Mike
Carruthers:
Did you know that donating blood is good for your
health?
Dr.
Nancy Snyderman:
The idea is that iron is the foundation for oxygen
free radicals that really are the "rust" of the human body. Dr.
Nancy Snyderman, Medical Editor for NBC News and author of the book Medical Myths
That Can Kill You… And
if you can decrease those radicals, those free radicals rummaging around your
body and causing the rust - you can decrease heart disease, stroke, a lot of cancers.
So how do you decrease the chance of getting rust to begin with? Lower the iron
levels a little bit in your body. When you donate blood you drop the iron levels,
you do something good for somebody else and you may in fact decrease your own
risk of disease. It's
important to realize, says Dr. Snyderman, doctors do play favorites. Doctors
really do like informed smart patients. So when a patient comes to the doctors
as prepared as he or she would be to go to the grocery store - with a list of
what they want to talk about and an idea of what they want out of the visit you'll
get more from your doctor. And
here's an odd but important little medical fact. The
kind of earwax a woman has (and this is according to the National Cancer Institute).
Women with excessive wet earwax are twice as likely to develop breast cancer as
those with dry earwax. Tomorrow,
how some coffee can affect your cholesterol - I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something
You Should Know.
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