healthy living for women + their families
Researchers say that Vitamin D deficiency is an indicator of aggressive prostate cancer risk in middle-aged men who underwent a biopsy.
Adam B. Murphy, M.D., MBA, assistant professor in the Department of Urology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said that the finding affected European-American and African-American men, although the link between Vitamin D deficiency andaggressive prostate cancer was stronger in African-Americans.
For many of us, the warmer seasons mean more exercise. And you’re probably taking several safety factors into account: how to protect yourself from dehydration or the sun’s damaging and even deadly rays. We should think about our sight as well. According to the National Institutes of Health, emergency room doctors treated an estimated 42,000 sports-related eye injuries each year.
And 90 percent of them, the NIH says, could have been prevented with protective eyewear.
A study done at the University of Michigan Health System has found that loss of paid employment after a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer may be common and potentially related to the type of treatment patients received. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings support efforts to reduce the side effects and burden of treatments for breast cancer and to identify patients who may forego certain treatments, particularly when the expected benefit is low.
Three studies from the University of Pennsylvania demonstrate new approaches to understanding and treating Parkinson’s disease, and eventually even staving it off.
The findings were to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology.
Unless you’ve been living in another solar system, you’ve repeatedly heard the news that resveratrol, a component of red wine and grapes, is associated with reducing LDL (bad) cholesterol, heart disease, and some types of cancer. Also found in blueberries, cranberries, mulberries, peanuts, and pistachios, resveratrol is associated with beneficial health effects in aging, inflammation and metabolism. Yet researchers have not been able to explain how and why resveratrol works its magic.
A previously overlooked group of cells may be contributing to a wide range of disorders, according to research from the University of California, San Francisco.
The star-shaped cells, known as astrocytes, might be a factor in illnesses such as Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), autism and schizophrenia.
The finding was published in the journal Nature.
By Ken Blanchard and Tim Kearin
By Chris Orestis
Here's another addition to our Third Age video collection. Press play to start learning.
Although many women with early-stage breast cancer are getting chemotherapy, the ones that decide against it appear to be more empowered about making a good decision, new research indicates.
The current guidelines for treating cancer that hasn’t spread to the lymph nodes or other parts of the body have led to thousands of women receiving chemotherapy without benefiting from it.
Scientists have discovered a crucial element in a cellular process that could help develop a new class of drugs for treating epilepsy, heart disease and cancer.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, found that T-type channels can shift the way they generate electrical signals to cells.
The rhythmic signals produced by a normal action of this process support the contraction of heart muscles as well as “firing” in parts of the brain
The first step to avoiding cardiovascular disease, which is the #1 killer of Americans, including women—is understanding how your heart and arteries age. The traditional approach to evaluating heart disease does not address what’s actually happening within your arteries. The single factor that causes most heart problems is not cholesterol per se, but the growth of plaque in your arteries. This is what determine your heart’s true age.
The Family Health Teamat the HealthHub of the Cleveland Clinic offers expert advice about skin tags and cysts:
The quality of kidney and liver donations is fundamentally important for the longevity of transplants and the health of recipients. That’s why it’s critical to know which organs are suitable for transplantation, as well as to use techniques that preserve an organ’s function after donation. Several studies published in the British Journal of Surgery in April 2014address these issues and offer ways to maximize the use of donated organs.
Laboratory mice are stressed by male experimenters but not by women and the reaction of the rodents may skew research findings. The reason is that the mice pick up on the human male pheromone scent but not that of human females. This may turn out to be the reason that scientists typically have trouble replicating research findings using mice and rats, a fact that has contributed to mounting concern over the reliability of such studies. These are the findings of an international team of pain researchers led by scientists at McGill University in Montreal
Not only do men have a shorter average life span than women but the incidence of cancer and the death rate from the disease is higher in men than in women. Yet the reason for these differences between the genders has long eluded researchers. Now a study led by scientists as Uppsala University in Sweden has shown a correlation between a loss of the Y chromosome in blood cells and both a shorter life span and higher mortality from cancer in other organs. As you probably know, women have two X chromosomes and men have one X chromosome and on Y chromosome.
Dipping blood sugars cause surprisingly irregular heart rhythms in diabetics and the dangerous overnight low glucose levels often go undetected. That is the finding of research led by Professor Simon Heller at the University of Sheffield in the UK. A release from the university explains that this discovery sheds important new light on the 'Dead in Bed' syndrome in which people without any history of long-term complications die suddenly from the disease.
As any pet owner can tell you, companion animals are part of your family. You love them, you take care of them, you play with them. Someday, though, the inevitable will come: your pet will become seriously ill and pass away. Most pets don’t die suddenly; they usually become ill and linger for a while. How can you make your companion’s last days good ones, and when is it time for him or her to go? The experts at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) have some answers.
