Drugs reduce chances of ovulation

Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.

If the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton) had been taking any of the three common nonsteroid anti-inflamatory drugs mentioned below for any of the aches and pains that accompany long days of globetrotting with Prince William, the chances of their being a little Prince George and little Princess Charlotte would have been greatly reduced.

New research revealed at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress found that many women stop ovulating after taking standard doses for just 10 days of diclofenac, naproxen and etoricoxib to ease mild back pain.

Only 6.3 percent of women in the study who took 100 mg of diclofenac daily, 25 percent of women using 500 mg of naproxen twice a day, and 27.3 percent of those taking 90 mg of etoricoxib (a cox-2 inhibitor) once a day, continued to ovulate, compared with 100 percent of women in the control group.

This is big news for women of child-bearing age and might indicate that these very effective pain relievers are doing more to your body than you recognize. If they cause the endocrine system to halt ovulation, what else might they do?

Our advice? Limit your intake, and go for relief with:

■ An Epsom salt bath (mild temperature for best absorption of muscle-soothing minerals).

■ Use RICE: Rest, ice, compression and elevation to ease a sore knee, twisted ankle or other such hurts.

■ Consider alternating ice (10 minutes) with heat (20 minutes) to reduce inflammation and promote blood flow.

■ Do gentle stretches to release muscle tension and increase flexibility.

Playground slides fun, but danger lurking

There’s one swing that’ll melt down faster than Tiger Woods’ at the 2015 U.S. Open, and that’s the swing on your child’s playground.

Back in the day when playground swings and slides were made of metal, we all knew when they could become just too hot to handle. Today those playground fryers are made from brightly colored, space-age, heat-reducing polymers, making the equipment look a lot less menacing. But don’t be fooled, the threat of burns is still there!

Exposure to direct sunlight, even when the air temperature is only in the 70s, can really turn up the heat on the plastic surfaces of slides, climbing platforms and swings. The Consumer Products Safety Commission points to the example of a child receiving second degree burns from a plastic slide on a day where the temps reached 74 degrees Fahrenheit. And from 2001 to 2008, more incidences of playground thermal burns were reported from plastic, rubber and non-metal surfaces than from metal ones.

So, when you get to the playground, make sure to test the slides, swings, bars and other surfaces, including crawl-arounds, with your hand BEFORE your child starts playing. Remember, a child’s skin is much more sensitive than yours, and it burns easily.

Look for places for kids to play that are out of direct sunlight, but even in the shade you need to test the surfaces. Then you can have a great time making sure your kids get at least two hours of active playtime a day, and you can join in, too!

Question: Recently, my husband was admitted into the hospital for emergency surgery on a Friday. He’s fine now, but things didn’t go well at the time and he was readmitted a week after he was released. I think it was because the B team was working over the weekend. Any truth in that? — Cheryl W., Oakland, Cal.

Answer: We can’t comment on your husband’s situation, but studies find that in the U.S. patients who had surgery on weekends experienced longer hospital stays and more-frequent readmissions. That’s called the “weekend effect.” Fortunately, that is changing, according to researchers from Loyola University.

We used to think that staffing problems and, as you called it, the presence of the B team was to blame. But after looking at 127,221 patients at 166 hospitals who underwent urgent general surgical procedures, the researchers found that the biggest difference between hospitals that overcame the weekend effect and hospitals that didn’t was the availability of electronic medical records — something that is now being required by the Affordable Care Act.

Hospitals where doctors had access to electronic records for patients they had never seen before did a better job of taking care of the patients and reduced the readmission rate! True, other factors, such as a higher nurse-to-bed ratio, the presence of social workers and availability of CT scans, help assure better patient outcomes on the weekends. But by far the biggest difference came from having electronic medical records.