Disaster Relief Efforts Underway
As the massive damage and ongoing threat to human life from Hurricane Katrina came into sharper focus along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday, health officials across the country scrambled to provide aid and comfort to the survivors.
Among the relief efforts, according to news reports:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) positioned 23 disaster medical assistance teams and seven search and rescue teams around the stricken region.
FEMA also delivered generators, tarps and stockpiles of water, ice and ready-to-eat meals, according to agency officials. And the agency has 500 truckloads of ice, 500 truckloads of water and 350 truckloads of meals available to distribute over the next 10 days.
The American Red Cross, in what it called one of the largest emergency operations in its history, opened 239 shelters by Monday night and sent 166 emergency response vehicles and thousands of volunteers to the stricken area, according to spokeswoman Renita Hosler.
Private relief agencies, including the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Fund and Spirit of America, a humanitarian group, moved in mobile kitchens and had prepared more than a half million hot meals for storm evacuees by Monday night.
The Environmental Protection Agency dispatched emergency crews to Louisiana and Texas because of concern about oil and chemical spills.
The Agriculture Department said its Food and Nutrition Service would provide meals and other commodities, such as infant formula, distilled water for babies and emergency food stamps.
The Health and Human Services Department sent 38 doctors and nurses to Jackson, Miss., to be used where needed, and 30 pallets of medical supplies to the Gulf Coast, including first aid materials, sterile gloves and oxygen tanks.
World's Oldest Person Dies at 115
The world's oldest person died peacefully in her sleep Tuesday at age 115, according to the director of the home for the elderly where she lived in the Netherlands.
"She was very clear mentally right up to the end, but the physical ailments were increasing," the home's director, Johan Beijering, told the Associated Press. "She felt that being the oldest person in the world for more than a year was long enough."
Known as "Henny" van Andel-Schipper, she lived in Hoogeveen since World War II, and moved to the elderly home when she was 106. Born in 1890, she celebrated her 115th birthday on June 29 and her status as "oldest person" was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records last year.
She advised others who wanted a long life to "keep breathing" and eat pickled herring, a favorite Dutch snack, AP reported.
Guinness spokesman Sam Knights said the oldest authenticated person now is Elizabeth Bolden, 115, of Memphis, Tenn., born Aug. 15, 1890. The oldest man is Emiliano Mercado del Toro, 114, of Puerto Rico.
Some Medicare Drug Premiums Will Fall Below $20: HHS
Some monthly premiums for the Medicare prescription drug benefit that kicks in next year will be lower than expected -- $20 or less, the government said Monday.
Plans offering zero deductibles or deductibles lower than $250 annually are other options that will be available when the prescription drug coverage begins Jan. 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement.
Some plans will offer coverage that exceeds Medicare's standard plan. These plans will help beneficiaries pay for costs beyond $2,250 and before out-of-pocket costs hit $3,600 a year -- the gap in Medicare's standard coverage.
Beneficiaries with limited incomes will be able to choose from zero-premium plans offered by at least five organizations, the HHS statement said. Between 11 and 23 organizations will offer prescription plans in each region of the country, it added.
By mid-October, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it will mail a Medicare & You handbook to more than 41 million U.S. households. Assistance also will be provided through various churches, senior centers, pharmacies and "other centers where seniors and people with disabilities work, live, play and pray," the agency said.
President Bush on Monday urged Americans to at least learn about the new prescription drug benefit -- even if they didn't plan to enroll, the Associated Press reported.
"I fully understand, and our government fully understands, many seniors don't want to change," Bush said. But he asked that they "at least be open-minded enough to listen" to what the new program has to offer.
Mouthwash Recalled for Bacteria Contamination
Medline Industries, of Mundelein, Ill., is recalling an unspecified number of alcohol-free mouthwash kits because the mouthwash may be contaminated with Burkholderia cepacia bacteria, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Monday.
B. cepacia is a well-known cause of hospital infections and can be resistant to many antibiotics, the agency said. It can lead to serious respiratory infections, especially in people with compromised immune systems.
The alcohol-free mouthwash, in 2- and 4-oz. bottles, was distributed to hospitals, medical centers and long-term care facilities nationwide, the agency said in a statement.
Lot numbers beginning with 0503 through 0508 are affected. Bottles also have the identification code RA05CRR on the lower portion of the product label.
The FDA also announced the recall of Trypan Blue 0.06 percent ophthalmic solution, an eyedrop used during cataract surgery. The product may be contaminated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that could cause blindness, the agency said.
Breast Cancer Drug on FDA Fast Track
Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG announced Monday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted its breast cancer drug letrozole priority review for use in postmenopausal women after surgery to prevent tumor recurrence.
If cleared for this new indication, letrozole, sold as Femara, will become the only breast cancer treatment approved in the United States to significantly reduce the risk of recurrence for both the adjuvant setting and in extended adjuvant treatment following standard therapy, the company said according to AFX news report.
Novartis said it had asked for the priority review, which is an accelerated approval process, in June based on the drug's enhanced efficacy in high-risk subgroups for which existing therapies have not shown benefit.
In January, the results of one of the largest trials ever conducted showed that letrozole reduced the risk of disease recurrence and metastasis, and prolonged disease-free survival compared to tamoxifen, the most commonly used drug.
Letrozole works by reducing the production of estrogen, depriving cancer cells of the source of the hormone. It is the second drug belonging to the new class of anticancer drugs called aromatase inhibitors that has been proven to be more effective than tamoxifen.
Health Tip: Prevent Diaper Rash
Few babies escape outbreaks of diaper rash, but you can help prevent frequent flare-ups with these tips from The Nemours Foundation:
Change your baby's diapers often, especially after a bowel movement.
Use a diaper ointment to prevent and heal rashes. Look for one with zinc oxide, which acts as a barrier against moisture.
Let your baby go undiapered for part of the day.
If you use cloth diapers, wash them in dye- and fragrance-free detergents, and avoid drying them with scented drying sheets.
Health Tip: Avoid Alcohol While Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding mothers should avoid drinking alcohol, advises Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Alcohol is readily passed into breast milk, and heavy drinking or a daily drink can harm your baby.
A baby's body metabolizes alcohol very slowly, so even a small amount can affect nursing and sleep patterns. Regular alcohol exposure can also affect a baby's behavior and coordination.
If you're craving a drink, you can limit yourself to an occasional single three-ounce glass of wine -- then wait two hours or more before nursing your baby. This way, your body will be able to clear both your blood and milk of alcohol.
Food Fact:
Culture club.
When yogurt's live active cultures colonize your digestive system, they draw a line in the sand against disease. The cultures -- especially acidophilus and bifida - muscle out potentially threatening bacteria. Low-fat or fat-free yogurt has a lot of other things going for it: It's easy to digest, especially for those who are lactose-intolerant and have difficulty digesting milk and many cheeses; it's an excellent source of calcium, protein, riboflavin (a B vitamin), vitamin B-12 (which may be low in vegetarian diets) and vitamin A; and provides selenium, potassium and magnesium.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Battling exercise "burnout."
To keep your enthusiasm up, it may pay to put a few exercises down for a while. Changing your exercise program every couple of months may help beat boredom. Besides, after a while, your body adapts to the exercise stressors your current program had introduced, and craves new challenges.
FAQ of the day:
Can certain foods prevent cancer?
No one can say with absolute certainty how powerful is diet in preventing cancer. But at least a third (and possibly more) of all cancers have been linked to diet. People who eat the most fruits and vegetables have been shown to have about half the risk of developing cancer as people who rarely eat them. Your genes and other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, have a strong say in your susceptibility to cancer. But it's likely that improving the typical American diet would make a big dent in new cases of cancer, the nation's second biggest killer after heart disease.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Health Headlines - August 30
Heart Attack Patient Recovers After Bone Marrow Stem Cell Treatment
A 61-year-old Japanese heart attack patient whose only chance of survival appeared to be a heart transplant, has recovered without one because doctors used stem cells from his own bone marrow to treat him.
According to the Knight Ridder Tribune news service, the procedure, which doctors at Saitama Medical Hospital in Kawagoe, Japan, believe to be the first of its kind, took place over a period of months while the patient remained connected to an external artificial heart. The bone marrow stem cell treatment allowed the patient's heart to regain sufficient strength to operate without assistance, the news service reported.
The wire service quotes Dr. Shunei Kyo as saying at a press conference that the patient first suffered the heart attack on Feb. 3, and that his age and other factors made him unsuitable for the heart transplant. Instead, the decision was made to begin the stem cell treatment, which called for bone marrow cells to be extracted and then transplanted into the damaged ventricle of the heart.
Researchers at Saitama Medical Hospital have been involved in regenerative tissue research for some time, the Knight Ridder Tribune news service reported, but officials there couldn't explain why the bone marrow treatment was so effective.
The patient's heart became strong enough to pump on its own by June 30, Kyo told the news service. "I believe that we've established a treatment that is safe and side-effect free," the news service quote Kyo as saying. "The treatment will save patients who are unsuitable for transplants. We intend to use this treatment in clinical practice."
1,000 Lawsuits Filed Against OxyContin Maker
Because a New York state judge refused to accept a class-action suit, about 1,000 individual lawsuits were filed Friday in New York City against the manufacturer of the controversial pain drug OxyContin.
The Associated Press reports that 14 cartons containing the legal papers were dropped off at the State court house in Staten Island, and that it took court employees four hours just to establish the processing procedure.
The reason that the cases have to be tried individually is that the hearing judge decided that too many of them had different injury claims and different evidence requirements. Oxycontin, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995, is a powerful painkiller, often used in cancer cases.
But it is also powerfully addictive, something the plaintiffs claim the drug's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., failed to point out to patients and doctors when it marketed the drug.
These lawsuits are the latest in a series of thousands that have been filed against Purdue Pharma in the United States. According to AP, the company has never lost an OxyContin lawsuit, but there was a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general's office in November 2004.
New Government Rules Restrict Scientists' Consulting
Scientists employed by the U.S. government will no longer be allowed unlimited access to consult for private companies.
According to The New York Times, this re-emphasis of the importance of independent and impartial scientific medical research grew out of an investigation by officials at the National Institutes of Health.
According to the Times, the investigation found that 44 of the NIH's 1,200 senior scientists appeared to have violated rules governing consulting, and that nine might have violated criminal laws.
Most of the investigation centered on the relationship between government scientists and pharmaceutical companies, the newspaper said. Some government scientists apparently used their position to get consulting contracts with drug companies, and these relationships could cause conflict between government duties and private consulting.
The government probe was first reported in an investigative article by the Los Angeles Times.
While the new rules establish limits on the relationships between government scientists and the medical industry, they don't ban them entirely. The Times quotes Dr. Sidney Wolfe, of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, as saying that the new rules still allow government scientists to give medical education lectures paid for by drug companies.
"These rules by no means end the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on N.I.H. employees," said Wolfe.
FDA Delays Decision on 'Morning-After' Pill
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed for 60 days its long-awaited decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive pill, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Plan B, often called the "morning-after" pill, can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
In delaying its decision, the FDA said it was comfortable allowing over-the-counter sales to adults 18 and older, but wanted more time to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers, the AP said.
Plan B maker Barr Pharmaceuticals criticized the delay, saying scientific evidence supported non-prescription sales, the wire service said.
Merck May Settle Some Vioxx Lawsuits: Report
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck may be settling some of the many lawsuits that have been filed over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that has been shown to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In what appears to be a possible reversal of strategy, the company's general counsel, Kenneth C. Frazier, suggested in an interview with The New York Times that Merck would consider settling suits brought by people who took Vioxx for long periods of time and had few risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 5,000 Vioxx suits have already been filed, and in the first one to go to trial, Merck was found liable last week for the death of a Texas man who had taken the drug for eight months. Merck was ordered to pay $253 million to the man's widow.
Merck had previously said it planned to defend every personal-injury lawsuit filed over Vioxx. While Frazier denied that the company had made any change in its position, the Times quoted him as saying, "We would look at the facts of the case and make reasonable decisions."
Cases where settlements might be possible represent only a small fraction of all the lawsuits filed against Merck, Frazier added, noting the company does not plan to offer plaintiffs' lawyers an overall settlement of all the suits.
Last week's award was among the highest ever given to an individual plaintiff, although Texas law will automatically reduce it to about $26 million and Merck has said it will appeal.
Merck stopped selling Vioxx, part of a class of medicines called cox-2 inhibitors, last year after a clinical trial showed that patients taking the drug for more than 18 months had a substantially higher risk of heart attack and stroke than people taking a placebo. Other trials have shown that Vioxx raises heart risks over a shorter period of time compared with a placebo or with naproxen, an older painkiller.
Bextra, another cox-2 drug that is made by Pfizer Inc., has been withdrawn from the market because of cardiovascular risks.
Food Fact:
Go mango.
Nature packs a lot of vitamins A and C into these low-calorie appetizers. Half a medium-sized mango supplies 40% of the vitamin A and 50% of the vitamin C that most of us need daily. All for a mere 67 calories. And it tastes great!
Fitness Tip of the day:
Don't just stand -- stretch!
It's easy to fit stretching into your day; try these 3 tips. Practice some stretches while waiting in shopping lines. Simple neck and shoulder rolls are a great way to release stress and relax tight muscles. And make use of the stairs -- a great tool for stretching out your calves. How important is it to stretch? The American College of Sports Medicine has added stretching to its fitness recommendations.
FAQ of the day:
Is it true grapefruit juice and prescription medications don't mix?
Amazingly, grapefruit juice can interfere with some prescription medications. Grapefruit and its juice contains a phytochemical that inhibits the enzyme needed to break down antihistamines, calcium-channel blockers, immunosuppressants, sedatives and protease inhibitors (treatments for AIDS), among others. As a result, blood levels of those drugs stay higher than expected, with potentially serious side effects. If you drink grapefruit juice regularly and are prescribed medication, mention it to your health care provider.
A 61-year-old Japanese heart attack patient whose only chance of survival appeared to be a heart transplant, has recovered without one because doctors used stem cells from his own bone marrow to treat him.
According to the Knight Ridder Tribune news service, the procedure, which doctors at Saitama Medical Hospital in Kawagoe, Japan, believe to be the first of its kind, took place over a period of months while the patient remained connected to an external artificial heart. The bone marrow stem cell treatment allowed the patient's heart to regain sufficient strength to operate without assistance, the news service reported.
The wire service quotes Dr. Shunei Kyo as saying at a press conference that the patient first suffered the heart attack on Feb. 3, and that his age and other factors made him unsuitable for the heart transplant. Instead, the decision was made to begin the stem cell treatment, which called for bone marrow cells to be extracted and then transplanted into the damaged ventricle of the heart.
Researchers at Saitama Medical Hospital have been involved in regenerative tissue research for some time, the Knight Ridder Tribune news service reported, but officials there couldn't explain why the bone marrow treatment was so effective.
The patient's heart became strong enough to pump on its own by June 30, Kyo told the news service. "I believe that we've established a treatment that is safe and side-effect free," the news service quote Kyo as saying. "The treatment will save patients who are unsuitable for transplants. We intend to use this treatment in clinical practice."
1,000 Lawsuits Filed Against OxyContin Maker
Because a New York state judge refused to accept a class-action suit, about 1,000 individual lawsuits were filed Friday in New York City against the manufacturer of the controversial pain drug OxyContin.
The Associated Press reports that 14 cartons containing the legal papers were dropped off at the State court house in Staten Island, and that it took court employees four hours just to establish the processing procedure.
The reason that the cases have to be tried individually is that the hearing judge decided that too many of them had different injury claims and different evidence requirements. Oxycontin, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995, is a powerful painkiller, often used in cancer cases.
But it is also powerfully addictive, something the plaintiffs claim the drug's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., failed to point out to patients and doctors when it marketed the drug.
These lawsuits are the latest in a series of thousands that have been filed against Purdue Pharma in the United States. According to AP, the company has never lost an OxyContin lawsuit, but there was a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general's office in November 2004.
New Government Rules Restrict Scientists' Consulting
Scientists employed by the U.S. government will no longer be allowed unlimited access to consult for private companies.
According to The New York Times, this re-emphasis of the importance of independent and impartial scientific medical research grew out of an investigation by officials at the National Institutes of Health.
According to the Times, the investigation found that 44 of the NIH's 1,200 senior scientists appeared to have violated rules governing consulting, and that nine might have violated criminal laws.
Most of the investigation centered on the relationship between government scientists and pharmaceutical companies, the newspaper said. Some government scientists apparently used their position to get consulting contracts with drug companies, and these relationships could cause conflict between government duties and private consulting.
The government probe was first reported in an investigative article by the Los Angeles Times.
While the new rules establish limits on the relationships between government scientists and the medical industry, they don't ban them entirely. The Times quotes Dr. Sidney Wolfe, of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, as saying that the new rules still allow government scientists to give medical education lectures paid for by drug companies.
"These rules by no means end the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on N.I.H. employees," said Wolfe.
FDA Delays Decision on 'Morning-After' Pill
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed for 60 days its long-awaited decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive pill, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Plan B, often called the "morning-after" pill, can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
In delaying its decision, the FDA said it was comfortable allowing over-the-counter sales to adults 18 and older, but wanted more time to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers, the AP said.
Plan B maker Barr Pharmaceuticals criticized the delay, saying scientific evidence supported non-prescription sales, the wire service said.
Merck May Settle Some Vioxx Lawsuits: Report
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck may be settling some of the many lawsuits that have been filed over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that has been shown to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In what appears to be a possible reversal of strategy, the company's general counsel, Kenneth C. Frazier, suggested in an interview with The New York Times that Merck would consider settling suits brought by people who took Vioxx for long periods of time and had few risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 5,000 Vioxx suits have already been filed, and in the first one to go to trial, Merck was found liable last week for the death of a Texas man who had taken the drug for eight months. Merck was ordered to pay $253 million to the man's widow.
Merck had previously said it planned to defend every personal-injury lawsuit filed over Vioxx. While Frazier denied that the company had made any change in its position, the Times quoted him as saying, "We would look at the facts of the case and make reasonable decisions."
Cases where settlements might be possible represent only a small fraction of all the lawsuits filed against Merck, Frazier added, noting the company does not plan to offer plaintiffs' lawyers an overall settlement of all the suits.
Last week's award was among the highest ever given to an individual plaintiff, although Texas law will automatically reduce it to about $26 million and Merck has said it will appeal.
Merck stopped selling Vioxx, part of a class of medicines called cox-2 inhibitors, last year after a clinical trial showed that patients taking the drug for more than 18 months had a substantially higher risk of heart attack and stroke than people taking a placebo. Other trials have shown that Vioxx raises heart risks over a shorter period of time compared with a placebo or with naproxen, an older painkiller.
Bextra, another cox-2 drug that is made by Pfizer Inc., has been withdrawn from the market because of cardiovascular risks.
Food Fact:
Go mango.
Nature packs a lot of vitamins A and C into these low-calorie appetizers. Half a medium-sized mango supplies 40% of the vitamin A and 50% of the vitamin C that most of us need daily. All for a mere 67 calories. And it tastes great!
Fitness Tip of the day:
Don't just stand -- stretch!
It's easy to fit stretching into your day; try these 3 tips. Practice some stretches while waiting in shopping lines. Simple neck and shoulder rolls are a great way to release stress and relax tight muscles. And make use of the stairs -- a great tool for stretching out your calves. How important is it to stretch? The American College of Sports Medicine has added stretching to its fitness recommendations.
FAQ of the day:
Is it true grapefruit juice and prescription medications don't mix?
Amazingly, grapefruit juice can interfere with some prescription medications. Grapefruit and its juice contains a phytochemical that inhibits the enzyme needed to break down antihistamines, calcium-channel blockers, immunosuppressants, sedatives and protease inhibitors (treatments for AIDS), among others. As a result, blood levels of those drugs stay higher than expected, with potentially serious side effects. If you drink grapefruit juice regularly and are prescribed medication, mention it to your health care provider.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Health Headlines - August 29
1,000 Lawsuits Filed Against OxyContin Maker
Because a New York state judge refused to accept a class-action suit, about 1,000 individual lawsuits were filed Friday in New York City against the manufacturer of the controversial pain drug OxyContin.
The Associated Press reports that 14 cartons containing the legal papers were dropped off at the State court house in Staten Island, and that it took court employees four hours just to establish the processing procedure.
The reason that the cases have to be tried individually is that the hearing judge decided that too many of them had different injury claims and different evidence requirements. Oxycontin, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995, is a powerful painkiller, often used in cancer cases.
But it is also powerfully addictive, something the plaintiffs claim the drug's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., failed to point out to patients and doctors when it marketed the drug.
These lawsuits are the latest in a series of thousands that have been filed against Purdue Pharma in the United States. According to AP, the company has never lost an OxyContin lawsuit, but there was a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general's office in November 2004.
New Government Rules Restrict Scientists' Consulting
Scientists employed by the U.S. government will no longer be allowed unlimited access to consult for private companies.
According to The New York Times, this re-emphasis of the importance of independent and impartial scientific medical research grew out of an investigation by officials at the National Institutes of Health.
According to the Times, the investigation found that 44 of the NIH's 1,200 senior scientists appeared to have violated rules governing consulting, and that nine might have violated criminal laws.
Most of the investigation centered on the relationship between government scientists and pharmaceutical companies, the newspaper said. Some government scientists apparently used their position to get consulting contracts with drug companies, and these relationships could cause conflict between government duties and private consulting.
The government probe was first reported in an investigative article by the Los Angeles Times.
While the new rules establish limits on the relationships between government scientists and the medical industry, they don't ban them entirely. The Times quotes Dr. Sidney Wolfe, of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, as saying that the new rules still allow government scientists to give medical education lectures paid for by drug companies.
"These rules by no means end the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on N.I.H. employees," said Wolfe.
FDA Delays Decision on 'Morning-After' Pill
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed for 60 days its long-awaited decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive pill, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Plan B, often called the "morning-after" pill, can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
In delaying its decision, the FDA said it was comfortable allowing over-the-counter sales to adults 18 and older, but wanted more time to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers, the AP said.
Plan B maker Barr Pharmaceuticals criticized the delay, saying scientific evidence supported non-prescription sales, the wire service said.
Merck May Settle Some Vioxx Lawsuits: Report
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck may be settling some of the many lawsuits that have been filed over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that has been shown to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In what appears to be a possible reversal of strategy, the company's general counsel, Kenneth C. Frazier, suggested in an interview with The New York Times that Merck would consider settling suits brought by people who took Vioxx for long periods of time and had few risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 5,000 Vioxx suits have already been filed, and in the first one to go to trial, Merck was found liable last week for the death of a Texas man who had taken the drug for eight months. Merck was ordered to pay $253 million to the man's widow.
Merck had previously said it planned to defend every personal-injury lawsuit filed over Vioxx. While Frazier denied that the company had made any change in its position, the Times quoted him as saying, "We would look at the facts of the case and make reasonable decisions."
Cases where settlements might be possible represent only a small fraction of all the lawsuits filed against Merck, Frazier added, noting the company does not plan to offer plaintiffs' lawyers an overall settlement of all the suits.
Last week's award was among the highest ever given to an individual plaintiff, although Texas law will automatically reduce it to about $26 million and Merck has said it will appeal.
Merck stopped selling Vioxx, part of a class of medicines called cox-2 inhibitors, last year after a clinical trial showed that patients taking the drug for more than 18 months had a substantially higher risk of heart attack and stroke than people taking a placebo. Other trials have shown that Vioxx raises heart risks over a shorter period of time compared with a placebo or with naproxen, an older painkiller.
Bextra, another cox-2 drug that is made by Pfizer Inc., has been withdrawn from the market because of cardiovascular risks. The only other cox-2, Pfizer's Celebrex, is still available to consumers but it carries a heightened warning about potential cardiovascular problems.
Toddlers Don't Have to Occupy Own Airline Seat: U.S.
Better for a baby to fly than to ride in a car. At least, that may be the thinking of the Federal Aviation Administration in its most recent ruling concerning small children and where they sit on the plane.
FAA officials have decided not to require toddlers under two years of age to occupy their own airline seats, the Bloomberg news service reports.
The rationale, according to the FAA, is that parents forced to pay for a toddler's plane ticket might decide to drive instead, putting the family at greater risk than if they flew, Bloomberg reported.
"Families are safer traveling in the sky than on the road," FAA chief Marion Blakey said in a statement. "If requiring extra airline tickets forces some families to drive, then we're inadvertently putting too many families at risk."
Airlines allow children under age two to fly in an adult's lap. The FAA estimated that requiring tickets for toddlers would have caused 13 to 42 additional highway deaths over 10 years, Bloomberg reported. Federal statistics show that three toddlers have died in aviation accidents over the last two decades, according to Bloomberg.
When Muscles Are Sore, Stay Cool
Easing sore muscles should begin with cold then move to heat, advise experts writing in the August issue of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter.
For relieving muscle pain caused by sprains and strains, the first step is to apply a cold compress for about 20 minutes at a time every four to six hours for the first few days. The cold should reduce swelling and inflammation, and relieve pain.
A cold compress can be a cold pack, a plastic bag filled with ice, or a bag of frozen vegetables. Wrap the cold compress in a towel or dry cloth to prevent frostbite when placing it on the skin.
The cold treatment should be followed by heat therapy, which can begin after the pain and swelling have subsided. That's usually two to three days after injury. The heat helps relax tight and sore muscles, and reduces pain.
Apply the heat to the injured muscle for 20 minutes up to three times a day using a hot water bottle, warm compress, heat lamp, warm bath or hot shower.
Heat is usually a better treatment than cold for chronic pain (i.e. arthritis pain) or for muscle relaxation, the article noted.
Java Joy: Study Touts Coffee's Benefits
When the Ink Spots sang "I love the java jive and it loves me" in 1940, they could not have known how right they were. Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.
Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.
The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming beverage.
"The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think," Vinson said in a telephone interview.
Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.
Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too.
His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person's diet.
They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.
That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables.
"Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fiber," Vinson said.
Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources of antioxidants, he said.
The antioxidants in coffee are known as polyphenols. Sometimes they are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant group, Vinson said.
The first step in measuring them was to break that sugar link. He noted that chemicals in the stomach do the same thing, freeing the polyphenols.
"We think that antioxidants can be good for you in a number of ways," including affecting enzymes and genes, though more research is needed, Vinson said.
"If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to spread it out to keep the levels of antioxidants up," Vinson said. "We always talk about moderation in anything."
His findings were released in conjunction with the annual convention of the American Chemical Society in Washington.
In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.
Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.
Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did not drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she was not surprised by Vinson's finding, because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.
But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson's research team, cautioned that while many people have faith that antioxidants will reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and more, the evidence has not always panned out. Most experts are looking beyond antioxidants to the combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods, she said.
Food Fact:
Dr. red pepper?
Peppers rank surprisingly high on the list of healing foods. For instance, hot chile peppers contain capsaicin, a compound that acts as an anticoagulant and may help prevent heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots. A half-cup of chopped red bell peppers provides 141mg of vitamin C and 4,250 IU of vitamin A -- more than an adult's daily needs for both. And whether they're mellow and sweet or fiery hot, all peppers are all good sources of potentially cancer-fighting antioxidants, especially vitamin C.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Don't discount fitness.
Can't fit exercise into your schedule? Here's how to exercise when you shop, and buy a little extra time! Mall walking makes exercise feel less like a chore and more a part of daily life. When the weather is bad walk laps with a friend around your area mall -- a great cardiovascular workout. To find a mall-walking program in your area, contact the management office of your local mall.
FAQ of the day:
When did garlic get its heart-healthy reputation?
Even ancient man suspected garlic was good for the heart. Dioscorides, the Roman who codified Greek herbal medicine in the first century A.D., wrote in his "Materia Medica" that garlic "clears the arteries." The ancient Indian Ayurvedic text "Charaka Samhita" holds that garlic "maintains the fluidity of the blood, strengthens the heart and prolongs life." But it's only in the past few decades that garlic's effect on blood cholesterol, blood clotting and other heart disease risk factors have been systematically studied.
Because a New York state judge refused to accept a class-action suit, about 1,000 individual lawsuits were filed Friday in New York City against the manufacturer of the controversial pain drug OxyContin.
The Associated Press reports that 14 cartons containing the legal papers were dropped off at the State court house in Staten Island, and that it took court employees four hours just to establish the processing procedure.
The reason that the cases have to be tried individually is that the hearing judge decided that too many of them had different injury claims and different evidence requirements. Oxycontin, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995, is a powerful painkiller, often used in cancer cases.
But it is also powerfully addictive, something the plaintiffs claim the drug's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., failed to point out to patients and doctors when it marketed the drug.
These lawsuits are the latest in a series of thousands that have been filed against Purdue Pharma in the United States. According to AP, the company has never lost an OxyContin lawsuit, but there was a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general's office in November 2004.
New Government Rules Restrict Scientists' Consulting
Scientists employed by the U.S. government will no longer be allowed unlimited access to consult for private companies.
According to The New York Times, this re-emphasis of the importance of independent and impartial scientific medical research grew out of an investigation by officials at the National Institutes of Health.
According to the Times, the investigation found that 44 of the NIH's 1,200 senior scientists appeared to have violated rules governing consulting, and that nine might have violated criminal laws.
Most of the investigation centered on the relationship between government scientists and pharmaceutical companies, the newspaper said. Some government scientists apparently used their position to get consulting contracts with drug companies, and these relationships could cause conflict between government duties and private consulting.
The government probe was first reported in an investigative article by the Los Angeles Times.
While the new rules establish limits on the relationships between government scientists and the medical industry, they don't ban them entirely. The Times quotes Dr. Sidney Wolfe, of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, as saying that the new rules still allow government scientists to give medical education lectures paid for by drug companies.
"These rules by no means end the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on N.I.H. employees," said Wolfe.
FDA Delays Decision on 'Morning-After' Pill
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed for 60 days its long-awaited decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive pill, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Plan B, often called the "morning-after" pill, can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
In delaying its decision, the FDA said it was comfortable allowing over-the-counter sales to adults 18 and older, but wanted more time to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers, the AP said.
Plan B maker Barr Pharmaceuticals criticized the delay, saying scientific evidence supported non-prescription sales, the wire service said.
Merck May Settle Some Vioxx Lawsuits: Report
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck may be settling some of the many lawsuits that have been filed over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that has been shown to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In what appears to be a possible reversal of strategy, the company's general counsel, Kenneth C. Frazier, suggested in an interview with The New York Times that Merck would consider settling suits brought by people who took Vioxx for long periods of time and had few risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 5,000 Vioxx suits have already been filed, and in the first one to go to trial, Merck was found liable last week for the death of a Texas man who had taken the drug for eight months. Merck was ordered to pay $253 million to the man's widow.
Merck had previously said it planned to defend every personal-injury lawsuit filed over Vioxx. While Frazier denied that the company had made any change in its position, the Times quoted him as saying, "We would look at the facts of the case and make reasonable decisions."
Cases where settlements might be possible represent only a small fraction of all the lawsuits filed against Merck, Frazier added, noting the company does not plan to offer plaintiffs' lawyers an overall settlement of all the suits.
Last week's award was among the highest ever given to an individual plaintiff, although Texas law will automatically reduce it to about $26 million and Merck has said it will appeal.
Merck stopped selling Vioxx, part of a class of medicines called cox-2 inhibitors, last year after a clinical trial showed that patients taking the drug for more than 18 months had a substantially higher risk of heart attack and stroke than people taking a placebo. Other trials have shown that Vioxx raises heart risks over a shorter period of time compared with a placebo or with naproxen, an older painkiller.
Bextra, another cox-2 drug that is made by Pfizer Inc., has been withdrawn from the market because of cardiovascular risks. The only other cox-2, Pfizer's Celebrex, is still available to consumers but it carries a heightened warning about potential cardiovascular problems.
Toddlers Don't Have to Occupy Own Airline Seat: U.S.
Better for a baby to fly than to ride in a car. At least, that may be the thinking of the Federal Aviation Administration in its most recent ruling concerning small children and where they sit on the plane.
FAA officials have decided not to require toddlers under two years of age to occupy their own airline seats, the Bloomberg news service reports.
The rationale, according to the FAA, is that parents forced to pay for a toddler's plane ticket might decide to drive instead, putting the family at greater risk than if they flew, Bloomberg reported.
"Families are safer traveling in the sky than on the road," FAA chief Marion Blakey said in a statement. "If requiring extra airline tickets forces some families to drive, then we're inadvertently putting too many families at risk."
Airlines allow children under age two to fly in an adult's lap. The FAA estimated that requiring tickets for toddlers would have caused 13 to 42 additional highway deaths over 10 years, Bloomberg reported. Federal statistics show that three toddlers have died in aviation accidents over the last two decades, according to Bloomberg.
When Muscles Are Sore, Stay Cool
Easing sore muscles should begin with cold then move to heat, advise experts writing in the August issue of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter.
For relieving muscle pain caused by sprains and strains, the first step is to apply a cold compress for about 20 minutes at a time every four to six hours for the first few days. The cold should reduce swelling and inflammation, and relieve pain.
A cold compress can be a cold pack, a plastic bag filled with ice, or a bag of frozen vegetables. Wrap the cold compress in a towel or dry cloth to prevent frostbite when placing it on the skin.
The cold treatment should be followed by heat therapy, which can begin after the pain and swelling have subsided. That's usually two to three days after injury. The heat helps relax tight and sore muscles, and reduces pain.
Apply the heat to the injured muscle for 20 minutes up to three times a day using a hot water bottle, warm compress, heat lamp, warm bath or hot shower.
Heat is usually a better treatment than cold for chronic pain (i.e. arthritis pain) or for muscle relaxation, the article noted.
Java Joy: Study Touts Coffee's Benefits
When the Ink Spots sang "I love the java jive and it loves me" in 1940, they could not have known how right they were. Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.
Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.
The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming beverage.
"The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think," Vinson said in a telephone interview.
Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.
Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too.
His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person's diet.
They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.
That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables.
"Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fiber," Vinson said.
Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources of antioxidants, he said.
The antioxidants in coffee are known as polyphenols. Sometimes they are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant group, Vinson said.
The first step in measuring them was to break that sugar link. He noted that chemicals in the stomach do the same thing, freeing the polyphenols.
"We think that antioxidants can be good for you in a number of ways," including affecting enzymes and genes, though more research is needed, Vinson said.
"If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to spread it out to keep the levels of antioxidants up," Vinson said. "We always talk about moderation in anything."
His findings were released in conjunction with the annual convention of the American Chemical Society in Washington.
In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.
Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.
Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did not drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she was not surprised by Vinson's finding, because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.
But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson's research team, cautioned that while many people have faith that antioxidants will reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and more, the evidence has not always panned out. Most experts are looking beyond antioxidants to the combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods, she said.
Food Fact:
Dr. red pepper?
Peppers rank surprisingly high on the list of healing foods. For instance, hot chile peppers contain capsaicin, a compound that acts as an anticoagulant and may help prevent heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots. A half-cup of chopped red bell peppers provides 141mg of vitamin C and 4,250 IU of vitamin A -- more than an adult's daily needs for both. And whether they're mellow and sweet or fiery hot, all peppers are all good sources of potentially cancer-fighting antioxidants, especially vitamin C.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Don't discount fitness.
Can't fit exercise into your schedule? Here's how to exercise when you shop, and buy a little extra time! Mall walking makes exercise feel less like a chore and more a part of daily life. When the weather is bad walk laps with a friend around your area mall -- a great cardiovascular workout. To find a mall-walking program in your area, contact the management office of your local mall.
FAQ of the day:
When did garlic get its heart-healthy reputation?
Even ancient man suspected garlic was good for the heart. Dioscorides, the Roman who codified Greek herbal medicine in the first century A.D., wrote in his "Materia Medica" that garlic "clears the arteries." The ancient Indian Ayurvedic text "Charaka Samhita" holds that garlic "maintains the fluidity of the blood, strengthens the heart and prolongs life." But it's only in the past few decades that garlic's effect on blood cholesterol, blood clotting and other heart disease risk factors have been systematically studied.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Health Headlines - August 28
FDA Delays Decision on "Morning-After" Pill
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed for 60 days its long-awaited decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive pill, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Plan B, often called the "morning-after" pill, can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
In delaying its decision, the FDA said it was comfortable allowing over-the-counter sales to adults 18 and older, but wanted more time to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers, the AP said.
Plan B maker Barr Pharmaceuticals criticized the delay, saying scientific evidence supported non-prescription sales, the wire service said.
Merck May Settle Some Vioxx Lawsuits: Report
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck may be settling some of the many lawsuits that have been filed over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that has been shown to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In what appears to be a possible reversal of strategy, the company's general counsel, Kenneth C. Frazier, suggested in an interview with The New York Times that Merck would consider settling suits brought by people who took Vioxx for long periods of time and had few risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 5,000 Vioxx suits have already been filed, and in the first one to go to trial, Merck was found liable last week for the death of a Texas man who had taken the drug for eight months. Merck was ordered to pay $253 million to the man's widow.
Merck had previously said it planned to defend every personal-injury lawsuit filed over Vioxx. While Frazier denied that the company had made any change in its position, the Times quoted him as saying, "We would look at the facts of the case and make reasonable decisions."
Cases where settlements might be possible represent only a small fraction of all the lawsuits filed against Merck, Frazier added, noting the company does not plan to offer plaintiffs' lawyers an overall settlement of all the suits.
Last week's award was among the highest ever given to an individual plaintiff, although Texas law will automatically reduce it to about $26 million and Merck has said it will appeal.
Merck stopped selling Vioxx, part of a class of medicines called cox-2 inhibitors, last year after a clinical trial showed that patients taking the drug for more than 18 months had a substantially higher risk of heart attack and stroke than people taking a placebo. Other trials have shown that Vioxx raises heart risks over a shorter period of time compared with a placebo or with naproxen, an older painkiller.
Bextra, another cox-2 drug that is made by Pfizer Inc., has been withdrawn from the market because of cardiovascular risks. The only other cox-2, Pfizer's Celebrex, is still available to consumers but it carries a heightened warning about potential cardiovascular problems.
U.S. Toddlers Don't Have To Occupy Own Airline Seat: Feds
Better for a baby to fly than to ride in a car. At least, that may be the thinking of the Federal Aviation Administration in its most recent ruling concerning small children and where they sit on the plane.
FAA officials have decided not to require toddlers under two years of age to occupy their own airline seats, the Bloomberg news service reports.
The rationale, according to the FAA, is that parents forced to pay for a toddler's plane ticket might decide to drive instead, putting the family at greater risk than if they flew, Bloomberg reported.
"Families are safer traveling in the sky than on the road," FAA chief Marion Blakey said in a statement. "If requiring extra airline tickets forces some families to drive, then we're inadvertently putting too many families at risk."
Airlines allow children under age two to fly in an adult's lap. The FAA estimated that requiring tickets for toddlers would have caused 13 to 42 additional highway deaths over 10 years, Bloomberg reported. Federal statistics show that three toddlers have died in aviation accidents over the last two decades, according to Bloomberg
Breast Milk of Northwest U.S. Women Contaminated
Samples of breast milk of 40 mothers from Montana, Oregon, and Washington state were found to be contaminated with significant levels of a toxic flame retardant called PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), the Associated Press reports.
The California Environmental Protection Agency compared the levels of PBDEs found in the women's milk with those of a now-banned chemical cousin, PCBs. According to results released Thursday at a Dioxin conference in Toronto, 30 percent of the mothers tested had higher levels of PBDEs in their milk than PCBs, the .A.P. said.
"The comparison with PCBs suggests that toxic flame retardants have emerged as a major environmental health concern," said Clark Williams-Derry, research director for a group called Northwest Environment Watch.
For reasons that weren't specified, the Northwest women had levels of PBDEs 20 to 40 times higher than levels found in women from Europe and Japan, the researchers said.
Diabetes Groups Dispute Metabolic Syndrome Diagnosis
Two top diabetes organizations are challenging the value of labeling patients as having "metabolic syndrome," a diagnosis based on a cluster of risk factors known to be bad for the heart.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes said in a joint statement that the syndrome is ill defined, built on sketchy evidence and could distract doctors from focusing on more established heart-disease risks, according to a USA Today report.
"We don't believe there's a syndrome," said Dr. Richard Kahn, the ADA's chief scientific and medical officer. "We don't believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We don't believe that the formula is grounded in scientific evidence."
The statement, in the September issue of Diabetes Care, represents an attack on a concept that has the support of many heart-disease experts. The American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute have adopted metabolic syndrome as an important focus of heart-disease research and prevention, the newspaper reported.
The AHA estimates that about 47 million Americans suffer from the array of risk factors that make up the syndrome, including abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol abnormalities and a pre-diabetic condition called impaired glucose tolerance.
The diabetes organizations' stance could also affect a potential market for the experimental smoking-cessation and weight-loss drug called rimonabant, which drug maker Sanofi-Aventis is already promoting as "a comprehensive management approach" to metabolic syndrome.
Douglas Greene, a Sanofi-Aventis vice president, said, "The question of whether this group of risk factors has a name is an interesting scientific and semantic debate. From our perspective, (rimonabant) targets all of those risk factors."
Health Tip: When You Start Jogging
If you're new to jogging, the American Physical Therapy Association offers these tips to help you get started:
Alternate between jogging and walking until you build up your endurance.
Use the "talk test" to pace yourself. If you can't talk comfortably while jogging, you're pushing too hard.
Avoid hard surfaces whenever possible. Dirt paths are better than asphalt, and asphalt is better than concrete.
Take care when running over grassy areas. They may hide holes, rocks, and other potential hazards.
Health Tip: Home Safety for Seniors
Elderly people are especially vulnerable to accidents in their homes.
To safeguard your home, the City of Ottawa suggests you make sure that:
Floors are not slippery.
Pathways are clear of extension cords and other objects.
Rugs have no ripples or tears.
Scatter mats are removed or taped to the floor.
Low tables are removed from the middle of the living room floor.
Chairs have armrests and are the right height.
Light fixtures have a minimum of 60-watt bulbs.
Stepladders or step stools are sturdy, and the step surface is not slippery.
Food Fact:
Coffee on the dark side?
If p.m. coffee leaves you too perky to sleep, try cutting it off earlier rather than cutting it out completely. Coffee's stimulatory effects usually take 6 - 8 hours to wear off, so consider your bedtime when you reach for an afternoon or evening cup. The effects -- it can exacerbate insomnia, nervousness, anxiety and even panic attacks -- may last longer in women taking oral contraceptives and in older people. But coffee isn't a demon, either. Short-term studies have found that a cup's worth -- 100mg -- can increase self-confidence, energy and motivation to work.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Carry that weight?
How much should you be lifting? Here's a good rule of thumb. When you can perform 12 to 15 reps using excellent form, it's time to increase the weight used by 5%. In weight training, always use weights you can handle. Remember, we are training our bodies not our egos.
FAQ of the day:
What's the healthiest way to handle garlic and onions?
The way you handle garlic and onions affects their health-protective compounds. The more you cut, chop, smash or otherwise disturb raw onions or garlic, the more compounds they will release. If you're going to cook garlic, for example, it's a good idea to smash or chop it about 10 minutes before.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has delayed for 60 days its long-awaited decision on whether to allow over-the-counter sales of the Plan B contraceptive pill, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Plan B, often called the "morning-after" pill, can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
In delaying its decision, the FDA said it was comfortable allowing over-the-counter sales to adults 18 and older, but wanted more time to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers, the AP said.
Plan B maker Barr Pharmaceuticals criticized the delay, saying scientific evidence supported non-prescription sales, the wire service said.
Merck May Settle Some Vioxx Lawsuits: Report
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck may be settling some of the many lawsuits that have been filed over Vioxx, the arthritis painkiller that has been shown to raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
In what appears to be a possible reversal of strategy, the company's general counsel, Kenneth C. Frazier, suggested in an interview with The New York Times that Merck would consider settling suits brought by people who took Vioxx for long periods of time and had few risk factors for heart disease.
Almost 5,000 Vioxx suits have already been filed, and in the first one to go to trial, Merck was found liable last week for the death of a Texas man who had taken the drug for eight months. Merck was ordered to pay $253 million to the man's widow.
Merck had previously said it planned to defend every personal-injury lawsuit filed over Vioxx. While Frazier denied that the company had made any change in its position, the Times quoted him as saying, "We would look at the facts of the case and make reasonable decisions."
Cases where settlements might be possible represent only a small fraction of all the lawsuits filed against Merck, Frazier added, noting the company does not plan to offer plaintiffs' lawyers an overall settlement of all the suits.
Last week's award was among the highest ever given to an individual plaintiff, although Texas law will automatically reduce it to about $26 million and Merck has said it will appeal.
Merck stopped selling Vioxx, part of a class of medicines called cox-2 inhibitors, last year after a clinical trial showed that patients taking the drug for more than 18 months had a substantially higher risk of heart attack and stroke than people taking a placebo. Other trials have shown that Vioxx raises heart risks over a shorter period of time compared with a placebo or with naproxen, an older painkiller.
Bextra, another cox-2 drug that is made by Pfizer Inc., has been withdrawn from the market because of cardiovascular risks. The only other cox-2, Pfizer's Celebrex, is still available to consumers but it carries a heightened warning about potential cardiovascular problems.
U.S. Toddlers Don't Have To Occupy Own Airline Seat: Feds
Better for a baby to fly than to ride in a car. At least, that may be the thinking of the Federal Aviation Administration in its most recent ruling concerning small children and where they sit on the plane.
FAA officials have decided not to require toddlers under two years of age to occupy their own airline seats, the Bloomberg news service reports.
The rationale, according to the FAA, is that parents forced to pay for a toddler's plane ticket might decide to drive instead, putting the family at greater risk than if they flew, Bloomberg reported.
"Families are safer traveling in the sky than on the road," FAA chief Marion Blakey said in a statement. "If requiring extra airline tickets forces some families to drive, then we're inadvertently putting too many families at risk."
Airlines allow children under age two to fly in an adult's lap. The FAA estimated that requiring tickets for toddlers would have caused 13 to 42 additional highway deaths over 10 years, Bloomberg reported. Federal statistics show that three toddlers have died in aviation accidents over the last two decades, according to Bloomberg
Breast Milk of Northwest U.S. Women Contaminated
Samples of breast milk of 40 mothers from Montana, Oregon, and Washington state were found to be contaminated with significant levels of a toxic flame retardant called PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), the Associated Press reports.
The California Environmental Protection Agency compared the levels of PBDEs found in the women's milk with those of a now-banned chemical cousin, PCBs. According to results released Thursday at a Dioxin conference in Toronto, 30 percent of the mothers tested had higher levels of PBDEs in their milk than PCBs, the .A.P. said.
"The comparison with PCBs suggests that toxic flame retardants have emerged as a major environmental health concern," said Clark Williams-Derry, research director for a group called Northwest Environment Watch.
For reasons that weren't specified, the Northwest women had levels of PBDEs 20 to 40 times higher than levels found in women from Europe and Japan, the researchers said.
Diabetes Groups Dispute Metabolic Syndrome Diagnosis
Two top diabetes organizations are challenging the value of labeling patients as having "metabolic syndrome," a diagnosis based on a cluster of risk factors known to be bad for the heart.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes said in a joint statement that the syndrome is ill defined, built on sketchy evidence and could distract doctors from focusing on more established heart-disease risks, according to a USA Today report.
"We don't believe there's a syndrome," said Dr. Richard Kahn, the ADA's chief scientific and medical officer. "We don't believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We don't believe that the formula is grounded in scientific evidence."
The statement, in the September issue of Diabetes Care, represents an attack on a concept that has the support of many heart-disease experts. The American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute have adopted metabolic syndrome as an important focus of heart-disease research and prevention, the newspaper reported.
The AHA estimates that about 47 million Americans suffer from the array of risk factors that make up the syndrome, including abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol abnormalities and a pre-diabetic condition called impaired glucose tolerance.
The diabetes organizations' stance could also affect a potential market for the experimental smoking-cessation and weight-loss drug called rimonabant, which drug maker Sanofi-Aventis is already promoting as "a comprehensive management approach" to metabolic syndrome.
Douglas Greene, a Sanofi-Aventis vice president, said, "The question of whether this group of risk factors has a name is an interesting scientific and semantic debate. From our perspective, (rimonabant) targets all of those risk factors."
Health Tip: When You Start Jogging
If you're new to jogging, the American Physical Therapy Association offers these tips to help you get started:
Alternate between jogging and walking until you build up your endurance.
Use the "talk test" to pace yourself. If you can't talk comfortably while jogging, you're pushing too hard.
Avoid hard surfaces whenever possible. Dirt paths are better than asphalt, and asphalt is better than concrete.
Take care when running over grassy areas. They may hide holes, rocks, and other potential hazards.
Health Tip: Home Safety for Seniors
Elderly people are especially vulnerable to accidents in their homes.
To safeguard your home, the City of Ottawa suggests you make sure that:
Floors are not slippery.
Pathways are clear of extension cords and other objects.
Rugs have no ripples or tears.
Scatter mats are removed or taped to the floor.
Low tables are removed from the middle of the living room floor.
Chairs have armrests and are the right height.
Light fixtures have a minimum of 60-watt bulbs.
Stepladders or step stools are sturdy, and the step surface is not slippery.
Food Fact:
Coffee on the dark side?
If p.m. coffee leaves you too perky to sleep, try cutting it off earlier rather than cutting it out completely. Coffee's stimulatory effects usually take 6 - 8 hours to wear off, so consider your bedtime when you reach for an afternoon or evening cup. The effects -- it can exacerbate insomnia, nervousness, anxiety and even panic attacks -- may last longer in women taking oral contraceptives and in older people. But coffee isn't a demon, either. Short-term studies have found that a cup's worth -- 100mg -- can increase self-confidence, energy and motivation to work.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Carry that weight?
How much should you be lifting? Here's a good rule of thumb. When you can perform 12 to 15 reps using excellent form, it's time to increase the weight used by 5%. In weight training, always use weights you can handle. Remember, we are training our bodies not our egos.
FAQ of the day:
What's the healthiest way to handle garlic and onions?
The way you handle garlic and onions affects their health-protective compounds. The more you cut, chop, smash or otherwise disturb raw onions or garlic, the more compounds they will release. If you're going to cook garlic, for example, it's a good idea to smash or chop it about 10 minutes before.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Health Headlines - August 27
Genetic Link Found to Post-Surgical Stroke
People who have two genetic variants are at least three times more likely than others to suffer a stroke after heart surgery, Duke University researchers reported Thursday.
Their findings also strongly support earlier research that showed inflammation plays a critical role in post-operative stroke, the researchers said.
The two implicated genes are involved in the body's immune response to injury. Either genetic variant by itself appeared to have no association with an increased risk of stroke, the researchers said, unlike the combination of the two.
The pair of genetic variants -- known as polymorphisms -- appears to be present in more than one-third of the population that has heart surgery, the researchers said, making the need for further study essential.
The research was published on-line in the journal Stroke.
Journal Editor Attacked for Fetal Pain Article
The editor of the medical journal that published research this week claiming that early term fetuses don't feel pain says she has received dozens of angry emails from abortion opponents.
Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, told the Associated Press that she's gotten dozens of "horrible, vindictive" messages since the article was published Wednesday.
DeAngelis defended the article from University of California, San Francisco researchers, who studied other research and concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely until the third trimester, at 29 to 30 weeks.
"There's nothing wrong with this article," she told the wire service, adding that JAMA will publish critics' comments in an upcoming edition and will give the authors a chance to respond.
Since the article was published, various news organiztions have reported that one of the five authors works at an abortion clinic and another has former ties to a pro-choice advocacy group.
Abortion opponents have called the article a politically motivated attack on proposed federal legislation that would require doctors to offer fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when their fetuses are 20 weeks or older.
DeAngelis strongly denied such suggestions, the wire service said, noting that she's a staunch Roman Catholic who personally opposes abortion but supports a woman's right to choose.
WHO Worried About Bird Flu
The World Health Organization says the possibility of a bird flu pandemic that could kill millions of people is very real, and urged the world's nations to make immediate preparations to combat a widespread outbreak.
WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said the longer the virulent HN51 strain of avian flu circulates among bird flocks in Asia and elsewhere, the greater the possibility that it will mutate into a lethal virus that's easily spread among people, according to a report by the Voice of America.
The Asian outbreaks that began two years ago have led to 57 humans deaths in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Indonesia along with the deaths of millions of birds. Recent outbreaks among birds have been reported in China and the Russian Federation.
Lee said WHO is creating a stockpile of antiviral drugs and is urging the global community to do the same. On Wednesday, the Swiss drugmaker Roche announced it was donating 30 million capsules of the antiviral medicine Oseltamivir, which is 3 million treatment courses, to the WHO's reserve.
FDA Investigating Producer of Recalled Pacemakers
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it's planning to conduct a thorough inspection of the manufacturing plants of Indianapolis-based Guidant Corp., a maker of implantable pacemakers and defibrillators that have been the subject of several recent recalls, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The agency began a review of Guidant in May after the newspaper reported that the company hadn't alerted doctors for three years about an electrical problem in one of its defibrillators -- devices designed to shock an irregularly beating heart back into a normal rhythm.
Since that disclosure, the Times said, Guidant has recalled tens of thousands more defibrillators and pacemakers, both of which are surgically implanted under the skin of the chest.
In a statement, the FDA said it would conduct a "comprehensive, on-site inspection of the firm's manufacturing facilities." An agency spokeswoman declined to elaborate, the Times reported.
The newspaper said the inspection was partially expected to focus on whether data gathered about the problems with the heart devices were accurately and properly reported to the FDA. Depending on what the agency finds, its responses could range from a confirmation that the company acted properly, to civil proceedings and a criminal investigation, the Times said.
Guidant officials declined to comment on the FDA inquiry, the paper said.
Feds Closing Walter Reed Medical Center
A federal commission reviewing a sweeping restructuring of U.S. military bases has voted to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a century-old landmark in Washington, D.C., that has served dignitaries including American presidents and foreign leaders, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Most of the hospital's work will be relocated to the bigger, more modern National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md., that will be renamed for the closed facility, the wire service said.
"Kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, all of them in harm's way, deserve to come back to 21st-century medical care," Anthony Principi, chairman of the nine-member panel that decided to close the original Walter Reed, said in a statement.
The current hospital has about 185 beds, while the expanded Maryland facility would have 340, the AP reported. Construction and renovations will cost about $989 million, the wire service said.
U.S. Debates How to Regulate Leeches and Maggots
Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are beginning a two-day meeting Thursday to decide how to regulate the use of age-old medical remedies including leeches and maggots, The New York Times reported.
Once considered tools of bygone medicine, blood-sucking leeches and flesh-eating maggots have undergone a "quiet renaissance," the newspaper said. Leeches are particularly adept at draining excess blood from reattached or transplanted limbs, while maggots are able to clean festering wounds that fail to heal.
Up to now, neither remedy has been subject to thorough investigation by the FDA, the Times said. While American squeamishness has limited their modern use in the United States, the agency has decided that enough doctors use them that they should be treated as medical devices subject to the agency's oversight, the newspaper said.
The FDA advisers are being asked to create general guidelines about how the living medical tools are to be safely grown, transported, and sold, the Times said.
Food Fact:
Chew on this.
If you visit the candy machine, sticking with gum may help you control calories. At 5 - 10 calories a sugar-free stick, it's a good alternative to hard candy, which is loaded with sugar and can contain up to 50 calories per little piece. And how many of us ever stop at one? One more bonus: Getting your jaw moving to chew burns about 12 extra calories per hour!
Fitness Tip of the day:
Exercise? It's in the bag.
Road trips won't stop you from exercising -- if you know what to pack. Find a little room in your suitcase for exercise tubes, a great compact tool for weight training and resistance exercises when away from home or your gym. If you travel a lot, ask a fitness pro to design an on-the-go exercise program.
FAQ of the day:
Does garlic lower blood cholesterol?
Studies differ over garlic's effect on blood cholesterol. While earlier studies were optimistic, more recent ones have not shown that garlic powder supplements effectively lower blood cholesterol. Few studies have looked at fresh garlic, either raw or cooked. Whether or not garlic lowers cholesterol, it has other benefits, such as inhibition of blood clots, that earn it a place in a heart-friendly diet.
People who have two genetic variants are at least three times more likely than others to suffer a stroke after heart surgery, Duke University researchers reported Thursday.
Their findings also strongly support earlier research that showed inflammation plays a critical role in post-operative stroke, the researchers said.
The two implicated genes are involved in the body's immune response to injury. Either genetic variant by itself appeared to have no association with an increased risk of stroke, the researchers said, unlike the combination of the two.
The pair of genetic variants -- known as polymorphisms -- appears to be present in more than one-third of the population that has heart surgery, the researchers said, making the need for further study essential.
The research was published on-line in the journal Stroke.
Journal Editor Attacked for Fetal Pain Article
The editor of the medical journal that published research this week claiming that early term fetuses don't feel pain says she has received dozens of angry emails from abortion opponents.
Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, told the Associated Press that she's gotten dozens of "horrible, vindictive" messages since the article was published Wednesday.
DeAngelis defended the article from University of California, San Francisco researchers, who studied other research and concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely until the third trimester, at 29 to 30 weeks.
"There's nothing wrong with this article," she told the wire service, adding that JAMA will publish critics' comments in an upcoming edition and will give the authors a chance to respond.
Since the article was published, various news organiztions have reported that one of the five authors works at an abortion clinic and another has former ties to a pro-choice advocacy group.
Abortion opponents have called the article a politically motivated attack on proposed federal legislation that would require doctors to offer fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when their fetuses are 20 weeks or older.
DeAngelis strongly denied such suggestions, the wire service said, noting that she's a staunch Roman Catholic who personally opposes abortion but supports a woman's right to choose.
WHO Worried About Bird Flu
The World Health Organization says the possibility of a bird flu pandemic that could kill millions of people is very real, and urged the world's nations to make immediate preparations to combat a widespread outbreak.
WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said the longer the virulent HN51 strain of avian flu circulates among bird flocks in Asia and elsewhere, the greater the possibility that it will mutate into a lethal virus that's easily spread among people, according to a report by the Voice of America.
The Asian outbreaks that began two years ago have led to 57 humans deaths in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Indonesia along with the deaths of millions of birds. Recent outbreaks among birds have been reported in China and the Russian Federation.
Lee said WHO is creating a stockpile of antiviral drugs and is urging the global community to do the same. On Wednesday, the Swiss drugmaker Roche announced it was donating 30 million capsules of the antiviral medicine Oseltamivir, which is 3 million treatment courses, to the WHO's reserve.
FDA Investigating Producer of Recalled Pacemakers
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it's planning to conduct a thorough inspection of the manufacturing plants of Indianapolis-based Guidant Corp., a maker of implantable pacemakers and defibrillators that have been the subject of several recent recalls, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The agency began a review of Guidant in May after the newspaper reported that the company hadn't alerted doctors for three years about an electrical problem in one of its defibrillators -- devices designed to shock an irregularly beating heart back into a normal rhythm.
Since that disclosure, the Times said, Guidant has recalled tens of thousands more defibrillators and pacemakers, both of which are surgically implanted under the skin of the chest.
In a statement, the FDA said it would conduct a "comprehensive, on-site inspection of the firm's manufacturing facilities." An agency spokeswoman declined to elaborate, the Times reported.
The newspaper said the inspection was partially expected to focus on whether data gathered about the problems with the heart devices were accurately and properly reported to the FDA. Depending on what the agency finds, its responses could range from a confirmation that the company acted properly, to civil proceedings and a criminal investigation, the Times said.
Guidant officials declined to comment on the FDA inquiry, the paper said.
Feds Closing Walter Reed Medical Center
A federal commission reviewing a sweeping restructuring of U.S. military bases has voted to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a century-old landmark in Washington, D.C., that has served dignitaries including American presidents and foreign leaders, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Most of the hospital's work will be relocated to the bigger, more modern National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Md., that will be renamed for the closed facility, the wire service said.
"Kids coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, all of them in harm's way, deserve to come back to 21st-century medical care," Anthony Principi, chairman of the nine-member panel that decided to close the original Walter Reed, said in a statement.
The current hospital has about 185 beds, while the expanded Maryland facility would have 340, the AP reported. Construction and renovations will cost about $989 million, the wire service said.
U.S. Debates How to Regulate Leeches and Maggots
Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are beginning a two-day meeting Thursday to decide how to regulate the use of age-old medical remedies including leeches and maggots, The New York Times reported.
Once considered tools of bygone medicine, blood-sucking leeches and flesh-eating maggots have undergone a "quiet renaissance," the newspaper said. Leeches are particularly adept at draining excess blood from reattached or transplanted limbs, while maggots are able to clean festering wounds that fail to heal.
Up to now, neither remedy has been subject to thorough investigation by the FDA, the Times said. While American squeamishness has limited their modern use in the United States, the agency has decided that enough doctors use them that they should be treated as medical devices subject to the agency's oversight, the newspaper said.
The FDA advisers are being asked to create general guidelines about how the living medical tools are to be safely grown, transported, and sold, the Times said.
Food Fact:
Chew on this.
If you visit the candy machine, sticking with gum may help you control calories. At 5 - 10 calories a sugar-free stick, it's a good alternative to hard candy, which is loaded with sugar and can contain up to 50 calories per little piece. And how many of us ever stop at one? One more bonus: Getting your jaw moving to chew burns about 12 extra calories per hour!
Fitness Tip of the day:
Exercise? It's in the bag.
Road trips won't stop you from exercising -- if you know what to pack. Find a little room in your suitcase for exercise tubes, a great compact tool for weight training and resistance exercises when away from home or your gym. If you travel a lot, ask a fitness pro to design an on-the-go exercise program.
FAQ of the day:
Does garlic lower blood cholesterol?
Studies differ over garlic's effect on blood cholesterol. While earlier studies were optimistic, more recent ones have not shown that garlic powder supplements effectively lower blood cholesterol. Few studies have looked at fresh garlic, either raw or cooked. Whether or not garlic lowers cholesterol, it has other benefits, such as inhibition of blood clots, that earn it a place in a heart-friendly diet.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Health Headlines - August 26
Researcher Stands by Fetal Pain Findings
A controversial new research article questioning whether early-term fetuses feel pain has triggered a heated debate on how the research might influence the flash-point realm of abortion politics.
But a neuroscientist who helped write the paper, published Wednesday, said there's no doubt about the conclusion: Humans only feel pain if they have a properly functioning brain, and fetuses in the early stages of development don't.
"The circuitry is not there," at least in the first 20 weeks, said Dr. Henry Ralston, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. "Without the connections, the sensation can't take place."
The report, a review of known research by four doctors and a researcher at UCSF, goes even further: In examining the effectiveness of giving anesthesia to a fetus for therapuetic procedures or abortion, the researchers concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester, at 29 to 30 weeks.
Other doctors disagree, however, as do anti-abortion activists who criticized the findings, which appear in the Aug. 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. K. S. Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, told The New York Times, "There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that pain occurs in the fetus."
Anand said premature babies only 23 or 24 weeks old cry when their heels are pricked for blood tests and become conditioned to cry when someone nears their feet.
"In the first trimester, there is very likely no pain perception," Anand said. "By the second trimester, all bets are off, and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians."
The study is also raising eyebrows, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report, because one of its authors is the head of an abortion clinic. Her affiliation was not disclosed in the study, nor was that of the lead author, a medical student who once worked for an abortion-rights organization, the newspaper said.
The researcher, UCSF obstetrician-gynecologist Eleanor A. Drey, is medical director of the abortion clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. She told the Inquirer: "We thought it was critical to include an expert in abortion among the authors. I think my presence ... should not serve to politicize a scholarly report."
JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine D. DeAngelis told the newspaper she had been unaware of that.
"This is the first I've heard about it," she said. "We ask them to reveal any conflict of interest. I would have published" the disclosure if it had been made.
The issue of fetal pain, once fairly obscure, has taken an increasingly prominent position in the public consciousness in recent months. More than a dozen state legislatures -- including those in New York and California -- have debated whether to require doctors to tell women getting abortions about the potential pain felt by fetuses during the procedures. The proposed laws would require doctors to offer anesthesia for the fetus.
Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota have already passed such laws.
And Congress is considering whether to require doctors to provide anesthesia to fetuses in all cases of abortion after 22 weeks of gestational age. (The new study noted that only 1.2 percent of abortions in the United States are performed at or after 21 weeks.)
Ralston said he and his colleagues launched their study, an analysis of previous research, to provide some perspective on the debate.
The researchers examined studies that looked at feelings of fetal pain before the age of 30 weeks. They found that while there hasn't been much research, the evidence suggests that fetuses aren't able to sense pain before the third trimester. They also report that "little or no" research provides guidance about the use of anesthesia on fetuses.
Advocates of anesthesia legislation have pointed to medical reports that fetuses shy away from painful stimuli, like the stick of a needle, in operations during pregnancy. Some doctors argue that infants between 20 and 30 weeks actually suffer pain more intensely than older fetuses and babies because their neural systems aren't set up to adequately process the sensations.
But Ralston said early fetal reactions are simply reflexes stemming from the spinal cord, not a matter of brain response to pain. The spinal cord develops earlier than the brain, as early as eight weeks, he said.
So when do fetuses actually start feeling pain? Ralston said it's not clear, but the lack of feeling before 20 to 22 weeks is "open and shut."
However, Dr. David A. Grimes, a former head of abortion surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now delivers babies and also performs abortions in Chapel Hill, N.C., told the Times, "This is an unknowable question."
"All we can do in medicine is to infer," he added.
Still, he said, the new research makes a compelling case that fetuses younger than 29 weeks have no perception of pain.
Health Tip: Making Your Bathroom Fall-Proof
Slippery tubs and water-splashed bathroom floors are common reasons for senior spills.
The Canadian city of Ottawa suggests you take these steps to skid-proof your bathroom:
Make sure the bathtub plug is easy to reach and to use.
Use a rubber mat every time you take a bath or shower.
Make sure anti-slip decals on the bottom of the bathtub are no more than two inches apart.
Install at least two grab bars in the tub area.
Check that portable grab bars don't move when used for climbing out of the tub.
Use a rug with a rubber backing outside the tub.
Health Tip: Building Strong Bones
It's widely known that calcium helps build strong bones. But according to Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, iron is another important nutrient associated with bone health because it helps produce an integral component of bone called collagen.
However, iron is only effective in bone building when the recommended 800-1200 milligrams of calcium are consumed as well.
A recent study of menopausal women found that those who consumed about 18 milligrams of iron a day, along with adequate calcium, had the greatest bone mineral density.
Doubts over "metabolic syndrome" weigh on Sanofi
The world's top two diabetes organizations have questioned the existence of a medical condition widely cited by drug firms, in a move that could hamper prospects for Sanofi-Aventis's new drug Acomplia.
The American Diabetes Association and European Association for the Study of Diabetes said in a joint statement on Thursday that "metabolic syndrome" -- which has come to be seen as a predictor of cardiovascular disease -- was poorly defined, inconsistently used and in need of further research.
Doctors should not diagnose people with the "syndrome" or treat it as a separate condition until the science behind it is clear, according to a paper to be published in the September issue of Diabetes Care and Diabetologia.
"There is no combination of risk factors that boosts a person's cardiovascular risk beyond the sum of the parts, or constitutes a separate disease," said Dr Ele Ferrannini, president of the European diabetes association.
Industry analysts said the strongly worded warning was a setback for Sanofi, which is keen to position its anti-obesity drug Acomplia as a medicine to treat "metabolic syndrome," because it also helps with risk factors such as lipid levels.
Shares in Sanofi were 1.2 percent lower at 69.45 euros by 1100 GMT, underperforming the European drug sector, which was off 0.5 percent.
Acomplia, which Sanofi hopes to launch next year once it has received regulatory approval, is viewed as a potential multibillion-dollar-a-year seller for the French company.
Sanofi had no immediate comment on the statement by the two groups.
"Metabolic syndrome" is often defined as applying to anyone with three or more of the following conditions -- a large waist circumference, high triglyceride levels, high blood pressure, low levels of HDL "good" cholesterol and high blood glucose.
A large and growing section of the population in North America and Europe are covered by such a definition, reflecting the increasing problem of obesity in developed countries.
Taken individually, all of the above conditions can be considered a risk factor for heart disease, the two associations said. But they should each be treated separately, and doctors should not try to prescribe treatments for the "syndrome" until new, solid evidence is obtained.
Their experts' concerns over "metabolic syndrome" follow similar controversies surrounding other new disorders that the pharmaceutical industry stands accused of inventing.
Conditions such as "generalized anxiety disorder" and "female sexual dysfunction" have been cited in the past as examples of so-called disease-mongering by drug companies eager to carve out new markets for their products.
The drug makers say they are addressing serious, chronic medical conditions.
Acupuncture Effective for Fibromyalgia
A brief regimen of acupuncture appears to offer more than a month of relief from some of the most debilitating symptoms of moderate-to-severe fibromyalgia, a new study suggests.
The findings are to be presented Thursday by Mayo Clinic researchers at the 11th World Congress on Pain, the meeting of the International Association for the Study of Pain, in Sydney, Australia.
The scientists cautioned that while acupuncture seems to alleviate some of the pain, chronic fatigue and anxiety that many fibromyalgia patients experience, the treatment should not be viewed as a cure.
They further stressed that even with improved energy levels and reduced stress, patients did not demonstrate improvements in either short-term or long-term physical functions after treatment.
Nonetheless, the Mayo team expressed hope that further studies will demonstrate that a sustained regimen of acupuncture treatments may offer fibromyalgia patients a shot at significant quality-of-life benefits over the long-term.
"We found that acupuncture helps with the symptoms, and might be particularly attractive to patients that might not be able to take a range of medications because of side effects," said study lead author Dr. David P. Martin, of the department of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic's division of pain medicine.
Fibromyalgia, which has no known cause, can provoke pain, fatigue, stiffness, headaches, numbness, tingling, sleep disturbances, sensitivity to heat and cold, and cognitive and memory problems, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH estimates that between 3 percent and 6 percent of Americans suffer from the often-disabling disorder. While 80 percent to 90 percent of all victims are women, fibromyalgia can strike men, women and children of any age or race.
Doctors typically treat the condition with a combination of symptom-based approaches that offer piecemeal pain management, such as stress and sleep counseling, aerobic exercise, and the tricyclic family of antidepressants.
But, antidepressants are only partially effective and can sometimes provoke side effects, such as excessive sleepiness, dry mouth, constipation and weight gain, Martin said.
Seeking to expand treatment options, the Mayo team tested the benefit of acupuncture on 50 fibromyalgia patients who were described as "moderately debilitated."
The patients -- all of whom had failed to achieve symptom relief with traditional treatments -- were divided into two groups. The first group received six sessions of acupuncture over a two- to three-week period. The second group received six sessions of simulated acupuncture in the same time frame.
Both before and immediately after the acupuncture and simulated sessions, all the patients completed questionnaires regarding their specific symptoms, their level of related pain, and the impact of fibromyalgia on their daily routines. The surveys were also offered one and seven months after treatment.
Martin and his team found that symptoms -- particularly in terms of pain, fatigue and anxiety -- improved significantly and in larger measure among real acupuncture patients compared with the simulated acupuncture patients. The most dramatic symptom improvements were noted at one month after acupuncture.
Yet physical function did not improve. And seven months after acupuncture, pain, fatigue and anxiety symptoms had all returned to pretreatment levels.
Martin suggested that offering acupuncture to patients on an ongoing basis may provide more sustained benefit. And, he added, he would recommend acupuncture to fibromyalgia patients who are open to the notion.
"We need further studies with a larger population," he said. "But the kind of acupuncture we offered was not incredibly unique. You could probably get it at many locations across the country. So I'd recommend patients discuss it with their family physician, and get a referral because people come to acupuncture through all different courses of training."
Dr. Stuart L. Silverman, a professor of medicine and rheumatology, and the medical director of the Fibromyalgia Rehabilitation Program at Cedars-Sinai/University of California, Los Angeles, cautioned that the jury is still out on the potential benefit of acupuncture for fibromyalgia.
"While it's certainly possible and encouraging that in some hands acupuncture works, we have to wait for further study," Silverman said. "Fibromyalgia is a question of central pain -- not peripheral pain. It's as if a person's pain fuse in the brain is broken. They have a problem with the processing of sensory information. They perceive almost any sensation as being painful.
"So while we do know that acupuncture is helpful for peripheral pain, for tennis elbow, for example, it's much harder when we ask acupuncture to treat a pain in the brain -- to treat brain modulation of pain. I think it might be able to do it. But we don't yet know," he added.
Understanding, identifying and treating fibromyalgia can be challenging and confusing for both patients and physicians. NIH researchers point out, for example, that although fibromyalgia is a rheumatic condition -- causing the onset of chronic pain due to joint and soft tissue impairment -- it is not actually a disease of the joints, and is therefore not officially considered a form of arthritis.
An official fibromyalgia diagnosis is typically based solely on reported symptoms, medical exams and the patient's history, since no current lab test or X-ray can effectively screen for the disorder.
"These patients often have to leave their social obligations early and are not able to meet all the expectations of friends and family or be able to do their fair share of the housework," said Martin. "Yet when they go to the doctor, the doctor says that everything's normal -- and it's very frustrating for the patient. These people get pretty desperate."
Health Tip: Get Less Salt
If you've been advised to reduce the amount of salt in your diet, Harvard Medical School offers these tips:
Buy fresh, frozen or canned "no salt added" vegetables.
Use fresh poultry, fish, and lean meat, rather than canned or processed.
Use herbs, spices and salt-free seasoning blends in cooking, and at the table.
Rinse canned foods, such as tuna, to remove some sodium.
Cut back on frozen dinners, packaged mixes, canned soups, and salad dressings.
Cook rice, pasta, and hot cereals without salt.
Health Tip: The Impact of Divorce on Your Children
Divorce can wreak havoc in children's lives, and while there is no step-by-step manual for steering your kids through this traumatic time, there are some common sense guidelines that may make adjustments easier.
If you're going through a divorce, The Nemours Foundation suggests you:
Encourage your kids to talk as openly as they can about their feelings, positive or negative.
Don't bad mouth your estranged spouse in front of your children, no matter how angry you are.
Avoid using your kids as messengers or go-betweens.
If there's someone new in your life, expect resistance from your children.
Seek out support groups, counseling, and friends in similar situations.
Food Fact:
Miso hungry!
This fermented soybean paste packs a lot of flavor in a very small quantity. The Japanese staple is usually made from a combination of soybeans and rice, although additional soybeans or barley may be used in place of the rice. Miso is usually sold in pint-sized recloseable plastic tubs at large supermarkets, whole foods stores and Asian markets. Refrigerated miso will keep for several months. Miso is very high in sodium, so use it sparingly in soups, marinades and salad dressings.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Mirror, mirror...
Ever wonder why health clubs have all those mirrors? No, it's not for vanity's sake! The mirrors are there to assure you're maintaining proper form when exercising. You're not being a narcissist when you position yourself in front of the mirror; pay careful attention to see you're doing the exercise right. If you are uncertain as to how to perform an exercise, don't hesitate to ask for help.
FAQ of the day:
Do I really need a "cooldown" after a workout?
Cooling down after a workout is even more important than the preworkout warm-up. During a cooldown, blood slowly returns from the extremities to the heart, capillaries return to normal dilation, and your respiration and heart rate slow down. If you skip your cooldown, you risk light-headedness and muscle spasms. It's also harder on your heart to go suddenly from 60 to zero. Walk slowly at the end of a run, do a few slower minutes on the stair climber or bike, and remember to stretch.
A controversial new research article questioning whether early-term fetuses feel pain has triggered a heated debate on how the research might influence the flash-point realm of abortion politics.
But a neuroscientist who helped write the paper, published Wednesday, said there's no doubt about the conclusion: Humans only feel pain if they have a properly functioning brain, and fetuses in the early stages of development don't.
"The circuitry is not there," at least in the first 20 weeks, said Dr. Henry Ralston, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. "Without the connections, the sensation can't take place."
The report, a review of known research by four doctors and a researcher at UCSF, goes even further: In examining the effectiveness of giving anesthesia to a fetus for therapuetic procedures or abortion, the researchers concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester, at 29 to 30 weeks.
Other doctors disagree, however, as do anti-abortion activists who criticized the findings, which appear in the Aug. 24/31 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. K. S. Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, told The New York Times, "There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that pain occurs in the fetus."
Anand said premature babies only 23 or 24 weeks old cry when their heels are pricked for blood tests and become conditioned to cry when someone nears their feet.
"In the first trimester, there is very likely no pain perception," Anand said. "By the second trimester, all bets are off, and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians."
The study is also raising eyebrows, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report, because one of its authors is the head of an abortion clinic. Her affiliation was not disclosed in the study, nor was that of the lead author, a medical student who once worked for an abortion-rights organization, the newspaper said.
The researcher, UCSF obstetrician-gynecologist Eleanor A. Drey, is medical director of the abortion clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. She told the Inquirer: "We thought it was critical to include an expert in abortion among the authors. I think my presence ... should not serve to politicize a scholarly report."
JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine D. DeAngelis told the newspaper she had been unaware of that.
"This is the first I've heard about it," she said. "We ask them to reveal any conflict of interest. I would have published" the disclosure if it had been made.
The issue of fetal pain, once fairly obscure, has taken an increasingly prominent position in the public consciousness in recent months. More than a dozen state legislatures -- including those in New York and California -- have debated whether to require doctors to tell women getting abortions about the potential pain felt by fetuses during the procedures. The proposed laws would require doctors to offer anesthesia for the fetus.
Arkansas, Georgia and Minnesota have already passed such laws.
And Congress is considering whether to require doctors to provide anesthesia to fetuses in all cases of abortion after 22 weeks of gestational age. (The new study noted that only 1.2 percent of abortions in the United States are performed at or after 21 weeks.)
Ralston said he and his colleagues launched their study, an analysis of previous research, to provide some perspective on the debate.
The researchers examined studies that looked at feelings of fetal pain before the age of 30 weeks. They found that while there hasn't been much research, the evidence suggests that fetuses aren't able to sense pain before the third trimester. They also report that "little or no" research provides guidance about the use of anesthesia on fetuses.
Advocates of anesthesia legislation have pointed to medical reports that fetuses shy away from painful stimuli, like the stick of a needle, in operations during pregnancy. Some doctors argue that infants between 20 and 30 weeks actually suffer pain more intensely than older fetuses and babies because their neural systems aren't set up to adequately process the sensations.
But Ralston said early fetal reactions are simply reflexes stemming from the spinal cord, not a matter of brain response to pain. The spinal cord develops earlier than the brain, as early as eight weeks, he said.
So when do fetuses actually start feeling pain? Ralston said it's not clear, but the lack of feeling before 20 to 22 weeks is "open and shut."
However, Dr. David A. Grimes, a former head of abortion surveillance at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now delivers babies and also performs abortions in Chapel Hill, N.C., told the Times, "This is an unknowable question."
"All we can do in medicine is to infer," he added.
Still, he said, the new research makes a compelling case that fetuses younger than 29 weeks have no perception of pain.
Health Tip: Making Your Bathroom Fall-Proof
Slippery tubs and water-splashed bathroom floors are common reasons for senior spills.
The Canadian city of Ottawa suggests you take these steps to skid-proof your bathroom:
Make sure the bathtub plug is easy to reach and to use.
Use a rubber mat every time you take a bath or shower.
Make sure anti-slip decals on the bottom of the bathtub are no more than two inches apart.
Install at least two grab bars in the tub area.
Check that portable grab bars don't move when used for climbing out of the tub.
Use a rug with a rubber backing outside the tub.
Health Tip: Building Strong Bones
It's widely known that calcium helps build strong bones. But according to Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter, iron is another important nutrient associated with bone health because it helps produce an integral component of bone called collagen.
However, iron is only effective in bone building when the recommended 800-1200 milligrams of calcium are consumed as well.
A recent study of menopausal women found that those who consumed about 18 milligrams of iron a day, along with adequate calcium, had the greatest bone mineral density.
Doubts over "metabolic syndrome" weigh on Sanofi
The world's top two diabetes organizations have questioned the existence of a medical condition widely cited by drug firms, in a move that could hamper prospects for Sanofi-Aventis's new drug Acomplia.
The American Diabetes Association and European Association for the Study of Diabetes said in a joint statement on Thursday that "metabolic syndrome" -- which has come to be seen as a predictor of cardiovascular disease -- was poorly defined, inconsistently used and in need of further research.
Doctors should not diagnose people with the "syndrome" or treat it as a separate condition until the science behind it is clear, according to a paper to be published in the September issue of Diabetes Care and Diabetologia.
"There is no combination of risk factors that boosts a person's cardiovascular risk beyond the sum of the parts, or constitutes a separate disease," said Dr Ele Ferrannini, president of the European diabetes association.
Industry analysts said the strongly worded warning was a setback for Sanofi, which is keen to position its anti-obesity drug Acomplia as a medicine to treat "metabolic syndrome," because it also helps with risk factors such as lipid levels.
Shares in Sanofi were 1.2 percent lower at 69.45 euros by 1100 GMT, underperforming the European drug sector, which was off 0.5 percent.
Acomplia, which Sanofi hopes to launch next year once it has received regulatory approval, is viewed as a potential multibillion-dollar-a-year seller for the French company.
Sanofi had no immediate comment on the statement by the two groups.
"Metabolic syndrome" is often defined as applying to anyone with three or more of the following conditions -- a large waist circumference, high triglyceride levels, high blood pressure, low levels of HDL "good" cholesterol and high blood glucose.
A large and growing section of the population in North America and Europe are covered by such a definition, reflecting the increasing problem of obesity in developed countries.
Taken individually, all of the above conditions can be considered a risk factor for heart disease, the two associations said. But they should each be treated separately, and doctors should not try to prescribe treatments for the "syndrome" until new, solid evidence is obtained.
Their experts' concerns over "metabolic syndrome" follow similar controversies surrounding other new disorders that the pharmaceutical industry stands accused of inventing.
Conditions such as "generalized anxiety disorder" and "female sexual dysfunction" have been cited in the past as examples of so-called disease-mongering by drug companies eager to carve out new markets for their products.
The drug makers say they are addressing serious, chronic medical conditions.
Acupuncture Effective for Fibromyalgia
A brief regimen of acupuncture appears to offer more than a month of relief from some of the most debilitating symptoms of moderate-to-severe fibromyalgia, a new study suggests.
The findings are to be presented Thursday by Mayo Clinic researchers at the 11th World Congress on Pain, the meeting of the International Association for the Study of Pain, in Sydney, Australia.
The scientists cautioned that while acupuncture seems to alleviate some of the pain, chronic fatigue and anxiety that many fibromyalgia patients experience, the treatment should not be viewed as a cure.
They further stressed that even with improved energy levels and reduced stress, patients did not demonstrate improvements in either short-term or long-term physical functions after treatment.
Nonetheless, the Mayo team expressed hope that further studies will demonstrate that a sustained regimen of acupuncture treatments may offer fibromyalgia patients a shot at significant quality-of-life benefits over the long-term.
"We found that acupuncture helps with the symptoms, and might be particularly attractive to patients that might not be able to take a range of medications because of side effects," said study lead author Dr. David P. Martin, of the department of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic's division of pain medicine.
Fibromyalgia, which has no known cause, can provoke pain, fatigue, stiffness, headaches, numbness, tingling, sleep disturbances, sensitivity to heat and cold, and cognitive and memory problems, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH estimates that between 3 percent and 6 percent of Americans suffer from the often-disabling disorder. While 80 percent to 90 percent of all victims are women, fibromyalgia can strike men, women and children of any age or race.
Doctors typically treat the condition with a combination of symptom-based approaches that offer piecemeal pain management, such as stress and sleep counseling, aerobic exercise, and the tricyclic family of antidepressants.
But, antidepressants are only partially effective and can sometimes provoke side effects, such as excessive sleepiness, dry mouth, constipation and weight gain, Martin said.
Seeking to expand treatment options, the Mayo team tested the benefit of acupuncture on 50 fibromyalgia patients who were described as "moderately debilitated."
The patients -- all of whom had failed to achieve symptom relief with traditional treatments -- were divided into two groups. The first group received six sessions of acupuncture over a two- to three-week period. The second group received six sessions of simulated acupuncture in the same time frame.
Both before and immediately after the acupuncture and simulated sessions, all the patients completed questionnaires regarding their specific symptoms, their level of related pain, and the impact of fibromyalgia on their daily routines. The surveys were also offered one and seven months after treatment.
Martin and his team found that symptoms -- particularly in terms of pain, fatigue and anxiety -- improved significantly and in larger measure among real acupuncture patients compared with the simulated acupuncture patients. The most dramatic symptom improvements were noted at one month after acupuncture.
Yet physical function did not improve. And seven months after acupuncture, pain, fatigue and anxiety symptoms had all returned to pretreatment levels.
Martin suggested that offering acupuncture to patients on an ongoing basis may provide more sustained benefit. And, he added, he would recommend acupuncture to fibromyalgia patients who are open to the notion.
"We need further studies with a larger population," he said. "But the kind of acupuncture we offered was not incredibly unique. You could probably get it at many locations across the country. So I'd recommend patients discuss it with their family physician, and get a referral because people come to acupuncture through all different courses of training."
Dr. Stuart L. Silverman, a professor of medicine and rheumatology, and the medical director of the Fibromyalgia Rehabilitation Program at Cedars-Sinai/University of California, Los Angeles, cautioned that the jury is still out on the potential benefit of acupuncture for fibromyalgia.
"While it's certainly possible and encouraging that in some hands acupuncture works, we have to wait for further study," Silverman said. "Fibromyalgia is a question of central pain -- not peripheral pain. It's as if a person's pain fuse in the brain is broken. They have a problem with the processing of sensory information. They perceive almost any sensation as being painful.
"So while we do know that acupuncture is helpful for peripheral pain, for tennis elbow, for example, it's much harder when we ask acupuncture to treat a pain in the brain -- to treat brain modulation of pain. I think it might be able to do it. But we don't yet know," he added.
Understanding, identifying and treating fibromyalgia can be challenging and confusing for both patients and physicians. NIH researchers point out, for example, that although fibromyalgia is a rheumatic condition -- causing the onset of chronic pain due to joint and soft tissue impairment -- it is not actually a disease of the joints, and is therefore not officially considered a form of arthritis.
An official fibromyalgia diagnosis is typically based solely on reported symptoms, medical exams and the patient's history, since no current lab test or X-ray can effectively screen for the disorder.
"These patients often have to leave their social obligations early and are not able to meet all the expectations of friends and family or be able to do their fair share of the housework," said Martin. "Yet when they go to the doctor, the doctor says that everything's normal -- and it's very frustrating for the patient. These people get pretty desperate."
Health Tip: Get Less Salt
If you've been advised to reduce the amount of salt in your diet, Harvard Medical School offers these tips:
Buy fresh, frozen or canned "no salt added" vegetables.
Use fresh poultry, fish, and lean meat, rather than canned or processed.
Use herbs, spices and salt-free seasoning blends in cooking, and at the table.
Rinse canned foods, such as tuna, to remove some sodium.
Cut back on frozen dinners, packaged mixes, canned soups, and salad dressings.
Cook rice, pasta, and hot cereals without salt.
Health Tip: The Impact of Divorce on Your Children
Divorce can wreak havoc in children's lives, and while there is no step-by-step manual for steering your kids through this traumatic time, there are some common sense guidelines that may make adjustments easier.
If you're going through a divorce, The Nemours Foundation suggests you:
Encourage your kids to talk as openly as they can about their feelings, positive or negative.
Don't bad mouth your estranged spouse in front of your children, no matter how angry you are.
Avoid using your kids as messengers or go-betweens.
If there's someone new in your life, expect resistance from your children.
Seek out support groups, counseling, and friends in similar situations.
Food Fact:
Miso hungry!
This fermented soybean paste packs a lot of flavor in a very small quantity. The Japanese staple is usually made from a combination of soybeans and rice, although additional soybeans or barley may be used in place of the rice. Miso is usually sold in pint-sized recloseable plastic tubs at large supermarkets, whole foods stores and Asian markets. Refrigerated miso will keep for several months. Miso is very high in sodium, so use it sparingly in soups, marinades and salad dressings.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Mirror, mirror...
Ever wonder why health clubs have all those mirrors? No, it's not for vanity's sake! The mirrors are there to assure you're maintaining proper form when exercising. You're not being a narcissist when you position yourself in front of the mirror; pay careful attention to see you're doing the exercise right. If you are uncertain as to how to perform an exercise, don't hesitate to ask for help.
FAQ of the day:
Do I really need a "cooldown" after a workout?
Cooling down after a workout is even more important than the preworkout warm-up. During a cooldown, blood slowly returns from the extremities to the heart, capillaries return to normal dilation, and your respiration and heart rate slow down. If you skip your cooldown, you risk light-headedness and muscle spasms. It's also harder on your heart to go suddenly from 60 to zero. Walk slowly at the end of a run, do a few slower minutes on the stair climber or bike, and remember to stretch.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Health Headlines - August 25
Study: Placebos Make People Feel Better
Patients will feel better if they believe they're taking painkillers -- even if their doses contain no medication, according to a University of Michigan study.
The study, examining the placebo effect, shows that the brain releases chemicals that relieve pain in patients who believe they're being treated.
It is to be published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Researchers say the findings could lead to new ways to treat chronic pain.
"This deals another serious blow to the idea that the placebo effect is a purely psychological, with no physical basis," said Dr. Jon-Kar Zubieta, associate professor of psychiatry and radiology at the Michigan Medical School. "The mind-body connection is quite clear."
While previous studies at Michigan and elsewhere have shown how the brain reacts physically to placebos, researchers said this study is the first to pinpoint a specific brain chemistry mechanism.
The study involved 14 healthy men, ages 20 to 30, who were given a salt water injection that caused pain to their jaw. They were then injected with a placebo and told it was a painkiller.
Researchers asked the men questions and monitored their brain activity during the process.
For each of the men, their brains released more natural painkilling endorphins after the placebos were administered. Nine were classified as high placebo responders, while five were classified as low responders.
The scientists say further research is needed to determine if the results hold up in women and people with various illnesses.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and completed by researchers at Michigan's Molecular and Behavioral Neurosciences Institute.
Health Tip: Test Young Children for Vision Problems
The sooner problems with vision are detected, the quicker a child can get the necessary treatment.
According to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, some children are more at risk for vision problems. Your infant may be more prone if:
She or he was born prematurely.
There is a family history of vision problems.
You had an infection during pregnancy.
Your baby has heart disease or hearing problems.
If you suspect your baby is having difficulty seeing, consult your doctor.
Health Tip: Treating a Deep Cut
While you can treat most cuts at home, deeper ones require emergency medical treatment.
If your child cuts himself severely and you can't get to the hospital right away, The Nemours Foundation suggests you:
Rinse the wound and apply pressure to the cut with sterile gauze, a bandage or a clean cloth.
If blood soaks through, place another bandage over the first, and continue applying pressure.
Raise the inured part to slow bleeding, but don't apply a tourniquet.
Food Fact:
Tempeh -- jewel of the Southwest?
It may sound like a town in Arizona, but it's actually the meatiest of soy foods. Chewy and full-flavored, tempeh is made from whole soybeans, which means it's loaded with beneficial soy isoflavones. Tempeh slices easily, holds its shape during cooking and loves a good marinade.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Home sweat home.
A home gym can remake your body and save money -- if you know how to use it. For home exercise programs to succeed, you need to treat a room in your home like your own private health club. When you enter the room you have entered the gym. Be sure to establish a training time that you will stick to, and keep all other activities OUT of the room.
FAQ of the day:
Why warm up before a workout?
During a warm-up, your body gradually prepares to bring extra blood and oxygen to the muscles during your workout. Your heart and respiration rate slowly increase, capillaries dilate and blood supplies flow to your extremities, which will need extra oxygen to fuel your muscles when you pick up the pace. The added heat and blood flow allow muscles to become more compliant, and thus less prone to injury. Finally, a proper warm-up is likely to improve your performance.
Patients will feel better if they believe they're taking painkillers -- even if their doses contain no medication, according to a University of Michigan study.
The study, examining the placebo effect, shows that the brain releases chemicals that relieve pain in patients who believe they're being treated.
It is to be published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Researchers say the findings could lead to new ways to treat chronic pain.
"This deals another serious blow to the idea that the placebo effect is a purely psychological, with no physical basis," said Dr. Jon-Kar Zubieta, associate professor of psychiatry and radiology at the Michigan Medical School. "The mind-body connection is quite clear."
While previous studies at Michigan and elsewhere have shown how the brain reacts physically to placebos, researchers said this study is the first to pinpoint a specific brain chemistry mechanism.
The study involved 14 healthy men, ages 20 to 30, who were given a salt water injection that caused pain to their jaw. They were then injected with a placebo and told it was a painkiller.
Researchers asked the men questions and monitored their brain activity during the process.
For each of the men, their brains released more natural painkilling endorphins after the placebos were administered. Nine were classified as high placebo responders, while five were classified as low responders.
The scientists say further research is needed to determine if the results hold up in women and people with various illnesses.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and completed by researchers at Michigan's Molecular and Behavioral Neurosciences Institute.
Health Tip: Test Young Children for Vision Problems
The sooner problems with vision are detected, the quicker a child can get the necessary treatment.
According to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, some children are more at risk for vision problems. Your infant may be more prone if:
She or he was born prematurely.
There is a family history of vision problems.
You had an infection during pregnancy.
Your baby has heart disease or hearing problems.
If you suspect your baby is having difficulty seeing, consult your doctor.
Health Tip: Treating a Deep Cut
While you can treat most cuts at home, deeper ones require emergency medical treatment.
If your child cuts himself severely and you can't get to the hospital right away, The Nemours Foundation suggests you:
Rinse the wound and apply pressure to the cut with sterile gauze, a bandage or a clean cloth.
If blood soaks through, place another bandage over the first, and continue applying pressure.
Raise the inured part to slow bleeding, but don't apply a tourniquet.
Food Fact:
Tempeh -- jewel of the Southwest?
It may sound like a town in Arizona, but it's actually the meatiest of soy foods. Chewy and full-flavored, tempeh is made from whole soybeans, which means it's loaded with beneficial soy isoflavones. Tempeh slices easily, holds its shape during cooking and loves a good marinade.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Home sweat home.
A home gym can remake your body and save money -- if you know how to use it. For home exercise programs to succeed, you need to treat a room in your home like your own private health club. When you enter the room you have entered the gym. Be sure to establish a training time that you will stick to, and keep all other activities OUT of the room.
FAQ of the day:
Why warm up before a workout?
During a warm-up, your body gradually prepares to bring extra blood and oxygen to the muscles during your workout. Your heart and respiration rate slowly increase, capillaries dilate and blood supplies flow to your extremities, which will need extra oxygen to fuel your muscles when you pick up the pace. The added heat and blood flow allow muscles to become more compliant, and thus less prone to injury. Finally, a proper warm-up is likely to improve your performance.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Health Headlines - August 24
New Efforts Begin to Improve CPR
WASHINGTON - Old-fashioned CPR is getting a makeover. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is crucial when people collapse with cardiac arrest, but it's hard to perform correctly.
Now major efforts are under way to improve how doctors, paramedics and average bystanders do the job: New CPR guidelines are due this fall, and high-tech machines that promise to help are already showing up in ambulances and offices.
Not yet proven is whether using technology -- like a chest-squeezing gadget or sensors that coax rescuers to pound harder -- to spice up the 40-year-old resuscitation technique really will save lives.
Emergency-care specialists agree that CPR today doesn't save as many lives as it could.
"We've got our work cut out for us to make sure CPR is done better," says Mary Fran Hazinski of the
American Heart Association, which is finalizing new recommendations designed to do just that.
More than 300,000 Americans each year die of cardiac arrest, where the heart's electrical system goes haywire and the heart abruptly stops beating.
Portable defibrillators can increase survival, delivering a jolt of electricity that stuns the heart, ending the abnormal rhythm and giving it a chance to resume a normal beat.
But the heart-zappers alone aren't enough. Virtually all cardiac-arrest victims need CPR, too. It buys time until a defibrillator arrives. Often, it's needed immediately after zapping, as the heart struggles to resume circulation.
Also, studies show that doing CPR first makes defibrillation more likely to work if cardiac arrest has lasted longer than three minutes. The longer someone goes without oxygen, the more their abnormal heart rhythm degrades until it's unshockable.
But "it has to be good CPR. We don't want to delay defibrillation for crummy CPR," warns Dr. Lance Becker of the University of Chicago, co-author of one of a pair of surprising studies earlier this year that found even the best-trained rescuers -- doctors, nurses and paramedics -- too frequently give inadequate CPR.
The studies found long pauses in CPR; that rescuers often didn't pound hard or fast enough on victims' chests; and that they pumped too much air into the lungs (a mistake more prone to professionals using hand-held air bags instead of mouth-to-mouth breathing.)
Why? Good CPR is tough -- you must compress the chest 1 1/2 to 2 inches deep -- and rescuers tire or may pause to prepare the defibrillator or perform other tasks.
Enter the high-tech machines:
Philips Medical Systems is seeking Food and Drug Administration clearance of a CPR-aiding defibrillator with sensor pads that measure chest compressions. The Q-CPR system's recorded voice says "compress deeper," or faster, or slower, or not so deep. Additional sensors also measure whether lungs are being filled too fast or slow. Initially aimed at paramedics, Philips plans to put the system on at-home defibrillators soon, too.
Zoll Medical Corp. already sells the AED-Plus defibrillator with a chest-measuring sensor that beeps to let rescuers pace compressions.
And more than 100 fire departments and other first responders have bought Zoll's AutoPulse, a battery-powered band that squeezes the chest to replace manual compressions.
It's getting some rave reviews.
"CPR is exhausting," explains Glenn Ortiz-Schuldt, the San Francisco Fire Department's chief of emergency medical services. "The machine doesn't tire."
A recent study of his fire department found more AutoPulse recipients made it to the hospital alive than those getting manual CPR -- 39 percent compared with 29 percent.
The key question is whether those people also were more likely to recover without brain damage and leave the hospital. The University of Washington has begun the first study, called ASPIRE, to find out.
But researchers recently suspended work because manual CPR seemed to work better at one of the five study sites. Another snag: Officials in Riverside, Calif., suspended AutoPulse use because the coroner was suspicious of injuries sustained by a 77-year-old man who died despite its use; Zoll says the machine isn't to blame.
The technology's intriguing, says the heart association's Hazinski, but no machine yet -- and there have been previous attempts -- has proven better than manual CPR. New international guidelines due in November aim to teach rescuers to do CPR better.
But the average person doesn't have to wait. Take a course, says Hazinski -- and take another one if you learned years ago.
"You have to learn it and practice it, and not be afraid to push hard."
Computers Help Seniors Beat the Blues
For many seniors, staying mentally healthy may involve booting up: A new study finds that older adults who use computers have fewer depressive symptoms than those who don't.
Stomach Pain, Swelling Could Signal Ovarian Cancer
Abdominal pain and swelling can be early symptoms of ovarian cancer. But they are often attributed to other causes, potentially delaying an earlier diagnosis of the disease when it could be treated more effectively, a new study finds.
Health Tip: When to Skip Your Workouts
Do you believe that a cold or the flu needs to be sweated out in the gym?
If so, you're mistaken. Your body doesn't sweat out toxins during exercise, according to the War Memorial Hospital in West Virginia. Rather, your immune system fights the better fight when it's not stressed.
Moderate exercise can help boost your immune system, thereby decreasing the chances that you will catch a cold or the flu. But a hard workout when you are sick can impair your immune system for several hours, making your illness worse.
Once you're feeling better, give your body an extra few days to recover before you resume working out. Allow three to four days of rest after a bad cold, and at least a week after the flu.
When you return to your routine, practice the 50 percent rule. Decrease your usual exercise time by half and go half-speed on the treadmill or exercise bike until you regain your strength and endurance.
Health Tip: Recognizing Premature Labor
Many pregnant women fear going into labor prematurely, which is three or more weeks before the due date.
The Community Hospital in Nebraska mentions these warning signs:
Contractions every 10 minutes or less.
Clear, pink, or brownish fluid leaking from the vagina.
The feeling that the fetus is pushing down.
Low, dull backache.
Cramps that feel like your period, with or without diarrhea.
If you think you may be experiencing preterm labor, even if you have only one sign, call your doctor immediately.
Food Fact:
Thrilla in vanilla
In low-fat desserts, high-quality vanilla can make you a champ. Vanilla imparts a warm, rounded flavor of its own and serves as a backdrop for other spices. Its quality is crucial in low-fat desserts, because without a lot of fat the other flavors stand out more. Avoid imitation extracts; they simply taste bad. Buy vanilla extract that is labeled "pure." Or better yet, make your own: Slit 4 whole vanilla beans lengthwise, place in a jar, cover with vodka or brandy, and let steep for at least 2 weeks.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Uncover hidden muscles.
The key to six-pack abs is not 500 sit-ups a day; it's skipping the excess calories. Improved muscle definition comes from losing body fat, not from increasing muscle size. For a healthy lean body, you need to find a balance between exercise and diet. Weight training will condition the muscle, but unless you address your total calorie intake, all that hard work will be hiding under a layer of fat.
FAQ of the day:
Are walking shoes a waste of money?
To find the right shoe, start with knowledgeable salespeople. If someone suggests a shoe designed for another sport as a walking shoe, move on. Ask a salesperson to measure your feet every time you buy new walking shoes -- foot size and width can change over time. Try on shoes after you've exercised and your feet are at their largest. Put on the socks you normally wear when you're walking. Make sure the shoe fits in the heel -- many women mistakenly choose shoes that are too small just because they feel secure in the heel as they walk. Replace walking shoes every 500 miles, or about twice a year.
WASHINGTON - Old-fashioned CPR is getting a makeover. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is crucial when people collapse with cardiac arrest, but it's hard to perform correctly.
Now major efforts are under way to improve how doctors, paramedics and average bystanders do the job: New CPR guidelines are due this fall, and high-tech machines that promise to help are already showing up in ambulances and offices.
Not yet proven is whether using technology -- like a chest-squeezing gadget or sensors that coax rescuers to pound harder -- to spice up the 40-year-old resuscitation technique really will save lives.
Emergency-care specialists agree that CPR today doesn't save as many lives as it could.
"We've got our work cut out for us to make sure CPR is done better," says Mary Fran Hazinski of the
American Heart Association, which is finalizing new recommendations designed to do just that.
More than 300,000 Americans each year die of cardiac arrest, where the heart's electrical system goes haywire and the heart abruptly stops beating.
Portable defibrillators can increase survival, delivering a jolt of electricity that stuns the heart, ending the abnormal rhythm and giving it a chance to resume a normal beat.
But the heart-zappers alone aren't enough. Virtually all cardiac-arrest victims need CPR, too. It buys time until a defibrillator arrives. Often, it's needed immediately after zapping, as the heart struggles to resume circulation.
Also, studies show that doing CPR first makes defibrillation more likely to work if cardiac arrest has lasted longer than three minutes. The longer someone goes without oxygen, the more their abnormal heart rhythm degrades until it's unshockable.
But "it has to be good CPR. We don't want to delay defibrillation for crummy CPR," warns Dr. Lance Becker of the University of Chicago, co-author of one of a pair of surprising studies earlier this year that found even the best-trained rescuers -- doctors, nurses and paramedics -- too frequently give inadequate CPR.
The studies found long pauses in CPR; that rescuers often didn't pound hard or fast enough on victims' chests; and that they pumped too much air into the lungs (a mistake more prone to professionals using hand-held air bags instead of mouth-to-mouth breathing.)
Why? Good CPR is tough -- you must compress the chest 1 1/2 to 2 inches deep -- and rescuers tire or may pause to prepare the defibrillator or perform other tasks.
Enter the high-tech machines:
Philips Medical Systems is seeking Food and Drug Administration clearance of a CPR-aiding defibrillator with sensor pads that measure chest compressions. The Q-CPR system's recorded voice says "compress deeper," or faster, or slower, or not so deep. Additional sensors also measure whether lungs are being filled too fast or slow. Initially aimed at paramedics, Philips plans to put the system on at-home defibrillators soon, too.
Zoll Medical Corp. already sells the AED-Plus defibrillator with a chest-measuring sensor that beeps to let rescuers pace compressions.
And more than 100 fire departments and other first responders have bought Zoll's AutoPulse, a battery-powered band that squeezes the chest to replace manual compressions.
It's getting some rave reviews.
"CPR is exhausting," explains Glenn Ortiz-Schuldt, the San Francisco Fire Department's chief of emergency medical services. "The machine doesn't tire."
A recent study of his fire department found more AutoPulse recipients made it to the hospital alive than those getting manual CPR -- 39 percent compared with 29 percent.
The key question is whether those people also were more likely to recover without brain damage and leave the hospital. The University of Washington has begun the first study, called ASPIRE, to find out.
But researchers recently suspended work because manual CPR seemed to work better at one of the five study sites. Another snag: Officials in Riverside, Calif., suspended AutoPulse use because the coroner was suspicious of injuries sustained by a 77-year-old man who died despite its use; Zoll says the machine isn't to blame.
The technology's intriguing, says the heart association's Hazinski, but no machine yet -- and there have been previous attempts -- has proven better than manual CPR. New international guidelines due in November aim to teach rescuers to do CPR better.
But the average person doesn't have to wait. Take a course, says Hazinski -- and take another one if you learned years ago.
"You have to learn it and practice it, and not be afraid to push hard."
Computers Help Seniors Beat the Blues
For many seniors, staying mentally healthy may involve booting up: A new study finds that older adults who use computers have fewer depressive symptoms than those who don't.
Stomach Pain, Swelling Could Signal Ovarian Cancer
Abdominal pain and swelling can be early symptoms of ovarian cancer. But they are often attributed to other causes, potentially delaying an earlier diagnosis of the disease when it could be treated more effectively, a new study finds.
Health Tip: When to Skip Your Workouts
Do you believe that a cold or the flu needs to be sweated out in the gym?
If so, you're mistaken. Your body doesn't sweat out toxins during exercise, according to the War Memorial Hospital in West Virginia. Rather, your immune system fights the better fight when it's not stressed.
Moderate exercise can help boost your immune system, thereby decreasing the chances that you will catch a cold or the flu. But a hard workout when you are sick can impair your immune system for several hours, making your illness worse.
Once you're feeling better, give your body an extra few days to recover before you resume working out. Allow three to four days of rest after a bad cold, and at least a week after the flu.
When you return to your routine, practice the 50 percent rule. Decrease your usual exercise time by half and go half-speed on the treadmill or exercise bike until you regain your strength and endurance.
Health Tip: Recognizing Premature Labor
Many pregnant women fear going into labor prematurely, which is three or more weeks before the due date.
The Community Hospital in Nebraska mentions these warning signs:
Contractions every 10 minutes or less.
Clear, pink, or brownish fluid leaking from the vagina.
The feeling that the fetus is pushing down.
Low, dull backache.
Cramps that feel like your period, with or without diarrhea.
If you think you may be experiencing preterm labor, even if you have only one sign, call your doctor immediately.
Food Fact:
Thrilla in vanilla
In low-fat desserts, high-quality vanilla can make you a champ. Vanilla imparts a warm, rounded flavor of its own and serves as a backdrop for other spices. Its quality is crucial in low-fat desserts, because without a lot of fat the other flavors stand out more. Avoid imitation extracts; they simply taste bad. Buy vanilla extract that is labeled "pure." Or better yet, make your own: Slit 4 whole vanilla beans lengthwise, place in a jar, cover with vodka or brandy, and let steep for at least 2 weeks.
Fitness Tip of the day:
Uncover hidden muscles.
The key to six-pack abs is not 500 sit-ups a day; it's skipping the excess calories. Improved muscle definition comes from losing body fat, not from increasing muscle size. For a healthy lean body, you need to find a balance between exercise and diet. Weight training will condition the muscle, but unless you address your total calorie intake, all that hard work will be hiding under a layer of fat.
FAQ of the day:
Are walking shoes a waste of money?
To find the right shoe, start with knowledgeable salespeople. If someone suggests a shoe designed for another sport as a walking shoe, move on. Ask a salesperson to measure your feet every time you buy new walking shoes -- foot size and width can change over time. Try on shoes after you've exercised and your feet are at their largest. Put on the socks you normally wear when you're walking. Make sure the shoe fits in the heel -- many women mistakenly choose shoes that are too small just because they feel secure in the heel as they walk. Replace walking shoes every 500 miles, or about twice a year.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Health Headlines - August 23
Severe Allergies Bring Back-to-School Dangers
As kids head back to school, experts are urging that parents of children with allergies inform teachers and other school staff about anaphylaxis -- a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction triggered by allergens.
"All school staff must be made aware of the potentially severe nature of anaphylactic reaction. Parents need to work together with teachers, coaches and school nurses to avoid triggers and act quickly if a reaction occurs," Dr. S. Allan Bock, chairman of the anaphylaxis committee at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), said in a prepared statement.
Symptoms of anaphylaxis include nausea and vomiting, severe headache, hives, sneezing and coughing, itching all over the body, swelling of the lips, tongue and throat, and anxiety. The most dangerous symptoms -- trouble breathing, a drop in blood pressure, and shock -- can all be fatal.
Experts at the AAAAI and the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) outline steps parents with allergic children can take before the start of the school year:
Work with an allergist/immunologist to identify your child's allergy triggers and make sure he or she understands these triggers. Consider a medical bracelet or necklace that identifies your child's specific allergies.
Check out your child's school or child-care facility and ask about policies regarding foods and other potential triggers that might be present in the classroom.
Provide school staff with information and resources about your child's allergy. Have your allergist/immunologist provide written instructions on how to recognize a reaction early and how to administer medications. Inform the staff to call 911 immediately if your child has a reaction.
Children with a history of anaphylaxis should carry epinephrine with them at all times.
Insurers Focusing on Children's Health
Once a potato chip addict, 14-year-old Kate Brown won't touch the stuff these days. After enrolling in a nutritional program for kids, Brown learned things about her favorite snacks that horrified her -- like how much fat is loaded into a bag of chips. Gone are the days when she'd come home from school and park in front of the computer. She's joined a soccer team and gets out as often as she can.
The makeover comes courtesy of KidPower, a free program offered by Capital District Physicians Health Plan, a health insurer covering upstate New York and Vermont. The program is built around a kid-friendly fitness workbook, food charts and workshops covering everything from rock climbing to how to pack a healthy lunch.
One class, aimed at children ages 5 to 8, teaches the basics of how to read a food label.
The KidPower program is part of a growing national trend steering kids away from greasy fast foods and toward the fruit bowl.
Insurers have long encouraged adults to get in shape by offering discounts and rebates for gym memberships and weight loss programs, but now the spotlight is shifting as statistics about childhood obesity set off alarm bells nationwide.
Obesity-related illnesses represented just 2 percent of spending by health insurers in 1987; that figure rose to 11.6 percent by 2002, according to a study published in the policy journal Health Affairs.
Some 15 percent of U.S. schoolchildren are estimated to be obese, and 30 percent are believed to be overweight.
That could end up costing insurers big: Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults.
Concerned about her own weight, Schenectady mother Gina LeBlanc took advantage of a Weight Watchers discount offered by her insurer a few years ago. She got a 50 percent reimbursement for a 10-week, $130 program, and ended up feeling better about herself.
But when it came to getting her kids in shape, she struggled with how to approach the sensitive topic without using ego-bruising words like "diet."
As they continued eating junk food and packing on the pounds, she worried about the health problems obesity had caused in her family.
KidPower gave her a way to talk about health with her children in a positive way, LeBlanc said.
She highlighted sections of the workbook that explained how different nutrients pass through the body, and the impact they had on overall health.
The healthy foods magnet -- which listed "red light" foods like ice cream and "green light" foods like leafy vegetables -- went up on the microwave. Swimming started becoming a daily activity.
Her 10-year-old daughter, teased for being chubby since kindergarten, was especially excited to embrace the new lifestyle. When deciding where to go for dinner these days, LeBlanc said it's the kids who suggest restaurants with healthy choices, complaining that the fast food joints are too greasy.
"Now my daughter brings string beans to school for a snack," LeBlanc said.
The LeBlancs are among the hundreds of children strapping on pedometers and plunging into KidPower.
A year after it was launched, 546 children are now enrolled in the program; 136 of them are between the ages of 5 and 8, and 355 are between 8 and 14 years old.
At America's Health Insurance Plans, an association of health insurers, 89 percent of members offer free nutritional counseling for members. The association does not track how many offer nutrition programs specifically for children, but the issue has become a focus for members with data emerging on childhood obesity, said Mohit Ghose, spokesman for AHIP.
In the past couple years, insurers have started fostering programs to curb childhood obesity, whether sponsoring fitness programs at schools or devising plans like KidPower, he said.
For Kate Brown, the plan is working.
The food chart magnet that helped keep her on track when she first started the program is gone from her refrigerator.
It's of no use to her these days; she's got it memorized.
New treatment works against SARS in monkeys
An experimental treatment approach called RNA interference reduced the severity of SARS infections in monkeys, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.
A tiny Maryland-based biotech company less than a year old said monkeys infected with SARS either before or after treatment became less ill than untreated monkeys.
They believe their approach helps prevent the virus from infecting cells and perhaps also from spreading from cell to cell, they report in the September issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, caused by a never-before-seen virus now named the SARS coronavirus, swept China's Guangdong province and then spread globally in 2003. It infected more than 8,000 people and killed around 800 by causing pneumonia and lung failure.
It was contained using quarantine and isolation. But experts fear another outbreak could come at any time and companies are working on vaccines to prevent it and drugs to treat it.
Intradigm, a small spinoff from Swiss drugs giant Novartis, set up business a year ago to develop experimental treatments using small interfering RNAs.
These are short stretches of RNA -- the genetic counterpart of DNA that actually functions in cells -- specifically designed to interfere with certain genes.
They developed two siRNAs, as they are called, to counteract two key genes in the SARS virus known as Spike and ORF1b23.
Working with colleagues in China, they tested their siRNAs in 20 monkeys infected with SARS. Macaque monkeys can be infected with the virus and develop fever and lung damage, but their disease is not as severe as it is in humans.
Patrick Lu of Intradigm and colleagues delivered the siRNA into the noses of half of the monkeys, some before infection with SARS and some afterwards. One group of monkeys was treated with an siRNA that had no activity against SARS.
Those treated developed lower temperatures than untreated or placebo-treated monkeys, although all became sick. "The prophylactic treatment group had the lowest temperature (38.7 C), close to the normal body temperature of Rhesus monkey (38.5 C)," the researchers wrote.
"All animals displayed a loss of appetite and some became agitated and aggressive."
Only 25 percent of the treated monkeys had detectable virus in their throats compared to all the untreated monkeys.
And when the monkeys were killed and their lungs examined, the treated monkeys had fewer infected lung cells, the researchers said.
They said their experiment showed the treatment was safe and could be tested in humans.
Joint Replacement: Less Is Sometimes More
Every year in the United States, more than 325,000 aching knees and more than 172,000 painful hips must be replaced as age, arthritis and injuries take their toll.
Advances in orthopedics, however, also mean there's less hospitalization and a quicker recovery time for joint-replacement patients because more surgeons are performing what are known as "minimally invasive" or "less invasive" procedures.
While the newer techniques won't work for everyone, they can be a godsend, especially for busy people who can't take a lot of time off from work to recover from surgery.
Today, joint-replacement surgery is classified as "conventional," "less invasive" or "minimally invasive," according to Dr. Jay Mabrey, chief of orthopedic surgery at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. The minimally invasive procedures involve the smallest surgical incisions; the conventional, the largest.
Minimally invasive surgeries are performed with specially designed, smaller surgical instruments, and the instruments can also be used for the less invasive surgeries.
Doctors typically insert two small tubes into the incision site. One tube contains a fiber optic camera and a light source; the other usually contains miniaturized surgical instruments. The surgeons watch a TV monitor to guide them during the operation.
Total hip replacement involves removing the head of the thighbone. The ball-and-socket mechanism of the hip is then replaced with the artificial implants. Knee replacement involves resurfacing the worn-out surfaces of the knee and replacing the cartilage with metal and plastic, Mabrey said.
"Most surgeons have gone to a smaller incision," Mabrey said, "and a smaller group of them have gone to minimally invasive techniques."
In traditional hip replacement surgery, for instance, the incision is about 12 to 14 inches in length, he said, and the operation involves a significant amount of blood loss. In less invasive techniques, the incision can be 4 to 8 inches, and in minimally invasive procedures, about 4 inches, he said.
It's not just the incision size that has changed in joint replacement surgery, Mabrey said. "Newer types of anesthesia techniques allow some patients to get out of the hospital within 24 to 36 hours [after surgery]," he said. Because the incision is smaller, the trauma to muscles and tissues is less, and thus recovery time is faster.
With minimally invasive surgeries, some patients go back to work in as little as 10 days to two weeks, said Dr. Mack Lancaster, an orthopedic surgeon at Baylor who does minimally invasive techniques in about 10 percent of his joint replacement patients. With less invasive techniques, the back-to-work timetable tends to be three to four weeks. With conventional surgery, it's six weeks or more, he said.
Both Lancaster and Mabrey, who does "less invasive" but not "minimally invasive" techniques, acknowledged that there are downsides to minimal incision surgery.
"There is a much smaller surgical field," Mabrey said. "So instead of being able to see everything, such as alignment of the implant, the actual surgery is not done under direct vision."
And a minimal incision operation, Mabrey said, "almost always increases the length of the surgery time."
Lancaster said he does not recommend minimal incision surgery unless it is crucial for the patient to get back to normal functioning, such as their job, quickly.
The best candidates for minimally invasive surgery, Lancaster said, are otherwise healthy people of average body weight. Overweight individuals are not good candidates for minimal incision surgery, Mabrey said, because "so much fat overlies the hip, it makes it difficult to see what you are doing."
Older patients who have more osteoporosis and are more likely to fracture are not good candidates for minimally invasive techniques either, Mabrey said.
If your surgeon says you are not a good candidate for minimal incision surgery, ask why, both doctors agreed. If you are a good candidate, ask your surgeon if he has trained in the technique.
Safety Tips When Taking Anticoagulants
Topic Overview
Anticoagulants, often called blood thinners, are medications that slow the clotting of blood. They do not actually thin the blood but increase the time it takes a blood clot to form. Anticoagulants help prevent existing blood clots from becoming larger and may be used to prevent deep vein blood clots or to treat certain blood vessel, heart, or lung conditions.
Safety tips for anticoagulants
Take the medication at the same time each day.
Check with your doctor before using nonprescription drugs, especially ones that contain aspirin.
Tell any new health professionals that you are taking medication that affects how your blood clots.
Be alert for signs of bleeding, and call the doctor immediately if any of the following symptoms occur:
Blood in urine or red or tarry stools
Bleeding from the nose or gums or spitting up blood
New, excessive, or prolonged vaginal bleeding
Frequent, severe bruising or tiny red or purple spots on the skin
Talk to your doctor about medications you are taking to find out how often you should have blood tests.
If you are taking ticlopidine, get frequent blood tests to check your white blood cell count during the first 3 months of treatment.
If you take warfarin (such as Coumadin):
Get regular blood tests to ensure that you are taking the right amount of medication.
Eat a balanced diet. Don't suddenly change your intake of vitamin K-rich foods, such as broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, and some vegetable juices. It is most important to maintain a consistent level of vitamin K foods in your diet. Vitamin K can interfere with the action of warfarin, making it more likely that your blood will clot.
Avoid excessive use of alcohol. If you drink, do so only in moderation. Alcohol may increase the effect of of warfarin.
Don't use tobacco of any kind.
Avoid activities that have a high risk for injury, such as skiing, football, or other contact sports. If you are taking warfarin, an injury could result in excessive bleeding.
Wear a seat belt anytime you are traveling in a car.
Preventing minor bleeding while taking anticoagulants
You may find it helpful to use the following items to lower the risk of bleeding:
An electric razor
A soft-bristled toothbrush and waxed floss
Protective clothing, such as gloves and shoes
Nonslip mats in the tub and shower
As kids head back to school, experts are urging that parents of children with allergies inform teachers and other school staff about anaphylaxis -- a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction triggered by allergens.
"All school staff must be made aware of the potentially severe nature of anaphylactic reaction. Parents need to work together with teachers, coaches and school nurses to avoid triggers and act quickly if a reaction occurs," Dr. S. Allan Bock, chairman of the anaphylaxis committee at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), said in a prepared statement.
Symptoms of anaphylaxis include nausea and vomiting, severe headache, hives, sneezing and coughing, itching all over the body, swelling of the lips, tongue and throat, and anxiety. The most dangerous symptoms -- trouble breathing, a drop in blood pressure, and shock -- can all be fatal.
Experts at the AAAAI and the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) outline steps parents with allergic children can take before the start of the school year:
Work with an allergist/immunologist to identify your child's allergy triggers and make sure he or she understands these triggers. Consider a medical bracelet or necklace that identifies your child's specific allergies.
Check out your child's school or child-care facility and ask about policies regarding foods and other potential triggers that might be present in the classroom.
Provide school staff with information and resources about your child's allergy. Have your allergist/immunologist provide written instructions on how to recognize a reaction early and how to administer medications. Inform the staff to call 911 immediately if your child has a reaction.
Children with a history of anaphylaxis should carry epinephrine with them at all times.
Insurers Focusing on Children's Health
Once a potato chip addict, 14-year-old Kate Brown won't touch the stuff these days. After enrolling in a nutritional program for kids, Brown learned things about her favorite snacks that horrified her -- like how much fat is loaded into a bag of chips. Gone are the days when she'd come home from school and park in front of the computer. She's joined a soccer team and gets out as often as she can.
The makeover comes courtesy of KidPower, a free program offered by Capital District Physicians Health Plan, a health insurer covering upstate New York and Vermont. The program is built around a kid-friendly fitness workbook, food charts and workshops covering everything from rock climbing to how to pack a healthy lunch.
One class, aimed at children ages 5 to 8, teaches the basics of how to read a food label.
The KidPower program is part of a growing national trend steering kids away from greasy fast foods and toward the fruit bowl.
Insurers have long encouraged adults to get in shape by offering discounts and rebates for gym memberships and weight loss programs, but now the spotlight is shifting as statistics about childhood obesity set off alarm bells nationwide.
Obesity-related illnesses represented just 2 percent of spending by health insurers in 1987; that figure rose to 11.6 percent by 2002, according to a study published in the policy journal Health Affairs.
Some 15 percent of U.S. schoolchildren are estimated to be obese, and 30 percent are believed to be overweight.
That could end up costing insurers big: Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults.
Concerned about her own weight, Schenectady mother Gina LeBlanc took advantage of a Weight Watchers discount offered by her insurer a few years ago. She got a 50 percent reimbursement for a 10-week, $130 program, and ended up feeling better about herself.
But when it came to getting her kids in shape, she struggled with how to approach the sensitive topic without using ego-bruising words like "diet."
As they continued eating junk food and packing on the pounds, she worried about the health problems obesity had caused in her family.
KidPower gave her a way to talk about health with her children in a positive way, LeBlanc said.
She highlighted sections of the workbook that explained how different nutrients pass through the body, and the impact they had on overall health.
The healthy foods magnet -- which listed "red light" foods like ice cream and "green light" foods like leafy vegetables -- went up on the microwave. Swimming started becoming a daily activity.
Her 10-year-old daughter, teased for being chubby since kindergarten, was especially excited to embrace the new lifestyle. When deciding where to go for dinner these days, LeBlanc said it's the kids who suggest restaurants with healthy choices, complaining that the fast food joints are too greasy.
"Now my daughter brings string beans to school for a snack," LeBlanc said.
The LeBlancs are among the hundreds of children strapping on pedometers and plunging into KidPower.
A year after it was launched, 546 children are now enrolled in the program; 136 of them are between the ages of 5 and 8, and 355 are between 8 and 14 years old.
At America's Health Insurance Plans, an association of health insurers, 89 percent of members offer free nutritional counseling for members. The association does not track how many offer nutrition programs specifically for children, but the issue has become a focus for members with data emerging on childhood obesity, said Mohit Ghose, spokesman for AHIP.
In the past couple years, insurers have started fostering programs to curb childhood obesity, whether sponsoring fitness programs at schools or devising plans like KidPower, he said.
For Kate Brown, the plan is working.
The food chart magnet that helped keep her on track when she first started the program is gone from her refrigerator.
It's of no use to her these days; she's got it memorized.
New treatment works against SARS in monkeys
An experimental treatment approach called RNA interference reduced the severity of SARS infections in monkeys, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.
A tiny Maryland-based biotech company less than a year old said monkeys infected with SARS either before or after treatment became less ill than untreated monkeys.
They believe their approach helps prevent the virus from infecting cells and perhaps also from spreading from cell to cell, they report in the September issue of the journal Nature Medicine.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, caused by a never-before-seen virus now named the SARS coronavirus, swept China's Guangdong province and then spread globally in 2003. It infected more than 8,000 people and killed around 800 by causing pneumonia and lung failure.
It was contained using quarantine and isolation. But experts fear another outbreak could come at any time and companies are working on vaccines to prevent it and drugs to treat it.
Intradigm, a small spinoff from Swiss drugs giant Novartis, set up business a year ago to develop experimental treatments using small interfering RNAs.
These are short stretches of RNA -- the genetic counterpart of DNA that actually functions in cells -- specifically designed to interfere with certain genes.
They developed two siRNAs, as they are called, to counteract two key genes in the SARS virus known as Spike and ORF1b23.
Working with colleagues in China, they tested their siRNAs in 20 monkeys infected with SARS. Macaque monkeys can be infected with the virus and develop fever and lung damage, but their disease is not as severe as it is in humans.
Patrick Lu of Intradigm and colleagues delivered the siRNA into the noses of half of the monkeys, some before infection with SARS and some afterwards. One group of monkeys was treated with an siRNA that had no activity against SARS.
Those treated developed lower temperatures than untreated or placebo-treated monkeys, although all became sick. "The prophylactic treatment group had the lowest temperature (38.7 C), close to the normal body temperature of Rhesus monkey (38.5 C)," the researchers wrote.
"All animals displayed a loss of appetite and some became agitated and aggressive."
Only 25 percent of the treated monkeys had detectable virus in their throats compared to all the untreated monkeys.
And when the monkeys were killed and their lungs examined, the treated monkeys had fewer infected lung cells, the researchers said.
They said their experiment showed the treatment was safe and could be tested in humans.
Joint Replacement: Less Is Sometimes More
Every year in the United States, more than 325,000 aching knees and more than 172,000 painful hips must be replaced as age, arthritis and injuries take their toll.
Advances in orthopedics, however, also mean there's less hospitalization and a quicker recovery time for joint-replacement patients because more surgeons are performing what are known as "minimally invasive" or "less invasive" procedures.
While the newer techniques won't work for everyone, they can be a godsend, especially for busy people who can't take a lot of time off from work to recover from surgery.
Today, joint-replacement surgery is classified as "conventional," "less invasive" or "minimally invasive," according to Dr. Jay Mabrey, chief of orthopedic surgery at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. The minimally invasive procedures involve the smallest surgical incisions; the conventional, the largest.
Minimally invasive surgeries are performed with specially designed, smaller surgical instruments, and the instruments can also be used for the less invasive surgeries.
Doctors typically insert two small tubes into the incision site. One tube contains a fiber optic camera and a light source; the other usually contains miniaturized surgical instruments. The surgeons watch a TV monitor to guide them during the operation.
Total hip replacement involves removing the head of the thighbone. The ball-and-socket mechanism of the hip is then replaced with the artificial implants. Knee replacement involves resurfacing the worn-out surfaces of the knee and replacing the cartilage with metal and plastic, Mabrey said.
"Most surgeons have gone to a smaller incision," Mabrey said, "and a smaller group of them have gone to minimally invasive techniques."
In traditional hip replacement surgery, for instance, the incision is about 12 to 14 inches in length, he said, and the operation involves a significant amount of blood loss. In less invasive techniques, the incision can be 4 to 8 inches, and in minimally invasive procedures, about 4 inches, he said.
It's not just the incision size that has changed in joint replacement surgery, Mabrey said. "Newer types of anesthesia techniques allow some patients to get out of the hospital within 24 to 36 hours [after surgery]," he said. Because the incision is smaller, the trauma to muscles and tissues is less, and thus recovery time is faster.
With minimally invasive surgeries, some patients go back to work in as little as 10 days to two weeks, said Dr. Mack Lancaster, an orthopedic surgeon at Baylor who does minimally invasive techniques in about 10 percent of his joint replacement patients. With less invasive techniques, the back-to-work timetable tends to be three to four weeks. With conventional surgery, it's six weeks or more, he said.
Both Lancaster and Mabrey, who does "less invasive" but not "minimally invasive" techniques, acknowledged that there are downsides to minimal incision surgery.
"There is a much smaller surgical field," Mabrey said. "So instead of being able to see everything, such as alignment of the implant, the actual surgery is not done under direct vision."
And a minimal incision operation, Mabrey said, "almost always increases the length of the surgery time."
Lancaster said he does not recommend minimal incision surgery unless it is crucial for the patient to get back to normal functioning, such as their job, quickly.
The best candidates for minimally invasive surgery, Lancaster said, are otherwise healthy people of average body weight. Overweight individuals are not good candidates for minimal incision surgery, Mabrey said, because "so much fat overlies the hip, it makes it difficult to see what you are doing."
Older patients who have more osteoporosis and are more likely to fracture are not good candidates for minimally invasive techniques either, Mabrey said.
If your surgeon says you are not a good candidate for minimal incision surgery, ask why, both doctors agreed. If you are a good candidate, ask your surgeon if he has trained in the technique.
Safety Tips When Taking Anticoagulants
Topic Overview
Anticoagulants, often called blood thinners, are medications that slow the clotting of blood. They do not actually thin the blood but increase the time it takes a blood clot to form. Anticoagulants help prevent existing blood clots from becoming larger and may be used to prevent deep vein blood clots or to treat certain blood vessel, heart, or lung conditions.
Safety tips for anticoagulants
Take the medication at the same time each day.
Check with your doctor before using nonprescription drugs, especially ones that contain aspirin.
Tell any new health professionals that you are taking medication that affects how your blood clots.
Be alert for signs of bleeding, and call the doctor immediately if any of the following symptoms occur:
Blood in urine or red or tarry stools
Bleeding from the nose or gums or spitting up blood
New, excessive, or prolonged vaginal bleeding
Frequent, severe bruising or tiny red or purple spots on the skin
Talk to your doctor about medications you are taking to find out how often you should have blood tests.
If you are taking ticlopidine, get frequent blood tests to check your white blood cell count during the first 3 months of treatment.
If you take warfarin (such as Coumadin):
Get regular blood tests to ensure that you are taking the right amount of medication.
Eat a balanced diet. Don't suddenly change your intake of vitamin K-rich foods, such as broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, and some vegetable juices. It is most important to maintain a consistent level of vitamin K foods in your diet. Vitamin K can interfere with the action of warfarin, making it more likely that your blood will clot.
Avoid excessive use of alcohol. If you drink, do so only in moderation. Alcohol may increase the effect of of warfarin.
Don't use tobacco of any kind.
Avoid activities that have a high risk for injury, such as skiing, football, or other contact sports. If you are taking warfarin, an injury could result in excessive bleeding.
Wear a seat belt anytime you are traveling in a car.
Preventing minor bleeding while taking anticoagulants
You may find it helpful to use the following items to lower the risk of bleeding:
An electric razor
A soft-bristled toothbrush and waxed floss
Protective clothing, such as gloves and shoes
Nonslip mats in the tub and shower
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