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and now try children's zyrtec® perfect measure®. a premeasured spoon. good morning. i'm dr. sanjay gupta. welcome to a place where you're going to learn to live longer and stronger. i'm your doctor, but i'm also your coach. some of today's teens are sending 3,000 texts a month. i've got three kids. that's 100 a day. some doctors are really worried about the statistics. and this woman. her name is dr. lisa sanders. she's an adviser for the program "house." she's going to tell us the one thing you don't want to do when solving a medical mystery. that's order more tests. we'll explain. finally a medical mystery. something we put into our bodies every day and the government may now be trying to regulate how much of it we can have. let's get started.

more and more dulls are doing this. teens have it down to a science. we're talking about texting. for many it's a social lifeline. there is some evidence it could also be an addiction. a new study finds teens send up wards of 100 texts a day. some surprising new research. >> get set, go. >> reporter: how fast can your average 15-year-old text a single line? >> let's say faster than someone not in high school. >> mine is not even english. >> for 10th grader on the right, sarah in the middle, and april, texting may be as important as talking. >> how many texts do you send and receive every day? >> probably around 200. >> definitely a lot. a couple hundreds. >> it varies. >> reporter: various studies show to the tune of 3,000 texts a month for the average

teenager. the question now, are teens texting too much? >> it's right by my bed when i go to sleep. it's right by my bed when i wake up. it's the first thing i go to. >> reporter: 80% of kids own cell phones. the rate of texting has skyrocketed 600%. >> bhi is it so important for you to know? >> you feel like you're missing something. if i misa text it's like, oh, i missed out. >> reporter: do you feel your mood is changing depending on how often you're receiving a text? >> yeah. >> like what? >> like if someone responds right away, like, yeah, they responded. if they respond two to three hours later, it's like what's going on? >> reporter: sound addictive? could be. doctors say texting and the instant gratification of getting a text back floods the brain's pleasure center with dopamine.

>> they have the area of the brain light up the same as an addict using heroin. they will describe when i don't have it, i feel bad. i feel anxious or sad. >> it's like the new nicotine. >> that's a good description. for many it may well be. >> reporter: brain doctor treats teens with sleeping disorders hat this clinic. he's discovered one out of five of them are interrupting their sleep to text, triggering problems. >> with lack of sleep, they are having a problem performing. they're going from honor roll students to barely passing. >> reporter: that's the worst case. these teens on the other hand get good grades and take part in after-school activities. texting does sometimes get them in trouble. while the behavior can be addictive, teens like sarah marshall say they're confident they can quit cold turkey. >> maybe have withdrawal symptoms. i get anxious and wonder what's

going on. once i realize, nothing bad is happening, i'm fine without my phone. >> okay. that was deb feyerick with that report. we hear texting can lead to injuries, like chronic pain of the next, the arm, and the hand. you see people texting like this. sometimes people use one thumb. that's terrible. over time the point is you can develop tendonitis and arthritis in my thumb. a lot of people hunch over as well when texting. i'm getting a text while i'm talking to you now. there's tips for pain-free texting. stand up straight. try resting your device on a flat surface. lean your back against a chair if you're sitting. use both thumbs. that cuts down on the strain. try to cut down on overall texting. she's a former tv producer. she became a doctor. now she's a technical adviser for the television program

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one of my favorite things to do is answer questions from you at home, our viewers. one question today from carly in north carolina who asked about food choices changing as we age. i decided to come to a grocery store to answer a full plate of question. as a father of three kids, as a husband as well, i do a lot of shopping for the house. one of the places i like to shop is the perimeter of the store. why? you get a lot of healthy foods, a lot of healthy vegetables. try to eat several different colored foods a day. the same habits we have for purchasing when they're younger, they got to change as we get older. i like to spend a lot of time here n the green section, making sure to get plenty of spinach and kale, good for your eyes and your bones. stay away from processed foods as much as possible. get enough dairy. not just milk but also cheeses as well. if you want meat, there's good

options as far as meat goes. get meat that has fewer calories, less fat. sometimes it costs more money. certainly worth the cost. another question now. deborah, cnn.com blogger writes about protein sources that aren't meat. what are other options. first of all, it is a myth that you need to get your pro tetein from meat. there's a lot of options out there. come to an aisle like this. foods like tofu. a lot of people scrunch up their nose. stir fry that with some sesame oil. cottage cheese can be good. incidentally women need 46 grams a day. men about 56 grams per day. one thing that comes up quite a bit is the discussion of protein shakes. are protein shakes a good option when it comes to improving your protein source in the answer is that sometimes they can be. let me give you quick tidbits. there are a lot of options out

there. you want to look at the labels. you want to see the type of protein, the amount of protein early on. you want to make sure it's coming from an actual food source. something like eggs, for example. a little rule of thumb. protein typically has four calories per gram. if you're seeing more of that in this particular shake, you're probably getting a lot of added stuff. another question from jack talking about sodium. his doctor told him he needed to cut back. how to do it, he asks. first of all, this may be one of the most important questions we answer. when it comes to sodium we eat too much. on average four grams per day as an adult. we really need about half that. about two grams per day. there's a study that said if you get down to two grams per day we could potentially save 150,000 lives per year.

frozen foods. also canned foods. 950 grams. almost a gram of soed just from something like this. far too much for an adult. far too much for most kids as well. cereal is an important food choice for many homes. read the labels again. one thing about reading labels as well. try to find foods, foods like this that have less than five ingredients. that's really going to help. when it comes to sodium, one thing in our house, we never leave cracker or cookies into a small box. we'll pour a little bit. that's important to find salt institu substitutes as well. we don't leave salt shakers out. if you find some flavoring like this, you can cut down on sodium, increase potassium and solve the problem. we'll try to get to as many questions as we can. ♪

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when i was in medical school one of this things i learned was the importance of listening to patients. that's the focus of a new book called "every patient tells a story." the author, doctor lisa sanders is here today. she's also a technical adviser for the hit television program "house." >> yes. >> pretty interesting background

there. >> i like to keep busy. >> one thing people don't know is you were a television producer first. then you went to medical school. now you're dabbling in both. >> no. i was a television producer. that was great. then midlife crisis i decided to go to medical school and be a doctor. i thought it would be fun. >> you were a producer for 12 years and went back. there's something specific. you called it a midlife crisis. >> it wasn't really a crisis. a few years before i made the decision to go to medical school i was with a correspondent i worked with. we were shooting something about white water rafting on a river in north carolina. and i was looking at him in the monitor and he was coming down, the white water looked fantastic, and he was doing his standup, then suddenly he disappeared from the skrun. the camera sort of runs around looking for him. he's up on the bank and he's pulling this elderly woman out of the water, and i had never

seen this in real life. but then he did cpr and she came back. it was really amazing. i thought, wow, i've never saved anybody's life. i probably never will. it sort of struck me that maybe i wanted to. i didn't quit television right then and there. but it manted a seed. >> what is it about these mysteries in the way to solve a mystery, is it the doctor simply pays more attention, that they're more astute, they order more tests? how do you go about solving a mystery? >> i would say one thing you don't do is order more tests. certainly. spinal tap and a functional mri. >> that drive you crazy? >> television has its own requirements. drama. when medicine is done right, it's not exciting. it's very boring.

so medicine is not exciting. television needs to be exciting. >> order more tests. >> that show really loves what i love in television. house is really "sherlock holmes". >> what are the ingredients to solve a mystery? >> i don't know that anybody knows. i think certainly paying attention is very important. when doctors tell me they never see any interesting cases, you know, i feel bad for them. i think it means that they're not fully paying attention all the time. that they're maybe a little bored with their job and they're not paying attention. i think paying attention is very important. >> how do you -- is this part of a discussion you have with your new medical students or you new residents about the very idea of listening to the patients? the art of the diagnosis? how do you get people to understand that? >> well, i tell them that

fascinating cases are passing in front of their nose every day. and if they're not seeing them it's because they're not paying attention. even if somebody has just a classic hospital disease, a pneumonia, the chances are excellent that their pneumonia is going to be a little bit different than somebody else's pneumonia. some percentage of the time that pneumonia is going to be something actually different. if you're not paying attention, you're going to miss it. >> well, that's just a little bit of a look inside the mind of a medical detective. she's going to stick with us now and give us the most important thing that we can look for in our own doctor. stay with us. -d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d- d

we are back.

we have an author of "every patient tells a story." what does a patient look for in a good doctor, one that's going to be disgent, maybe not ordering too many tests. how do you find a good doctor tlik? >> i think the first thing to do is ask your friends. ask them, why do you like your doctor? there are things you might like in a doctor that other people won't like. i like somebody who is direct, straightforward, cuts to the chase. my husband does not. he needs somebody to pretty much take him out to dinner before he gets any information. so you need to know yourself. more important, the most important thing is, is that doctor paying attention to you? is that doctor listening to what you have to say? i think we have to reformulate a

doctor/patient relationship. they are experts working together on different problems. the doctor is the expert on bodies in general and diseases in general but the patient is the expert on this particular body and these particular symptoms. if you don't work together, you may not get the answer as easily as you should. >> that's really well put. what if you are the patient and you like your doctor for all the reasons you said but you don't agree with them. they are going down this road, they think it is x, y, or z, and you are pretty convinced you are over here, what do you do as a patient? >> i think there is room to negotiate. my husband, when he quit his job to write a book, started getting these dizzy spells. to me, i wasn't even in medical school at the time and i said, oh, this is stress. he said, no, no, this is real. he went to his doctor and he said i think i have a brain

tumor. the doctor said, no, this is stress. the third time he came back and said, i really think i need a head ct. the doctor goes, okay, fine and got a head ct. it was completely normal and that solved all of his prob zems was that the right thing to do for that doctor? >> certainly, we can't see inside the skull i think that patients are able to feel things inside their body that they may not be able to express. so, as it turned out, my husband did not have a brain tumor, thank goodness. but, you know, it would be pretty arrogant if somebody is so insistent to consistently go, absolutely not, because there are brain tumors that don't cause weakness. i don't have to tell that you. >> you are going to keep doing what you are doing, writing the column for "the new york times," technical adviser for the show, a practicing physician. are you where you want to be in

your life? >> so far, so good. i wake up every day happy and excited to be here and find out what happens next. >> great discussion. fascinating stuff. really appreciate the time. i learned a lot. i always enjoy this. thank you. >> thank you. so school lunches have long been a focus in the fight against obesity but a national security sflet. >> a group of retired military officers say school lunches are making american kids too fat to fight. 27% of americans age 17-24 are now too overweight to join the military. their focus is on these school lunches. we decided to look at what a typical school lunch looks like. this was taken directly from the menu on a friday in april. you have a pair, chocolate treat, baked beans, fish nuggets. all that will total up to 853 calories and 25 grams of fat. that's just one meal specifically. here is the real problem, as i

could see it. even if these students chose the healthy lunch, this is what it might look like. that's not a bad-looking salad, a chicken chef salad. 532 calories in the salad and 18.87 grams of fat and healthy lunch, not so healthy lunch, they are really not so different. looking at the actual numbers like that, it makes all the difference. even a salad can be loaded with fat and calories. my wife and i use this sort of thing as a criteria when picking a school. it is best to be informed. this leads us to our medical mystery. do you know what this is? something you put in your body every day and now the government may be trying regulate how much of it you can actually eat. kes , the students learn to keep america's wind turbines going and to keep them safe, the only battery they trust

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we are back with sgmd. the u.s. military in haiti is coming down. by june, forecasting forward, u.s. officials expect only about 500 national guard and reserve troops to be stationed in haiti doing humanitarian work. officials say that aid agencies and groups like usaid have continued to expand their efforts which may drop the numbers like this possible. time for our medical mystery of the week. do you know what this is? something we put in our body every day. the answer, not that hard. it is salt. here is the point. regulators plan to work with health experts in the food industry toward establishing the first legal limits ever for sodium and process foods.

frozen foods, they contain a lot of sodium. salt is a preservative. canned foods, as well, like soup, these can sometimes have your entire's day's worth of sodium in a can. the institute of medicine which is the science arm of the national academy of science is urging the fda to cut back the sodium recommendation and create what they call a national average, trying to figure out how much salt you are likely to eat in a particular day and bring that number down. the concern that high levels of salt could increase your risk of a heart attack or stroke. there is a salt institute that says that all of this is overregulation. the government is essentially conducting a clinical trial ong society. we talk about the stanford study that said we could save 150,000 lives a year simply by redg