Archive for the 'Health and Wellness' Category

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U.S. shows progress on cancer report

Published on June 26, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

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Around 1, 596, 670 Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year. Within that number, about 571, 950, which is more than 1,500 each day, will die. These figures come from the June 17 report from the American Cancer Society. They update cancer incidence and mortality statistics every year. Their Cancer Facts and Figures 2011 provides a more in depth explanation of where the United States rates when it comes to cancer.

Dropping since the 1990s, cancer death rates have proceeded to decline among males and females in almost all racial and ethnic groups since 1998, according to the report. The ACS believes that the falling rate in cancer mortality rates from 1990 to 2007 designate almost 900,000 lives that could have been lost due to cancer but were not.

Even though they have been increasing since the 1930s, lung cancer death rates have been on the decline for women. For men, the death rates began to fall about 10 years ago. This said, lung cancer will be the cause of almost 25 percent of all cancer deaths for women in 2011.

From 1997 to 2007, cancer death rates for men plunged by 22.2 percent for men and for women by 13.9 percent. Most of the lessening was the result of decreasing mortality rates for colorectal and breast cancer for women and lung, prostate and colorectal cancers for men.

Disturbingly, the report notes that the American Cancer Society reveals that cancer death rates for the least educated are more than twice the amount of that for the most educated. The report claims that if this difference was eradicated, 37 percent of the premature cancer deaths that happened in 2007 among those between 25 to 64 years old, could have been prevented. This number mirrors more than 60,000 lives.

Even though all this is good news, cancer is still the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. The ACS reports that cancer is responsible for almost one in every four deaths. Currently, only heart disease kills more.

Health risks are linked to access to restaurants

Published on June 16, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A new study has concluded that the chance of early death from heart disease or diabetes increases with dining out too often. There is particular concern with dining out at fast-food restaurants.

It was found that early deaths from diabetes rose by 8 percent in neighborhoods near fast-food restaurants. The report also said that premature deaths from heart disease increased by 5 percent.

Unfortunately the study also found a link with full-service restaurants and health risks. According to the study, dying earlier from diabetes climbed by 3 percent for each full-service restaurant in or near a neighborhood.

Elizabeth Racine, the lead researcher for the Mecklenburg County Community Food Assessment, said “the number of restaurants that are available within an area is related to premature deaths. Although she said this, she does admit that more data is required to know for sure if restaurants have a direct link to mortality rates. She also said “You’d have to look at people over time to see if that exposure causes these things.”

These findings are very substantial considering that Americans spend 48 percent of their food dollars on average at restaurants based on estimates from the U.S. Departure of Agriculture, according to Racine.

Of course it is noteworthy to mention that many restaurants now offer healthy options. It is simply up to the customers to make healthy choices. Another thing to think about is that you can eat just as badly at home as you would in a restaurant.

Husbands who help with housework keep wives healthy

Published on May 31, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Finally some research that helps support all those women who have had to nag their husbands to get up off the couch and help with the housework. Scientists have found that women’s health and happiness depends heavily on whether or not her husband or partner helps with the housework.

To arrive at this conclusion, researchers studied the daily activities of 30 working couples in Los Angeles during a period of one week. The levels of the stress hormone cortisol was tracked in each couple. This hormone is at it’s peak during the day as it helps the body cope with physical and mental challenges, and in the evening, it usually decreases when the day’s activities slow down.

Unfortunately some people have unusually high cortisol levels and some even have levels that don’t fall at the end of the day. These people not only feel stressed, but they are susceptible to a variety of physical and mental illnesses. Studies have even indicated that they are prone to die at a younger age. This is why researchers thought that linking cortisol levels with evening activities of married parents would uncover a lot about how domestic routines influence health and happiness.

All the couples studied had at least one child living at home that was between the age of 8 and 10 and the median age of the parents was 41. On average, the women spent 30 percent of their nights doing housework and around 11 percent on relaxing activities. In contrast, the men spent 20 percent of their time doing housework and around 19 percent on leisure.

Not surprisingly, the scientists from University of Southern California, the University of Los Angeles and Connecticut College, discovered that spending too much time on chores in the evening tended to keep cortisol levels high in husbands and wives. Also, when they looked at the study more carefully they noticed that the cortisol levels of married women decreased more when their husbands helped with the housework. On the other hand, the dad’s cortisol wasn’t likely to drop unless they spent more time relaxing in the evening while their wives kept busy with chores.

The researchers wrote in the Journal of Family Psychology that “arguments about who’s doing the dishes and who’s flipping through channels have repercussions for the health of both spouses.” Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an Ohio State University psychologist, says that this is especially true for working moms. She studies the effect of relationships on immune function.

Antipsychotic drugs given to elderly despite increased death risk

Published on May 19, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

A recent government audit discovered that almost one in every seven elderly nursing home residents are given strong atypical antipsychotic drugs, without the consideration that these medicines raise the risk of death and are not approved for such treatments. Nearly all of these patients have dementia. The FDA has warned that these drugs, usually given to patients with serious conditions such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, are not appropriate for these patients.

This audit found that in the first part of 2007, the federal Medicare program paid for antipsychotics that were given in error during the first six months  of 2007. This cost the program an astounding $116 million for that first half of that year.

Daniel Levinson, who is the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote that “government, taxpayers, nursing home residents as well as their families and caregivers should be outraged and seek solutions.” He also pointed out that these drugs such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon, are “potentially lethal” to some elderly patients and that some drug manufacturers illegally marketed their medicines for these uses “putting profits before safety.”

The audit is a rare evaluation done by the government to check if doctors are treating Medicare patients as they should in nursing homes. Levinson recommended that the government should keep a record of the diagnoses given to Medicare patients so it can determine if the drugs prescribed to them are accurate and suitable for the patients’ needs.

Even though this is common in the private sector, an oversight such as this is extremely rare in the Medicare program and would most likely be strongly advised against by doctors’ groups and most in Congress who see government intrusions into the doctor-patient relationship as wrong.

In reaction to the audit, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that some of the inaccurate use of antipsychotics in elderly nursing home patients is the consequence of drug manufacturers paying kickbacks to nursing homes to increase those prescriptions.

Less women dying from lung cancer

Published on May 7, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

For the first time ever, the death rates for women dying from lung cancer are decreasing. Even though it is a minuscule amount, a little less than 1 percent a year, it still provides hope towards the battle against lung cancer.

Unfortunately lung cancer is still the nation’s, as well as the world’s, leading cancer killer. This said, this drop has been anticipated for a long time. A similar decrease began in U.S. men about ten years ago. Elizabeth Ward of the American Cancer Society, said “It looks like we’ve turned the corner.”

Thanks to the success against some of the main types of cancer – breast, prostate and colorectal, and lung cancer in men, death rates from cancer have been slowly dwindling for years. Preventing cancer is more beneficial than treating it, and the U.S. has reported small but significant declines in new cases as well.

The new report reveals that death rates have fallen on an average of 1.6 percent a year between 2003 and 2007, which is the latest data available. The researchers reported in the National Cancer Institute that rates of new diagnoses have diminished almost 1 percent a year.

Diagnosis and deaths are still on the increase for other types of cancer such as liver, kidney, melanoma and pancreatic cancer. Also, cancer is predominately a disease of the older population, and it is swiftly aging.

In general, men were heavier smokers long before women, which caused men’s lung cancer deaths to skyrocket first. Then in the early 1990s, death rates started to fall, and less young men fell into the habit. The new report showed that those rates were decreasing by 3 percent a year between 2005 and 2007. Researchers have been expecting the same thing to happen with women, so they began noting signs that death rates had started to slowly fall for a few years. Now that they have a straight five year trend, they are assured that the decrease is real, according to Brenda Edwards, a statistician from the National Cancer Institute.

Edwards mentioned that the cigarette industry targeted women in the late 1960s and ’70s. She called this “the Virginia Slims effect”. This escalated smoking for some young women around this time. She said that the death rate may temporarily be increased for these women as they get older.

Lung cancer is projected to kill more than 159,000 Americans this year. About 70,500 will be women.

More study advised on connection between food dyes and hyperactivity

Published on April 30, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

An advisory panel from the FDA has suggested that the agency study more about the tie between food coloring and childhood hyperactivity. This said, they claim that the products that have these dyes do not currently need warnings.

The committee voted 8 to 6 for food packages not to have warnings on packages with food colorings. Currently the products have to list the food colorings, but contain no warning about a potential link to hyperactivity. This committee consisted of doctors, scientists and consumer representatives.

The panel did agree with the FDA and indicated that there is not sufficient enough evidence to say that specific food dyes cause hyperactivity in most children. However, they were in accordance that diets that do not contain food dyes seem to work well for a considerable amount of children with behavior problems.

During a two-day meeting, the advisory committee looked at the links between the dyes and attention deficit disorder. The FDA agrees with studies that show  hyperactivity and other behavioral problems are worsened by food dyes, as well as other substances found in foods. For most children, there is no proven effect.

The FDA and the panel now must decide if all this should lead to more regulation. Academics who have been studying the issue, as well as public advocates, both agree that the dyes do not seem to be the main cause of hyperactivity, but they claim that the effects of specific dyes on a percentage of children has caused enough concern to support a ban on the additives.

The meeting was held by the FDA in reaction to a 2008 petition that was filed by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest to ban Yellow 5, Red 40 and six other dyes. The director of the group, Michael Jacobson, said that he is disappointed that panel members were looking for exact scientific evidence that the link exists. He is pleased  that at least the FDA is accepting the fact that food coloring may affect hyperactivity in some children.

Even though dyes are still found in U.S. foods, certain companies have decreased the use of dyes in food that are sold in Europe.

Medicare may pay for prostate cancer drug

Published on April 13, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Medicare will most likely pay for the prostate cancer drug according to Medicare officials. The prostate drug, Provenge, extends one’s life for about four months and the cost is a whopping $93,000 per patient.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid claim that the bio-tech drug stood up to tests as being a “reasonable and necessary” medicine. This allows thousands of men to receive the drug through the federal government.

The agency will be taking comments for 90 days before it makes a final decision.

5 myths that keep some from a good workout

Published on April 6, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Here are 5 myths that make many people believe that they have to use a machine for the best workout:

Myth No. 1 Weight training will make you look bulky.

Of course this one seems to especially frighten the ladies. The truth is that if you need weight training if you want to change your body. Also, weight training can help prevent conditions like osteoporosis as you age.

Myth No. 2 Cardio burns more fat than other exercises.

Believe it or not, resistance training, such as the use of elastic bands, tends to burn the most calories across the board. While you are doing cardio, you are burning calories during the exercise. Now with resistance training, you also burn calories during the exercise, but more importantly, you continue to burn them for up to an astonishing 48 hours following your exercise! This is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or after-burn. Resistance training also revs up you metabolism, improves insulin resistance and turns off the fat-storing enzymes in your body.

Myth No. 3 I must not be working out hard enough since I don’t feel sore or have any pain.

Don’t depend on soreness to tell yourself that you are working out correctly. Soreness can come from things such as how many reps you did to what you ate before you worked out. Wearing a heart-rate monitor and working at 60 to 85 percent of your maximum rate will help you to have a quality workout.

Myth No. 4 I will never get more flexible because my muscles have always been tight.

Of course, not exercising can make you inflexible, but exercising the wrong way can cause muscle imbalances, such as working one part of your body more than the other.

You will move with more ease and have more range of motion if you condition your core correctly. Work on training your weak areas and you should improve.

Myth No. 5 To get a total workout, you must use machines.

It seems true, judging on how many machines there are in most gyms. The problem with machines is that they lock you into a certain range of motion that doesn’t copy real everyday movements. They don’t always adjust to your body height and type. Free weights can work the smaller stabilizing muscles that machines can not.

Tamiflu not as effective against N.C. flu strain

Published on March 30, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Even though the flu season is coming to a close, federal and state health officials are analyzing a group of influenza B viruses in North Carolina that seem to not react to the antiviral drug Tamiflu as regular flu viruses have in the past.

Physicians have been informed by state health officials about the fact that the viruses apparently  have experienced a genetic change that has not been observed in virus samples from other states.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have performed lab tests revealing that the modified viruses are less responsive to Tamiflu in the laboratory, but they are not totally resistant.

A state health department spokeswoman, Julie Henry, said that this most likely would not affect the average person, but that it is serious enough to inform physicians about this genetic change so that they can make the best treatment decisions.

Antiviral drugs remain the best treatment for those hospitalized with the flu, but doctors need to be alerted to the fact that since there has been a change in specific influenza B viruses, Tamiflu may not work as well in certain patients as it usually does.

From November to February, about 31 viruses were collected from 92 samples from North Carolina that showed the genetic change. Most of these patients had the usual flu symptoms and got better after a few days. This said, one patient did die soon after they were diagnosed with the flu, but they had extreme underlying immune conditions.

The CDC is currently testing more flue viruses from North Carolina as well as some surrounding states. The agency has also begun a telephone survey of residents in N.C. who have tested positive for influenza B.

Even though influenza B infections have been more prevalent this season, some physicians say that there is not a greater risk with them  than there is with other flu strains. They want to remind people that the very best way to keep the flu from spreading is to wash your hands, cover coughs and sneezes, stay home if you are sick, and avoid those that are sick at your home.

In the future a simple blood test could reveal Down syndrome

Published on March 9, 2011 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Recently, European scientists found that they could accurately diagnose Down syndrome through a blood test given to pregnant women. This new procedure gives hope that in the future pregnant women could evade the more invasive procedure that is currently used to test for Down syndrome.

The journal Nature Medicine published the online preliminary report on March 6. It is the most recent of many current studies that indicate that scientists can now pinpoint Down syndrome through fetal DNA found in the mother’s bloodstream.

Having an extra specific chromosome constitutes Down syndrome. Presently, pregnant women have a blood test and an ultrasound to see if the fetus is at risk for Down syndrome. To make absolutely sure of an accurate diagnosis, doctors extract a sample of amniotic fluid or the placenta. This procedure, called an amniocentesis, can cause some uncomfortable pressure, pain and even a risk of miscarriage.