According to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), 26 million Americans have chronic kidney disease (CKD), and millions more are at risk. Kidney disease, in which the kidney fails to eliminate wastes from the body, is extremely serious, since it can lead to failure of this vital organ.
Tag: depressive symptoms
5 Common Questions About Sex and Your Heart
By Steven Nissen, MD
Cleveland Clinic
Patients often ask me: Is sex good for your heart?
The question seems simple. The answer is complicated, in part because of the limits of what research can tell us. But we do have a strong sense that sex fits in with a heart-healthy lifestyle.
Below are answers to five common questions.
1. Is sex exercise?
New “Heart Attack Gene” Discovered
Researchers have found a previously undiscovered gene variation that reduces heart attack risk, and the discovery could lead to better treatment of high cholesterol and related disorders.
The finding, by a team from the University of Michigan and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, took six years of analysis.
A Sharp Drop in Deaths From Colon Cancer
Colon cancer screenings have led to a 30 percent drop in cases for people aged 50 and older, the American Cancer Society reports. Death rates have also declined.
The drop was measured over the last ten years. The researchers who conducted the study said the decrease was due to more people getting recommended screening tests. And even more deaths could be avoided if everyone got their screening tests on time.
Grow a Nutritious Garden in a Pot
By Melinda Myers
Don’t let a lack of time or space get in the way of gardening your way to a healthy lifestyle. Plant a container of nutritious vegetables and herbs. Include a few planters on a windowsill, the front porch, back patio or right outside the kitchen door.
Tracking a Superbug’s Evolution
Using genome sequencing, National Institutes of Health scientists and their colleagues have tracked the evolution of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 258 (ST258), an important agent of hospital-acquired infections. While researchers had previously thought that ST258 K. pneumoniae strains spread from a single ancestor, the NIH team showed that the strains arose from at least two different lineages.
Slowing Down Alzheimer’s Plaques
University of Michigan researchers have learned how to fix a cellular structure called the Golgi that mysteriously becomes fragmented in all Alzheimer's patients and appears to be a major cause of the disease.
The scientists say that understanding this mechanism helps decode amyloid plaque formation in the brains of Alzheimer's patients—plaques that kills cells and contributes to memory loss and other Alzheimer's symptoms.
Deer Hunters’ Trick Can Help Diabetics
The scent of a human alerts deer to a hunter’s presence so scientists developed sprays for suppressing the telltale odor. Now, in an unexpected twist, researchers at Mississippi State University have discovered that the work of those scientists could help develop an electronic device to do the work of “diabetes alert dogs”. The team presented the findings at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in March 2014 in Dallas.
Continuity of Care for Elderly Patients Needed
Older patients with chronic illnesses often have care that is poorly coordinated. They may see many different health care providers working in multiple clinical locations, and poor communication between provider and patient is common. These factors can lead to higher use of health services and poorer outcomes. Improving the coordination of care for elderly patients with chronic diseases trims costs, reduces use of health services, and cuts complications. Those are the finding of a study done by the RAND Corporation and published online in March 2014 by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Caregivers and Exercise
According to Sherri Snelling, ThirdAge contributor and founder of The Caregiving Club (www.caregivingclub.com), there are 65 million family caregivers in the United States. It’s no surprise that many of them, alone with that emotionally and physically draining task, become depressed. In turn, that can lead to unhealthy lifestyle choices such as failure to exercise, bad eating habits and tobacco and alcohol use.
Doctors Prescribe Medicines that May Not Be Best for Patients
When it comes to choosing which medications to prescribe, patients may have as much influence as physicians, a study has found.
Researchers said that that patient requests for specific medications—often spurred by direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising—have a substantial impact on doctors' prescribing decisions.
"A patient request for a specific medication dramatically increases the rate at which physician s prescribe that medication," said lead researcher John B. McKinlay, PhD, of New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Mass.
Muscle Mass May Mean Longer Lifespan
Being stronger may equal a longer lifespan, according to new research.
The findings, by researchers from UCLA, indicate that the more muscle mass older Americans have, the less likely they are to die prematurely.
The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine, was led by Dr. Preethi Srikanthan, an assistant clinical professor in the endocrinology division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. It seems to support a growing body of research that muscle mass may be a better predictor of all-cause mortality than the Body Mass Index (BMI).
Tips for Turning Your March Madness into March Happiness
By Jaime Kulaga, Ph.D., LMHC
There’s a lot of hype about March Madness, and if you’re an NCAA fan (or married to one) you know it well.
But I’d rather think in terms of March Happiness: training mind and body, just as those basketball players train, to remain positive even when faced with stress, sadness, and the cyclicality of life. You can create a habit of happiness.
Watch: 3 Common Heart Disease Myths You Probably Believe
Here's another addition to our ThirdAge Video Collection. Press play to start learning!
The Anti-Aging Diet Tip That Can Speed Up Weight Loss
By Soriyya Bawa
Honey as an Antibiotic
Honey could be a solution to the problem of bacterial resistance to, to research done at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I and presented in March 2014 at the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Dallas.
A release from the society noted that medical professionals sometimes use honey successfully as a topical dressing but that the researchers predicted it could play a larger role in fighting infections..
Facebook: An Epidemic of Wellbeing?
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego say that feelings are “contagious” on Facebook and that this fact could be exploited to created an “epidemic of wellbeing”. The study, published in March 2014 in the hournal PLOS ONE, analyzed over a billion status updates among more than 100 million users of Facebook in the United States. The report found that “positive posts beget positive posts”, according to a release from the university.
Safer Driving With “Emotion Detectors”
Technology that identifies the seven universal emotions — fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, surprise, and suspicion – can help make driving safer, according to a study done at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.