You Docs: Will traveling after surgery up clot risk?

Posted: Tuesday, August 30, 2011


-- Elaine, China

Congrats on your new, younger look. You're a braver person than we YOU Docs to have all those procedures done at once. (Ouch!) Done together, they add up to one major surgery, which, yes, puts you at risk of forming blood clots for up to three months.

A long trip during which you can't move around much impedes circulation in your lower body, which also increases your chance of clots. Travel-related clots often form in a deep vein of your leg or pelvis, and are called deep vein thrombosis. If a DVT breaks free and travels to your lungs, it can be fatal. Here's how to lower your risk:

1. Move your butt. Get up every half hour to walk about the cabin. Explain why to your seatmate and the crew, so they'll understand. Moving your leg muscles helps "pump" blood through your veins.

2. Roll and flex. If you can't get up, roll your ankles and flex and point your toes at least 10 times every 30 minutes to activate your leg muscles.

3. Drink lots of water and no alcohol. Do not become dehydrated. It makes blood thicker and more likely to clot.

4. Wear compression stockings. They apply graduated leg pressure from the ankles up, which keeps blood moving.

5. Wear loose clothes (no body shapers) and don't cross your legs. Putting any kinks on lower veins inhibits circulation.

6. Ask your doc about this: Take two blood-thinning baby aspirins with a half glass of warm water one hour before the flight and daily for three days after it.

My 8-year-old granddaughter has been on antibiotics for four years.

The doctors say it prevents her once-frequent bladder infections. She hasn't had one in a long time. Isn't it harmful to be on antibiotics for years?

-- Jim, via email

Your granddaughter may no longer be troubled by urinary tract infections because those germ-killing drugs did their job about three and a half years ago.

Antibiotics are most beneficial during the first six months of treatment. That's when a UTI is most likely to stage a comeback in infection-prone kids. If her doc didn't check to see if the original therapy worked, it's time to talk to another doctor.

Long-term antibiotic use in children with UTIs was linked to antibiotic resistance long ago (it lets germs mutate to the point that they laugh off the antibiotic).

If this little girl has a normal urinary tract, she may be able to prevent future infections by following a few simple rules:

1. Go when she needs to go. Holding it until she's doing the pee-pee dance outside the bathroom can cause urine to back up and allow bacteria to thrive.

2. Clean properly. Children need to be taught to wipe front to back after urinating in order to avoid carrying bacteria from the rectum to the urinary tract.

3. Avoid bubble baths and strong soaps. Both can irritate the urethra and make it painful to pee. If she tries not to go (see step 1), it increases her UTI risk.

• • •


Everybody has trouble sleeping now and then. Even we YOU Docs toss and turn sometimes. Don't yawn and bear it. Insomnia problems increase with age, and so do the dangers.


Sleeping pills add other risks, especially with age, often leading to daytime drowsiness, memory problems and scary falls.

Rest easy. Our late-night medical reading (see No. 3 below) turned up four natural sleep strategies that helped 66 percent of people sleep better. Good bet they'll help you, too.

1. Spend less time in bed. Sounds counterintuitive: If you need more sleep, stay in bed until you get it, right? Nope. Instead, train your brain to link bed only with sleep (or sex) -- not with watching TV, answering email or paying bills. Do those elsewhere.

2. Don't hit the sack until you're really sleepy. Then you won't be tempted to do stuff there that disrupts your shuteye. (See No. 1.) A good tip for nodding off easily at night: Exercise in the morning.

3. If you can't sleep, get up. Read a book until you feel drowsy again (a medical journal's even better!). Or do some slow, gentle stretches and deep breathing.

4. Or try scent: Dr. Mike believes in lavender so much as a sleep aid that he's backing an aromatherapy company.


• • •


From swap meets to kids trading baseball cards to neighborhood barters ("I'll mow your lawn if you babysit next week"), it's easy to love a good swap. Here's one that won our hearts, and we bet it will steal yours, too: four delicious switcheroos that lower your risk for diabetes by a third.

It turns out that eating a daily serving of either red meat (beef, pork, lamb) or processed meat (bacon, hot dogs, sausage, many deli meats) is a big risk for Type 2 diabetes. For example, a small, daily serving of beef (a serving is just a palm-size amount; many burgers are now two to three servings) ups your diabetes risk 19 percent.

Think that's bad? Scarfing down a hot dog, sausage patty or two bacon strips every day boosts it 51 percent!

There's an extra troublemaker in processed meats: preservatives. They weaken your ability to produce blood-sugar-controlling insulin. The iron in red meat, surprisingly, may do the same thing.

So pull the same switcheroo we YOU Docs do: Swap out meat for healthier proteins: fish, skinless poultry breast, combos of beans-lentils-chickpeas-nuts-and-whole grains, and no/low-fat cheese or yogurt. Instead of increasing your diabetes risk by a huge amount, you'll cut it by that much or more.

These swaps mean tasty eating, too. How about Asian salmon with brown rice pilaf? Stuffed whole-wheat pizza? Turkey roll-ups with baked red potatoes? Grilled shrimp with peanut sauce and snow peas? Find these and many more delicious, diabetes-friendly recipes in our "YOU: On a Diet" Menu Planner at www.realage.com.

• • •



Exercising -- even just strolling around the house -- may be the last thing you feel like doing if your knees, hips or back hurt. You also may be afraid that it'll make things worse inside your joints, where this common-as-colds problem erodes cushy cartilage between your bones, letting them scrape against each other. (Ouch.) If worries like these are keeping you on the couch, you're far from alone: Half of all women and nearly as many men with arthritic knees stay still most of the time.

It's counterintuitive, but movement is great arthritis medicine. It eases pain by keeping your joints flexible (not exercising makes 'em stiffer ... and stiffer) and by strengthening leg muscles that act as shock absorbers for your knee joints. Movement also lubricates cartilage, which keeps it healthier. And it helps lower the risk for heart attacks and strokes, too, which often are high in people with arthritis in part because they don't move.

Best get-up-and-go plan: Talk with your doc. Walking and water exercise are almost always great options; just check to see if there are moves you should avoid and whether knee supports would help. Our friends at the Arthritis Foundation offer pool classes, at-home exercise DVDs and more. Log on to www.arthritis.org to print out tips and info. Then walk around the house while you read them.

• The YOU Docs -- Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen -- are authors of "YOU: On a Diet." Want more? See "The Dr. Oz Show" on TV. To submit questions, go to www.RealAge.com.

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