DVT Risk Management Beyond The Socks

10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small

❝I know I am at higher risk of DVT after having hip surgery, any advice beside compression stockings?❞

First of all, a swift and easy recovery to you!

Surgery indeed increases the risk of deep vein thrombosis (henceforth: DVT), and hip or knee surgery especially so, for obvious reasons.

There are other risk factors you can’t control, like genetics (family history of DVT as an indicator) and age, but there are some that you can, including:

  • smoking (so, ideally don’t; do speak to your doctor before quitting though, in case withdrawal might be temporarily worse for you than smoking)
  • obesity (so, losing weight is good if overweight, but if this is going to happen, it’ll mostly happen in the kitchen not the gym, which may be a relief as you’re probably not the very most up for exercise at present)
  • sedentariness (so, while you’re probably not running marathons right now, please do try to keep moving, even if only gently)

Beyond that, yes compression socks, but also frequent gentle massage can help a lot to avoid clots forming.

Also, no surprises, a healthy diet will help, especially one that’s good for general heart health. Check out for example the Mediterranean DASH diet:

Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

Also, obviously, speak with your doctor/pharmacist if you haven’t already about possible medications, including checking whether any of your current medications increase the risk and could be swapped for something that doesn’t.

Take care!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • How White Is Your Tongue?
  • Wanna read more?
    Dive into better reading habits: Kindle ergonomics, bedtime chapters, audiobooks on the move, and the joy of a reading retreat!

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Is ADHD Being Over-Diagnosed For Cash?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Is ADHD Being Systematically Overdiagnosed?

    The BBC’s investigative “Panorama” program all so recently did a documentary in which one of their journalists—who does not have ADHD—went to three private clinics and got an ADHD diagnosis from each of them:

    So… Is it really a case of show up, pay up, and get a shiny new diagnosis?

    The BBC Panorama producers cherry-picked 3 private providers, and during those clinical assessments, their journalist provided answers that would certainly lead to a diagnosis.

    This was contrasted against a three-hour assessment with an NHS psychiatrist—something that rarely happens in the NHS. Which prompts the question…

    How did he walk into a 3-hour psychiatrist assessment, when most people have to wait in long waiting lists for a much more cursory appointment first with assorted gatekeepers, before going on another long waiting list, for an also-much-shorter appointment with a psychiatrist?

    That would be because the NHS psychiatrist was given advance notification that this was part of an investigation and would be filmed (the private clinics were not gifted the same transparency)

    So, maybe just a tad unequal treatment!

    In case you’re wondering, here’s what that very NHS psychiatrist had to say on the topic:

    Is it really too easy to be diagnosed with ADHD?

    (we’ll give you a hint—remember Betteridge’s Law!)

    ❝Since the documentary aired, I have heard from people concerned that GPs could now be more likely to question legitimate diagnoses.

    But as an NHS psychiatrist it is clear to me that the root of this issue is not overdiagnosis.

    Instead, we are facing the combined challenges of remedying decades of underdiagnosis and NHS services that were set up when there was little awareness of ADHD.❞

    ~ Dr. Mike Smith, Psychiatrist

    The ADHD foundation, meanwhile, has issued its own response, saying:

    ❝We are disappointed that BBC Panorama has opted to broadcast a poorly researched, sensationalist piece of television journalism.❞

    Click here to read their full statement!

    Share This Post

  • Their First Baby Came With Medical Debt. These Illinois Parents Won’t Have Another.

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    JACKSONVILLE, Ill. — Heather Crivilare was a month from her due date when she was rushed to an operating room for an emergency cesarean section.

    The first-time mother, a high school teacher in rural Illinois, had developed high blood pressure, a sometimes life-threatening condition in pregnancy that prompted doctors to hospitalize her. Then Crivilare’s blood pressure spiked, and the baby’s heart rate dropped. “It was terrifying,” Crivilare said.

    She gave birth to a healthy daughter. What followed, though, was another ordeal: thousands of dollars in medical debt that sent Crivilare and her husband scrambling for nearly a year to keep collectors at bay.

    The Crivilares would eventually get on nine payment plans as they juggled close to $5,000 in bills.

    “It really felt like a full-time job some days,” Crivilare recalled. “Getting the baby down to sleep and then getting on the phone. I’d set up one payment plan, and then a new bill would come that afternoon. And I’d have to set up another one.”

    Crivilare’s pregnancy may have been more dramatic than most. But for millions of new parents, medical debt is now as much a hallmark of having children as long nights and dirty diapers.

    About 12% of the 100 million U.S. adults with health care debt attribute at least some of it to pregnancy or childbirth, according to a KFF poll.

    These people are more likely to report they’ve had to take on extra work, change their living situation, or make other sacrifices.

    Overall, women between 18 and 35 who have had a baby in the past year and a half are twice as likely to have medical debt as women of the same age who haven’t given birth recently, other KFF research conducted for this project found.

    “You feel bad for the patient because you know that they want the best for their pregnancy,” said Eilean Attwood, a Rhode Island OB-GYN who said she routinely sees pregnant women anxious about going into debt.

    “So often, they may be coming to the office or the hospital with preexisting debt from school, from other financial pressures of starting adult life,” Attwood said. “They are having to make real choices, and what those real choices may entail can include the choice to not get certain services or medications or what may be needed for the care of themselves or their fetus.”

    Best-Laid Plans

    Crivilare and her husband, Andrew, also a teacher, anticipated some of the costs.

    The young couple settled in Jacksonville, in part because the farming community less than two hours north of St. Louis was the kind of place two public school teachers could afford a house. They saved aggressively. They bought life insurance.

    And before Crivilare got pregnant in 2021, they enrolled in the most robust health insurance plan they could, paying higher premiums to minimize their deductible and out-of-pocket costs.

    Then, two months before their baby was due, Crivilare learned she had developed preeclampsia. Her pregnancy would no longer be routine. Crivilare was put on blood pressure medication, and doctors at the local hospital recommended bed rest at a larger medical center in Springfield, about 35 miles away.

    “I remember thinking when they insisted that I ride an ambulance from Jacksonville to Springfield … ‘I’m never going to financially recover from this,’” she said. “‘But I want my baby to be OK.’”

    For weeks, Crivilare remained in the hospital alone as covid protocols limited visitors. Meanwhile, doctors steadily upped her medications while monitoring the fetus. It was, she said, “the scariest month of my life.”

    Fear turned to relief after her daughter, Rita, was born. The baby was small and had to spend nearly two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. But there were no complications. “We were incredibly lucky,” Crivilare said.

    When she and Rita finally came home, a stack of medical bills awaited. One was already past due.

    Crivilare rushed to set up payment plans with the hospitals in Jacksonville and Springfield, as well as the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, and the labs. Some providers demanded hundreds of dollars a month. Some settled for monthly payments of $20 or $25. Some pushed Crivilare to apply for new credit cards to pay the bills.

    “It was a blur of just being on the phone constantly with all the different people collecting money,” she recalled. “That was a nightmare.”

    Big Bills, Big Consequences

    The Crivilares’ bills weren’t unusual. Parents with private health coverage now face on average more than $3,000 in medical bills related to a pregnancy and childbirth that aren’t covered by insurance, researchers at the University of Michigan found.

    Out-of-pocket costs are even higher for families with a newborn who needs to stay in a neonatal ICU, averaging $5,000. And for 1 in 11 of these families, medical bills related to pregnancy and childbirth exceed $10,000, the researchers found.

    “This forces very difficult trade-offs for families,” said Michelle Moniz, a University of Michigan OB-GYN who worked on the study. “Even though they have insurance, they still have these very high bills.”

    Nationwide polls suggest millions of these families end up in debt, with sometimes devastating consequences.

    About three-quarters of U.S. adults with debt related to pregnancy or childbirth have cut spending on food, clothing, or other essentials, KFF polling found.

    About half have put off buying a home or delayed their own or their children’s education.

    These burdens have spurred calls to limit what families must pay out-of-pocket for medical care related to pregnancy and childbirth.

    In Massachusetts, state Sen. Cindy Friedman has proposed legislation to exempt all these bills from copays, deductibles, and other cost sharing. This would parallel federal rules that require health plans to cover recommended preventive services like annual physicals without cost sharing for patients. “We want … healthy children, and that starts with healthy mothers,” Friedman said. Massachusetts health insurers have warned the proposal will raise costs, but an independent state analysis estimated the bill would add only $1.24 to monthly insurance premiums.

    Tough Lessons

    For her part, Crivilare said she wishes new parents could catch their breath before paying down medical debt.

    “No one is in the right frame of mind to deal with that when they have a new baby,” she said, noting that college graduates get such a break. “When I graduated with my college degree, it was like: ‘Hey, new adult, it’s going to take you six months to kind of figure out your life, so we’ll give you this six-month grace period before your student loans kick in and you can get a job.’”

    Rita is now 2. The family scraped by on their payment plans, retiring the medical debt within a year, with help from Crivilare’s side job selling resources for teachers online.

    But they are now back in debt, after Rita’s recurrent ear infections required surgery last year, leaving the family with thousands of dollars in new medical bills.

    Crivilare said the stress has made her think twice about seeing a doctor, even for Rita. And, she added, she and her husband have decided their family is complete.

    “It’s not for us to have another child,” she said. “I just hope that we can put some of these big bills behind us and give [Rita] the life that we want to give her.”

    About This Project

    “Diagnosis: Debt” is a reporting partnership between KFF Health News and NPR exploring the scale, impact, and causes of medical debt in America.

    The series draws on original polling by KFF, court records, federal data on hospital finances, contracts obtained through public records requests, data on international health systems, and a yearlong investigation into the financial assistance and collection policies of more than 500 hospitals across the country. 

    Additional research was conducted by the Urban Institute, which analyzed credit bureau and other demographic data on poverty, race, and health status for KFF Health News to explore where medical debt is concentrated in the U.S. and what factors are associated with high debt levels.

    The JPMorgan Chase Institute analyzed records from a sampling of Chase credit card holders to look at how customers’ balances may be affected by major medical expenses. And the CED Project, a Denver nonprofit, worked with KFF Health News on a survey of its clients to explore links between medical debt and housing instability. 

    KFF Health News journalists worked with KFF public opinion researchers to design and analyze the “KFF Health Care Debt Survey.” The survey was conducted Feb. 25 through March 20, 2022, online and via telephone, in English and Spanish, among a nationally representative sample of 2,375 U.S. adults, including 1,292 adults with current health care debt and 382 adults who had health care debt in the past five years. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample and 3 percentage points for those with current debt. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.

    Reporters from KFF Health News and NPR also conducted hundreds of interviews with patients across the country; spoke with physicians, health industry leaders, consumer advocates, debt lawyers, and researchers; and reviewed scores of studies and surveys about medical debt.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    Share This Post

  • How a Michigan community center supports young people’s mental health

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Even before the COVID-19 pandemic made mental health problems worse for people of all ages, young people already struggled with a lack of support and treatment for issues like depression, anxiety, and ADHD. 

    Like many states, Michigan doesn’t have enough health care providers, and youth mental health professionals are in high demand. 

    Some local groups step in to support kids when they aren’t getting the help they need or experience long wait times for services.

    To learn more about how one community-based organization tackles these challenges, Public Good News spoke with Avion Williams, Youth Coordinator at Community Family Life Center.

    Here’s what she said.

    [Editor’s note: The contents of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.]

    Public Good News: Can you tell us more about your organization and where you’re located?

    A.W.: Community Family Life Center is a community outreach center. We offer a multitude of after-school programs and services to Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor and even the Belleville community. 

    Ypsilanti is a small community. It was originally a farmer’s town. You will still see a lot of older families here. 

    A lot of our restaurants are like mom-and-pop shops. We have our downtown area, which is now being modernized a little bit, but again, a lot of shops are family-owned businesses that have been around for decades. 

    We have a lot of colleges. We have Eastern Michigan, which is the college I actually attend, and that’s in Ypsilanti. But we also have colleges right next door that are 10 minutes away, like University of Michigan and Concordia. 

    So it’s a college town, very family-oriented, but also a very small town with not too many resources.

    PGN: Can you share some of your experiences as a youth coordinator trying to help young people access your organization’s services and programs?

    A.W.: So we offer a ton of different programs, but our main focus is for kids to have something to do. There’s definitely a lot of young people in Ypsilanti. 

    I’m 25, and when I was in high school, a lot of people in my grade were having children. And they weren’t just having one baby, they were having multiple babies. You know, maybe one in tenth grade, another when we graduated our senior year, another right after. So a lot of people my age have a lot of children. And now I work with a lot of their children. 

    Many of those children come to after-school programs, and they’re in need of not just school things like math and reading, but they’re in need of, you know, love and care. Maybe mom can’t do everything because she has to work two or three jobs, or she doesn’t have the best financial help, and so she doesn’t know what to do. 

    And these young children get stuck with teachers that may not necessarily know how to give the best support, because maybe they’re stressed. 

    We have after-school programs and community centers like ours, where we get all of that. 

    Not only do we have to deal with mental health, we have to deal with these babies being hungry. We have to teach what mental health is. 

    PGN: What about therapy? How does that fit into the picture?

    A.W.: Sometimes in society, people just throw therapy out there, like, ‘Go to therapy, go to therapy, go to therapy,’ but they don’t talk about the process of what it’s like getting a therapist. 

    I love the idea of therapy. Don’t get me wrong. Having somebody to talk to is very real. Having the right person to talk to is very real, right? 

    But I think sometimes we don’t talk about how everybody is not able to get therapy. 

    And a lot of times when people are ready for therapy, it’s after everything has happened. 

    You know, ‘Mom is gone, dad is gone. I’m doing terribly in school now. I’m acting out. Now I’m lashing out. I’m super hungry. I don’t have money for this. I don’t have money for that. I don’t know what to do about this…’ and then it’s like, ‘okay, I think I need therapy.’ 

    Instead of us approaching it as, ‘Hey, this person’s mom is a young mom, maybe we should see if we can get therapy for both of them.’ Or when that child is being born, or when we see this young mom at the hospital and we see that she’s pregnant. Let’s offer some help before things start to hit the fan, right? 

    And maybe this mom doesn’t even have the proper health care to receive therapy, or let alone, doesn’t have the money to pay for it. 

    PGN: How does your organization respond to this need?

    A.W.: We have a lot of ways to access our therapists. We started maybe two years ago, and at first a lot of people weren’t going. And now there’s so many people going that yes, we have this wait list.

    So we also all do daily check-ins with our kids. We really do get to know our kids and their families and have consistent conversations with parents. 

    I always tell my kids this is a safe space to talk. I’m open to hear anything my students have to say.

    This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • How White Is Your Tongue?
  • Egg Noodles vs Rice Noodles – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing egg noodles to rice noodles, we picked the egg noodles.

    Why?

    It was close—these are both quite mediocre foods. They’re neither amazing for the health nor appalling for the health (in moderation). They are both relatively low in nutrients, but they are also low in anti-nutrients, i.e. things that have a negative effect on the health.

    Their mineral profiles are similar; both are a source of selenium, manganese, phosphorus, copper, and iron. Not as good as many sources, but not devoid of nutrients either.

    Their vitamin profiles are both pitiful; rice noodles have trace amounts of various vitamins, and egg noodles have only slightly more. While eggs themselves are nutritious, the processing has robbed them of much of their value.

    In terms of macros, egg noodles have a little more fat (but the fats are healthier) and rice noodles have a lot more carbs, so this is the main differentiator, and is the main reason we chose the egg noodles over the rice noodles. Both have a comparable (small) amount of protein.

    In short:

    • They’re comparable on minerals, and vitamins here are barely worth speaking about (though egg noodles do have marginally more)
    • Egg noodles have a little more fat (but the fats are healthier)
    • Rice noodles have a lot more carbs (with a moderately high glycemic index, which is relatively worse—if you eat them with vegetables and fats, then that’ll offset this, but we’re judging the two items on merit, not your meal)

    Learn more

    You might like this previous main feature of ours:

    Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Get Better Sleep: Beyond “Sleep Hygiene”

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Better Sleep, Better Life!

    This is Arianna Huffington. Yes, that Huffington, of the Huffington Post. But! She’s also the CEO of Thrive Global, a behavior change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live—in particular, by challenging the idea that burnout is the required price of success.

    The power of better sleep

    Sleep is a very important, but most often neglected, part of good health. Here are some of Huffington’s top insights from her tech company Thrive, and as per her “Sleep Revolution” initiative.

    Follow your circadian rhythm

    Are you a night owl or a morning lark? Whichever it is, roll with it, and plan around that if your lifestyle allows for such. While it is possible to change from one to the other, we do have a predisposition towards one or the other, and will generally function best when not fighting it.

    This came about, by the way, because we evolved to have half of us awake in the mornings and half in the evenings, to keep us all safe. Socially we’ve marched onwards from that point in evolutionary history, but our bodies are about a hundred generations behind the times, and that’s just what we have to work with!

    Don’t be afraid (or ashamed!) to take naps

    Naps, done right, can be very good for the health—especially if we had a bad night’s sleep the previous night.

    Thrive found that workers are more productive when they have nap rooms, and (following on a little from the previous point) are allowed to sleep in or work from home.

    See also: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)

    Make sure you have personal space available in bed

    The correlation between relationship satisfaction and sleeping close to one’s partner has been found to be so high that it’s even proportional: the further away a couple sleeps from each other, the less happy they are. But…

    Partners who got good sleep the previous night, will be more likely to want intimacy on any given night—at a rate of an extra 14% per extra hour of sleep the previous night. So, there’s a trade-off, as having more room in bed tends to result in better sleep. Time to get a bigger bed?

    What gets measured, gets done

    This goes for sleep, too! Not only does dream-journaling in the morning cue your subconscious to prepare to dream well the following night, but also, sleep trackers and sleep monitoring apps go a very long way to improving sleep quality, even if no extra steps are consciously taken to “score better”.

    We’ve previously reviewed some of the most popular sleep apps; you can check out for yourself how they measured up:

    Time For Some Pillow Talk: The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Why STIs Are On The Rise In Older Adults

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Three Little Words

    Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are often thought of as something that predominantly plagues younger people… The truth, however, is different:

    ❝Rising divorce rates, forgoing condoms as there is no risk of pregnancy, the availability of drugs for sexual dysfunction, the large number of older adults living together in retirement communities, and the increased use of dating apps are likely to have contributed to the growing incidence of STIs in the over-50s.

    These data likely underestimate the true extent of the problem as limited access to sexual health services for the over 50s, and trying to avoid the stigma and embarrassment both on the part of older people and healthcare professionals, is leading to this age group not seeking help for STIs.❞

    ~ Dr. Justyna Kowalska

    Read more: Managing The Rise In STIs Among Older Adults

    That said, there is a gender gap when it comes to the increased risk, for example:

    ❝A retrospective study from the USA involving 420,790 couples aged 67 to 99 years, found that widowhood was associated with an increased risk of STIs in older men, but not women❞

    ~ US Dept of Health & Human Services

    Source: CDC: | Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance

    Is abstinence the best preventative, then?

    It is inarguably the most effective, but not necessarily the best for everyone.

    This is because for most adults, a healthy sex life is an important part of overall wellbeing.

    See also: Mythbusting The Big O

    Even in this case there is a gender gap in:

    • the level of importance placed on frequency of sexual interactions
    • what act(s) of sexuality are held to be most important:

    ❝Among sexually active men, frequent (≥2 times a month) sexual intercourse (P < .001) and frequent kissing, petting, or fondling (P < .001) were associated with greater enjoyment of life.

    Among sexually active women, frequent kissing, petting, or fondling was also associated with greater enjoyment of life (P < .001), but there was no significant association with frequent intercourse (P = .101).

    Concerns about one’s sex life and problems with sexual function were strongly associated with lower levels of enjoyment of life in men and to a lesser extent in women.❞

    ~ Dr. Lee Smith et al.

    Source: Sexual Activity is Associated with Greater Enjoyment of Life in Older Adults

    If you have the time to go into it much more deeply, this paper from the Journal of Gerontology is much more comprehensive, looking also at related lifestyle factors, religious/political backgrounds, views on monogamy or non-monogamy (of various kinds), hormonal considerations, the impact of dementia or other long-term disabilities that may affect things, widowhood, and many other elements:

    The National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project: An Introduction

    What’s the best preventative, then?

    Regular health screening for yourself and your partner(s) is an important key to preventative health when it comes to STIs.

    You can Google search for a local STI clinic, and worry not, they are invariably discreet and are well-used to everybody coming in. They’re just glad you’re being responsible about things. It’s also not their job to judge your sexual activities, even if it’s something you might have reason to wish to be secretive about, try to be honest there.

    Secondly, most of the usual advice about safe sex still goes, even when there’s no risk of pregnancy. For example, if there’s at least one penis involved, then condoms remain the #1 barrier to all manner of potential infections (we know, almost nobody likes condoms, but sometimes the truth isn’t what we want to hear).

    Lastly, if there’s at least one vagina involved, then please for the love of all that is holey, do not put anything there that could cause a yeast infection.

    What can cause a yeast infection? Pretty much anything with sugar, which includes but is not limited to:

    • Most kinds of food that Cosmo-style “liven things up in the bedroom” advice columns might suggest using (including fruit, honey, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, etc)
    • Hands that are not clean (watch out for bacteria too)
    • A mouth that has recently been eating or drinking anything with sugar in it, and that includes many kinds of alcohol, as well as milk or hot drinks that had milk in

    Yeast infections are not nearly so serious as the STIs the other measures are there to avoid, but they’re not fun either, so some sensible policies in that regard are always good!

    On a related note, see also: How To Avoid UTIs

    Recap on the single most important part of this article:

    At all ages, it remains a good health practice—unless one is absolutely celibate—to regularly get oneself and one’s partner(s) checked for STIs.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: