_ 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.
_ 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.
_ Exercise People Underestimate Intensity of Exercise By Jane Farrell article If you think youΓÇÖre exercising enough, you just might be mistaken, a new study shows. The investigation, by researchers from York University in Toronto, found that many people over-estimate the effort required to work out at a moderate intensity level.
_ Bionic Pancreas Outperforms Insulin Pump By Sondra Forsyth article People with type 1 diabetes ΓÇô a lifelong condition -- who used a bionic pancreas instead of manually monitoring glucose using fingerstick tests and delivering insulin using a pump were more likely to have blood glucose levels consistently within the normal range, with fewer dangerous lows or highs. The full report of the findings, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published June 15th 2014 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
_ Estrogen May Affect Male Obesity By Jane Farrell article An imbalance of female hormones may contributing to obesity among men in Western nations. In a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the University of Adelaide's School of Medical Sciences, in Australia, said that part of the massive weight gain among men could be linked with exposure to substances containing estrogen. "Hormonally driven weight gain occurs more significantly in females than in males, and this is very clear when we look at the rates of obesity in the developing world," said medical student James Grantham, co-author of the study.
_ A New Kind of Drug for Alzheimer's? By Jane Farrell article Researchers have discovered a new drug target to fight AlzheimerΓÇÖs, and the finding could lead to a new diagnostic tool as well. Earlier drugs have long targeted the amyloid protein called plaques, which can cause neurons in the brain to die. But Penn State University researchers have found that another substance, a neurotransmitter known as GABA, could also be implicated in the development of AlzheimerΓÇÖs.
_ 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.
_ 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.
_ Osteoarthritis 6,000 Steps a Day Helps Ease OA By Sondra Forsyth article Research done at from Sargent College at Boston University in Massachusetts shows that walking just 6,000 steps a day reduces the risk of developing mobility issues such as difficulty getting up from a chair and climbing stairs that are often associated with knee osteoarthritis (OA). The typical recommendation I 10,000 steps ΓÇô about five miles -- a day but BU team found that fewer steps will do the trick. The study, which was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, was published in June 2014 in in Arthritis Care & Research.
_ Watching Out for Bedbugs By Jane Farrell article Along with other insect-related problems weΓÇÖre worrying about (bites from ticks, mosquitos and ants, to name a few) weΓÇÖre got an even nastier one: bedbugs. And theyΓÇÖre growing in number.
_ Frailty Means Greater Hospital Complications By Jane Farrell article Researchers have found that elderly patients who are frail are likelier to experience in-hospital complications following trauma. Previously, complications had been associated with age alone. The investigators, from the University of Arizona Medical Center, Tucson, examined statistics from 250 patients according to the 50-item Canadian Frailty Index, which measures social and daily living activities, nutrition and mood.
_ Exercise Heart Health Stress Management Stress-Free Living Why Stress & Overexertion Trigger Heart Attacks By Sondra Forsyth article Scientists believe they have an explanation for the axiom that stress, emotional shock, and overexertion may trigger heart attacks in vulnerable people. Hormones released during these events appear to cause bacterial biofilms on arterial walls to disperse, allowing plaque deposits to rupture into the bloodstream, according to research published in published in June 2014 in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Imaging the Adult ADHD Brain By Sondra Forsyth article Brain scans done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology differentiated adults who have recovered from childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and those whose difficulties linger. The study was published in the June 10th 2014 issue of the journal Brain. A release from MIT notes that about 11 percent of school-age children in the United States have been diagnosed with ADHD. While many of these children eventually outgrow the disorder, some carry their difficulties into adulthood: About 10 million American adults are currently diagnosed with ADHD.
Superbugs in ΓÇ£HandcuffsΓÇ¥ By Sondra Forsyth article Staph infections become resistant to multiple antibiotics because of a genetic parasite called a plasmid that the bacteria carry. RepA is a protein that sticks to the beginning of the plasmid's DNA sequence and starts a copying process. When a pair of RepA proteins bumps into another pair, which can happen when the cell is starting to get crowded with plasmids, the two pairs of RepA stick to each other and form a four-part molecule. Scientists say that the plasmids are therefore ΓÇ£handcuffedΓÇ¥ because the plasmid can no longer replicate.
_ Exercise What You Need to Know About Exercise As You Get Older By Sondra Forsyth article By Soriyya Bawa While exercise and weight loss are both important elements of any anti-aging regimen, many seniors worry that the risks outweigh the potential benefits. Exercise at an older age means risking serious injury due to falling, injuring the ligaments of the knee, and other forms of musculoskeletal injuries; the risk is even greater if the person is obese. However, a recent study has found that the benefits from exercise at an older age, and the subsequent weight loss, far exceed any possible risk of injury.
Love Insurance: How to Protect Your Most Valuable Asset By blog Most of us spend a considerable amount of money on car insurance to protect us in the event of an accident. We spend even more for health insurance to help pay for expenses should we get sick. We get life insurance to help our families after we are gone. But few of us even consider getting ΓÇ£Love insuranceΓÇ¥ to protect our relationship from small or catastrophic accidents that can befall us.
Mice With MS Walk Again After Stem Cell Tx By Sondra Forsyth article Mice severely disabled by a condition similar to multiple sclerosis (MS) could walk less than two weeks following treatment with human stem cells. The study, which uncovers new avenues for treating MS, was don e at the University of Utah and published online on May 15th 2014, in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
_ Vision Health No More Eye Drops for Glaucoma By Sondra Forsyth article Scientists from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the Singapore Eye Research Institute have jointly developed a new nanomedicine, liposomal latanoprost, that will allow glaucoma patients to do away with daily eye drops. The nanomedicine is delivered to the front of the eye via a painless injection and will stay and release the anti-glaucoma drugs slowly over the next six months.