Tag: depressive symptoms

7 Hidden Causes of Fatigue

From the Cleveland Clinic

Fatigue can signal anemia, diabetes, hypothyroidism or hepatitis C. But once your doctor rules out major medical causes of fatigue, it’s time to consider hidden ones.

“We look for the less obvious roots of fatigue — that’s our job,” says Tanya Edwards, MD, Medical Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

Hidden causes include:

1. A junk food diet

Sepsis Contributes to Half of Hospital Deaths

Sepsis, toxic response to infection, contributes to up to half of all hospital deaths in the U.S., according to a study presented at the American Thoracic Society's 2014 annual conference in San Diego. Although many studies have examined the incidence and mortality of patients diagnosed with sepsis in the U.S. over time, the study authors say that so far, the impact of sepsis on overall hospital mortality has been poorly understood.

New Heart Tx as Good as Gold Standard

LCZ696, a drug with two antihypertensives to lower blood pressure, won a head to head comparison with ACE inhibitors, the gold standard treatment. The trial, which was conducted in Athens and called the PARADIGM-HF, was stopped abruptly in May 2014 because of a benefit to patients that was overwhelmingly statistically significant.

“Forgive and Forget” Really Works

If you’re still holding a grudge about a wrong someone did to you, you’d probably do well to follow the old adage that tells us to “forgive and forget”. That’s the advice of researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who showed that the details of an offense are more likely to be wiped from your memory when you’ve forgiven that transgression. You don’t even have to forgive the offender in person. You can simply resolve to pardon the person in your mind.

Healthy And Safe Exercise For Your Dog – And You

Now that spring’s here, it’s a perfect time to get out and exercise – and having a canine companion will make it ever more enjoyable. But just as you follow safety measures for yourself, you need to know what will keep your dog from danger.

Here, from the ASPCA, are some tips:

Get your pet a check-up

Clot-Busting Can Help or Harm Stroke Patients

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have developed a technique that can predict with 95 percent accuracy which stroke victims will benefit from intravenous, clot-busting drugs and which will suffer dangerous and potentially lethal bleeding in the brain.

Reporting online May 15th 2014 in the journal Stroke, the Johns Hopkins team says these predictions were made possible by applying a new method they developed that uses standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to measures damage to the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain from drug exposure.

“Happy Antics” Exercise for Dementia Patients

A holistic exercise program called “Happy Antics” that pairs cognitive activities with physical movements helps dementia patients and caregivers alike, according to research done at Teesside University in the U.K. and published in May 2014 in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies.

“Physician Partners” Help Improve Patient Care

A “physician partner” who can handle a doctor’s administrative tasks will help lighten the practitioner’s burden and increase patient care satisfaction, according to a study from UCLA.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, focused on the implementation of electronic medical records.

Watch: Adult Onset Asthma Risk Factors

Here's another addition to our ThirdAge Video Collection. Press play to start learning!

10 Common Cancer Treatment Myths

By Mayo Clinic Staff

As advances in the treatment of cancer have increased, you may have discovered more opportunities to learn the facts about this disease. Yet some misleading ideas about cancer treatment still persist.

Timothy J. Moynihan, M.D., a cancer specialist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., helps debunk some of the most common misconceptions about cancer treatment and explains the truth.

Myth: A positive attitude is all you need to beat cancer.

How To Have The Exercise Talk With Your Doctor

The health benefits of exercise are almost too numerous to list: Experts say that regular physical activity can have a positive effect on health conditions ranging from depression to diabetes. But it’s essential to talk to your doctor you begin exercising, want to take your current routine to the next level, or want to start a different activity.

National Hepatitis Testing Day 2014

May 19th 2014 is the third national Hepatitis Testing Day. Testing is especially important for Boomers and Beyond because people in that cohort may have contracted the HCV virus through blood transfusions or organ transplants prior to 1992 before screening went into effect. HCV, a potentially life-threatening infection of the liver, can be chronic with no symptoms for years and even decades. Millions of Americans have chronic hepatitis and most of them don’t know they are infected until serious liver damage has occurred.

Viagra for Heart Failure? Works Better for the Guys

Clear-cut gender differences stand out in measuring impact of Viagra as therapy for heart failure, according to a study done at Johns Hopkins and posted online May 16th 2014 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Specifically, in female mice modeling human heart failure, the benefits of sildenafil, the generic name for Viagra, ranged from robust to practically nonexistent depending on the animals' levels of the hormone estrogen. Yet in male mice, sildenafil generally appears to work well because it targets a different biological process independent of estrogen.

New Tx to Protect Brain Cells in PD

April was Parkinson's Awarness Month, but here at ThirdAge we want to promote PD awarness all year long. To that end, here's a fascintating and encouraging new study  about PD.

Meditation Can Give Your Brain A Rest

If you’re doing focused meditation, your brain is in effect giving itself a bit of a rest.

Norwegian and Australian researchers, examining brain activity via an MRI, found that concentrated meditation, in which a subject focuses on breathing and works to suppress other thoughts, showed a brain activity level that was almost the same as the brain resting.

A Cellular Path to Anti-Aging Drugs

Researchers have devised an algorithm that can help in the ongoing search for anti-aging drugs.

The scientists, from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, published their findings in the journal Frontiers in Genetics.

In their investigation, the researchers compared the cells of young and elderly patients, focusing on signaling pathways. The pathways play a crucial part in a process that ultimately results in either normal or pathological changes in cells.