Imagine a sock that makes your feet not only look nicer but smell better. Teaneck-based Aetrex Worldwide Inc. has.

The 60-year-old foot-care products company said Thursday that within the next month, it will introduce its Copper Sole Sock designed to fight bacteria that causes fungus and odor.

In addition, the socks are essentially seamless, meaning there is no raised seam that can cause an irritation that could be potentially dangerous to diabetics.

The sock taps into the antimicrobial properties of copper for its innovative therapeutic benefits, according to Donille Perrone, Aetrex’s marketing director.

Cupron fibers derived from copper are weaved into the sole of the sock, and that fiber has been found to eliminate 99.9 percent of bacteria and fungi that are the leading cause of athlete’s foot, she said.

The copper fiber remain active for as long the sock is worn, she added.

Moreover, Perrone added, “Copper ions are one of the only technologies presently available that actually improves the appearance of the skin.”

Thus wearers could find red, blotchy irritations caused by fungus disappearing after wearing the socks, she said.

Perrone explained that many diabetics suffer from a condition called neuropathy, which dulls feeling in the foot and can lead to ulcerations.

Copper Sole Socks have no seams and therefore don’t cause irritation, she said.

“There are not too many socks that are safe for people with diabetes but this is one of them,” she noted.

Dr. John M. Galant, a podiatrist in Tenafly, said he couldn’t vouch for copper’s therapeutic values because he was unaware of them. But a seamless sock would be beneficial to a diabetic, he said.

Aetrex said its claims are backed up by medical evidence.

In a 2004-05 study, according to a statement released by the company, a doctor tracked the foot health of 51 patients, including 21 with diabetes.

The study showed that patients wearing Copper Sole Socks had “significant improvement in the appearance and texture of their skin, particularly around their toes and the soles of their feet,” the company said.

Perrone said a pair of Copper Sole Socks will cost $10 to $20, and will be available in sport and dress style. The company expects to one day sell the socks in large sporting goods stores and pharmacies, she said.

Meanwhile they can be purchased on the company’s Web site at foot.com.

“It’s no ordinary sock,” she said.

“It’s by far the healthiest sock you could wear.”

***

E-mail: prial@northjersey.com

(c) 2006 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

That is why groups all over the country are working to advance legislation to require prosthetic coverage. These bills have already passed in six states. It is time for Utah to take action to protect the needs of people with limb loss. Data have shown that prosthetic parity actually results in a savings in medical costs. I urge people to contact their legislators to push for a prosthetic coverage bill.

Tami Stanley

Orem

(c) 2006 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Nov. 9–Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the Star on Nov. 7.

Holly Bergay wouldn’t mind seeing herself on a Wheaties box or on the side of a McDonald’s cup.

She’s got her sights set firmly on the Olympics, though it’s rare for equestrians to garner the kind of exposure that lands them on cereal boxes.

When Holly runs through equestrian exercises on an autumn evening as the sun sets, it’s easy for the casual onlooker to miss the precise nature of the dressage techniques she uses.

Her mount, Lilly, appears to skip and dance as she moves gracefully around the arena.

It’s also easy to miss the most unusual aspect of the show, which is that Holly has no left hand or lower arm.

Holly, a 14-year-old dressage champion many times over who lives on the far Northeast Side, has never taken part in a disabled competition since she began competing as a 7-year-old.

For the past four years, she’s worked under the tutelage of Pat Baker-Hutter, a trainer, instructor and licensed dressage judge willing to work with a rider who has a physical challenge.

Last weekend, she went to the state championships in Scottsdale, where she was named third-level state champion and second-level reserve champion, and she twice won third-level musical freestyle.

And for the first time, she’s working toward qualifying for a competition for physically disabled athletes. The U.S. Paralympics Team already is scouting her for the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, though she can’t begin sending scores to them for another year.

In the near term, Holly hopes to make the Junior Team of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, which is for ages 14 to 16, before moving on to the federation’s Young Riders category for ages 16 to 21.

Sometime during those years, she plans to compete as a Paralympian — “She doesn’t discount that at all,” said her mother, Mary Bergay — before eventually heading off to the Olympics, she hopes.

She would like to become the first disabled rider to compete in the main Olympics, she said.

Holly says riding dressage with one hand is a blessing in some ways. A lot of dressage — a nonverbal form of communication between horse and rider which, if done properly, appears as if the rider isn’t doing anything — requires keeping both hands steady, and Holly doesn’t have to worry about that second hand becoming jittery, she said.

Sometimes kids ask what happened to her arm, and she tells them a shark bit it off before she tells the truth, which is that she was born that way, she said.

She sporadically wore a prosthetic lower arm until she was 8 and decided she didn’t want it anymore.

“I wore it for show and tell and that was it,” she said.

“She’d dig in the sand with it. It was a $20,000 arm,” her mother said.

Holly’s youth and attitude inspire other riders who see her, said fellow dressage rider Carol Bratt, 52, who first saw Holly about six years ago at a show.

“I was very new at it. It was my very first show,” Bratt said.

First she noticed how young Holly was, and then that she was riding an Arabian — the same kind of horse Bratt was riding. Then she noticed Holly’s left arm.

“The horse just seemed to be completely listening and complying and performing for his little girl,” Bratt said. Holly said that’s exactly what she’s shooting for when she competes.

“It’s really empowering. When you’re up there, and the horse is really going to its full potential and you’re doing everything right that you can, it’s a powerful feeling.”

–Send story ideas about people or happenings in the Foothills or Tanque Verde Valley to Shelley Shelton at sshelton@ azstarnet.com or call 434-4078.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:MCD,

Lately I’ve noticed many products in the grocery store show more fruit and vegetables on the label than exist in the products themselves. “Juice” drinks, “strawberry” cereal, “fruit” chews and “vegetable” chips often have less nutrition than the pictures on their labels would lead you to believe.

One really tricky item I found is a “juice drink” that comes in a bottle plastered with delicious-looking berries and other fruit. Only after allowing my daughter to have one did I read the small print: “contains 5% juice.”

Far be it from me to make any accusations, but if the print used for “5% juice” were any smaller you’d need the Hubble Space Telescope to read it.

Given that we want our kids to eat more fruits and vegetables, what’s a well-meaning parent to do? It would be great if little Johnny or Sally craved nothing but apples and carrots, but let’s be real: In today’s world of big-budget advertising and focus group testing, they’re more likely to crave apple-”flavored” cereal than the apples themselves.

Though food companies don’t have to follow guidelines for the pictures they use on packaging, they are bound by law to the descriptive words used on their labels.

The words used to promote food products have specific meanings, and getting to know them can help you make better choices for your family. And don’t worry … in most cases, a magnifying glass is not needed to read them.

Here are some of the most commonly used words on food labels, and what they really mean:

Free (fat-free, calorie-free, etc.): This means that the amount of a particular nutrient (fat or calories in these examples) is so small it probably won’t have any affect on your body.

Low: This term is specific to the item it describes. For instance, a low-fat item includes 3 grams of fat or less per serving; a low-sodium item provides 140 milligrams or less of sodium per serving.

Reduced: This is used to describe a food that contains 25 percent less calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol or sodium than a comparable non-reduced food.

Light or Lite: These describe a food that has one-third fewer calories or 50 percent less fat than the original version.

Good source: This phrase describes a food that contains 10 to 19 percent of the daily value (the amount we need every day based on a 2,000-calorie diet) of a particular nutrient. Example: “100% whole wheat bread is a good source of fiber.”

High or An excellent source of: These are used to describe a food that contains at least 20 percent of the daily value of a particular nutrient. Example: “High in Vitamin C” or “An excellent source of calcium.”

Healthy: This describes a food that is low in fat and saturated fat, contains less than 60 milligrams of cholesterol and 480 milligrams of sodium, and provides at least 10 percent of the daily value of vitamins A and C, calcium, iron, protein and fiber. Fruits and vegetables can be labeled healthy, even if they fall short in one or more of these nutrient categories.

Paying attention to the descriptive terms on food packaging can help you make smarter choices for your family. Don’t be duped — like yours truly — into a beautiful-looking but less-than- healthful product when alternatives are available.

It’s the content of the book, not its cover, that counts.

Steve Baldwin, M.S., R.D., is a nutrition network project director with the Hawthorne School District’s Nutrition Network Center. He can be reached at stbaldwin@hawthorne.k12.ca.us.

(c) 2006 Daily Breeze. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

HEALTHY eating habit can help prevent pre-diabetes, which is caused by, among others, damage to pancreas, writes MUSTAFFA EMBONG

People with pre-diabetes have higher-than-normal blood glucose levels (although not quite as high as in those with diabetes).

These individuals are very likely to also have high blood pressure, high blood lipids (fats in the blood) and are usually overweight or obese.

The combination of these undesirable conditions not only significantly increases the risk of developing full-blown diabetes but also of having heart attack or stroke.

Fortunately, according to studies in China, US and Finland, pre- diabetes (and its associated problems) can be managed, if not reversed, through healthy eating, regular exercise and healthy weight management.

We looked at how a healthy lifestyle can beat pre-diabetes by overcoming an associated condition called Insulin Resistance (IR).

Let’s explore how healthy eating can help in managing another related condition called hyper-insulinaemia, or excessive insulin in the blood (resulting from excessive production by the pancreas).

Is your pancreas overworked?

When food is converted into glucose and the level of the glucose rises in the blood, the pancreas (an organ situated behind the stomach) starts to release more insulin into the blood stream.

This means there is enough to effectively help transport the glucose into your body cells, especially that of muscles and liver.

The amount of insulin that’s produced starts coming down as more and more glucose leaves the bloodstream and enters the body cells.

If you have pre-diabetes, however, things don’t quite go this way.

Due to IR (Insulin Resistance), glucose is not able to readily enter the body cells and tends to stay and accumulate in your blood.

As a natural response, your pancreas keeps producing even more insulin, in the hope that it can encourage more glucose to enter your body cells.

Just how effective this is depends on the degree of your IR. But the fact remains that insulin is being over-produced. The result is hyper-insulinaemia or excessive insulin in the blood.

Quite like high blood glucose levels, some researchers believe that high insulin concentrations by itself could actually damage the blood vessels.

But more evidently, hyper-insulinaemia is a warning sign that your pancreas is becoming seriously overworked.

If you do nothing to manage your pre-diabetes, your IR may get worse, your blood glucose levels may keep rising and, all the while, your pancreas will suffer tremendous stress.

By the time you develop full-blown diabetes, your pancreas would already be all tired out.

In fact, studies have suggested that by the time you develop Type 2 diabetes, your pancreas would have lost up to 50 per cent of its capacity to produce insulin.

And give yourself a few more years of neglect after that, your pancreas might just give up on you altogether.

When this happens, you’ll soon find yourself needing to take insulin injections to keep your blood glucose levels under control.

Pancreas-friendly eating tips

Since your blood glucose levels are greatly influenced by your diet, here are a few eating tips to avoid overloading your pancreas.

* Know your carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates come in two major groups: complex and simple. Complex carbohydrates are found in grains, cereals and tubers.

Simple carbohydrates come in the form of sucrose (white, brown or red cane sugar), fructose (fruit sugar) and lactose (milk sugar). Your body converts such foods into glucose to supply you with energy.

* Choose healthy carbohydrates.

Complex carbohydrate foods (eg rice, noodles, bread, other cereal products and tubers) are recommended sources of energy.

Even though complex carbohydrates are broken down into simple sugars, this is done more slowly resulting in slower absorption from your digestive system.

This in turn leads to a slower rise of glucose levels in your blood, thus giving time for your pancreas to adequately response to the glucose rise.

Fruits and milk, although containing simple carbohydrates, are also encouraged because they are rich in vitamins and minerals.

Sweetened food and drinks, however, should be minimised or avoided as these cause your blood glucose levels to rise quickly and they usually do no confer much nutritional benefit.

* Go high with fibre.

A type of complex carbohydrate, fibre is the undigestible portion of plant foods.

Natural sources of fibre include unrefined complex carbohydrate foods, legumes (eg peas and lentils), fruits and vegetables.

It’s important to note, however, that not all processed carbohydrate foods are high in fibre. Most polished rice varieties and ordinary white sandwich bread, for example, contain almost no insoluble fibre.

This has prompted certain health-conscious manufacturers to develop innovative methods to retain, restore or even increase the amount of fibre in their products.

* Consume low-GI carbohydrate foods.

GI or ‘Glycaemic Index’ is a measure of how quickly or slowly your body converts the carbohydrates in a particular food into glucose and releases it into your bloodstream.

While this is not the only consideration when choosing your carbohydrate foods, low GI varieties are obviously the better choice when you have pre-diabetes.

You must of course, pay particular attention on the amount you take as even low GI foods, if taken in excess will also increase in blood glucose levels.

* Eat sensibly and space out your carbohydrates.

Having pre-diabetes does not mean that you should go on a low carbohydrate diet.

You merely have to eat your carbohydrate foods in sensible and consistent daily amounts, spread over the day.

Some experts may recommend taking frequent but small meals throughout the day so that there is no sudden, sharp rise in your blood glucose levels that your pancreas is not able to cope.

* Cultivate good taste for health.

Besides controlling your carbohydrate intake (and total calorie too, if you are overweight or obese), you need to also keep your intake of high-fat and salty foods to a minimum.

This is to help reduce your high cholesterol and high blood pressure levels, if you have been diagnosed with these.

It might be hard at first on your taste buds but you can be sure that your heart loves the taste of healthy eating.

Overcome IR with a healthy lifestyle

Healthy eating and regular exercise help you manage your body weight - a very important factor when it comes to overcoming Insulin Resistance.

IR is a condition where body cells become less sensitive to the action of the hormone, insulin.

This makes it difficult for glucose to enter the body cells, whereupon it stays in the blood where it rises to harmful levels.

Excessive fat, especially in the belly area, contributes to IR. This may explain why many overweight or obese people (or normal weight people with big belly) develop pre-diabetes.

The good news is that, research has shown that losing just 5-10 per cent of excess body weight markedly improves the body cells’ ability to take up glucose from the blood.

So, if you are overweight or obese and have pre-diabetes, start eating healthily, be physically active or exercising regularly to trim down.

The healthier your body weight, the more likely that your blood glucose levels would have returned to the normal range, reducing your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes or of having a heart attack or stroke.

* Datuk Professor Mustaffa Embong is the Consultant Endocrinologist with the National Diabetes Institute.

Article courtesy of the Fight Against Diabetes programme organised by the National Diabetes Institute in collaboration with the Ministry of Health Malaysia, Nutrition Society of Malaysia, Malaysian Dietitians’ Association and the Malaysian Association for the Study of Obesity. For enquiries, call (03) 5632 3301/5637 3526.

(c) 2006 New Straits Times. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Nov. 13–Although patient survival rates for hospital cardiovascular treatment are on the rise more than 97 percent for all U.S. hospitals cardiovascular disease remains the No. 1 killer in the United States, according to Solucient. If peer hospitals provided the same quality of cardiovascular care as the top 100, the study found survival rates could increase by more than 8,000 patients each year and complications may decrease. About 575 additional patients could be complication-free, the study said.

A study designed to help hospitals improve performance has concluded that Altru Health System is one of 100 hospitals nationwide worthy of being a model of financial and operational efficiency for cardiovascular care.

Altru made the list in a 40-hospital subcategory of teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residencies. It’s Altru’s first appearance on the list.

Solucient is an independent company that markets comparative measurements of cost, quality and market performance intended for use by healthcare managers to improve the business growth, cost management and care quality of their organizations.

The cardiovascular study is one of several Solucient develops for use as a management tool to provide hospital executives and board members with a model of financial and operational efficiency, according to Solucient’s Web site.

It’s not designed, the Web site says, “to provide consumers with all the information needed in the selection of a healthcare provider,” calling that a “complex decision” to be made by consulting with family and a physician.

That hardly means consumers lack interest in the findings.

No. 1 killer

Although patient survival rates for hospital cardiovascular treatment are on the rise more than 97 percent for all U.S. hospitals cardiovascular disease remains the No. 1 killer in the United States, according to Solucient.

If peer hospitals provided the same quality of cardiovascular care as the top 100, the study found survival rates could increase by more than 8,000 patients each year and complications may decrease. About 575 additional patients could be complication-free, the study said.

The study also maintained top 100 hospitals have a quicker patient turnaround, making them less expensive. The average top 100 hospital discharges patients half a day earlier and at an average cost that is 13 percent less than its peers, the study said.

The measures were calculated for three classes of hospitals: community, teaching with cardiovascular residency programs and teaching without cardiovascular residency programs. Next to Altru, the closest hospital on the top 100 list is MeritCare Heart Center in Fargo, which also made the “teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residencies” subcategory; it’s the seventh appearance in eight years for MeritCare.

‘Work collaterally together’

At Altru, officials attribute the hospital’s top 100 status to processes designed for proper “through-put” of patients, facilitated by accessible patient services, state-of-the-art technology and continuity of care.

The cardiovascular care team is contained in one wing of the Altru building and includes 10 physicians, according to Nancy Endres, manager of cardiovascular services.

“All our services work collaterally together,” Endres said. “Patients see the same people throughout their stay here. They know the people who are taking care of them.”

Solucient scored hospitals in eight areas: risk-adjusted medical mortality, risk-adjusted surgical mortality, risk-adjusted complications, core measures score, percentage of coronary artery bypass grafting patients with internal mammary artery use, severity-adjusted average length of stay, and wage and severity-adjusted average cost.

Four Minnesota hospitals none in the northwest also made the list in the “teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residencies” category: St. Mary’s Medical Center, Duluth; United and St. Joseph’s hospitals, both in St. Paul; and Methodist Hospital, St. Louis Park.

Abbott Northwestern Hospital of Minneapolis, a teaching hospital with a cardiovascular residency, also made the top 100.

Medcenter One in Bismarck and Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, Minn., made the top 100 in the subcategory for community hospitals.

The study, “2006 Solucient 100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success,” appears in the Nov. 6 edition of Modern Healthcare magazine.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.