Your health: Health conditions that don't exist

Health conditions that don't exist

Prevention magazine had a little fun recently pointing out “Five Health Conditions That Don't Really Exist.”

• Stomach flu: If you suffer from vomiting and diarrhea, it's not influenza, says Jill Swartz, an urgent-care doctor in New York. The flu virus causes fever, congestion and sore throat. The stomach issues are probably from gastroenteritis, which is a different virus.

• Walking pneumonia: Even though doctors use the term, it's “something of a catchall rather than an exact diagnosis,” Swartz says, trotted out when you have a chronic cough and doctors can't figure out why.

• Gluten allergy: Yes, gluten can make some people feel sick, but what's going on is not an allergy. “Celiac disease … is an immune response to gluten, not an allergy like we think about a peanut allergy,” says allergist Janna Tuck.

• Nervous breakdown: “People do not have mental breakdowns,” says Tamar Gur, a psychiatrist at Ohio State University. What they usually have, rather than a total meltdown, is an episode of a particular condition (anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc.) that is treatable.

• Head cold: No different from any common cold. (The same goes for “chest cold.”) You're just describing where you happen to notice the symptoms.

Global contest shows healthy potential

A workplace exercise challenge using pedometers and social media in a global competition shows potential to improve health in a study involving almost 70,000 employees in 64 countries, The Associated Press reports.

In the program, office teams compete against each other or with groups at companies in other countries to see who can take the most daily steps during a 100-day challenge. Workers post progress on a special social media website — for motivation and to egg on rival teams.

The study found workers on average increased their daily activity by 3,500 steps, exercised for almost one extra day per week, reduced sitting time by about 45 minutes daily, and lost about three pounds during the contests. Whether the changes were lasting isn't known.

Dr. Anand Ganesan, a cardiologist in Australia who led the study, said the results show that using technology in a clever way has broad appeal to improve activity levels.