_ Pain Management 9 Ways to Tame Your Chronic Pain By Jane Farrell article When it comes to chronic pain, thereΓÇÖs usually a limit to how much relief medications and procedures can bring. ThatΓÇÖs where changes to your daily life can help bridge the gap. Cleveland Clinic pain and wellness specialists Daniel Leizman, MD, and Mladen Golubi─ç, MD, PhD, offer nine ΓÇ£pain wellnessΓÇ¥ tips to make sure youΓÇÖre following for maximum pain management. Take deep breaths. The average adult takes eight to 16 breaths per minute. Slowing that down to five or six deep breaths that really fill your lungs will help you relax, which can lessen your discomfort.
_ Obesity Toward New TX for Obesity & Diabetes By Sondra Forsyth article Research done at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center could lead to new therapies to treat obesity and diabetes. The team found that a protein that controls when genes are switched on or off plays a key role in specific areas of the brain to regulate metabolism. The transcription factor involved ΓÇô spliced X-box binding protein 1 (Xbp1s) ΓÇô appears to influence the body's sensitivity to insulin and leptin signaling.
_ Mental & Emotional Health ΓÇ£Experiential ProductsΓÇ¥ Boost Happiness By Sondra Forsyth article Material items designed to create or enhance an experience, also known as "experiential products," can make shoppers just as happy as life experiences. That is the finding of research done at San Francisco State University and published online July 24th 2014 in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
_ 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.
_ Aging Well ThereΓÇÖs No Place Like Home ΓÇô For Growing Old By Sondra Forsyth article ΓÇ£The stairs are getting so hard to climb.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Since my wife died, I just open a can of soup for dinner.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£IΓÇÖve lived here 40 years. No other place will seem like home.ΓÇ¥ These are common issues for older people. And, you may share the often-heard wishΓÇöΓÇ£I want to stay in my own home!ΓÇ¥ The good news is that with the right help you might be able to do just that.
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 Potassium May Save Lives for Heart Patients on Diuretics By Sondra Forsyth article Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that patients taking prescription potassium supplements together with loop diuretics for heart failure have better survival rates than patients taking diuretics without the potassium. The degree of benefit increases with higher diuretic doses. The team, including senior author Sean Hennessy, PharmD, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology in PennΓÇÖs Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB), report their findings in a study published online July 16th 2014 in PLoS ONE.
_ Losing Your Sense of Smell By Jane Farrell article Many older people are not even aware that they have a problem with their sense of smell because the changes occur gradually over several years. They may not even notice that they are experiencing a loss of smell until there is an incident in which they don't detect food that has spoiled or the presence of dangerous smoke.
_ Caregiving Professional Post-Stroke Care From Head to Toe By Sondra Forsyth article By Marki Flannery At the end of nurse Lorraine Williams' recent home care visit to Professor Samuel Kaplan, he walked her to the apartment's front door. "I was so surprised," she marvels. Only a year earlier, the 70-something professor had a stroke and couldn't walk.
_ Pets Keep Pets Safe On The Fourth By Jane Farrell article The Fourth of July weekend, with its barbecues, firecrackers and fireworks, is a festive time for millions of families. And itΓÇÖs also a time to remember your animal companions. The experts at the ASPCA have some strategies for making the holiday a relaxing time for the furry friend(s) in your home. DonΓÇÖt leave alcoholic drinks within reach of pets. Alcohol can poison animals. Your pet could also go into a coma, the ASPCA says. In severe cases, fatal respiratory failure has occurred.
Excellent Advice from Maya Angelou By blog ΓÇ£Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇô Maya Angelou Now thereΓÇÖs something I wish I had known at 18, instead of waiting until I was in my 40s! I know I made far too many others priorities throughout my life, when they only saw me as one of many options. This came from my unfortunate habit of not valuing myself fully. Get some self-respect early on. DonΓÇÖt wait.
Coming Next Week! June 23rd to June 27th By Sondra Forsyth article HereΓÇÖs a sneak preview of the articles and blogs weΓÇÖll be posting during the coming week on ThirdAge, the biggest and best site for ΓÇ£boomer and beyondΓÇ¥ women since 1997. As always, weΓÇÖll 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. In addition, be sure to come back every morning to check out the ThirdAge Exclusives, We write them after culling the most important new academic and government studies from around the world that are making news that day.
_ Women's Health and Wellness For Some Older Women, Calcium Supplements Up Risk of Kidney Stones By Sondra Forsyth article Calcium and vitamin D are commonly recommended for older women, but the usual supplements may send calcium excretion and blood levels too high for some women, according to a study published online June 18th 2014 in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. Excess blood and urine calcium levels may lead to kidney stones or other problems. The study will be published in the November 2014 print edition of Menopause.
_ Medical Care Docs Say ΓÇ£AMENΓÇ¥ When Patients Pray for a Miracle By Sondra Forsyth article Cancer clinicians and a chaplain at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a new tool to help doctors, nurses, and other health care providers talk to dying patients and families who are, literally, praying for a miracle.
_ Vision Health AMD: Omega-3 Stops Unwanted Blood Vessel Growth By Sondra Forsyth article Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is characterized blood vessel growth, is the primary cause of blindness in the elderly in industrialized countries. The prevalence of the disease is projected to increase 50% by the year 2020. There is an urgent need for new pharmacological interventions for the treatment and prevention of AMD.
_ High blood pressure / hypertension Lower BP Not Always Better By Sondra Forsyth article For decades, common medical wisdom has been "the lower the better" in treating the approximately one in three people in this country who have high blood pressure. But does that approach result in reduced risk for dangerous heart events? Not necessarily, according to research done at Wake Forest Baptists Medical Center in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and published in the June 16th online edition of JAMA Internal Medicine.
Love and the Mind By blog ΓÇ£How beautiful would it be to find someone who is in love with your mind?ΓÇ¥ One of the often ignored advantages to finding love later in life is finding someone who sees past your surface beauty. That special someone who takes the time to look all the way into your mind and your soul. This is a true gift of aging! This is an advantage I had no idea of back in early 2005 when I finally met the partner I had been seeking my whole life.
_ Healthy Diet & Nutrition Health Buzzwords on Food Products: False Promises? By Sondra Forsyth article Health-related buzzwords such as "antioxidant," "gluten-free" and "whole grain," lull consumers into thinking packaged food products labeled with those words are healthier than they actually are, according to a research done at the University of Houston. A release from the university reports that the team suggests that false sense of health as well as a failure to understand the information presented in nutrition facts panels on packaged food may be contributing to the obesity epidemic in the United States.