HEALTHY LIVING
What you need to know to feel better
THE TROUBLES I’VE SEEN
A study published in medical journal
Pain found that if you land up with chronic back pain (and 80% of us will experience an episode sooner or later), you’re less likely to experience physical impairment and disability than those on either end of the spectrum – those who have had a pain-free life, or a really rough time.
The study also found that a bit of exposure to adversity also protected against mental health problems linked to chronic back pain. One of the researchers, Dr Mark Seery, an associate professor of psychology, says it could be related to resilience. ‘The experience of prior, low-levels of adversity may cause sufferers to reappraise stressful and potentially debilitating symptoms of chronic back pain as minor annoyances that do not substantially interfere with life.’
GO ON THE BLINK
Eight hours a day in front of the computer feels heavy on the eyes. But there’s no reason to worry that your sight is suffering: according to Harvard Medical School, screen time doesn’t damage your eyes. Rather, it makes them tired and strained. And your intense focus means you might forget to blink, which dries your eyes. So look off into the distance every now and again to give your eyes a break.
WE’RE GETTING THERE
Over the past decade, there’s been increasing buzz about immunotherapy as a form of cancer treatment. ‘With immunotherapy, we don’t kill the cancer cells directly; we modify our immune system to try to kill them,’ explains Dr Daniel Vorobiof, oncology director of the Sandton Oncology Centre in Joburg. ‘The number of treatments is restricted in melanoma patients, yet melanoma was the first cancer in which immunotherapy was shown to work.’
Several clinical trials use immunotherapy drug ipilimumab, including one conducted by Dr Vorobiof. One of his patients came to him in November 2006 with several tumours. ‘She had only three treatments with ipilimumab because she’d developed serious toxicity from the treatment,’ says Dr Vorobiof. ‘But she recovered and is well, 10 years on.’
But not all patients respond to the drug. ‘Our overall survival rates were similar to clinical trials done in Europe and America. From three years onwards, 23% of patients survived.’ However, he adds, this is the first treatment that has prolonged the life of patients with advanced melanoma.
OH, MY BEATING HEART
Every so often, we hear about the death of someone young and apparently healthy. In some cases, it’s down to arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), where heart muscle tissue is replaced by fatty and fibrous tissue, causing abnormal heart rhythms, which in turn cause loss of consciousness and cardiac arrest.
The good news is researchers have identified CDH2, the specific gene that causes ARVC. The discovery is the result of an international collaboration headed by our very own Dr Bongani Mayosi, dean of the faculty of health sciences at UCT. ‘This is probably the biggest breakthrough in South African cardiology since Dr Chris Barnard’s first heart transplant,’ he said. ‘This discovery will permit the diagnosis and possible targeted treatment of heart muscle disease in the future.’