In this 2021 YouTube daily health update, Dr. David Koivuranta of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic reviews six recent research findings and translates them into practical lifestyle recommendations. He begins by noting that women who experience hypertension during pregnancy have a two‑fold increased risk of premature cardiovascular death later in life, emphasizing the importance of early cardiovascular health. He then highlights a study showing that two tea catechins (epicatechin gallate and epigallocatechin‑3‑gallate) activate the KCNQ5 protein to relax blood vessels and lower blood pressure. Next, he cites a literature review indicating that pre‑operative breathing exercises improve lung function, reduce postoperative pulmonary complications, and shorten hospital stays for elective cardiac surgery patients. He moves on to a large cohort analysis of over 500,000 lumbar spine cases, which found that non‑operative (conservative) care resolves the vast majority of degenerative lumbar spine conditions, with only 1.7 % progressing to surgery. He then discusses evidence that consistent CPAP use in seniors with obstructive sleep apnea lowers the risk of cognitive impairment. Finally, he references a child‑health survey linking higher daily screen time to difficulty falling asleep, fragmented night sleep, and daytime sleepiness, urging moderated technology use for children. Throughout, Dr. Koivuranta stresses that proactive, evidence‑based lifestyle choices—nutrition, breathing, appropriate medical device use, and balanced screen time—can improve long‑term health outcomes even when immediate benefits are not apparent. He invites viewers to request a written copy of the update and promises a new update the following day.
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Hello everyone, it's Dr. Dave. Hopefully you're all doing well, enjoying your week. Once again, you made it halfway, you're on to Wednesday. Congratulations! Coming at you today on behalf of the Toronto Neck and Back Pain Clinic with your daily health update. It is Wednesday, April 14th, 2021. I'm gonna look at 6 areas of health and wellness today as usual, and somewhere around this video you can read through all 6 of those areas. If you'd like a copy, DM us on social, send us an email, give us a call at the clinic, we'll be sure to get that to you. Not going to treat, diagnose, prevent or cure any illness or disease with our time together today. However, you just never know what that body of yours is capable of when you keep it focused on some good health and wellness information and your decisions, actions, thoughts, choices throughout the day support the outcomes that you'd like to have, especially in creating those great experiences you want because you do live your life through your body and your nervous system helps make that happen. So when your lifestyle factors are sharp and you're watching what you're doing throughout the day and your health and wellness is front of mind, with some of those decisions, thoughts, and actions, then you're just guaranteed to have some kind of good stuff happen, I would think and would hope. So today, one of the things that can get in the way of that journey is heart disease, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology says that women who have had high blood pressure during pregnancy are 2 times increased at risk for premature death from heart disease later in life. So they say that this study shows out of the 88,000+ women that they followed for 28 years, that cardiovascular disease is incredibly important to understand in terms of the implications it has and how much that hypertension or that high blood pressure, in this case, especially during pregnancy, has an impact afterwards. So it's good to go into these things healthy, and that's why sometimes there's no immediate gratification in some of these decisions, thoughts, choices, and actions we make, but down the road, you better believe they're going to come to serve you really well. Now, sometimes there's no predicting. Sometimes we do things really, really well and we still face with challenges. However, how well you go into those challenges when they happen certainly helps predict how well you're going to come out of them. So you, in my mind, cannot go wrong trying to stack this deck in your favor. All right, so, uh, this one's pregnancy specific, and of course you want to take care of yourself when you're preparing to or are in the midst of bringing another life into this world. But of course, for everybody, this strategy based just that one principle alone, which pregnancy emphasizes, uh, is true for all of us. So it's kind of an interesting thing, this research and literature. And that's the spinoff in paying attention to or being interested in, uh, how your body works and, uh, what they're discovering along the way. Because all of it does have implications for each of us, cuz most of us have stuff with our bodies and all these parts are very similar and we're likely to encounter some of the same problems along the way. One of the things you can do to help with your cardiovascular function and get some benefit is drink tea. A recent study found evidence that two catechin-type flavonoid compounds found in tea, epicatechin gallate and epigallocatechin-3-gallate, activate a protein called KCNQ5 that helps relax blood vessels, which can reduce blood pressure. Good to keep those blood vessels supple. When they become rigid and tense, that's where high blood pressure comes from. And 80 to 90% of high blood pressure is idiopathic. Fancy word for knowing they're not quite sure why it happens. So, um, we want to take care of ourselves because when they don't know how it or why it happens, there really is no treatment or cure other than just taking something to lower the blood pressure, which the research and literature doesn't really show improves our likelihood of having better cardiovascular outcomes, as interesting as that may be. So, uh, nonetheless, one of the things we can do through our lifestyle is just support that as best we can, and drinking tea can help have that effect, okay? That's from Cellular Physiology and Biochemistry, March 2021. If you end up in one of those situations where you face a challenge like surgery, apparently breathing can help you recover postoperatively. They did a research literature review, engaging in a breathing— according to that research literature review, engaging in a breathing exercise intervention prior to elective cardiac surgery is associated with improved lung function, a reduced risk for pulmonary postsurgical complications, and a shorter hospital stay. That's from the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology, March 2021. So getting that lung function increased and improved and maybe even helping a little bit with the stress going into that surgery increases the outcome. So again, how you go into something quite often helps determine how you come out of it. There will be challenges, but we can handle them if we go into them in as a healthy state as we possibly can. So breathing exercise is good before cardiac surgery. If you know someone unfortunately in that predicament. The Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, April 2021, looks at the conservative care of degenerative lumbar spine conditions. So some wear and tear happening in the spine, the parts are degenerating, uh, whether it's the bone and/or the disc. In this case, they looked at over 500,000 spines with lumbar stenosis or spondylolisthesis, both of which can compromise the amount of space and the nature of function of the parts in the lower back and the amount of space, especially for the nerves. And the researchers report that non-operative treatment approaches are often successful, with only 1.7% of patients failing to respond to conservative care and opting for lumbar fusion. So quite often people are worried if they need to get low back surgery. You don't have to get low back surgery, hopefully. Statistically, it's very unlikely that based on your low back pain you would have to get surgery. However, if you are not able to achieve and receive a proper diagnosis and be given options to take care and improve that lower back, the likelihood of you becoming one of those people that may need surgery will certainly increase. But that's the same as it might be with any health condition. It shouldn't be surprising with back pain, neck pain, uh, but any condition that's left to progress or isn't supported as best it can be to try and either slow and stop its own progress and/or to actually recover some improvement in function and health and wellness, then it is likely, more likely to have an outcome that we don't want. So that effort will never go wrong as long as it's well-placed and well-intended. And that comes down to a proper diagnosis and being given options, which as a healthcare consumer you want so you can make the right choice for you. And if surgery becomes the right choice, that's okay. They do amazing things with surgery. It's just that it shouldn't be a first or near the beginning resort unless it's necessary, but it should be a last resort until all conservative options have been exhausted. All right, um, in the journal Sleep, March 2021, they looked at how CPAP can help preserve brain health. So if you have obstructive sleep apnea and you get appropriate, uh, support through a CPAP machine, um, especially with seniors, it revealed that those who use continuous positive airway pressure had lower risk for cognitive impairment than patients who failed to use their CPAP consistently. So if you're diagnosed with that sleep apnea disorder and you need the CPAP, it's a good idea to use it because it's not only your rest that improves, but your overall body function, because it relies on that airway to function nicely and that will have an impact on your cognitive or brain function. So keep using that CPAP. And finally, the journal or the report from Child, March 2021, looked at how screen time affects kids' sleep. They looked at questionnaires completed by the parents of 1,700 young children, and it revealed an association between the time a child spends in front of a screen, including smartphones, computers, television, or video games, consoles, each day, and an increased risk for difficulty falling asleep, sleeping through the night, and maintaining alertness during the day. There's nothing wrong with technology, and it can be very helpful and also very entertaining and fun. But like so many other things that are meant for good, we want to be cautious, use them in moderation. So that they don't have negative health implications. The research would want us to use these things in moderation, as apparently, according to the research, there can be implications. All right, a long daily health update, lots to chat about in that one, uh, to encourage you to keep up with those lifestyle choices because they are valuable. You will not go wrong. Sometimes there's no immediate gratification, but in the long term, you're just more likely to be able to reap the benefits of what you've been able to invest in 'cause you're probably gonna have to make a withdrawal sometime in the future. No one gets through life unscathed, and as nice as that would be, we'd also lose the contrast of how good it is when things are good. So keep working to the level and degree that you want to take care of yourself so you feel the way that you want to and you're able to do what you need and want to do, and the daily health update can help you do that. So come back tomorrow, Thursday. We'll have your next daily health update then. Enjoy the rest of your day. Take care, be well. We'll talk soon.
