Health Notes, March 16th 2008, by Sarah Stacey

How Sandra walked back to happiness

It’s not often you get a mini-striptease over tea and fruit cake but graphic designer Sandra Oakins, 60, is so determined to demonstrate the ‘miracle’ leg brace that has restored her mobility after more than 30 years that she shoots out of her chair, strips off her jeans and dashes across the room. When I talked to her some weeks later at her home in the Yorkshire dales, she had come in from a long walk with her dogs. Last year, she climbed in the Lake District and trekked across rough terrain in the Sinai desert. It’s an extraordinary reversal of fortune for a woman who, eight years ago, was on crutches and receiving incapacity benefit.

In 1974, Sandra had a terrible mountaineering accident in the French alps. ‘I was crossing a large glacier when there was a rock fall. A boulder the size of a chest of drawers hit my right hand side.’ As well as breaking her arm badly, her right leg was smashed. Surgeons in Grenoble inserted an L-shaped plate which ran down the outside of her right thigh bone, then through her knee joint. After five months in hospital, life was virtually back to normal – although she couldn’t climb or run – but two years later, the plate broke.

Surgeons in London put in a shorter plate but, over the next few years, it became obvious that, when it was reset, her leg had been misaligned. ‘The bottom half had been twisted so that my foot pointed inwards.’ This increasingly caused awkwardness and pain with walking and normal movement. The next two decades was a saga of disappointments. Orthotics only helped temporarily and by 2000, Sandra’s life was reduced to ‘stumbling round the house, hanging on the furniture’.

The breakthrough came in 2002 when a specialist in biomechanics at the Freeman Hospital Newcastle-on-Tyne, suggested she try a brace, but not the conventional heavy type usually supplied by the NHS. After extensive measurements were taken (each brace is individually made), Sandra received an Ambroise UTX brace, a revolutionary design developed in Holland in the late 1980s by mechical engineer Nils van Leerdam and colleagues. The range is made of thin-walled, tubular stainless steel, which is both high-strength and lightweight and crucially allows much greater natural movement.

‘Most conventional leg braces are rigid constructions that lock the entire leg so you can’t bend your knee – which is uncomfortable. Also, if patients still have some potential activity, they can’t make use of it,’ explains van Leerdam. His mechanism detects when the knee joint in the brace needs to be unlocked: as the foot tilts forward to take a step, a cable between the ankle and knee joints pulls a ratchet that unlocks the knee joint so the leg can swing freely. At the end of the ‘swing phase’, once the leg is fully extended, the knee joint locks again. A tiny spring inside the knee joint acts as a safety device, only freeing it when the ankle movement indicates it’s safe.

The Ambroise braces cost more than NHS versions, but Sandra points out she was ‘costing the country a lot more on benefit and unable to work’. The improvement to her quality of life is immeasurable: ‘I have freedom now to lead the active sort of life I love.’ You do have to work quite hard over a period of months to get used to walking in the braces, she says, and you may feel sore at first. ‘But the results are definitely worth it.’

Contact your local orthotist or biomechanics specialist to see if the UTX ® orthosis is suitable for you.

Not so fantastic plastic: the danger in plastic bottles

Polycarbonate plastic, used in bottles and many other items, contains a toxic chemical called Bisphenol A (BPA). BPA is an ‘endocrine [hormonal system] disruptor’, potentially linked to fertility problems, diabetes, breast cancer, hyperactivity and early puberty in girls. Research shows that BPA can leech out of bottles left in the sun, or repeatedly scrubbed or dish-washed – and into the contents. The danger increases with higher temperatures. A recent American study found that putting boiling water in new or used plastic bottles increased the release of BPA 55-fold. So if you use plastic bottles, keep them cool, or preferably use glass.

White noise machine: a nice way to drop off

A formerly insomniac reader recommends a ‘white noise machine’ called the Sleep Mate Dual Speed sound conditioner (£75 plus p&p from www.electronichealing.co.uk). ‘The constant shushing sound calmed my mind and I drift effortlessly off to sleep every night.’

Website of the week: www.eatingforpregnancy.org.uk

Sensible advice for pregnant mums from the charity Wellbeing of Women on what food and how much to eat, before, during and after pregnancy, plus a regular newsletter, recipes, common concerns, latest news on research – and the chance to ‘ask an expert’ about your concerns.