What Do You Know About the Common Cold?

June 22nd, 2011 at 07:14am Under Health report

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Do you think getting cold can give you a cold? Is it bad to drink milk when you have a cold? Can chicken soup cure a cold?

Ranit Mishori is a family medicine doctor at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. She says colds are more common in winter, but not because of low temperatures. The cold weather just means people stay inside more.

RANIT MISHORI: “People tend to congregate and be together and the way the common cold virus is transmitted from one person to another is through handshakes, through sneezing, or coughing on one another.”

Adults generally get two to three colds a year. Children are likely to catch four or five. Dr. Mishori says some people mistakenly believe they can become resistant to colds.

RANIT MISHORI: “There are about two hundred different viruses that cause the common cold. People think that once you get infected one time you develop immunity for the rest of your life. This is wrong.”

There is still no cure for the common cold. But Dr. Mishori says there are ways to feel better sooner.

RANIT MISHORI: “So if you get a cold and on day one and you start taking about two grams of vitamin C a day, there is evidence that it might shorten the number of days that you will be suffering with these symptoms.”

She says honey can also help.

RANIT MISHORI: “There is increased evidence that it helps shorten the duration of the common cold sometimes even by two to three days.”

Dr. Mishori says honey seems to be especially effective in children with colds. But the Agriculture Department says never to feed honey to babies less than one year old. It says even honey in prepared foods may contain substances that can make babies very sick.

Some people believe in treating a cold with chicken soup. Does it work?

RANIT MISHORI: “Chicken soup has anti-inflammatory properties, so it helps reduce the duration of the cold but also it helps clear the mucus.”

Mucus is the sticky substance that can make you cough and have trouble breathing during a cold.

Have you ever heard the old saying “feed a cold, starve a fever”? Dr. Mishori says this is not necessarily a good guideline to follow. She says if you have a cold but do not feel hungry, then don’t eat.

RANIT MISHORI: “But you have to drink a lot and you can drink water or you can drink tea — anything that gets fluids into your body. That’s very important.”

But what about drinking milk during a cold? Some people think it only causes more mucus. Dr. Mishori says yes and no.

RANIT MISHORI: “Dairy products do not cause increased secretions, but they can thicken the secretions. So it’s possible that discomfort is somewhat more enhanced when you drink milk. But obviously, if you’re a baby and that’s all you drink, you should not stop giving babies milk.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report. How do you and your family treat colds? Tell us at voaspecialenglish.com, where you can also read and listen to all of our reports. I’m Barbara Klein.

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Why Hands-Free Faucets May Be a Risk to Some Hospital Patients

June 16th, 2011 at 07:06am Under Health report

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This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Automatic faucets use an electronic sensor to start and stop the flow of water when people wash their hands. These faucets save a lot of water, which is one reason they are found in busy public bathrooms. Another reason is because of concerns about the spread of infection by people touching the handles on traditional faucets.

Hospitals started using automatic faucets about ten years ago. But a new study at one hospital finds that these devices may not always be worth the savings in water use.

Researcher took apart twenty automatic faucets at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. They found that half contained Legionella bacteria, compared to fifteen percent of manual faucets.

Healthy people rarely get sick from the bacteria. So the study should not concern most users of automatic faucets in public bathrooms.

But Legionella bacteria can cause a form of pneumonia in people with weakened immune systems. These include patients with diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS, and those who have recently had an organ transplant.

After their first tests, the researchers cleaned the water system with chlorine dioxide. But they found that twenty-nine percent of the automatic faucets were still contaminated with bacteria. That compared to seven percent of the manual faucets.

The researchers have some theories. Dr. Emily Sydnor says the automatic faucets contain more parts, so there are more areas where bacteria could grow. Also, the reduced water pressure in low-flow faucets might not remove as much bacteria from surfaces.

EMILY SYDNOR: “We think that, one, the pieces and the parts inside are sort of providing places and surface area for bacteria to get trapped and probably promoting something called bio-film formation, which is essentially just a colony of bacteria that can sort of coexist in a little slime and a little, almost a little colony of it that it’s hard to get rid of. And that, combined with the low water flow, is probably promoting the growth.”

Six other studies have also found higher amounts of bacteria in automatic faucets. The latest study was presented Saturday at a meeting of the Society for Health Care Epidemiology in Dallas, Texas.

The study has not yet been published. But the results have persuaded Johns Hopkins Hospital to replace its automatic faucets with manual ones.

The Chicago Faucet Company supplies the hospital with automatic and manual faucets. Patrick Kimener, the senior vice president of sales, said he had not seen the full study.

PATRICK KIMENER: “Our company has been around for a hundred and ten years. We’ve been a long-term supplier for an awful lot of health care facilities in the U.S. and we’re more than interested to find out what those findings would be.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report. I’m Christopher Cruise.

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