Q: It drives me nuts that so many of my friends are using GPS to navigate. They never really know where they are or where they're going! It can't be good for you to rely on that, can it? - Bruce F., Tappan, New Jersey
A: Ask any police officer from Brisbane, Australia, to the upper west side of Manhattan, and they'll tell you how GPS navigation systems have instructed drivers to plow into homes, trees and lakes, and drive off cliffs. Rangers at Death Valley National Park in California call it "death by GPS." Don't ask why; you can Google the gruesome details.
But there's even more physical danger involved in navigating exclusively with those devices! Information is starting to pile up that GPS navigators are shrinking your brain. A 2017 study in Nature Communications used an fMRI to show that when you study a map or memorize directions, you're using your hippocampus, the part of your brain that constructs complex spatial representation as you interact with the environment. That builds both brainpower and knowledge of your surroundings. Use a GPS, and you switch off the part of your brain that should be interested in the streets you're driving on.
That explains a 2006 British study that found taxi drivers, whose licensing requires demonstrated recall for around 25,000 London streets plus historic landmarks, had more grey matter in their hippocampus than bus drivers who simply follow a designated route. Two additional studies in 2008 from Japan and Cornell University came to the same conclusion.
The researchers who conducted the fMRI study caution that if you don't use your brain, just like an unused muscle it will start to atrophy and shrink. But if you stimulate your hippocampus - say, by memorizing the layout of roads on a map - you greatly improve your cognitive abilities at any age.
Q: I've been taking a proton pump inhibitor for GERD, and now I hear that it's really bad for my kidneys. Is there an alternative? - Bart S., Sacramento, California
A: We've been mentioning for a long time - in this column, at Dr. Mike's Wellness Center, and on "The Doctor Oz Show" and its website - that long-term PPI use is not good for you. In 2015, we mentioned a Johns Hopkins study that tracked 10,482 adults with normal kidney function for 15 years. It found that PPI users were 20-50% more likely to develop chronic kidney disease than non-PPI users. A second study from SUNY Buffalo tracked more than 240,000 patients for 17 years and had similar results.
Then in 2017, we mentioned a British study that found patients who took PPIs were more than twice as likely to get stomach cancer. The longer PPIs were used, the greater the risk of developing stomach cancer. It rose five-fold after more than a year, six-fold after two or more years and more than eight-fold after three or more years.
Most recently, a U.S. Veterans Administration study found that PPIs were linked to fatal cases of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and upper gastrointestinal cancer even when PPIs were taken at low doses. They recommend that "PPIs should be used only when medically indicated and for the minimum duration necessary."
You have alternatives, Bart. Check with your doc to avoid contraindications with other meds, and ask him/her about using histamine 2 (or H2) blockers instead. They can decrease stomach acid by 70% over 24 hours.
Also, explore lifestyle changes. Don't eat snacks before bedtime; avoid the five food felons (all trans and saturated fats, added sugars and syrups, and any grain that isn't 100% whole), lay off alcohol and tobacco, and try eating four or five small meals a day instead of two or three larger ones.
Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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