_ Rituals Help With Asthma Med Adherence By Sondra Forsyth article Storing asthma medications in the bathroom and establishing taking the drugs as part of a daily routine may be helpful advice that doctors can give their older asthmatic patients who struggle to remember to stick to their medication schedule. ThatΓÇÖs the finding of a study done at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, which discusses how elderly asthmatics cope with taking their inhaled corticosteroid medication as prescribed. The report was published August 5th 2014 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
_ The Mathematics of Happiness By Jane Farrell article Scientists have developed a mathematical model to measure happiness, and that may eventually lead to better treatments for mood disorders. Researchers from University College London used the equation to analyze the happiness of more than 18,000 people worldwide. As a result, they found that moment-by-moment happiness is due not only to how well things are going but whether they are going better than a person expected.
_ Healthy Diet & Nutrition Fish Really Is Brain Food! By Sondra Forsyth article 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.
_ Women's Health and Wellness Female Boomers with Asthma Face Challenges By Sondra Forsyth article 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.
_ Hope for Accurate Diagnosis of Memory Problems By Sondra Forsyth article 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.
Blended By blog Are you an Adam Sandler fan? We are all fans here in our house. One year for Christmas, [my late husband] Tim got me every Adam Sandler movie he had made so far. I love most of his stuff, but I donΓÇÖt really ever buy videos because I keep things simple when I can. I appreciated the thoughtful gesture, though. My favorite duo is Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.
_ Exercise Does Air Pollution Make Outdoor Exercise Risky? By Sondra Forsyth article By Edward R. Laskowski, M.D. While aerobic activity is one of the keys to a healthy lifestyle, air pollution and exercise can be an unhealthy combination. This is especially true if you have asthma, diabetes, heart or lung conditions, or lower respiratory disease. Even when you're not exercising, exposure to air pollution can cause health problems. But with the combination of air pollution and exercise, the potential health problems are increased.
_ Women's Health and Wellness Hysterectomy With Morcellation Poses Cancer Risk By Sondra Forsyth article Among women undergoing a minimally invasive hysterectomy using electric power morcellation, uterine cancers were present in 27 per 10,000 women at the time of the procedure, according to a study published July 22nd 2014 by JAMA. There has been concern that this procedure, in which the uterus is fragmented into smaller pieces, may result in the spread of undetected malignancies.
_ Heart Health Women With a Heart Attack Fare Worse Than Men By Sondra Forsyth article While awareness campaigns may be getting women to go to the hospital more quickly during a heart-attack, a new look at hospital data shows women have longer hospital stays and are more likely than men to die in the hospital after a heart attack. For the study published online July 21st 2014 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers from Yale School of Medicine analyzed 230,684 hospitalizations for heart attack in patients age 30 to 54 from a total of 1.1 million hospitalizations reported in a national database from 2001 to 2010.
Do You See Others as They Are or As You Want Them to Be? By blog Mental clarity is the ability to make distinctions between the false and the true, what appears to be real and what is illusory. Mental confusion, on the other hand, is often based on dishonesty: either you are not telling yourself the truth, or someone is not telling you the truth. And if you are not aware of or you deny your feelings, you are even more likely to be easily fooled. As an example, your longing for approval causes you to overlook the flaws in a person from whom you seek validation.
_ Heart Health Niacin Linked to Death Risk By Sondra Forsyth article Niacin has been a mainstay of cholesterol therapy for 50 years, but Northwestern Medicine preventive cardiologist Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D. maintains that the drug should no longer be prescribed for most patients due to potential increased risk of death, dangerous side effects, and no benefit in reducing heart attacks and strokes. His editorial was published in the July 17th 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
_ Medical Care Antibiotic Use Prevalent in Hospices By Sondra Forsyth article The use of antibiotics is still prevalent among terminal patients who have chosen hospice care as an end-of-life option, despite little evidence that the medications improve symptoms or quality of life, and sometimes may cause unwanted side effects. That is the finding of a study done at Oregon State University and the Oregon Health & Science University and published on July 14th 2014 in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
_ Meditation Doesn't Have To Be A Marathon By Jane Farrell article If youΓÇÖd like to meditate but are overwhelmed by the thought of lengthy training and practice, take heart: you can get the stress-reducing benefits from just 25 minutes. New research from Carnegie Mellon University is the first to show that brief mindfulness meditation practice ΓÇö 25 minutes for three consecutive days ΓÇö alleviates psychological stress. " the study investigates how mindfulness meditation affects people's ability to be resilient under stress.
_ Hepatitis C Liver Transplants for Hep C: A Surprising Finding By Sondra Forsyth article An international team of researchers was surprised to find that in some hepatitis C patients who receive liver transplants, genes that target the hepatitis C virus (HCV) as part of the innate immune system actually enable the patients to tolerate a foreign organ without taking immunosuppressant medication. The study was published in July 2014 in Science Translational Medicine.
_ Food Allergies & Intolerance Milk & Egg Allergies More Worrisome Than Nut Allergies By Sondra Forsyth article If youΓÇÖre the grandparent or parent of a child with food allergies, you know that constant vigilance is called for regarding everything your off-spring child eats. A hidden ingredient can be fatal.
Aging Well A Drug to Slow Aging By Sondra Forsyth article A drug called rapimycin may mimic the effect of dietary restriction, one of the most-researched methods for slowing the aging process, according to an article published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences/em> in June 2014.
_ Facebook and Your Friends' Feelings By Jane Farrell article Reading your Facebook news feed may do more than keep you up to date. It may also influence the emotional state of your status updates ΓÇô and that will affect your friends as well. To reach that conclusion, social scientists at Cornell University, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Facebook, studied the news feed of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users. In their experiment, they controlled the news feed of the users to add more negative stories or more positive stories.
_ Caregiving Synching Info Between Homes & Hospitals By Sondra Forsyth article Researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia are working to develop an in-home health monitoring and alert system that streams patientsΓÇÖ individualized health information between homes and hospitals. The systemΓÇÖs ability to provide comprehensive health information could lead to better care for patients as well as reduced costs for individuals and health systems.