Here’s a riddle: who is buried in Elvis Presley’s tomb? If you guessed Elvis Presley, you might want to review the meaning of “riddle.” Actually, no one is currently buried there, since the bodies of Elvis Presley and his mother were moved from the original mausoleum in Memphis’s Forest Hills cemetery to the Meditation Garden at Graceland two months after Elvis’s death. (Full disclosure: as a Memphis native I have toured Graceland often. Not once have I seen anyone in the garden actually meditate.) Now the original monument is up for auction, with burial services included for the winner, if that’s the right word for someone who uses a tomb.
Photo Courtesy Wikimedia/Airtuna08/Creative Commons License
Meditate on this: Elvis Presley's final resting place may not be where you think it is.
If that story were not already confusing enough, a new study of infants left to cry themselves to sleep either does or does not cast doubt on conventional pediatric sleep advice. Most pediatricians urge parents to put their infants to sleep in a bassinet or crib with a firm sleep surface and without cushioning or excess blankets, since sleeping in bed with parents greatly increases the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Infants do not always agree with this plan, sometimes expressing their displeasure by crying, screaming, or filing lawsuits. Now these infants are accusing their parents of raising their cortisol levels, or at least that’s what it sounds like.
In a study, researchers measured salivary cortisol levels of 25 infants and their mothers who participated in a 5-day inpatient sleep training program designed to help infants learn to sleep through the night. (Please don’t tell parents you can get admitted to the hospital for this; there won’t be any room left for the sick people.) Investigators measured saliva cortisol levels to gauge stress in mothers and infants, and as you might expect, babies cried at bedtime, which elevated cortisol levels in the infants and their mothers. (The authors do not comment on the availability of alcohol on the unit.) By the third night, however, babies stopped crying, and their moms were less stressed, all good, right? Except the infants’ cortisol levels remained elevated even in the absence of crying. What does this mean? No one really knows, but as I anticipate the questions I’m going to get from parents I can sense my cortisol level rising.
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"My cortisol levels are unacceptably high due to my parents' refusal to stay up all night with me. I am calling my lawyer."
In the meantime, parents of toddlers who are done worrying about bedtime cortisol levels can now worry about those cool new little self-contained packets of laundry detergent. Apparently the small pouches of swirled, candy-colored detergent, stain-remover, and brightener are particularly poisonous to toddlers and preschoolers. According to the American Association Of Poison Control Centers, these “single dose packs” cause rapid and severe symptoms when swallowed. I don’t know about you, but I think part of the problem may be the term, “single dose packs.” Parents of young children might do well to forego the convenience of these products in favor of giant plastic bottles of liquid concentrate that drip all over the laundry room but lack that certain Willy Wonka factor.
The Center For Medicare And Medicaid Services (CMS) hopes to keep things clean and bright by bringing light to financial relationships between physicians and pharmaceutical and device manufacturers via the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. The Sunshine Act, initially slated to take effect this month but now delayed, would require industry to report payments to physicians and hospitals in a searchable online database. The theory is that doctors and hospitals might make less biased purchasing and prescribing decisions if patients could freely see just who payed for that critical research trip to a golf resort on Aruba. A new poll of 50,000 doctors reveals that 56% of them are “concerned” about the Sunshine Act. I, too, am concerned. I’m concerned that somehow I ended up among the 44% of doctors who have nothing to be concerned about! How did I miss this gravy train? I love Aruba! It doesn’t even have to be the Caribbean! At this point I’d accept a junket to Graceland, to meditate of course.