_ Widowhood Mourning the Death Of A Spouse By Jane Farrell article Losing a spouse is one of life’s most heartbreaking events. You may react in a number of different ways: sorrow, fear, even anger (that your husband didn’t look after his health, for example). You can also feel guilty that you have survived, while he hasn’t. You may even feel a certain sense of relief, especially if you have been an in–home caregiver or your spouse has been in a nursing home.
_ Protein Implicated In Kidney and Heart Disease By Jane Farrell article Phosphate-rich foods such as processed cheese are known to increase the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease. Now scientists have found exactly why that’s so. The culprit is the hormone FGF23 (Fibroblast Growth Factor 23). When the level of FGF23 is raised, putting strain on the cardiovascular system. FGF23 controls renal excretion of sodium, and that affects blood pressure. The study, from researchers at Vetmeduni, Vienna, was published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.
_ Women Recover Faster from Concussions By article A study of concussion patients at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that males took longer to recover after concussion than females did. The study, which shows that using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) as a bias-free way to predict concussion outcome, was published online May 6th 2104 in the journal Radiology.
Caring for Horses Can Help Dementia Symptoms By Jane Farrell article Spending time with horses eases dementia symptoms for Alzheimer’s patients, according to the first study of its kind. The research, a collaboration between The Ohio State University and an adult daycare center, revealed that patients could groom, feed and walk horses under supervision. That experience improved patients’ mood and made them less likely to resist care or become upset later in the day.
6 New Ways to Love Your Salad By article By Jon Yaneff There is a classic Simpsons episode where Homer and Bart chant to Lisa, “You don’t win friends with salad.” This popular television family would mark any occasion with donuts and Duff beer, if Homer had anything to do with it.
_ Medical Care The Right Questions to Ask Your Doctor About Hepatitis C By Sondra Forsyth article By Sondra Forsyth The Centers for Disease Control has designated May as Hepatitis Awareness Month. One goal of that campaign is to let Boomers know that of the more than three million Americans infected with hepatitis C, over 75% are in their 50s and 60s. You can find out the extent of your risk with this 5-minute online assessment from the CDC.
Get Ready By blog I was obviously never a Boy Scout, but isn’t their motto “be prepared?” Recently, a client I’ve known for 12 years passed away suddenly. He was only in his early 50s. Here I am out in public, preaching about death, dying and being prepared. The loss of this special man has kept me up at night wondering about what I’ve been doing here at home- meaning my home office. Am I preaching enough right here at home? NO MATTER WHAT YOUR AGE, BE PREPARED. Part of dying well is doing what you need to do when you are living.
_ Breast Cancer Sleeping Well Boosts Survival for Breast Ca Patients By article A study done at Stanford and published in the May 1st 2014 issue of the journal Sleep reports that “sleep efficiency”, defined as the ratio of time asleep to time spent in bed, is predictor of survival time for women with advanced breast cancer.
_ Skin Skin Health ItΓÇÖs Melanoma Monday! By article May 5th 2014 is Melanoma Monday, and the entire month of May is Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month, according to a release from the American Academy of Dermatology. (The observances are registered trademarks of the academy). The academy encourages all of us to learn how to detect skin cancer. An estimated one in five Americans will be diagnosed with skin cancer in the course of their lifetime, and one person dies from melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – every hour.
_ 6 Tips for Overcoming Diabetes Burnout By article By Ginger Vieira Diabetes isn’t easy, and having to prick your finger day in and day out to check your blood sugar can be grating. Even though this task takes up about a combined 120 seconds of our day, it’s a tedious responsibility that comes with “good” or “bad” news depending on whatever our blood sugar is. After a while, who could blame you for being sick of it, for forgetting to do it, or for wanting to forget you have diabetes altogether?
_ 5 Ways to Stop Being a Passive Patient By article By Frederick Frost, MD It’s high time for patients to take an active role in their own healthcare. There was a time when many people had long-term relationships with a family doctor – someone who knew them and their families well.
_ Sleep Health Does Melatonin Work? By Jane Farrell article could get to sleep. Millions of people suffer from the same condition, and melatonin, a popular dietary supplement, is said to help. The melatonin sold in stores is a concentrated form of a natural hormone that plays a role in sleep. The hormone’s levels in the body rise in the a.m. and fall in the p.m. It’s been studied in connection with sleep disorders such as jet lag and insomnia, as well as dementia symptoms.
_ Heart Health Original Oily Fish Study Flawed By article You’ve heard it here on ThirdAge and probably elsewhere as well: Oily fish such as salmon, fresh tuna, and swordfish are currently recommended as part of a heart healthy diet. Oops! An international team of researchers have called into question the validity of a now-classic study from the 1970s that claimed that because the diet of Eskimos in Greenland is rich in whale and seal blubber, these peopledon’t have coronary artery disease at the same rate as other populations.On the contrary, the Eskimos turn out to have alarmingly high rates of lethal CAD and stokes.
Vision Health Abnormal ΓÇ£Binocular VisionΓÇ¥ as We Age By article Abnormal “binocular vision”, which involves the way our eyes work together as a team, increases dramatically as we age, according to research from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. A release from the university reports that the study also found that general health and antidepressant use are also linked to this disorder, which affects depth perception and therefore may increase the risk of falls.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Stress Management Stress-Free Living Stress Is Contagious By article Watching somebody else try to cope with a stressful situation, even on TV, can be enough to bump up your own level of the stress hormone called cortisol. That is the finding of research done at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and the Technische Universität Dresden and published on April 17th 2014 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
_ For Meds Adherence, Feedback Trumps Digital Nagging By article A device that monitors people when they take their meds and then give feedback has advantages over “automated nagging” according to a release from Carnegie Mellon University about a study done there and presented on April 30th 2014 at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Toronto.
_ Even a Little Activity Helps Prevent Knee OA By article Here’s some good news if you aren’t all that eager to engage in high intensity workouts. All you need to do to stave of the pain and disability of knee osteoarthritis as you age is to get up out your chair and do ordinary tasks such as running the vacuum or pushing a shopping cart. That’s the finding of research y done at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago and published on April 29th 2014 on the British Medical Journal.
_ Osteoporosis Fracture Risk Tool Is Flawed By article If you’re between the ages of 40 and 65, or if you’ve ever broken a single bone, the World Health Organization's tool for assessing the likelihood of breaks would underestimate your risk of “fragility fractures” resulting from falls. That is the conclusion of a study done at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada and published in April 2014 published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).