_ Sleep Health How to Keep Your Body from ΓÇ£Falling BackΓÇ¥ By Jane Farrell article By Julia Samton, MD
_ Avoiding Hospital Readmission After Surgery By Jane Farrell article Patients with post-surgical complications are likelier to be readmitted within 30 days than are those that don’t have the complications, according to a study published in JAMA Surgery. The research also found that using a simple online tool can help health-care practitioners predict which patients are at high risk of readmission.
_ Screening for Sickle Cell Trait Needed By article Researchers at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine say the time is long past due to use current scientific data and technical advances to reduce the burden of sickle cell disease (SCD). Sickle Cell Trait (SCT) is estimated to affect 3 million people in the US: approximately 8 percent of African Americans and .5-3 percent of Hispanics. The inexpensive identification of the mutated hemoglobin and the technical capacity to screen populations have been known for decades.
_ Prehospital Alerts for Stroke Patients By article Prehospital stroke alerts by emergency medical services personnel can shorten the time to effective treatment with "clot-busting" drugs for patients who have had a stroke, according to a report in the March issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
10 Things You Should Expect From Your Doctor By article By David Longworth, MDof the Cleveland Clinic You just waited two hours for a doctor who’s running late. Once in the office, the doctor zips through a jargon-filled speech, orders a test, writes a prescription and sends you on your way. You leave in a cloud of confusion, realizing that you never even asked a question.
_ Memory Loss Could Someday Be Reversed By Jane Farrell article Researchers have made a discovery that may make age-related memory loss a thing of the past. The drug can’t be used by humans yet, but scientists from the University of Florida are developing compounds that could eventually help adults who have memory trouble but are not suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia.
Women's Health and Wellness Post-Menopausal WomenΓÇÖs Fall Risk By article A study published in the March 2014 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS) showed that women with distal radius (wrist) fractures had decreased strength compared to similar patients without fractures. The authors suggest that this fact could explain why these women were more likely to fall and might sustain future fractures.
_ Sleep Health Restless Legs May Signal Heart Problems By article A nationally recognized sleep expert has published an editorial describing Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) as a possible biomarker for underlying disease. The editorial appears in the March 5th 2014 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology and was written by Boston Medical Center neurologist Sanford H. Auerbach, MD. RLS is a disorder of the nervous system. Patients with RLS have uncomfortable sensations in their legs that lead to an overwhelming urge to move them – most often at night or whenever the patient is resting.
_ Heart Health The ΓÇ£DemonizationΓÇ¥ of Saturated Fats? By article After President Eisenhower had a heart attack in his 50s, the erroneous belief that diets low in saturated fat curb heart disease risk was strengthened, according to Dr, James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist and doctor of pharmacy based in Ithaca, New York. His editorial appears online in the March 2014 issue of Open Heart, a journal published by the British Medical Association. Dr.
_ Is Your Hearing Getting Worse? By Jane Farrell article From NIH SeniorHealth.gov. Hearing loss, a common yet complex problem, involves both the ear’s ability to detect sounds and the brain’s ability to interpret those sounds, including speech. Several factors have to be taken into account to determine how much of an effect hearling loss will have on quality of life. They include: *the degree of the hearing loss *the pattern of hearing loss across different frequencies (pitches) *whether one or both ears is affected
_ Protect Yourself Against Colon Cancer By Jane Farrell article Colon cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, is often preventable and highly curable. March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and it’s important to find out all about the illness that overwhelmingly affects people 50 and older. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 90 percent of people with the illness fall into that age category.
How to Love an Angry Man: Understanding and Helping Your Partner By blog We all get angry at times. When we feel we’re threatened we react with anger. But we know people who get overly angry or their anger causes problems with their relationships at home or at work. I was one of those people. I wrote two books about how it impacted me and how I learned to help myself and my clients: The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from The Irritable Male Syndrome.
_ Aging Well Over 65? High Protein Diet Is Protective By Sondra Forsyth article This morning a news release from the University of Southern California entitled “Meat and cheese may be as bad as smoking” hit my inbox. Since then, numerous sites around the web have picked up the eyeball-grabbing headline and the accompanying story. If you encountered any of those posts and you’re over 65, don’t be alarmed and don’t cut back on the percentage of protein you eat.
_ Pain Management Minimally Invasive Back Surgery By article Research done at the Beaumont Health Systems in Royal Oak, Michigan and published in the February 2014 online issue of the journal Spine has shown that patients who have a low back surgery called minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion end up better off in many ways than patients who have more invasive surgery to alleviate debilitating pain.
_ Heart Health Anger and Heart Attacks By Jane Farrell article For some people, anger could literally be a killer. A new study has found that there’s a nearly fivefold increase in heart attack risk in the two hours following an outburst. “There has been a lot of research on anger; we already know it can be unhealthy, but we wanted to quantify the risk, not just for heart attack, but for other potentially lethal cardiovascular events as well,” said lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky, MPH, ScD, a post-doctoral fellow in the cardiovascular epidemiological unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Can Skype Make You Happier? By article By Hilary Young Loneliness and depression are not uncommon within the senior community. While the Centers for Disease Control reports that “depression is a true and treatable medical condition, not a normal part of aging,” the CDC also acknowledges that older adults do face a higher risk than other age groups of experiencing depression and anxiety. According to the CDC, about 80 percent of older adults are living with at least one chronic health problem, which could play a major role in the development of depression.
_ FDA Wants to Update Nutrition Labels By article The Food and Drug Administration wants to update the look and content of the Nutrition Facts Label to help consumers make better food choices and follow healthy dietary practices. The proposed changes include:
_ Proposed 2015 Medicare Part C Updates By article Medicare beneficiaries can get greater protections, value, and care in the Medicare services they receive through the proposed policies in March of 2014 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The 2015 Advance Notice and draft Call Letter takes important steps to improve payment accuracy for Medicare Advantage (Part C) for 2015.