The Cleveland Daily Banner Sunday, January 10, 2016 | Page 34

34—Cleveland Daily Banner—Sunday, January 10, 2016 www.clevelandbanner.com SUNDAY HealtH Gwen Swiger Associate Editor Phone [phone] or fax [phone] [email protected] Cancer now No. 1 killer in 22 states, ahead of heart disease NEW YORK (AP) — Cancer is becoming the No. 1 killer in more and more states as deaths from heart disease have declined, new health statistics show. Nationwide, heart disease is still the leading cause of death, just ahead of cancer. While death rates for both have been falling for nearly 25 years, heart disease has dropped at a steeper rate. As a result, cancer moved up to the top slot in 22 states in 2014, according to the latest government figures. It’s also the leading cause of death in certain groups of people, 5 health insurance resolutions The Associated Press Health insurance may not be the sexiest New Year’s resolutions subject, but thinking about it could be just as important as vowing to drop a few pounds or quit smoking. The cost of health care rises every year and coverage has been shrinking, which leaves a greater portion of the doctor bill to patients. It could be very beneficial to your fiscal health in 2016 if you make a few promises to yourself. —GET FAMILIAR WITH YOUR COVERAGE Know the limits of your insurance before you start using it. No one wants to begin the year with a nasty case of sticker shock from a steeper-than-expected doctor’s bill. The particulars of your plan may have changed compared with last year, and perhaps you missed the letter or email from your employer or insurer. An outpatient surgery that would have cost you $700 last year might run more than $900 this year if the plan increased your coinsurance responsibility, or the amount you have to pay after meeting a deductible. Your deductible also may have jumped, which means you might have to spend more this year befor e most of your coverage begins. — SHOP FOR CARE Shopping for health care is the wave of the future. Many employers and insurers are convinced that health care costs can be controlled better if providers are forced to compete for your business. Insurers are providing online tools that let patients compare prices and quality measurements for a wide range of non-emergency care. Doing that could save hundreds of dollars on an outpatient procedure for people with highdeductible plans. But you don’t need an app or some online tool to shop for all care. Drugstores and grocers have been squeezing clinics into their store spaces for years. The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, also has been developing in-store clinics that charge $59 per office visit. That’s much cheaper than including Hispanics, Asians, and adults ages 40 to 79. The trend is noted in the American Cancer Society’s latest annual report released Thursday. The cancer death rate has fallen 23 percent since its peak in 1991. The decrease is attributed to declining smoking rates and advances in cancer detection, treatment and prevention. The heart disease death rate fell 46 percent in that time. The cancer society predicts there will be nearly 1.7 million new cancer cases this year, and AP Photo A Nurse PlAces a patient’s chemotherapy medication on an intravenous stand at a hospital in Philadelphia in this file photo. A report released on Thursday, says cancer is the second leading cause of death nationally, after heart disease. Cancer death rates have been falling for nearly 25 years, but heart disease death rates have been falling at a steeper rate. nearly 600,000 deaths. Government figures for 2014 show cancer was the leading cause of death in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. —Online: Cancer society report: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d oi/10.3322/caac.21332/full of learning s B C A Tots recognize words are symbols WASHINGTON (AP) — Celebrate your child’s scribbles. A novel experiment shows that even before learning their ABCs, youngsters start to recognize that a written word symbolizes language in a way a drawing doesn’t — a developmental step on the path to reading. Researchers used a puppet, line drawings and simple vocabulary to find that children as young as 3 are beginning to grasp that nuanced concept. “Children at this very early age really know a lot more than we had previously thought,” said developmental psychologist Rebecca Treiman of Washington University in St. Louis, who co-authored the study. The research published Wednesday in the journal Child Development suggests an additional way to consider reading readiness, beyond the emphasis on phonetics or being able to point out an “A’’ in the alphabet chart. Appreciating that writing is “something that stands for something else, it actually is a vehicle for language — that’s pretty powerful stuff,” said Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a specialist in literacy development who wasn’t involved in the new work. And tots’ own scribbling is practice. What a child calls a family portrait may look like a bunch of grapes but “those squiggles, that ability to use lines to represent something bigger, to represent something deeper than what is on that page, is the great open door into the world of symbolic thought,” Hirsh-Pasek said. The idea: At some point, children learn that a squiggle on a page represents something, and then that the squiggle we call text has a more specific meaning than what we call a drawing. “Dog,” for example, should be read the same way each time, while a canine drawing might appropriately be labeled a dog, or a puppy, or even their pet Rover. Treiman and colleagues tested 114 preschoolers, 3- to 5-year-olds who hadn’t received any formal instruction in reading or writing. Some youngsters were shown words such as dog, cat or doll, sometimes in cursive to rule out guessing if kids recognized a letter. Other children were shown simple drawings of those objects. Researchers would say what the word or drawing portrayed. Then they’d bring out a puppet and ask the child if they thought the puppet knew what the words or drawings were. If the puppet indicated the word “doll” was “baby” or “dog” was “puppy,” many children said the puppet was mistaken. But they more often accepted synonyms for the drawings, showing they were starting to understand that written words have a far more specific meaning than a drawing, Treiman said. Language is “like a zoom lens on the world,” said HirshPasek. This study shows “even 3-year-olds know there’s something special about written words.” It’s not clear if children who undergo that developmental step at a later age — say, 5 or 6 instead of 3 or 4 — might go on to need extra help with learning to read, cautioned Brett Miller, an early learning specialist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which helped fund the research. But because some children did better than others in the experiment, Treiman plans to study that. Scientists have long known that reading to very young children helps form the foundation for them to later learn to read, by introducing vocabulary, rhyming, and different speech sounds. But it’s important to include other activities that bring in writing, too, Treiman said. Look closely at a tot’s scrib- Path to reading: Helping youngsters link written words to language Reading to very young children is crucial to help them eventually learn to read. But researchers studying how kids begin to understand that text conveys meaning differently than pictures — an important concept for reading readiness — say parents should pay attention to writing, too. Some suggestions: —Run a finger under the text when reading to youngsters. Otherwise, kids pay more attention to the pictures and miss an opportunit y to link written words to spoken language, said Brett Miller of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. —Show children how you write their names well before they could attempt it, said Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. That’s one of their first concrete examples that a mysterious squiggle on a page is a symbol for a word they know. bles. A child might say, “I’m writing my name,” and eventually the crayon scribble can become smaller and closer to the line than the larger scrawl that the tot proclaims is a picture of a flower or mom, she said. “It’s very exciting to see this develop,” she said. Previous studies have shown it’s helpful to run a finger under the text when reading to a youngster, because otherwise kids pay more —Often a child’s name is his or her first written word, thanks to memorizing what it looks like. Encouraging youngsters to invent their own spellings of other words could spur them to write even more, said developmental psychologist Rebecca Treiman of Washington University in St. Louis. —When youngsters scribble, don’t guess what they produced — ask, Hirsh-Pasek said. It’s pretty discouraging if a tot’s about to announce he wrote a story and mom thinks he drew a house. —Post a scribble they’re proud of on the refrigerator, she said. Children are figuring out patterns with their scribbles, and that’s more instructive than merely pasting copies of, say, apples onto a page to make a recognizable picture. —Give tots a pencil or pen instead of a crayon if they say they want to “write” rather than “draw” attention to the pictures, Miller said. If the words aren’t pointed out, “they get less exposure to looking at text, and less opportunity to learn that sort of relationship — that text is meaningful and text relates to sound,” he said. Make sure children see you that you write for a purpose, maybe by having them tell you a story and watch you write it out, adds Hirsh-Pasek. “That’s much richer than just learning what a B or a P is.” See INSURANCE, Page 36 Questions and answers about UK drinking guidelines LONDON (AP) — British health officials say drinking any alcohol regularly increases the risk of cancer, and have issued tough new guidelines that could be hard to swallow in a nation where having a pint is a hallowed tradition. In recommendations released Friday, Britain’s Chief Medical Officer advised both men and women not to drink any more than 14 units of alcohol — about six pints of beer or about four large glasses of wine — a week and said even that still carries a low risk of liver disease or cancer. Alcohol is a known carcinogen; in the U.S., experts estimate it causes about 3.5 percent of all cancer deaths. People who have more than about four drinks a day have up to a three-fold greater risk of cancers of the head and neck than non-drinkers. Here are some questions and answers about the new guidelines and their likely effect: WHAT’S NEW? For women, the guidelines remain unchanged, recommending no more than 14 units of alcohol a week. Men, however, had previously been told they could drink up to 21 units a week. That now drops to the same limit as for women. The original guidance was published in 1995, before much of the recent evidence about the link between alcohol and cancer was released. The guidance clarifies advice to pregnant women, recommending they avoid alcohol “as a precaution.” The recommendations say “the risk of harm to the baby is likely to be low if a woman has drunk only small amounts of alcohol before she knew she was pregnant or during pregnancy.” In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant. WILL BRITONS GO TEETOTAL? Probably not. In a nation known for its ales and its pubs, Britons are unlikely to abandon drinking in droves. Lax control of retail sales and cheap alcohol have fueled a rise in binge-drinking, which was once declared a national scandal by Prime Minister David Cameron. Health agency takes on advertising for electronic cigarettes AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File IN tHIs FIle PHoto, a man smokes an electronic cigarette in Chicago. On Tuesday, the U.S.'s lead public health agency focused its attack on electronic cigarettes on the issue of advertising, saying too many kids see the ads. There are bans on TV commercials and some other types of marketing for regular cigarettes but there are no restrictions on advertisements for e-cigarettes. Most states, though, ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's lead public health agency on Tuesday focused its attack on electronic cigarettes on the issue of advertising, saying too many kids see the ads. There are bans on TV commercials and some other types of marketing for regular cigarettes but there are no restrictions on advertisements for e-cigarettes. About 7 out of 10 kids said they've seen the ads, mostly in stores, according to survey results released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 22,000 high school and middle school students were asked in 2014 if they saw e-cigarette ads — in stores, online or in magazines, movies and television. The report doesn't prove advertising is actually causing more kids to pick up e-cigarettes and a trade group said the survey is flawed. But CDC officials worry ecigarettes may hook a new generation on nicotine, and lead some to take up cigarettes — possibly reversing a long and gradual decline in smoking rates. "Unfettered marketing of e-cigarettes has the potential to compromise decades of progress," said Brian King, a CDC expert on smoking issues. Youth e-cigarette smoking rates have risen at a similar trajectory as spending on advertising, say officials at the Atlantabased CDC. And researchers say advertising has, in the past, been a big driver of youth smoking of traditional cigarettes. Cigarette sales to minors are banned nationwide; most states now ban the sale of e-cigarettes to those unde r 18. The federal health agency has been taking an unusually hard stand against e-cigarettes, at a time when scientists still trying to determine if they are harmful. Ecigarettes have only been sold in the United States for about the past nine years. E-cigarettes heat liquid nicotine into an inhalable vapor. Users get nicotine but not the thousands of chemicals, tar, or odor of regular cigarettes. Scientists say nicotine is highly addictive and can be harmful for the developing brain. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said e- cigarettes can be a benefit if they help adult smokers quit, but kids should not be using them. "They are not harmless," Frieden said Tuesday, in a call with reporters. The Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association — an e-cigarette industry trade group — criticized the survey and CDC's stance. "The CDC continues to mislead the public about the benefits of vapor products as far less harmful alternatives to smoking," the group's executive director, Cynthia Cabrera, said in a statement. "The CDC also fails to mention that teens are exposed to many other adult issues on the Internet, TV and movies, such as violence, sex and alcohol."