That's Fit

My sister has high blood pressure. While lifestyle choices and medication keep her blood pressure in healthy ranges she can't seem to shake the edema. Despite her best efforts, her feet and ankles remain swollen and puffy. While my blood pressure is within healthy range, as soon as the weather gets hot and humid, I'm dealing with swollen feet, too.

Our bodies are designed to move water through our systems. Edema is a condition where excess fluid is retained between cells. There are many reasons you may have edema including immobility, pregnancy, heat/humidity, medications, high blood pressure, trauma, and kidney disease. If you have swollen feet, take heart. There are plenty of things you can do:

• Elevate your legs above heart level. You can use a leg wedge to raise your legs up while sleeping.
• Wear support socks.
  
• Increase your activity -- walking is a perfect exercise for helping edema.
• Avoid standing or sitting in one place for a long time. (If you are sitting for a while, try raising your feet up a bit.)
• Ask your doctor if a short-term course of diuretics would be advisable.
• If you're on high blood pressure medication, talk to your doctor about possibly modifying your medications. (Do not make any changes without speaking to your doctor.)
• Drink plenty of water.

Revolution Health has a new interactive tool, momScore, that ranks states based on the accessibility and quality of maternal health care. To determine the score, a team of health experts compared state-to-state criteria including:

• Access to prenatal care
• Maternal mortality
• Risk of pregnancy complications
• Childcare availability per capita
• Infant mortality
• Air quality
• Violent crime rate
• Access to health insurance
• Affordability of children's health insurance
• Mandatory paid leave policy
  

You can check your state's score overall or by specific health topic. My state ranked roughly in the middle, which was what I expected to see. Where does your state rank?

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint of the UK has some very unsettling news regarding pregnant teenagers over there. In an effort to ease the pain of birth, expectant teens are taking up smoking to have smaller babies. If this sounds like one of the worst things you've ever heard, then you are not alone.

The myth of small children being less painful to birth has some teenagers going to extreme and fatal lengths to try and produce a child that would be significantly more unhealthy than babies born from non-smoking mothers. As I'm sure any mother could tell you, this is preposterous. Having a smaller baby is no less painful than a larger one. Are they even thinking about the potential of losing the child altogether?

Apparently not, because the article cites research stating that smoking while pregnant raises the chance of a miscarriage or stillbirth by 26 percent. By all conventional thinking, there are a thousand reasons to kick the habit while women are expecting (or not pick it up at all). Let's hope they realize this before it is too late.