Starting With Curious

We just had the great fortune to spend 2 weeks vacationing in Argentina.  It represented a couple of first for us: first time in that country, and first time taking an entire two week vacation.  We thought it was pretty luxurious, and actually it was.  So we were struck by the number of travelers we met, from a range of other countries, who were in the midst of a 4, or 8, or 12 week trip.  Indeed, the only people we encountered who were on a shorter vacation than us was a couple from Philadelphia.  What were we doing wrong?

Some of the people were retired (although they indicated that they had done similarly long vacations when they were younger), but many were working age.  How do they pull this off, we wondered?  There seem to be a few factors:

1. Paid leave. Most industrialized countries provide much more generous paid leave, either by mandate or due to union leverage, than the US.  One of our guides, when asked whether Argentine workers get much vacation time, seemed shocked at the question.  “Of course, it’s in our constitution!  I mean, we may be Argentina, but it’s not like we’re in Africa or someplace like that.”
2. Culture. Americans work longer hours than most other industrialized countries (including all of Europe and Japan, though we are still outpaced by Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan).  The difference in hours worked is greater than the difference in paid leave (i.e., we don’t even use the little we get), suggesting that some of it is due to a cultural reluctance to get away from our jobs.  In many industries, it’s almost a badge of pride to be “on” constantly.  We talked with several people who were taking extended leave without pay, something few Americans do (or are permitted to do).
3. Health care. Even if an American wanted to take unpaid leave for an extended trip, she would in many cases have a pause in employer-provided benefits, especially health insurance.  Paying for coverage while on unpaid leave is too much of a financial burden for most people.  This is not an issue for people from countries with government-provided health care, like Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, etc., etc.

Which leads me to two other points.  First, among the folks I had the opportunity to talk with were a doctor from Argentina and a nurse from England.  Both had wonderful things to say about their national health systems, including that fact that while people do often carry private insurance for things like a nicer room in the hospital, or a shorter wait for an imaging test, people are enormously satisfied with the quality of care.  “Everyone knows that the best doctors are the ones that work for the National Health Service.”

Second, when they talk about their “free” health care, of course we know that it is not free.  People pay either through their insurance premiums, or out of pocket costs, or taxes.   But while we might gag at the tax rates in places like Scandinavia, a recent study shows that, when you add it all up, public and private sources, the US actually has the second highest total social expenditures (largely health care, but also unemployment, retirement, disability, etc.), after France but ahead of those tax-and-spend Nordic countries.

Oh, and the wine in Argentina is terrific and cheap!

I am still on vacation, so Happy Thanksgiving…

When I was growing up, family meals were not an everyday event.  My mother, a nurse, often worked evenings, so those days we obviously couldn’t all eat together.  But we did make an effort to eat as a family on the other days.  Similarly, when we were raising our kids, despite my working shifts and both my wife and I traveling a fair amount for our jobs, we also placed a premium on eating together whenever possible.  That often meant having dinner 5:30 some days and 8:30 on others, but it seemed worth it.  After all, the demise of the family dinner has been cited as one important factor in the obesity epidemic, along with a host of other societal ills.

A new study in Pediatrics suggests that when it comes to risk of obesity, at least, not all family meals are created equal.  Researchers at the University of Minnesota, using a mixed-methods study including direct observation of 120 primarily low-income families, identified aspects of mealtime that were associated with obesity in the children.  While non-overweight children tended to have somewhat longer meals, and were more likely to eat in the kitchen or dining room vs. family room, the differences were small, and most meals were short (< 20 minutes), and the majority of both groups ate in a dining area.  More important were the family dynamics.  After adjusting for demographic factors (including parental BMI), the most important factors associated with child overweight or obesity were presence of positive interactions among family members (for example, enjoyment of each others’ company, warm interactions, positive reinforcement), and the absence of negative ones (hostility, lack of discipline, etc.).  Interestingly, very few food-specific dynamics were relevant.  Only moralizing about food – for example, “Eat what I gave you – other children are hungry and would be happy to have it” – was associated with the child’s weight; children who were hectored were more likely to be overweight.

Good information for those of us with families, or who are providing advice to families.  Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and a proponent of better eating (for the sake of our own health as well as that of the planet, sums his advice up succinctly into 3 rules: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly vegetables.”  To which we might add a fourth “Eat with people you like and get along with..”

Ask your doctor if you might be suffering from “restless legs syndrome.” Or “low testosterone,” or “social anxiety disorder.”  We’ve all seen the ads suggesting that our legs cramps or aging or shyness might instead represent a disorder with a name.  One that, not coincidentally, could be helped by a medication manufactured by the sponsor of the ad.  A medication for which you can ask your doctor for a prescription.  But while doctors like to complain about Big Pharma’s “diagnosis mongering,” what if we are also part of the problem?

“Overdiagnosis: How Our Compulsion for Diagnosis May Be Harming Children,” in the November issue of Pediatrics, raises this question.  The authors here are not referring to the kind of pseudo-disorders pedaled by industry.  By overdiagnosis they mean the discovery of a true abnormality, where the diagnosis does not benefit the patient.  This may include minor forms of a condition that would neither benefit from treatment nor be expected to progress to something more severe, or conditions for which treatment has been shown not to affect outcomes.  Think of low levels of elevated bilirubin in a newborn, asymptomatic skull fracture due to minor accidental trauma, or positive IgE blood test results indicating a response to food allergens in the absence of clinical symptoms.  None of these is treatable, and even knowing the diagnosis isn’t helpful in any way.  Yet physicians often perform – and sometimes parents request – tests for these and other diagnoses.

What is behind this drive for a diagnosis that doesn’t matter?  The article cites a few groups of factors.  One is industry influence.  There is no doubt that advertising does drive some demand.  (There is a reason pharma spent $4.5 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2009, in addition to support for various disease advocacy groups, with varying degrees of legitimacy.)  Another is incentives in the current health care system.  For one thing, providers are often financially rewarded for unnecessary testing and care.  A review of pediatric quality measures also shows a marked bias toward indicators focused on underuse of resources rather than overuse.  Public perception that diagnosis is more precise than it really is, coupled with an intuitive sense that it must be better to detect disease, as another factor.  But the largest influence, according to the authors, is physicians themselves.  We have a culture of intolerance of uncertainty.  We hate not having an answer, something that is ingrained from the earliest days of medical education where students are encouraged to develop a lengthy list of potential diagnoses and then exhaustively eliminate them one by one until finally arriving at the right one.  “Defensive medicine” is frequently cited, but most of the research suggests that this plays at most a minor role.

Cost is the obvious downside.  But there are others.  There are potential adverse physical effects, if having a diagnosis leads to treatment that will not benefit and might harm the patient.  Sometimes the tests ordered in search of a diagnosis are themselves risky (procedures requiring anesthesia, for example, or radiation exposure).  There is also real psychological harm in carrying a diagnosis.  The newborn who is a little yellow and has a mildly elevated bilirubin gets a diagnosis of  “hyperbilirubinemia.”  A child with nonspecific symptoms who tests positive for antibodies to shellfish and eggs is now labeled as “food allergic.”  Numerous studies have documented the “vulnerable child syndrome” in such children.  It results in increased utilization of health care, overprotective parenting, and bullying, among other consequences.

There are several efforts – from professional societies and academic medical centers – targeted at both providers and lay people to increase awareness of the presence and problems of overdiagnosis.  Traditionally, academic medicine has probably been more of a cause, but is now trying to be part of the solution.

Ask your doctor if you might be suffering from “adiagnosticophobia.”