Figuring Out Health News

Jordan was gathering information for a research project on teens and suicide. She came across a news article about how some antidepressants increase the chances of suicidal thinking and behavior in kids and teens. Jordan was confused. How could a medicine that was supposed to help kids with depression actually make them feel worse? She was also worried because her sister was taking an antidepressant. After Jordan did some of her own research and looked into the issue further, though, she discovered things that set her mind at ease.

Often, news reports on health and medicine can be confusing — and sometimes they can be downright scary. How do you know what is important and accurate?

Large newspapers, magazines, TV networks, and radio stations often have medical reporters on staff to cover developments in health and medicine. Their job is to report complicated scientific information in a way that’s easy for regular people to understand. Many health stories are accurate and balanced. But not all are. Sometimes, reporters try to quickly cram information into a short news story, and they may oversimplify the information. What you see may not be the whole picture.

A Study — or Just a Story?

To catch a viewer’s attention, news reports sometimes make dramatic claims. In addition, medical news reports often focus on people’s personal stories, not scientific studies. Personal stories are interesting, but often they don’t prove anything about health or treatments in general. It takes a well-done study to do that. And sometimes these studies just aren’t dramatic or exciting enough to make the news.

When you hear about a new medical development, the first question to ask yourself is whether the news is based on a scientific study. Knowing there’s a study behind the news is only the first step, though. How the study was done (and who did it) matters too. For example:

Was the Study Done in People?

A lot of medical research is done in the laboratory or in lab animals, not in people — at least, not at first. Lab studies help scientists figure out whether a drug looks promising, how it works, and whether there might be side effects. But what happens in a laboratory does not necessarily work the same in people. These studies are often a beginning — but they’re usually not the end of the story.

When watching or reading a news report about a new drug or treatment, see if it tells you whether the findings involved animals or people. It might not — so you’ll have to do some sleuthing on your own to get the information (see "Doing Your Own Research" below).

Who Was in the Study?

Even if a study was done in people, it may not apply to you. For instance, findings from studies involving only adults may not be true for teens. Results of all-male studies may not apply to women. Research studies usually list who took part — their sex, age, and other characteristics. Are these people like you?

In addition to who is in a study, you’ll also need to keep in mind how many people took part in it. The more people in the study, the more likely it is that the study’s findings will hold true for the whole population. Sometimes a study’s results are announced with a big splash and then it turns out that the study only involved a few people. When researchers do the same study using the hundreds or thousands of people necessary to get really accurate (or "significant") results, those results might be different.

It’s also important for the study to follow patients long enough to be sure that a treatment really works, and that additional or more serious side effects don’t develop over time.

How Was the Study Designed?

There are lots of ways researchers look into new treatments and information that can help people stay healthier. Sometimes they look back at people’s medical records or ask them questions to find out what might have put them at more (or less) risk for a health condition. Those studies, called retrospective studies, can provide useful clues, but they’re only as reliable as a person’s memory or the accuracy of medical records.

Prospective studies are usually better. They look forward, not backward. The best of these studies follow thousands of people long enough to see whether the things they do — like diet and exercise — have a good or bad effect on their health.

For new drugs or treatments, randomized, controlled clinical trials are the best way for deciding whether a treatment works. In this kind of research, some of the participants get the drug, vitamin, or other therapy being tested. Others get what is called a placebo (a fake treatment or sugar pill that contains no medicine at all). In this type of study, the patients are "blinded" — they don’t know who is getting the treatment and who is getting the placebo until the trial is over. That way, their response to the drug or placebo can’t be influenced by whether they think they have been taking the real drug or not. In a double-blind study, neither the patients nor the researchers know which patients have taken the drug or the placebo until the study is over.

It’s rare for one study to be the final word. Medical knowledge comes from many studies done over time — and frequently there are contradictions along the way. Often, different studies of a particular treatment or condition, all done properly, can still have different (or even completely opposite) results.

Also, the news media (and even researchers themselves!) are more likely to report the findings of a study if that study shows results that are different from what is thought to be true. For example, the media are much more likely to do a story about a study that shows that eating a particular type of food may help prevent cancer. But other studies may show that eating that food doesn’t really make much difference.

The scientific community can take into account all the different studies and decide that eating the food might not really help a person avoid cancer. But to the regular person who just hears about one study through the news, that food suddenly becomes a cancer-fighting miracle.

Where Do Reporters Get Their Stories?

Sometimes, reporters get their news stories by following what is published in medical journals. The best medical and scientific journals — like The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics, Science, and Nature — carefully review studies before publishing them so the information is trustworthy.

These publications are written for the scientific community, and the language in them can be hard for people who aren’t doctors or scientists to understand. News reporters who get their information from scientific journals might do a good job of explaining the study and what it means — but not always.

Some reporters don’t always wait until something is published before reporting it as news. Sometimes reporters hear information from researchers before a study has even been published and they want to bring it to the public’s attention quickly. Without a published study, though, a reporter may not have all the facts.

So how do you get closer to the truth?

Doing Your Own Research

You can get additional information about a news report on the Internet. Put keywords from the news report into a search engine and see what comes up. The results will give you lots of different perspectives — particularly if the issue is big news — so you’re not relying on just one news report for the facts. You’ll need to screen what you see, though. Many of the sites that show up in search results may not have the most accurate and up-to-date information.

On commercial websites (sites with URLs that end in .com), look to see if the site has advertising. If it does, it may be biased in favor of the advertiser. Of course, having advertising on a site doesn’t necessarily mean it is biased. But if you’re going to be a good "information consumer," you need to take that possibility into account.

Also check to see whether a doctor or other medical expert has reviewed the information you’re reading, and whether the date on the information is recent.

The websites of government health agencies — such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — usually give accurate and unbiased information. Established medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, and associations, such as the American Psychiatric Association, are other good sources.

Getting Help

The best way to get a full understanding of medical news is to ask someone like a doctor or science teacher for help in figuring out what it all means.

Jordan talked to her science teacher about the antidepressant story. She helped Jordan understand that certain antidepressants (like the one Jordan’s sister was taking) are OK for teens. She also helped her discover that the study results didn’t mean all the teens in the study committed suicide while on the medication. In fact, in this study, none of the patients on the medication committed suicide. Instead, some reported thinking about suicide more. Jordan also learned about how important it is for teens on antidepressants to see their doctors regularly so their medications can be monitored and adjusted.

Reading or watching medical news isn’t a substitute for seeing a doctor. Trying to diagnose yourself or changing or stopping your medicine based on something you’ve read or heard can be dangerous. News reports often focus only on the positive and don’t mention the downsides, or side effects, of a medication or other treatment. Or they may report a dramatic or scary side effect of a medication that is really very rare, or fail to mention the large number of patients who might get very sick if they didn’t take the drug. Your doctor can help you weigh the benefits and risks.

As Jordan discovered, understanding what’s behind medical news can take away worry and concern. And knowing more can help you ask good questions about your own health when you see your doctor.

Fainting

Desiree got out of the whirlpool at the gym and was on her way to the showers when she felt incredibly dizzy. Next thing she knew, she woke up on the locker room floor with her sister looking over her anxiously. She was pretty scared — what happened?

Desiree's sister thought she'd probably fainted. Although Desiree felt like she'd been unconscious for hours, her sister said she was out for less than a minute. Since Desiree felt fine and she'd never fainted before, she decided she didn't need to go to the ER.

When Desiree asked her school nurse about it the next day, she said Desiree probably fainted because she stayed in the whirlpool too long or the temperature was set too high, affecting her body temperature.

Why Do People Faint?

Fainting is pretty common in teens. The good news is that most of the time it's not a sign of something serious.

When someone faints, it's usually because changes in the nervous system and circulatory system cause a temporary drop in the amount of blood reaching the brain. When the brain is robbed of its blood supply, a person loses consciousness and falls over. After lying down, a person's head is at the same level as the heart, which helps restore blood flow to the brain. So the person usually recovers after a minute or two.

Here are some of the reasons why teens faint:

• Physical triggers. Getting too hot or being in a crowded, poorly ventilated setting are common causes of fainting in teens. People can also faint after exercising too much or working out in excessive heat and not drinking enough fluids (so the body becomes dehydrated). Fainting can also be triggered by other causes of dehydration, as well as hunger or exhaustion. Sometimes just standing for a very long time or getting up too quickly after sitting or lying down can lead someone to faint.
• Emotional stress. Emotions like fright, pain, anxiety, or shock can affect the body's nervous system, causing blood pressure to drop. This is the reason why people faint when something frightens or horrifies them, like the sight of blood.
• Hyperventilation. A person who is hyperventilating is taking fast breaths, which causes carbon dioxide (CO2) to decrease in the blood. This can make a person faint. People who are extremely stressed out, in shock, or have certain anxiety disorders may faint as a result of hyperventilation.
• Drug use. Some illegal drugs — such as cocaine or methamphetamine — can cause fainting (and even a heart attack in some cases). Inhalant use ("huffing") can lead to fainting by causing problems with a person's heartbeat. Fainting also is a side effect of some prescription medications.
• Low blood sugar. The brain depends on a constant supply of sugar from the blood to work properly and keep a person awake. People who are taking insulin shots or other medications for diabetes can develop low blood sugar and pass out if they take too much medicine or don't eat enough. Sometimes people without diabetes who are starving themselves (as with crash dieting) can drop their blood sugar low enough to faint.
• Anemia. A person with anemia has fewer red blood cells than normal, which decreases the amount of oxygen delivered to the brain and other tissues. Girls who have heavy periods or people with iron-deficiency anemia for other reasons (like not getting enough iron in their diet) may be more likely to faint.
• Pregnancy. During pregnancy the body normally undergoes a lot of changes, including changes in the circulatory system, which can cause a woman to faint. In addition, the body's fluid requirements are increased, so pregnant women may faint if they aren't drinking enough. And as the uterus grows it can press on and partially block blood flow through large blood vessels, which can decrease blood supply to the brain.
• Eating disorders. People with anorexia or bulimia may faint for a number of reasons, including dehydration, low blood sugar, and changes in blood pressure or circulation caused by starvation, vomiting, or overexercising.
• Cardiac problems. An abnormal heartbeat and other heart problems can cause a person to faint. If someone is fainting a lot, especially during exercise or exertion, doctors may suspect heart problems and run tests to look for a heart condition.
  

Some medical conditions — like seizures or a rare type of migraine headache — can cause people to seem like they are fainting. But they're not the same thing as fainting and are handled differently.

Can You Prevent Fainting?

Some people feel dizzy immediately before they faint. They may also notice changes in vision (such as tunnel vision), a faster heartbeat, sweating, and nausea. Someone who is about to faint may even throw up.

If you think you're going to faint, you may be able to head it off by taking these steps:

• If possible, lie down. This can help prevent a fainting episode as it allows blood to circulate to the brain. Just be sure to stand up again slowly when you feel better — move to a sitting position for several minutes first, then to standing.
• Sit down with your head lowered forward between your knees. This will also help blood circulate to the brain, although it's not as good as lying down. When you feel better, move slowly into an upright seated position, then stand.
• Don't let yourself get dehydrated. Drink enough fluids, especially when your body is losing more water due to sweating or being in a hot environment.
• Keep blood circulating. If you have to stand or sit for a long time, periodically tense your leg muscles or cross your legs to help improve blood return to the heart and brain. And try to avoid overheated, cramped, or stuffy environments.

What Should You Do?

If you've only fainted once and the reasons why are obvious (like being in a hot, crowded setting), then there's usually no need to worry about it. But if you have a medical condition or are taking prescription medications, it's a good idea to call your doctor. You should also let your doctor know if you hurt yourself when you fainted (for example, if you banged your head really hard).

If you also have chest pain, palpitations (heart beating fast for no reason), shortness of breath, or seizures, or the fainting occurred during exercise or exertion, talk with your doctor — especially if you've fainted more than once. Frequent fainting may be a sign of a health condition, like a heart problem.

What Do Doctors Do?

For most teens, fainting is not connected with other health problems, so a doctor will probably not need to do anything beyond examining you and asking a few questions. If concerned about your fainting, the doctor may order some tests in addition to giving you a physical exam and taking your medical history. Tests depend on what the doctor thinks might be causing the problem, but common tests include an EKG (a type of test for heart problems), a blood sugar test, and sometimes a blood test to make sure a person is not anemic.

If test results show that fainting is a symptom of another problem, such as anemia, the doctor will advise you on treatments for that problem.

Helping Someone Who Faints

If you're with someone who has fainted, try to make sure the person is lying flat, but avoid moving the person if you think he or she might have been injured when falling (moving an injured person can make things worse).

Instead, loosen any tight clothing — such as belts, collars, or ties — to help restore blood flow. Propping the person's feet and lower legs up on a backpack or jacket can also help move blood back toward the brain.

Someone who has fainted will usually recover quickly. Because it's normal to feel a bit weak after fainting, be sure the person stays lying down. Getting up too quickly may bring on another fainting spell.