ALLERGIES:

Some people with year round allergies usually due to house dust keep sniffing and sneezing no matter what they try. Even the newest drugs and desensitization shots may not work. And conventional nasal surgery causes bleeding and discomfort.

Now researchers are experimenting with lasers to vaporize mucous forming nasal tissue in a painless, bloodless, outpatient procedure. Under a local anesthetic, doctors use a handheld CO? laser to shoot a beam into the nasal cavity.

TARGET: the inferior turbinates’ the thin nasal layer in which allergic reactions occur.

No fuss, no mess, according to laser surgeon Tomoshige Fuku take of the Kansas Medical University in Osaka, Japan. The technique is especially good for very young patients he suggests in the Archives of Otolaryngology head and neck surgery.

Of 140 patients, aged 7 to 53, reexamined a month after laser surgery, 76 percent said allergy

relief was “excellent”, or “good”, according to the study. Perennially running noses improved only slightly for 18%, 6% percent felt no better.

About a dozen US. Medical centers are testing the experimental laser technique, says Stanley Shapshay, Chairman of Otolaryngology at Boston’s Lahay Clinic. It’s unclear whether it’s better than traditional surgery over the long run, he says. “But studies show lasers cause less pain and bleeding for most patients”.

EXERCISE & YOU

Top marathoners pound the pavement at the rate of 20 miles a day. Elite swimmers often paddle as much as 25,000 yards. Most frantic are triathletes who sometimes train eight hours a day.

Well, much of their good intentioned work is wasted energy, suggests David Costill, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University. “Typically, athletes overstrain” says Costill, “predisposing themselves to poor performances and injuries”.

But how much is too much? Costill believes athletes cease to improve when they expand 5,000 calories weekly through exercise. For runners, that means 50 to 60 miles, depending on body size and efficiency.

In Costills current book, “Inside Running” he documents two marathoners who resumed training after six month layoffs, then gradually upped weekly mileage. On 25 miles a week, they show “dramatic improvements in aerobic capacitiy Improvement continued through 50 miles, then began to plateau before 75. Beyond 75, they made no added gains in aerobic capacity.

Costill has also detrained swimmers and found that they improved on 5,000 yards, down from the visual 10,000.

You can estimate calorie expenditure using a calorie chart, or follow Costill’s rule of thumb: 60 minutes of daily exercise “an hour a day keeps the doctor away” he says. Beyond that he can measure no physiological benefits.

Article extracted from this publication >>  June 26, 1987