Regulating Salt

On Wednesdays I like to go to McDonald’s for lunch. This Wednesday, as usual, I ordered a double cheeseburger meal. With medium fries and a Diet Coke this is a good value at $2.99, and it keeps me filled up until dinner. For kicks, today I flipped the place mat and read the nutritional content: 440 calories in my double cheeseburger, 23g of fat, 11g of saturated fat, 80mg of cholesterol and 1150mg of sodium. In my medium fries I consumed 380 calories, 19g of fat, 2.5g of saturated fat and 270mg of sodium. Generally, I don’t worry too much about this tasty weekly bargain, given my relatively healthy diet, daily exercise and normal body mass index. However, some may not agree with my lack of alarm.

Increasingly we’re hearing about government regulation of food. Yesterday I read the May edition of Atlantic Monthly. Its article, “Beating Obesity,” was about the obesity epidemic, comparing and contrasting excess food as a social ill, with tobacco. Much like the tobacco industry, the food industry has been under recent attack for formulating and marketing the addictive processed foods that our children snack on. As we all know, these foods are rich in sodium, sugar and fat, and contribute to obesity and chronic health problems including, hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, among others. Salt is the most recent of these nutritional poisons to come into the limelight.

There is epidemiological evidence from the NHANES Trial and others that high salt intake is linked with hypertension and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. A recent meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal demonstrated worse outcomes in those who consumed a high salt diet. The recommended daily allowance of sodium for people at low risk is 2300 mg. For those at high risk, which I am sorry to say includes healthy me, the recommended daily allowance is less than 1500 mg. “High risk” is defined as: over age 40, people who have high blood pressure or slightly elevated blood pressure, people who have diabetes, and African Americans. This constitutes 70 percent of Americans. Perhaps I should think twice about my weekly meal.

On April 20, 2010 the Institute of Medicine released the report, “Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake,” recommending that the FDA work with the food and restaurant industry to set new standards for reducing the sodium content of marketed foods. The argument goes that if we all get used to a low sodium diet (less than 1500 mg) at a young age we will change our palates and reduce our cardiovascular risk. OK fine, I’ll give up the double cheeseburger, but not my Kalamata olives, those are Mediterranean, they must be healthy.

A recent New York Times article noted the challenge to the food industry. Salt works synergistically with sugar and fat to mask the taste of foods that without enough salt have the consistency of “damp dog hair.” That doesn’t sound good.

It seems to me that the food industry is in trouble. Regulation of food has become increasingly popular. In 2006 the New York City Board of Health made New York City the first to ban trans fat from restaurant food. Bill Clinton has campaigned to get sugary soft drinks out of schools, which has been demonstrated to be an effective means of combating childhood obesity, Michelle Obama’s current agenda. The movie Food Inc. certainly showed the ugliness of food industrialization in our country, portraying the big business aspect, with its primary focus on mass production. The implication was that the FDA and USDA have been negligent.

In my neighborhood of Decatur, Georgia, located less than two miles from the CDC and Emory University, a new restaurant, Farm Burger, is a big hit, featuring locally-produced hormone-free hamburgers. Farm Burger has very good burgers, but I am a personal fan of burgers at the Brick Store Pub, though admittedly it could be could be its extensive beer list and English pub atmosphere that flavors my preference. I wonder how the sodium content of burgers in these restaurants compares. Should governmental regulatory agencies be getting more involved?

Managing Pain in Primary Care: Moving Beyond the Rock and the Hard Place

In April 2010 the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) published updated guidelines for the management of chronic pain. The guidelines were based on a review of recent scientific evidence as well as a survey of expert opinion. As I read through the guidelines, summarizing the efficacy of various therapies for chronic pain ranging from epidural injection to medication management, some of my most challenging clinical cases involving pain management came to mind.

The assessment of pain is recognized as integral to the care of every patient to the extent that pain, similar to blood pressure, is assessed at every encounter as a “vital sign” on a scale from 1 to 10. Reports of the “under-treatment” of pain by doctors are prevalent in the literature. Yet at the same time physicians are increasingly fearful to prescribe some therapeutic options, mostly chronic narcotics, because of the regulatory and legal concerns intrinsic in prescribing these medications, and because of their addictive potential. The advent of Pain Medicine as a specialty in the past several decades has had a beneficial impact for the management of patients with chronic pain, but the reality is that most of these patients continue to be managed largely by their primary care physicians.

I remember the harrowing case of a patient in her thirties who was my patient. She had chronic abdominal pain, had been through unending diagnostic tests, referrals to pain centers and subspecialty consultation. In the end, I was left to manage her symptoms and had her on a multimodal regimen that included chronic narcotics. One weekend I received a call for the county coroner. This mother of five had been found by her husband dead from a presumed overdose. As it turned out, unbeknownst to me, she had recently visited a new pain clinic and was prescribed additional medications, which she had added to what I was already prescribing.

Another patient, a respected professional, after many years of caring for her and a good doctor-patient relationship, forged a prescription that I wrote and was caught at the pharmacy where arrest was threatened. On returning to me she was tearful and afraid that I would no longer care for her. I did, and she went on to come off of her chronic narcotics until she was diagnosed with metastatic cancer a year later, the diagnosis of which was possibly delayed given her long history of bone disease and chronic pain.

It is the impact of cases like these that cause physicians to question themselves, in a stare down with the Hippocratic Oath, “first do no harm,” and result in their reluctance to manage chronic pain. To a primary care physician the pain clinic might seem like an ideal solution. Similar to an anticoagulation clinic (for the management of patients on warfarin) the pain clinic would take over pain management, including the prescribing of medications, and provide a systematic approach, allowing primary care doctors to obviate themselves of this risky aspect of patient care. The reality is, however, that there are currently too few pain centers to handle the numbers of patients with chronic pain. Moreover, the consultative and drug monitoring aspect of pain management is not nearly as lucrative as the procedural aspect of pain management. The result is that many pain centers act as a consult services, making initial treatment recommendations, including the assessment of whether a patient is a suitable candidate for a therapeutic procedure, but send the patient back to their primary care doctor for the ongoing medication prescribing and management. It’s rare that the patient is cured after the pain clinic consultation, and so begins the back and forth, trial and error process, as the primary care doctors picks up the management and tries his or her best to advocate for the patient.

In primary care we have a lot of work to do. This is highlighted by the fact that in my 12 years of clinical practice within an 18-member group of academic general internists we had no practice-wide strategy or protocol for managing patients with chronic pain issues. Though a variety of pain contracts had been proposed for implementation during the course of my employment within this group, we could never settle on one to adopt. Some of this seemed to occur as a result of insufficient time to develop a process for a systematic practice approach to pain management. However, there was also general acceptance of the view that each physician had his or her own unique style and standard, the art of medicine. Nonetheless, I think the lack of systemization led to cross-coverage issues and increased risk for both patients and physicians related to inconsistency in practice.

What is the answer? In my view chronic pain, similar to other chronic conditions, is best managed by a patient’s primary care physician within the context of a “medical home.” There needs to be more standardization of processes and protocols within primary care practices, with clear pathways of communication back and forth with procedural specialists, opportunities for group support for patients, and linkages to physical rehabilitation and psychological support services. However, the development and management of such programs within the context of primary care will require more support from our healthcare system. Similar to other chronic health conditions, fee-for-service based reimbursement for primary care office visits at current rates is not adequate to support the care coordination necessary to deliver the highest quality and safest care to our patients.

For more information on chronic pain management I found the following site particularly informative:
Emerging Solutions in Pain

For further guidelines and resources go to:
American Pain Society
Opioid Treatment Guidelines
Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement: Assessment and Management of Chronic Pain

Snakes and Healers

On April the 7^th I saw a snake in the Temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus, Greece. It sat on top of the temple floor as I met its gaze and then slithered beneath a rock. Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of healing and medicine, son of Apollo and father to Hygieia and Panacea, among others, was worshiped as a sacred healer in antiquity. From 300 BC onward his cult became very popular. During my recent trip to the Peloponnese, I visited Epidaurus, the site of the most famous sanctuary of Asclepius. At Epidaurus I visited its ancient theater, renowned as the best preserved of Greek antiquity, looking out at the same backdrop of mountains and cypress trees that theatergoers of 2400 years prior had appreciated. However it was the ruin of the Asclepieion that most fascinated me at Epidaurus.

I learned that the rod of Asclepius, entwined with a single snake, was a symbol of his healing powers thought to derive from the snake. As described in a paper in by Susan M Kellie in Lancet:

“The Cult of Asclepius (Asklepios, Aesculapius), was one of the most enduring of classical antiquity. Hundreds of shrines dotted Italy, Greece, the eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa. The origin of the cult was thought to be at Epidaurus, from which it spread to new sites by the transport of one of the sacred serpents. The Asclepian snake is described as watchful, gentle, and endowed with perennial youth through the shedding of its skin, hence its association with healing."

The serpent, as symbol for medicine, is best recognized today in the form of a caduceus. However, the caduceus derives from the staff of the ancient messenger god, Hermes, patron god of trade. In form it is a single winged staff with two serpents entwined. The caduceus was symbolic of commerce and its initial use in medicine likely had to do with alchemy and pharmacy. Confusion of the caduceus with the staff of Asclepius likely led to its widespread application to symbolize medicine and healing.

In the healing ritual of the Cult of Asclepius the sick pilgrim would enter the Asclepieion (hospital), go through a procedure of bathing, fasting and sacrifice, and then go to sleep. While sleeping, the patient would be visited by the god, in the form of a snake, which licked or bit the patient. On waking the patient’s dream was interpreted by a priest and he or she was offered a cure.

Traveling through Greece this April I sought to understand the momentous force of Christianity, which would end Classical culture and propel European culture into the Dark Ages until the Age of Enlightenment. I visited Byzantine monasteries and churches, staring at gilded icons, Mary Theotokos, Mary Hodegetria and Mary Platytera. I lighted candles and listened to the somber music of Holy Week, church bells clanging, the austere Orthodox Easter sermon booming through my window while I lay in bed awake at midnight in Monemvasia.

But with the snake at Epidaurus I found personal meaning.

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