Tag Archive for 'Prevention'

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Upper body pain can come from too much texting

Published on April 23, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

3772984885_e453a2cb30The increasing use of cell phones is resulting in a new type of pain for some people, according to Dr. Mark Sobor of ChicagoHealers.com.

Neck, shoulder, hand and arm pain and similar kinds of repetitive motion injuries can come from texting and using computer keyboards a lot. Believe it or not, cell phones were not originally designed for all that texting.

Dr. Sobor said that people are prone to hunch over as they work, which puts considerable strain on their neck and upper backs. Most use only one thumb to type, causing strain to occur on one side. Also, repeated motions of some muscles deprives them of oxygen, which can lead to spasms.

So if you are one of those who is texting more than talking, there are some things you can do to prevent this kind of unwelcome pain. First of all, get yourself ready for texting by warming up and stretching your muscles. Furthermore, mother was right when she said “sit up straight.” Improving your posture while texting can help prevent pain. Try to put your phone or PDA on an area where you will not have to strain your neck and upper back by bending over to see the screen. Also, it is important to give yourself plenty of breaks. Between texts, put the phone down and get up and move around a little. As often as you can, open and close your fingers and stretch them. You can stretch your forearm muscles by extending your arm with your palm facing up and use your other hand to pull your palm down toward the floor. Hold this position for 15 seconds and repeat 2 or 3 times for each arm. Another tip to try is to use both thumbs to text and try to keep your messages short and sweet.

Glaxo’s rotavirus vaccine is temporarily suspended by FDA

Published on April 23, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

4150560901_2350ce120bIn March, pediatricians were told by U.S. health officials to temporarily stop using one of the two vaccines used to prevent a leading cause of diarrhea in infants. This was done after they found doses of Glaxo-Smith-Kline’s Rotavirus contaminated with a benign pig virus.

Millions of children around the world have been vaccinated with Glaxo’s vaccine with no safety issues and the pig virus is not known to cause any type of illness in people or animals according to Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who is the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

The Rotavirus causes extreme diarrhea and is the leading killer of children in developing countries. About 55,000 children in the U.S. were hospitalized for rotavirus infections before vaccination began with the Merck’s vaccine in 2006 and Glaxo’s in 2008.

Glaxo said that regulators abroad have decided not to alter how Rotarix is used as scientists research the importance of this new finding.

The oral vaccine, Rotarix, is created from a diluted strain of human rotavirus that is grown inside living cells before it is purified into a vaccine dose. Glaxo uses a line of monkey kidney cells or vero cells. According to Hamburg, the pig virus DNA fragments have been found in Glaxo’s cell bank. This means that they were there from the earliest development of the vaccine. It is not yet known how the contamination happened but an investigation is being performed.

The rotavirus vaccine created by Merck is made by a completely different process.

Drug for menstrual cramps is being developed

Published on April 6, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

3153325402_7a2c7bfac0Well there is finally some good news for every woman out there who has experienced the excruciating menstrual cramps that can come with getting your period; the pain that no man can truly understand and that most all women endure to some degree every month.

There is a British company that is striving to create a medication that is aiming against the exact cause of menstrual cramps. Recently at a medical conference, the researchers revealed data from a clinical trial.

Contractions of the uterus and an escalation of the hormone vasopressin are what generate menstrual cramps. The purpose of this innovative medicine, called VA111913, is to shut off this hormone. The usual treatments women currently use for help with painful cramps are pain medicine and birth control pills. These do help, but they only deal with the symptoms of menstrual cramps, not the actual cause.

About 50 percent of all women undergo some type of menstrual cramps, but there are 10 to 20 percent who have a severe condition called dysmenorrhea. This condition is one of the main reasons for women to miss school and work in America.

Diet may have strong affect on depression

Published on March 5, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Here’s yet another reason to listen to your mother when she says to make sure you eat your fruits and vegetables. A new study in the British Journal of Psychiatry has found that those who regularly eat fish, fruit, and vegetables decrease their chances for developing depression.

About 3,500 British civil servant’s diets were observed by scientists at London’s University College. Five years later they evaluated the individuals symptoms of depression. These researchers pointed out the beneficial effect of a whole-food healthy diet that seemed to protect those who consumed it. On the flip side, they found that those who ate a poor diet consisting of sweets, processed meats, fried food, refined cereals and high-fat dairy foods appeared to make them more vulnerable to depression.

The study drew attention to a link between diet and depression. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a poor diet definitely causes depression, but these results are compelling. So what is most likely giving the protection for good mental health? The researchers suggested a variety of possibilities. Maybe it could be the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables believed to protect cells from harm, the folic acid found in leafy greens that affects brain tissue, or the omega-3 fatty acids in fish that are found in specific brain membranes. Or they theorized that the benefits could be from a combination of all of these factors.

Kids are increasing their snack consumption

Published on March 3, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

414786983_58ae3e7439These days everybody is so busy that there is sometimes not enough time for sit-down meals. This is one of the main reasons that snacks have become so popular in our society, especially with kids. They are often snacking after school and on the way to activities such as soccer and tutoring sessions. These extra calories each week could add up to around 13 1/2 pounds of body fat a year. Snacks now account for more than 25 percent of the average kid’s daily intake.

This research displays just how prominently snacks have been a culprit in the weight problem among many of America’s children.

Public health officials have taken sodas and fatty and salty snacks out of our schools, but the food industry constantly keeps pushing snacks at us to continue to treat people in the U.S. as if we are always extremely ravenous.

The nation’s child obesity level has climbed to 16.4 percent in 2007 – a 10 percent increase since 2003. It seems that eating meals and drinking milk has decreased and eating fatty and salty foods is increasing. Since everyone is busy and snacks are often necessary to get through the day, parents need to try to find healthier alternatives for between meal snacks such as an apple or some yogurt.

The new study, which tallied the results from 31,337 children and adolescents to four federally funded food surveys, has revealed that in 1977, around 75 percent of kids age 2 to 18 ate at least one snack between meals. In 2006 the amount of kids who snacked rose to 98 percent.

The survey reports that kids’ daily caloric intake has risen by 100 calories since 1977. This escalation in snacking has thrust their average calorie intake to 2,099. In 2006, 27.3 percent of total calories, around 600 calories a day, came from snacks, according to the N.C. research team.

Also, calories eaten at mealtimes have started to decline a little since the last food survey was taken in 1994. Because of this, U.S. children are eating more fatty, sugary and salty foods and less of the dairy, protein and produce that is common at mealtimes.

Study finds that teen use of pot and alcohol is increasing

Published on March 2, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

3917056433_2940ff8494After ten years of declining, a new study has found that alcohol and marijuana use is on the rise. Sean Clarkin, director of strategy at The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, said that we have learned from the past that you usually see an increase in recreational drugs first and the harder stuff usually follows.

The  survey, which is done yearly, discovered that the amount of teens in grades 9 through 12 who said they drank alcohol in the past month rose 11 percent in the past year; with 39 percent reporting alcohol use, which is about 6.5 million teens.

Pot use among teens is up 19 percent. About 25 percent of teens said they smoked marijuana in the last month.

Until recently, these numbers for pot and alcohol use had been on a steady decline since 1998. At this time, use lingered around 50 percent for teens using alcohol and 27 percent for teens using pot.

In addition, the new study unfortunately discovered that teens using the party drug Ecstasy is on the rise. Six percent of teens interviewed admitted that they used Ecstasy in the last month, compared with 4 percent in 2008.

Clarkin said that if parents do suspect their teen might be using, they need to act swiftly. Try to watch them closely, talk to them about the danger of drugs, set rules and if necessary, and get outside help such as a counselor, doctor, clergy or other resource.

During the study researchers asked the teens how they felt about doing drugs or about the friends who did them. It was found that a higher percentage of teens than the last year said that they like being high and more friends said they had friends who often got high at parties. Also, less teens admitted that they would not hang out with kids who smoked pot.

MetLife Foundation sponsored the partnership’s “attitude tracking” study. Researchers in the study surveyed 3,287 teens in grades 9 through 12. Data was drawn from surveys that the teens completed from March to June 2009. The study has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

The New York-based partnership is a nonprofit group that works to decrease illicit drug use.

Twenty percent of U.S. teens found to have high cholesterol levels

Published on January 27, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Around one out of every five American teenagers have high cholesterol levels, according to federal health officials. Unfortunately, these high levels of cholesterol can lead to heart disease.

Obese children were found to be at the highest risk for abnormal “blood lipid” levels, with 43% testing outside the normal ranges, according to the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Blood tests on 3,125 children were performed from 1999 to 2006 to obtain these results.

Lipids are the fatty substances in the blood that often lead to plaque build-up in the arteries and the early stages of heart disease. It is recommended that children with high lipid levels get counseling so they can improve their diet and exercise habits. Cholesterol drugs are also given to adults along with improved health habits. The CDC claims that around 1% of children have high cholesterol that is treatable with drugs.

LDL, or bad cholesterol, and HDL, good cholesterol, and triglycerides were measured in the study. Adults who have higher levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides are at an increased risk for heart attacks and strokes from heart disease. Studies have revealed that increased levels of the good kind of cholesterol can help get rid of harmful fats.

The CDC says that the leading cause of death for adults in the U.S. is heart disease, which causes around 630,000 deaths every year. Children and teenagers having high lipid levels are at a higher risk for developing heart disease when they become adults.

Hypertension may be a culprit in developing dementia

Published on January 27, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

New research has found that one of the best ways to keep from getting dementia is to control your blood pressure.

During the study, scientists scanned the brains of people to reveal that hypertension causes some kind of scarring that is related to the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. The scars can begin to form in middle age, years before memory problems are apparent.

The new evidence is so strong that the National Institutes of Health is planning on studying thousands of people with hypertension to see if vigorous treatment will help protect their hearts and their brains. This aggressive treatment will involve getting blood pressure lower than normal recommendations.

The largest factor for Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia is age. Dementia affects about one in eight people who are 65 and older.

For a long time now, scientists knew that many of the triggers for heart disease such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes appear to increase the chances for getting dementia. This said, they thought that the link was with “vascular dementia”, which are memory problems related to small strokes; not the frightening Alzheimer’s disease. Now, specialists are finding that many patients have a mixture of both types of dementia.

Having hypertension, which is a blood pressure reading of 140 over 90 or higher, weakens arteries and  also seems to spur Alzheimer’s disease-like activity. One culprit could be the scarring known as white matter lesions. White matter works like the brain’s telephone network with a system of  nerve fibers that permit the brain cells to communicate with each other. Unfortunately even small increases in blood pressure can cause harm to the tiny blood vessels that sustain the white matter. This damage causes interruptions to those signals.

The new studies found that MRI scans revealed that women 65 and older with hypertension had notably more white matter lesions in their brains eight years later. The journal Stroke just published comparable evidence from a John Hopkins University-led study that observed 983 people for more than 15 years, beginning in middle age. The results showed that the more time people spent with uncontrolled high blood pressure, the more white matter harm they incurred.

All this said, hypertension by itself doesn’t mean one is condemned to get dementia. There are far more people with hypertension than dementia; about one in three adults in the U.S.

Puberty is good time for girls to have some fat mass

Published on January 27, 2010 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Most girls going through puberty dream about having those incredibly thin bodies of models that they see in the fashion magazines and on t.v. Chubby girls often get rejected at recess time when picking teams and are sometimes even bullied or isolated.

Finally there is some good news that might make some of those girls feel a little bit better. New research has found that puberty is an important time for a girl to have some curves. In a study that will be published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, scientists discovered that having some fat mass is actually beneficial for bone mass to form, particularly in girls.

This new research could help to pinpoint if and how the development of the female skeleton is affected by such eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, that are linked to decreased fat mass.

Currently scientists are not clear on why a woman’s fat amount matters. A few researchers think that some of the bone accumulation is perhaps a response to the stress created by the weight her skeleton is carrying. Authors in the study also point to a possible link to estrogen levels.

No matter what the underlying triggers are, it is extremely crucial to promote a healthy body image. When a teenage girl is too thin, brittle bones, physical and psychological damage and other long-term effects such as osteoporosis can result. So, to sum things up, being skin and bones is not healthy for the bones and is not really flattering or beautiful.

Stretching found to be beneficial to the heart

Published on November 4, 2009 in Health and Wellness. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

We all know that any aerobic exercise is good for your heart and research has revealed that it can delay the hardening of arteries that often occurs during the aging process. New discoveries now indicate that flexibility may also have a positive effect on keeping the arteries healthy.

Your risk for getting heart disease and stroke may be able to be predicted from a basic flexibility test. The American Physiological Society has published a new study giving evidence to the fact that with women and men over the age of 40, the capability to touch one’s toes can reveal the hardness of the arteries.

Hardening of the arteries may increase blood pressure and is a huge factor in the cause of heart disease. Past research has shown us that aerobic exercise can assist in slowing the process of stiffening arteries as we age. Now researchers are discovering that staying flexible is definitely beneficial to the arteries.