healthy living for women + their families
From the Mayo Clinic
The news that you will need surgery can prompt many questions and a lot of anxiety. Beyond details about your medical condition and treatment options, what should you ask your surgeon before the operation? Whatever you need to ask to be comfortable with the decisions you make about your care, says Robert Cima, M.D., a colon and rectal surgeon and chair of Mayo’s surgical quality subcommittee.
The cost of brain scans for headache patients has reached $1 billion annually, a study has found. But many of the scans are unnecessary.
Research from the University of Michigan Medical School found that 12 percent of doctor visits in the U.S. for headache resulted in a brain scan.
Several national guidelines for physician advise against scanning the brains of patients who complain of headache and migraine. Still, the rate of brain scans is rising, not falling, since the guidelines were issued.
Men who got androgen deprivation therapy as the primary treatment in the early stages of prostate cancer didn’t live any longer than those who got no treatment at all, a study shows.
The researchers say that this conclusion, along with the risk of serious side effects such as heart disease and diabetes, “mitigates against any clinical or policy rationale for use of primary androgen deprivation therapy [PADT] in these men.”
According to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), 26 million Americans have chronic kidney disease (CKD), and millions more are at risk. Kidney disease, in which the kidney fails to eliminate wastes from the body, is extremely serious, since it can lead to failure of this vital organ.
By Steven Nissen, MD
Cleveland Clinic
Patients often ask me: Is sex good for your heart?
The question seems simple. The answer is complicated, in part because of the limits of what research can tell us. But we do have a strong sense that sex fits in with a heart-healthy lifestyle.
Below are answers to five common questions.
1. Is sex exercise?
Researchers have found a previously undiscovered gene variation that reduces heart attack risk, and the discovery could lead to better treatment of high cholesterol and related disorders.
The finding, by a team from the University of Michigan and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, took six years of analysis.
Colon cancer screenings have led to a 30 percent drop in cases for people aged 50 and older, the American Cancer Society reports. Death rates have also declined.
The drop was measured over the last ten years. The researchers who conducted the study said the decrease was due to more people getting recommended screening tests. And even more deaths could be avoided if everyone got their screening tests on time.
According to Sherri Snelling, ThirdAge contributor and founder of The Caregiving Club (www.caregivingclub.com), there are 65 million family caregivers in the United States. It’s no surprise that many of them, alone with that emotionally and physically draining task, become depressed. In turn, that can lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices such as failure to exercise, bad eating habits and tobacco and alcohol use.
When it comes to choosing which medications to prescribe, patients may have as much influence as physicians, a study has found.
Researchers said that that patient requests for specific medications—often spurred by direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising—have a substantial impact on doctors' prescribing decisions.
"A patient request for a specific medication dramatically increases the rate at which physician s prescribe that medication," said lead researcher John B. McKinlay, PhD, of New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Mass.
Being stronger may equal a longer lifespan, according to new research.
The findings, by researchers from UCLA, indicate that the more muscle mass older Americans have, the less likely they are to die prematurely.
The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine, was led by Dr. Preethi Srikanthan, an assistant clinical professor in the endocrinology division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. It seems to support a growing body of research that muscle mass may be a better predictor of all-cause mortality than the Body Mass Index (BMI).
From the Mayo Clinic
If you have a chronic disease — such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, or back or joint pain — exercise can have important health benefits. However, it's crucial to talk to your doctor before starting an exercise routine. He or she might have advice on what exercises are safe and any precautions you might need to take while exercising.
How can exercise improve a chronic condition?
Regular exercise can help you manage symptoms and improve your health. For example:
Scientists have discovered how a lack of oxygen can interact with inflammation to cause memory loss in conditions like stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.
The research, from the University of British Columbia, focused on microglia, part of a newly discovered brain mechanism that contributes to Alzheimer’s.
Chronic inflammation and oxygen deficiency are hallmarks of several brain diseases. But until now, there hasn’t been much known about how they contribute to symptoms such as memory loss.
About 20 percent of older Americans with chronic conditions are taking medicines that work against each other, according to a new study. In other words, the medication being used to treat one condition can make another condition worse.
The problem affects millions of Americans, since three out of four older adults have multiple chronic conditions.
Here's another addition to our Third Age video collection. Press play to start learning!
By Sherrie Campbell
Is food your “frenemy?” Food can be the best friend and comfort you have when you are down or just want to feel something because you are bored. Yet after you eat, you’re consumed with self-loathing. Suddenly, food is the enemy. This is no way to live or to let something outside of you have this much control over how you feel about yourself.
It’s not a simple issue, but you can start having a better relationship with food – and yourself – if you understand all the complexities involved:
Having a high level of self-esteem in older adulthood can have a positive effect on physical as well as mental health, new research shows.
A study by researchers from Concordia University in Montreal analyzed responses from 147 adults aged 60 and older to measure their self-esteem, stress and symptoms of depression every 24 months over four years. The investigators also measured the levels of cortisol, a hormone that’s released when stress levels are high.
There’s a new clinical design to determine whether medicines designed for cats are actually doing the job.
In designing the new method, researchers from North Carolina State worked to overcome the “placebo effect” in a pain-management study of cats. Evaluating the effectiveness of a medicine is difficult when it comes to cats, who may not reveal the pain they are suffering and who also are resistant to taking medication.
A safer form of lithium is on the horizon, researchers say.
The drug, one of the most widely used to treat bipolar disorder has a serious drawback of toxicity.
But investigators from the University of South Florida discovered that an oral variation, lithium salicylate, maintains steady levels of the drug for up to 48 hours without the toxic “spike” that happens with the rapid absorption of FDA-approved lithium carbonate.
Their study results appear in RSC Advances, the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
