Teenage Vaping; Poison Ivy Patrol; Cancer Overtreatment

Grandmas Know Best

How To Raise A Human  This week’s story from our special series on parenting is all about Grandma.   What made us human might have had less to do with men out hunting, and a lot more to do with what was going on at home — with grandmas and babies.   John Daley / CPR News   A Teenage Vaping Habit Became 'Impossible To Let Go' Julien Lavandier, a 21-year-old student at Colorado State University, started vaping when he was a sophomore in high school.   "At first, it was a lot of, you know, chasing flavors, or doing smoke tricks and that was really what impressed me,” he tells Colorado Public Radio’s John Daley. "I thought, you know, this is cool, this looks like something fun."     Lavandier estimates a quarter of his classmates were habitual e-cigarette users.    Now he’d like to stop using e-cigarettes but can’t.   Dr. Deborah Liptzin, a pediatric pulmonologist at Children's Hospital Colorado, says e-cigarettes have become "the new way to get kids addicted to nicotine."   (From top left clockwise) Poison ivy with smooth edges; jagged edges; notched leaves; round leaves. All pictures were taken on a trail in a state park on Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau. Blake Farmer/WPLN   Don't Touch! How To Spot Poison Ivy Before It Splotches You How bad can a brush with poison ivy be? Virginia Tech scientist John Jelesko found out the hard way after dragging the power cord of his electric chainsaw through a patch of the stuff. In a sort of experiment on himself, Jelesko decided to let the resulting rash go untreated. He barely slept while fighting the urge to "claw my itching flesh off." Eventually, he broke down and went to his family doctor, who prescribed oral steroids. Jelesko's experience sparked years of research into poison ivy and urushiol, the chemical that triggers the tell-tale rash. It’s tricky to avoid poison ivy because the plant is so adaptable and can take many different forms, Jelesko tells Nashville Public Radio’s Blake Farmer. But we have some pointers on how to minimize the danger.   SPL/Science Source   Doctors Scrutinize Overtreatment, As Cancer Death Rates Falls For many years, the death rate from cancer climbed steadily, and the focus of big medical meetings about the disease was the quest for better treatments. As cancer death rates have fallen, researchers are asking if some some people are getting too much treatment for their cancers? At the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, the answer was an emphatic yes, NPR’s Richard Harris reports. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, says a glut of "me-too" drugs that don't offer meaningful advances, contributes to the problem. It's left up to doctors "to figure out the drugs we should be using versus the drugs we should not be using."  Your Shots editor, Scott Hensley   You received this message because you're subscribed to our Health emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002