchers evaluated differences in food cost per serving, as well as per 200 and per 2,000 calories. They compared prices for foods in the same food category (such as low fat and full fat milk), as well as prices for overall diets.

The greatest price differences were seen in meats and proteins, in which healthy versions of the foods cost about 30 cents more per serving, and 47 cents more per 200 calories, on average, than less healthy versions.

Healthy diets, like the Mediterranean diet, cost $1.48 more per day, or $1.54 more per 2,000 calories, than less healthy diets. When the researchers considered only studies conducted in the United States, the results were similar: healthy diets cost $1.49 more per day, and $1.79 more per 2,000 calories.

Reducing food cost

Some healthy foods, like lean beef and skinless chicken, may cost more because they require food manufacturers to do more processing, the researchers said.

But unhealthy diets may also cost less because food policieshave focused on producing inexpensive, high-volume commodities. This has led to a system that favors sales of highly processed foods, the researchers said.

Creating a system that instead supports the production, transportation and marketing of healthier foods may increase their availability and reduce prices, the researchers said.

The study is published Dec. 5 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Open.

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