_ Weather Changes Linked to Strokes By article Stroke hospitalization and death rates may rise and fall with changes in environmental temperature and dew point, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014 in San Diego.
Fatigue Helps You Make Good Health Decisions By Jane Farrell article Researchers say there might be one good thing about being fatigued: we make better health-care decisions when we’re feeling tired and run down. “We proposed that people are more motivated to engage in healthful behavior when they are depleted and perceive their safety to be at stake,” write authors Monika Lisjak, of Erasmus University, and Angela Y. Lee, of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Heart Health Heart Patients Now Less Likely to Die of Heart Disease By article Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN were pleasantly surprised to find that more people who have known coronary heart disease die from other causes — such as cancer, and lung and neurological diseases — than heart disease, compared with 20 years ago. The study was published online on February 10th 2014 in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal.
_ Men's Health Testosterone Therapy Not Always Good for Older Men By Jane Farrell article Experts are calling for a full evaluation of the risks and benefits of hormone therapy for older men with declining levels of testosterone. The statement by the Endocrine Society was prompted by recent studies, one from the Veterans Health Care System and the other from the National Institutes of Health, that have raised concerns about the risks of testosterone therapy for older men with a history of heart disease.
_ Age-Related Decline in Motor Skills May Not be Inevitable By Jane Farrell article Researchers have pinpointed a source of age-related motor decline, and that could lead to targeted treatments to deal with the condition. The investigators, from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, discovered evidence that so-called “set points” in the nervous system are not inevitably determined during development but can be “reset” with age.
Diabetes: 7 New Genetic Regions By article Seven new genetic regions associated with type 2 diabetes have been identified in the largest study to date of the genetic basis of the disease. DNA data was brought together from more than 48,000 patients and 139,000 healthy controls from four different ethnic groups. The research was conducted by an international consortium of investigators from 20 countries on four continents, co-led by investigators from Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. The study is published in the February 2014 issue of journal Nature Genetics.
_ Heart Health New Guidelines for Preventing Stroke in Women By Jane Farrell article For the first time, researchers have developed guidelines for preventing women from having strokes. "If you are a woman, you share many of the same risk factors for stroke with men, but your risk is also influenced by hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other sex-related factors," said Cheryl Bushnell, M.D., M.H.S., author of the statement published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. The guidelines outline stroke risks for women women and provide recommendations on how o treat them, including:
_ Heart Health Spousal Supportiveness = Better Heart Health By Jane Farrell article Supportiveness from a spouse can help people fare better in their overall cardiovascular health, according to a new study. The findings, by researchers from the University of Utah, show that when partners perceive the support they get from each other as ambivalent – sometimes helpful, sometimes stressful – their levels of coronary artery calcification (CAC) tend to be high. The findings were published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
_ Heart Health Knowing Your "Heart Age" Leads to Healthier Behavior By Jane Farrell article People who know their “heart age” are likelier to engage in healthier behavior, according to a new study.
_ Sleep Health Sleep: Myths vs. Facts By Jane Farrell article How much do you know about one of life’s most important activities? Here, the experts from the National Center on Sleep Disorder Research, a division of the National Institutes of Health, separate the facts from the myths and misunderstandings: Sleep is a time when your body and brain shut down for rest and relaxation
_ Aging Well Well-being Feeling in Control Can Increase Longevity By article People who feel in control and believe they can achieve goals despite hardships are more likely to live longer and healthier lives, especially among those with less education, according to a study by Brandeis University and the University of Rochester and published online in the Journal of Health Psychology. Previous studies have shown that people with a high school diploma or less education tend to die younger than those with a college degree or graduate training. Yet, that’s not a hard and fast rule. Why?
_ Heart Health Patients, Have a Statin Discussion with Your Doctor By Jane Farrell article Patients and physicians should work together to decide on individualized treatments based on new statin guidelines, according to a commentary by three Mayo Clinic doctors. The guidelines, issued last year by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, called for caregivers to prescribe statins to healthy patients if their 10-year cardiovascular risk is 7.5 percent or higher.
_ Breast Cancer Biennial Mammograms Just as Good as Annual Ones? By Jane Farrell article The adoption of guidelines calling for mammograms every two years for women age 50 to 75 would yield effective breast screenings and save the United States $4.3 billion a year in health care costs, a new study said.
Exercise Video Improves Post-Stroke Exercise Results By article About 80% of stroke survivors experience a condition called hemiparesis that causes weakness or the inability to move one side of the body. Core stabilization exercise to improve postural stability and independent walking in chronic hemiparetic stroke patients could be enhanced by real-time video feedback, according to research done at Sahmyook University in the Republic of Korea and published in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.
_ DNA and Age-Related Cancers By Jane Farrell article Changes in a process that controls genes appear to be linked to some of the increased risk of cancer seen in older people, according to a new National Institutes of Health study. It’s long been known that age is a leading risk factor for the development of many cancers. But scientists haven’t known exactly why that’s so. They’ve suspected a process called DNA methylation-- the binding of chemical tags, known as methyl groups, onto DNA.
Parents without Children By Jane Farrell blog When my mom was still alive, my sister and I often visited her in assisted living and later in memory care. Many times, we would be the only outside visitor. In fact, there were many residents whose family didn’t visit them. Sitting hour-after-hour in the lobby, these aging seniors would watch the front entrance intently. They looked as though they were constantly waiting. Waiting for someone who rarely or never came to visit. Their waiting and obvious loneliness made me incredibly sad.
_ After Antibiotics Stop Working, What's Next? By Jane Farrell article By Paul DiCorleto, Ph. D. Each year in the United States, 23,000 people die from drug-resistant bacterial infections. Antibiotics, designed to fight infections, have been one of the greatest medical advances of the past 100 years. But many health experts warn that we are entering a postantibiotic era, where drug-resistant “superbugs” threaten our health and economy. Our behavior — how we use antibiotics and antibacterial products — may be part of the problem. How superbugs survive
_ Fructose vs. Glucose: Not Much Difference By Jane Farrell article Fructose has a reputation for causing obesity, but replacing it with glucose doesn’t seem to make much difference. The findings, published in the journal Current Opinion in Lipidology, show that when portion sizes and calories are the same, fructose does not cause any more harm than glucose.