Living With and Treating Peripheral Artery Disease

If you have P.A.D., you may feel pain in your calf or thigh muscles after walking. Try to take a break and allow the pain to ease before walking again. Over time, this may increase the distance that you can walk without pain. Talk with your doctor about taking part in a supervised exercise program. This type of program has been shown to reduce P.A.D. symptoms.

Dehydrated? These 7 Foods Will Satisfy Your Thirst and Hunger

By Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD

When heat and humidity soar, keeping your body hydrated matters more than ever. Did you know you can hydrate with what’s on your plate — not just what’s in your cup?
The following foods are heavy on the water content, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s nutrient database. In several cases, they’re also full of nutrients that will help you fight disease. So eat up, and beat the heat with your fork.

1. Cucumbers

Clue to Curbing Obesity

Preventing weight gain, obesity, and ultimately diabetes could be as simple as keeping a nuclear receptor from being activated in a small part of the brain, according to a study done by Yale School of Medicine researchers andp ublished in the August 1st 2014 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI).

Fish Really Is Brain Food!

Eating baked or broiled fish once a week is good for the brain, regardless of how much omega-3 fatty acid it contains, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published online in 2014 the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, add to growing evidence that lifestyle factors contribute to brain health later in life.

Prostate Cancer Risk Calculator Online

A free updated calculator to help men and their doctors assess their risk of prostate cancer is available online. Developed at the University of Texas Health Science Center, the tool has had a major upgrade in order to enhance how men and their physicians better understand a man’s risk of prostate cancer. A description of the update’s needs and benefits is described by the Health Science Center authors in a viewpoint published online August 4th in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Lung Cancer Diagnosis Tool Safe for Older Patients

A 2014 study done at the University Hospital of South Manchester in the UK has found that a procedure to take tissue samples from lung cancer patients can be used safely in the elderly, allowing doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis and to choose appropriate treatment. The results were published their results in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.

How to Know You Need Bifocals or Progressives

A gradual loss of the ability to see well up close is a natural part of aging. The condition is called presbyopia, from the Greek for “elder eye”. If you already wear glasses or contact lenses for distance vision because you have myopia, the medical term for nearsighted, you’ll need to switch to a new prescription. Options include bifocals, vari-focals, and progressives. For contacts, you could also choose monovision in which one eye is corrected for distance and the other is corrected for close work.

5 Exercise Myths Debunked

By Brett Osborn M.D.

As a neurosurgraon and an avid bodybuilder, I know that you will do more harm than good if you’ve bought into some of the myths and “conventional wisdom” about exercise that is simply wrong. Here’s the truth about are those misconceptions:

“Lab Developed Tests”: FDA to Ensure Reliability

On July 31st 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took important steps to ensure that certain tests used by health care professionals to help diagnose and treat patients provide accurate, consistent and reliable results.

Female Boomers with Asthma Face Challenges

An article published in the August 2014 issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), outlines the challenges faced by older women in treating asthma, and offers practical solutions to improve their care.

Longer Lives, Fewer Age-Related Illnesses

Living long and well may eventually be more possible, thanks to a surprise result of the work of scientists at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. While developing a new cancer drug, the researchers discovered that mice lacking a specific protein live longer lives with fewer age-related illnesses. The mice, which lack the TRAP-1 protein, demonstrated less age-related tissue degeneration, obesity, and spontaneous tumor formation when compared to normal mice. The teams findings could change how scientists view the metabolic networks within cells.

Hope for the Overweight & Diabetics

Researchers in Germany and at Harvard have succeeded in distinguishing the various types of fat cells in the body on the basis of their surface proteins. This discovery is raising hope for a new method to treat those suffering from obesity and diabetes. The team was headed by Dr. Siegfried Ussar from the Institute for Diabetes and Obesity (IDO) at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center/ Helmholtz Zentrum München, partner of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), and Professor C. Ronald Kahn from the Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School.

Coming Next Week! August 4th to August 8th 2014

Here’s a sneak preview of the articles, slideshows, and blogs we’ll be posting during the coming week on ThirdAge, the biggest and best site for “boomer and beyond” women since 1997. As always, we’ll bring you the latest information from top experts about maintaining a healthy body, mind, and spirit as you navigate both the challenges and the joys of being a ThirdAger.

Tree Nuts Help Lower Blood Sugar Levels

Eating tree nuts appears to help lower and stabilize blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes compared to those on a control diet, according to a study done at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and published July 30th 2014 in the online journal PLOS ONE.

Tree nuts include almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, coconuts, hazelnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, walnuts, pine nuts and pistachios. They do not include peanuts, which are legumes.

Diverticulitis Patients Suffer Symptoms Long After Attack

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles interviewed people with diverticulitis and confirmed that many suffer psychological and physical symptoms long after their acute illness has passed.

Migraine Relief from Cosmetic Surgery Technique

Dr. Oren Tessler, Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, is part of a team of plastic and reconstructive surgeons who report a high success rate using a method to screen and select patients for a specific surgical migraine treatment technique. More than 90% of the patients who underwent this surgery to decompress the nerves that trigger migraines experienced relief and also got a bonus cosmetic eyelid surgery.

Hope for Accurate Diagnosis of Memory Problems

More accurate tests could be created to diagnose diseases such as Alzheimer’s or memory problems stemming from head injuries. These tests could lead to earlier intervention, according to findings from the University of East Anglia in the UK published July 30th 2014 in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.