The tonsils also stand guard at the entry to your digestive system. As pathogens in your food (or in the air, if you’re breathing through your mouth) pass by, they set off the release of the beta-defensins, along with other immune components such as IgA and B cells. In the short time it takes a substance to make its way down your esophagus, your body is prepared to meet the invader.

Doctors started removing tonsils at about the turn of the last century, and the practice reached a peak in the early 1930s. After a brief break in the mid-‘30s, the trend continued well into the 1960s. During this period, tonsils were removed in response to continued infections or sore throats.

These days, one of the main reasons for tonsil removal in children is sleep apnea, which is a health problem that used to be practically unheard of in children. Sleep apnea, along with high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels, started surfacing in the last couple of generations due to the growing childhood obesity problem. Most doctors have been led to believe that the tonsils are fairly useless after the age of four or five, so cutting them out to treat sleep apnea seems far more practical than getting children to change their diets and increase their activity. However, some research strongly suggests that removing these glands may have far more impact than anyone realized.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York found that, on average, children experienced a 13 percent increase in weight following the removal of their tonsils and adenoids. Dr. James Roemmich, the lead researcher in the study, stated that the weight gain caused by the surgery to help relieve the breathing problem in these children could create a vicious cycle. Weight gain in these children is a concern. Obesity may be a primary cause of obstructive sleep-disordered breathing, so additional weight gain may lead to a re-occurrence of obstructed breathing during sleep in spite of the surgery.

If the child is experiencing sleep apnea and also happens to be obese, as were the children in this study, it should go without saying that surgery isn’t the answer. Not only could the surgery contribute to additional weight gain, the removing the tonsils also eliminates the extra protection against infections these “unnecessary” organs provide.

Until next time,

Dr. David Williams

By Steve Bousquet and Marc Caputo, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
In Print: Thursday, September 24, 2009

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A mailer sent by the Conservative Voters’ Coalition was called “appalling” by Tom Edwards, whose group paid for it. Jacksonville Republican John Thrasher, a former House speaker, overcame a barrage of trial-lawyer attacks to defeat three rivals for a state Senate seat.
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TALLAHASSEE — In a highly embarrassing mea culpa, Florida’s powerful trial lawyer lobby admitted Wednesday that it was behind an ugly race-baiting flier in a recent North Florida Senate election.

“Morally and politically, it was indefensible,” said Scott Carruthers, executive director of the Florida Justice Association, the trial bar group, who said its leaders had no knowledge of it. “I accept full responsibility for not having done everything to stop that piece from going out.”

The flier juxtaposed images of the Black Panthers, President Barack Obama, the Rev. Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and black marchers holding a large ACORN banner. The caption read: “Is this the change YOU want to believe in? Violence and intimidation at the voting booth.”

The admission sheds new light on the growing practice in Florida of electioneering groups known as 527s that transfer large sums of money among each other to buy ads to influence voters while concealing their affiliations.

Those tactics exploded in recent weeks in the Senate election after a federal judge struck down a law requiring such groups to quickly disclose their contributions and expenses. Now they can wait until long after the election.

The controversial flier also may have damaged the trial bar’s reputation with African-American legislators. Said Rep. Joe Gibbons, a former president of the legislative black caucus: “An apology won’t do.”

“Armed thugs may try and scare you away from the voting booth,” read the text of the mailer, a message still volatile in Jacksonville since the 2000 presidential recount. The city was the epicenter of the recent Senate election in which Republican John Thrasher, a former House speaker, overcame a barrage of trial-lawyer attacks to defeat three rivals.

The mailer included a tear-off absentee ballot request form and was the trial bar’s way of building a pool of persuadable absentee voters through a phony political group. The so-called Conservative Voters’ Coalition was a 527 political organization acting as a front for the trial bar.

Lawyer David Ramba created the new organization and the trial bar enlisted Republican campaign consultant Bill Helmich to design the mailer.

The money for the mailer came from a trial bar-aligned 527 group, the similarly named Conservative Citizens for Justice, which sent a check for $68,999.53 to pay for the piece to go to 88,000 Jacksonville area homes on Aug. 18-19.

On Aug. 21, the mailer’s existence was noted on a Jacksonville political blog, triggering an uproar. Tom Edwards, the lawyer whose Conservative Citizens for Justice group paid for it, resigned, calling the piece “detestable,” “appalling” and “inappropriate.”

Trial bar executive director Carruthers said the group’s internal process of vetting all political advertising was not followed, including a review by its election-law adviser, attorney Ron Meyer.

Rep. Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, said the trial bar’s actions are especially damaging, coming at a time when some feel that criticism of Obama’s presidency has racial overtones.

“That’s just bad faith,” Gibbons said. “You would like to think nobody would use race, particularly at a time when you have a black president, and you have these hard people out there with all these hard feelings built up. It’s an insult to me … to think that people just trying to win an office would go to those kinds of depths to win is shocking.”

What was especially embarrassing about the mailer is that trial lawyers overwhelmingly backed Obama’s election, and Carruthers personally gave $2,300 to Obama’s effort.

Helmich declined to comment on his role in the mail piece. The trial bar said it paid no money to Helmich directly.

Ramba, the lawyer who filed the paperwork for the group, called his role “purely administrative.”

Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com or (850) 224-7263.

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These are the white lawyers who are not being asked to be disbarred for their despicable behavior.

Suzette

I am a Kenyan. I read your blog every day. I mostly like what I read. I get to know what america and the rest of the world knows when they know it. That is a very fine thing.

But do you have to be so hard on men? The ladies here say Michelle says this and Michelle says that. I say why don’t MIchelle say females should be nice to the men too?

I take a lot of messing with be cause my name means =He is hot=. The girls are the most with this teasing me. I say Michelle tell your female readers in Kenya to stop.

Thank you

Hiuhu