How to Stop Worrying: Self-Help for Anxiety Relief

How to Stop Worrying: Self-Help for Anxiety Relief

CT and Pet scans have risks

Granted this 2009 article below is new and not officially approved yet, but based on the fact that the EPA office staff wrote back to me that its Federal Guidance and Protection Diagnostic Radiology Report (FGR 9) is thirty years old. Or at least twenty years out of date according to other scientific documentation in BEIR VII since 1990 and needs updating and revision because it does not take all the CT/PET scans fully into account. And a EPA working group with the Interagency Steering Committe on Radiation Standards (ISCORS) plans to discuss the need for reference levels and dose optimization, new dose metrics, guidelines and standards to reduce unnessessary radiation exposure due to increasing medical use. I wonder if any of it has been implemented yet?

Because this article below is so scary, please don't share it with anyone who needs an immediate diagnostic CT or PET scan to save their life unless you are sure doctors will approve a more expensive MRI scan instead. Some doctors think the MRIs show too much "tiny" detail of possible lumps that may never need to be treated in the person's lifetime. Please try to remember the balance and duality of risk vers reward. Its like flipping a coin, heads you win, tails you lose. The luck of the draw. For example, we all love to watch the Olympic winter sports, yet at the same time thousands more young people are taking extreme risks of possible physical or emotional injury while practicing their sport and hoping someday to compete to win a gold metal and the highest honors. Only a very few ever acomplish their goals without significant physical or psychological wounds as they actually risk their life for extreme sport. Everything in life has an up side and a down side, we all need to try to go with the flow up to some point beyond which we may falter or sacrifice too much of oursleves to recover our balance.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Radiology/DiagnosticRadiology/17530

Potential indolent tumors from lifetime repeated low dose radiation exposures

The need to immediately update Radiation Risk Calculations for women and children and specific organs, like the brain. Please ask the EPA to stop procrastinating.

Did you know that the risk of non cancerous complications and benign radiation induced tumors from multiple low dose radiation exposures is 50% higher for women than for men? The most commonly used standard EPA REFERENCE MAN is obsolete. After twenty to thirty year latency periods today the risks are even higher for children, not only because their growing bodies are more vulnerable, but because they hope to live 60-80 years, twice as long as any 30 year old male adult that the now obsolete 1990 REFERENCE MAN was based on starting in the early 1970s after Nixon declared WAR ON CANCER.

I am wondering if the 50% higher impact on women may explain why more than twice as many women have meningioma brain tumors than men and why the most common benign braintumor meningioma is twice as common as the more aggressive glioma brain tumors. Almost a third of middle aged women have benign fibroids which look the same as meningioma cells under a microscope. I was just reading about the thousands of radiation induced abdominal tumors from many multiple Ct scans reported in 2007. Each CT scan is equal to several hundred plain x-rays today. And this is scary and folks used to ignore me when I said the many multiple full mouth dental xrays I had fifty years ago from three different types of dentists contributed to my meningioma brain tumor, plus a decade of cordless analog home phone use before my brain tumor was discovered on the same side of my head that I hold the phone. And I wondered WHY the number of new meningioma brain tumor cases in 2004-2005 was so many more than were anticipated by the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States(www.CBTRUS.org) Now CBTRUS onine reports that meningiomas are 37% of all primary brain tumors, more than twice as many as the 17% more aggressive glioma brain tumors like Sen Ted Kennedy died from recently. Yet there is still no effective chemotherapy agent FDA approved specifically for classic benign, atypical, recurrent or malignant meningiomas.

Did you hear about the reduction in recommended mammograms from the Prevention Task Force? Have you seen the new FDA warning about limiting Ct scans and potential accidental overdoses? Or the recent news story of possible radiation induced benign tumor or cancer from multiple Ct scans in your lifetime? Reducing medical costs for our health care is not the major reason to reduce our total cummulative life time low dose man made diagnostic and therapeutic radiation exposures.

No one wants to scare any of us, but inquiring minds might want to know more about mammograms, if so please go to http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0952-4746/29/2A/S08/
and there are many more research articles in the side bar

It is scary to me that proven results of the 2005 BEIR VII National Academies of Science reports have not been fully implemented by all government agencies to protect the public, especially women and children. In 2008, then Senators Obama and Henry Waxman thought it was important to publically list the additional risk levels for women and children separately as REFERENCE WOMAN and REFERENCE CHILD not just the old obsolete 1990's REFERENCE MAN and wrote to the EPA a short 2 page letter requesting published RAD RISK info for women and children. They were told it was still in the works by former EPA Adninstrator Stephan Johnson who wrote that REFERENCE MAN was totally obsolete in his reply to them.
http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/16-1.pdf

And in October 2009, still nothing has been done by the new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to make the public more aware of the additional vulnerability of women and children and our grandchildren and the higher overall risk for young women, especially pregnant women with their early first trimester fetus at greater risk.
This longer 5 page letter from Honorable Rep Ed Markey MA is the most recent communication I can find, he was requesting a response from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson by Nov, 17, 2009, I do not know if he got one yet,but her EPA office staff could not provide me with a copy of her reply to him and suggested I contact his office, but I am not in his district or state.

http://www.ieer.org/campaign/Markey_102709_epa_radiation_letterfn.pdf

This is a brief summary of the campaign and major talking points for a healthy start RAD protection program for the US
http://www.ieer.org/campaign/talkingpoints2.pdf

You can find more solid information from this organization at http://www.ieer.org

And below are two good background resource articles I found earlier that further document this obsolete and inadequate REFERENCE MAN risk calculator still being used by other government agencies.
http://www.womensenews.org/story/health/071113/reference-man-may-lose-radiation-modeling-job
http://blog.cleveland.com/health/2009/01/feds_too_slow_in_revising_canc.html (This is an article I was prohibited from passing on to our braintrust,org meningioma list because I was told it is too scary. I believe they have a right to know what is going on and I felt an obligation to warn them to be more careful about how many CT scans they have, and would have suggested they ask for MRIs instead)

What can ordinary citizens like you and I do about this issue?

Please contact President Obama, the new Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Massachusetts House Rep Ed Markey with your own thoughts and opinions.

Simply ask them to make sure the most current scientific radiation risk data from BEIR VII 2005 is being used and published in all EPA materials on their website and in FDA medical device warnings about CT scans and in the radiation control standards used by all other government agencies relating to water, soil and air pollution particles from medical and industrial radioactive waste, including old xray equipment in dental offices and local community hospitals and other private medical facilities. Not just more piecemeal political patches and continuous procrastination with long draft revisions being passed around behind the scenes between advisory councils and committees etc as was done in the past. It is not being fully implemented by all other federal and state radiation control agencies like OSHA, FDA, FCC, NIOSH and NTIA hoping not to rock the boat for past administrations and now for the current administration.
The EPA recognized in a private response to me that their Radiation Protection Guidance report for diagnostic medical x rays FRG 9 is now thirty years old and they plan to revise it soon. Isn't that great news? (My sarcasm here) CT scans were not used by most doctors thirty years ago, and now almost every doctor uses them regularly for all their patients. And the federal and state government agencies responsible have still not solved the long term storage and transportion issues of removing radioactive waste from military, medical and industrial uses. How long has congress been discussing, debating and procrastinating on Yucca Mountain storage possiblities? And now they want to fund more nuclear reactors because we need more electricity, IMHO they like boys are playing with fire.

You can also copy your request and opinions to other Energy and Commerce Committee leaders, the Honorable Chairman Henry Waxman, the Honorable Joe Barton and the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment leader, the Honorable Fred Upton.

For congressional contact information go to www.congress.org or use the congressional widget located on my blog page. The mailing address for EPA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. is:

Administrator Lisa P. Jackson HQ
Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Bldg
1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20460
HQ Phone 202-564-4700 Fax her office at 202-501-1450
To send email: Jackson.LisaP@epa.gov

A support Healthcare, not Warfare Fax to your elected officals

http://pdamerica.org/misc/RESOLUTION%20LANGUAGE.pdf

Ask our US Congress to pass Health care for all Americans, not endless warfare in other countries.

Meningioma fatality or insurance company death panel?

Please read all about the real Norma Rae, you can google her name for a ton of articles about her life, her work, her marriages and her children and her fight for the working poor, especially women in this country, remember cute Sally Fields as the female union organizer in the movie?
The real Norma Rae, Crystal Lee Sutton died two years after being told she had a meningioma, turned out to be a malignant brain tumor. For more information you can start right here

http://www.crystalleesutton.com/tn_article.html

MORE HEALTH CARE, NOT MORE WARFARE

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi

I'm ready to win this time, first I was told it was all in my head, then in 1992-3 congress ignored all women including me and Hillary, then one dotor ridiculed me by calling me a brain tumor damaged survivor and a naive pathetic pawn of the evil feminists. Now I am being asked
not to write any political comments and personal suspicions about longterm brain radiation injury are too scary. LOL I'm an old lady, I wouldn't scare anyone lol
I was asked not to write even about vital changes underway in our health care system on the main serious meningioma www.brain trust.org email list, but really everything is political, especially the safe non-invasive drug I use to control meningioma tumor regrowth instead of radiation treatment.

After reading the October 2009 "Thats Outrageous" article in Readers Digest about the
billions in waste, abuse and fraud in our current health care system. Eliminating waste fraud and abuse of the health care system saves60 billion a year lost to fraudulent practices and scam artists.

I think if they water down the current bill without any additional coverage option for unemployed, self employed, private contractors, and small business owners, it will not bring costs down or be worth voting for. We have to get some public government plan passed and get a bulk discount for common drugs from pharma and
so we could see from elected officials vote where they stand, whether they are seriously voting for ordinary peoples best interst instead of their own. Medicare even made payments to deceased doctors in some medical scams and we all end up paying for expensive emergency room care unless everyone can sign up for a primary care center. Some doctors and ERs are recommending defensive excessive medical tests to avoid lawsuits from patients and some professionally criminal doctors who scare people into unneccessary expensive and dangerous procedures.

We can win with HR 676 with either a single payer to private providers or a public option for an affordable health care plan like Medicare for the working class who want to sign up. We have been paying all elected politians, 2 million federal employees and public policy decision makers billions for years
to recommend national plans and cost effective public health maangement issues for twenty years and this information as been available to all. This is not rushing into anything new. Approximately 40% of Americans get federal health care, Medicare, medicaid or VAMilitarycare or SCHIPS childrens health care already, extending a public option to currently unemployed and working adults who do not get it as a benefit with their job, (mostly low paid women workers and hourly part timers or independent contractors)will not bankrupt the private insurance industry.

Please read the bill HR 676 and read the list of your house members who supported it early on and have now backed down for some reason, compare that with how they voted on endless war supplmental funding,the bailout funding and stimulus package.
If they voted to use our tax dollars to save Wall street firms with bonuses and big banks and the insurance giant AIG and the auto makers plus package to big government spending, they are just not voting for ordinary working people, or the least of these without a job that currently lack health care coverage.

IF they are still voting for the special corporate interests that got them elected, if they can stay in for two terms they get life time benefits and retirement plans while the poor and unemployable like me who can not help them in return get nothing. Not an end to the deadly military guerilla fighting abroad that kills so many innocent civilians,destroys their communities, and not even decent health care for our legal citizens and their family members here, if they ever get really sick.

Affordable care must be an option for all those wise enough to realize they need to have coverage in case of emergencies or serious illness. We pay for all the others anyway, no one gets turned away at the emergency room, or charity hospitlas, but that is a very expensive way to provide health care and it denies prompt ER treatment to tax paying insured citizens, if the uninsured can have access to a local public clinic or urgent care center we would all have saved everyone some money.

From what I have read so far, I think HR 676 is the best bill to attempt to provide national health care coverage for Americans that guarantees the Patient Bill OF Rights and has:

a .No exclusions for pre-existing conditions,
b. Guarantees access to essential services and benefits,
including appropriate cognitive rehabilitation for stroke, any brain injury etc
c. Places limits on cost sharing and provides drug discounts
d. Satisfactory local or out of network provider services for specific specialityfor brain tumors and other specialists and home nursing care if they need it
e. No annual or lifetime limits on coverage
f. Consumer protections, medical minimium standard regulations and more public
transparent accountability to eliminate medical errors and poor quality service.

I hope some of these issues will be effective immediately, but if we don't speak up none of them will happen for 3 or 4 years on a good day, if they pass some bill.

Basic coverage of cognitive rehabilitation for brain injury has been recently implemented by United Health Care and Anthem Insurance Companies, Anthem Health Plans, Anthem BC/BS and we need to make sure it is added to TRICARE for our returning service members and included in our national public plan to foster improved behavioral remediation especially for younger adults surviving tramatic brain injury and maternity care for pregnant young women and reproductve rights for all women. IF men can get viagra included for themselves,they ought to give women the pills they need to protect themselves.
To see more legislative brain injury issues and take action
You can go to http://capwiz.com/bia/issues/

I have not met anyone who pays as much in monthly premiums as my husband and I.
I suspect no health plan will come or be implemented soon enough to help us, there maybe a few years before it takes effect even if it passes this fall. Now my husband pays 24,000 a yr for both our good private individual plans, mine is $960 a month from United Health care and his Aetna is up to $1235.00 a month in October 2009 which is triple what we paid ten years ago, He had to change his Aetna to a $5000 deductibe in order to get back under $1000 a month premium. the investigational, off-label use of Mifepristone=Mifeprex to control meningioma regrowth is not covered by any prescription coverage plan and costs him $6,000 a year which is triple what it cost just four years ago. The first time I took it for three years in the 90's it was free in a NCI SWOG trial. and United Health Care dropped all my prescription coverage years ago.

Rising medical health care costs have made the current private insurance system unaffordable for most middle class American couples, no kids at home and no family plan for us, because my tumor condition and between 55 and 65,self-employed with pre existing conditions. (Oh who can afford $30,000 a year to buy a brand new car??)for health insurance, when we are both healthy right now. He never had a heart attack, but had a stent put in near his heart about six years ago as a preventative measure after one of those high priced corporate executive physical exams before he switched jobs

Its how how we spend money, its about regional geographic variations in medical costs
differences in retail medical costs without insurance, and health insurance
discount contracts for large companies and unions etc high specialty costs, or generalists costs, money is fungible, but the radiation doctors are getting rich and often they do not care for their own patients in the infusion centers or radiation treatment rooms.

Dr Andrew Weil, a famous Az doc of nutrition writes most radiation docs make a million a year, while primary care docs and general surgeons often make only enough to cover their office costs and malpractice insurance, not real profits. I think we could do the math and balance the medical\hospital costs more evenly if we wanted to by averaging regional differences state by state. SOme states cost much less, but opening up the state systems to giant corporations without having any anti trust laws seems stupid to me. Unless ironically it may mean someday we will all owe our souls to the comapny store all over again.

(This is my original rough draft, if you send me your comments I may be able to revise anything that seems offense to someone else, at least I have found my own voice again and have been able to speak up loud enough to be heard. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR

Mary Lauder's experience in Australia

http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_11_031207/lan10997_fm.html