I know; it’s September. Better late than never…

Anemia of Chronic Disease: An Adaptive Response?  The authors argue that anemia may be beneficial to patients with inflammatory disease, and advocate restraint in treating mild to moderate forms of anemia. This may be proven someday, as they are now finding that too much injected erythropoietin (Procrit, Epogen, etc) can have adverse effects if used to bring hemoglobin up past 12.

CMV Infections Affect More Than Just Patients With Compromised Immune Systems – researchers have discovered that Cytomegalovirus, which is particularly dangerous to those with suppressed immune systems, can also be reactivated in those with normal

Want A Reason To Love Your Lower Belly Fat?….     Fat in the lower abdomen and thighs is rich in adult stem cells.  Maybe they can set up a plan for those having gastric bypass to donate their extra fat after weight loss to cover the cost of cosmetic surgery?

Does Too Much Sun Cause Melanoma? You’ll notice in the past that I’ve had articles on Vitamin D. This article reports that sun can cause the more “benign” skin cancers, but not melanoma, and that we must strike a balance between the need to protect the skin from cancer and the need to get Vitamin D.

Long Term Weight Loss… - study of women which shows that in order to maintain a 10% weight loss, there needed to be 5 days a week of 55 minutes of exercise. On the bright side, small changes throughout the day can be partially substituted, such as moving around more, less TV, etc.

Total Calories More Important Than Dietary Fat In Diabetes Risk – decreased risk of diabetes is linked to weight loss, and not to specific nutrient content. There are other conclusions in this study, such as consumption of soft drinks was associated to unhealthy behaviors and consumption of fruit juices to healthy behaviors “to some extent”.

Stem Cell Scientist Predicts Health Revolution - immature adult stem cells are predicted to be as important a revolution in the 21st century as antibiotics were in the 20th century.

World’s First Transplant of Both Arms - Last month, a surgery team in Germany transplanted bilateral arms onto a 54 year old farmer who lost his in an accident. The 2 things of interest are the actual procedure and what was involved, as well as the hurdles afterwards, such as immunosuppression and the lack of a blood test to catch rejection.

Positive Thinking May Protect Against Breast Cancer – Yet another study affirming feelings of happiness and optimism as providing a “protective role” against disease (in this case, breast cancer).

Despite the fact that I’m only 2-1/2 months out from my kidney transplant, I still occasionally eat at restaurants. I’ve always been cognizant of how clean a restaurant is, since I worked in McDonalds while in high school. One of my pet peeves is when a person cleaning a table uses the same rag on the seats as they do on the table (a big no-no at Mickey D’s). However, since my transplant and resulting immunosuppression, I’m even more fanatical about it now.

This past weekend, the 3 of us went to lunch with my wife’s mother and sister. They seated us at a table that obviously was dirty. The hostess noticed it, and put down the napkin-wrapped untensils on the dirty table and told us she would be back to clean it. When she cleaned it, she put the utensils back down ON THE WET TABLE ! (capillary action can wick germs into the napkin and onto the utensils)  I let it get that far to see what she would do, and  when she hadn’t replaced them, I told her of my immune status and asked for clean utensils. Needless to say, I didn’t get a pleasant response. She wasn’t nasty, but I could tell that she was pissed.

2 weeks ago, we went away for the weekend, and when we were waiting for a table at a restaurant, the host picked a cloth up off the floor and WIPED OUR TABLE OFF WITH IT! I mentioned it to the waitress, and of course, got another pissed-off look.

Am I being unreasonable? Even if I DIDN’T have a suppressed immune system, I would still expect that our utensils and napkins not be placed on a dirty table, nor should a rag that was on the floor be used to clean our table off.

Today is the 5 week anniversary of my kidney transplant. Doing better today. Not that yesterday was bad, but urinating was VERY painful after yesterday’s procedure. Today, it’s back to normal. 

My BP is normal today, which proves that BP trends are more accurate than single readings.

Jackie and Kevin put in our air conditioners last evening, so it’s much more tolerable inside today. I feel bad that I’m unable to do heavy lifting or weeding/gardening, but I know it’s for my own good. The heavy lifting restriction is from both the surgery and the fistula. One of the issues last night was that when we turned on the air conditioners, there was a musty smell, which means fungus. So, we sprayed Lysol inside the vent that shoots out the cool air, because fungus in my immune state could be life-threatening.

I posted some interesting articles related to transplants on MyKidney.com.

I also came across a contrarian view to current oil prices (which can be seen here). Time will tell.