Health News

Headache: Top 5 tests and treatments to avoid

Doctors who specialize in treating head pain, such as chronic migraines, are the latest to list the procedures and treatments they think have risks or costs that may outweigh the benefits to patients.

The American Headache Society’s list is part of the Choosing Wisely campaign from the ABIM Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation established by the American Board of Internal Medicine. The campaign has seen cancer doctors, eye doctors and chest surgeons naming the overused or unproven practices their peers should avoid and patients should question.

The newest Choosing Wisely list was published Thursday in the journal Headache.

“The article and recommendations identify situations that are felt by experts to be cases where patients and doctors should think very carefully before they decide to use that particular treatment or intervention,” said Dr. Elizabeth Loder, an author of the new recommendations.

Loder is the president of the American Headache Society, and chief of the Division of Headache and Pain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

All tests and treatments have risks, Loder said. For example, imaging techniques such as CT scans expose patients to potentially cancer-causing radiation, and certain pain medications sometimes used to treat headaches are easy to get hooked on.

The goal of the recommendations is to encourage discussion between patients and their doctors about which tests are overall beneficial to patients, she said.

“The purpose is to start a conversation about situations, tests, procedures and interventions that do not necessarily benefit the patient, and sometimes can even cause problems,” Loder said.

To come up with the recommendations, Loder and her coauthors asked physician members of the American Headache Society (AHS) to identify tests and treatments they view as being used incorrectly or too often, and which methods of care had benefits too small to outweigh the risks.

The researchers evaluated more than 100 items suggested by AHS members, distilling the list down to five items based on current evidence.

The guidelines advise against imaging the brains of patients who get headaches that have not changed over time.

They also discourage the long-term use of over-the-counter pain pills to treat headaches, and recommend that physicians avoid using certain pain medications – opioids like oxycodone and drugs containing butalbital like Fioricet – for patients who get headaches often.

Finally, physicians should not perform computed tomography, or CT, on a patient with a headache when magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, is available, except if it’s an emergency, the recommendations state.

The recommendations, Loder said, “are a nice distillation for patients when thinking about their care.” Patients and their families can use the guidelines to start a conversation with their doctor about the pros and cons of a given test or procedure.

“In addition to thinking about the good things that may come about from interventions, it’s also important to think about situations in which caution can be used,” Loder told Reuters Health.

Source: Global post

Better diet tied to higher quality of life in old age

Older adults who follow dietary guidelines tend to have a better quality of life and less trouble getting around and taking care of themselves, according to a new study.

Not many prior studies had tried to tackle that issue, researchers said.

“Our paper showed that maintaining an overall optimal diet quality will be beneficial for preserving the general well-being of older adults,” lead author Bamini Gopinath told Reuters Health in an email.

Gopinath is a senior research fellow with the Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research at the University of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia.

“Adhering to national dietary guidelines which is typified by high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish could be beneficial in maintaining a good quality of life and functional ability such as shopping, household duties, meal preparation, and taking their own medication,” she said.

Her study included 1,305 men and women age 55 and over that were part of a large Australian study of common eye diseases and general health.

Participants filled out questionnaires about what they ate and how often in 1992 to 1994.
Researchers scored each person’s diet on a scale from 0 to 20 based the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. Higher scores indicated better diets.

The one-quarter of participants with the highest-quality diets had scores above 11.1. The one-quarter with the poorest diets scored 8.1 and below, the researchers reported in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Five and ten years after reporting on their diets, participants completed surveys assessing their quality of life with regard to physical health, mental health, social functioning and vitality. Each area was measured on a scale of 0 to 100.

On average, participants with the highest diet scores also reported a better quality of life.

Physical function was almost six points higher among the healthiest eaters than the least healthy. General health was four points higher among healthy eaters and vitality was five points higher.

However, there were no differences on measures of mental health or social functioning, based on diet.

The researchers also assessed how well people could perform basic and instrumental activities of daily living 10 and 15 years after the diet surveys.

Basic activities include being able to eat, dress and groom without assistance and the ability to walk alone. Instrumental activities include the ability to go shopping, use a telephone, handle money and travel beyond walking distance.

There was no difference in how well people performed basic activities of daily living based on their diets. But participants with the highest diet scores were half as likely to be impaired when it came to instrumental activities compared to those with the worst diets.

The findings don’t prove diet, itself, was responsible for the differences in quality of life and how well people performed daily tasks.

But Gopinath believes they could contribute to the evidence needed to come up with strategies that help an aging population make dietary changes.

“If older adults didn’t make healthy choices when they were younger, they may need to change their habits to get the necessary nutrients for a better quality of life. In fact, many older adults are coming up short, when it comes to essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber,” Ruth Frechman told Reuters Health in an email.

She is a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and was not involved in the study.

Frechman said people can turn to the US Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate guide for help with healthy eating.

“To reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, half of the grains should be whole grains, such as whole grain pasta, brown rice or oatmeal. It’s also important to include low-fat or fat-free sources of dairy for healthy bones,” she added.

Source: GMA News

Adopt healthy pregnancy habits to avoid preterm birth

Being pregnant is one of the happiest moments in life. Despite the excitement that comes with it, it could be hard for you as you need to take extra care of your body and the fetus inside you during this time. What is preterm birth? According to World Health Organization (WHO), preterm is defined as babies born alive before 37 weeks of pregnancy are completed.

There are sub-categories of preterm birth, based on gestational age:

Extremely preterm (born at less than 28 weeks of pregnancy).
Very preterm (born between 28 to 32 weeks of pregnancy).

Moderate to late preterm (born between 32 to 37 weeks of pregnancy).
Sometimes, even a healthy pregnancy may make you go into preterm labor because it is usually not anticipated. Preterm birth also happens because the causes are not completely understood.

But adopting healthy pregnancy habits may help keep your baby until he or she is fully ready to face the world.

How to prevent it?
Below are some simple tips as suggested by health experts that may help avoid preterm birth:
Eat healthy: This is the time that you eat a balanced diet which is good for you, your baby and pregnancy. Make sure that you get all necessary nutrients in right proportions every day — such as Vitamins A, C, E, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc and most importantly, the well-known baby- friendly folic acid. This can help avoid preterm labour.
Adopt healthy lifestyle: If you smoke, drink or use any kinds of drugs, you must quit.

Get enough fluids: Remember to take at least 8 glasses of water or fluids daily to keep yourself hydrated. Dehydration can cause premature contractions. Keeping yourself hydrated can also increase the chances of keeping baby put.

Say ‘no’ to stress: Stress is not directly linked to preterm, but try not to take stress for your own benefit during this time. Instead ask for help and try to relax. Check your weight: Gaining too much or too little weight during pregnancy can up your preterm labour risk. Being overweight can increase your odds of getting gestational diabetes and preeclampsia (both of which up preterm) whereas being underweight can advance your due date as well as make your baby born too small.

Prenatal vitamins: Do not neglect taking those pills, they are not just good for you and your growing baby’s health, but will also increase the chances that you’ll carry to term.
Don’t hold your urine: During pregnancy, you should never hold your urine. Doing that can inflame your bladder and as a result of which, your uterus could be aggravated leading to contractions. Holding your pee could also cause urinary tract infections (UTI), another source of preterm contractions.

Source: Journey Line

‘Painful’ pinpricks may soon be history for diabetics

A new nanotechnology-based technique for regulating blood sugar in diabetics may give patients the ability to release insulin painlessly using a small ultrasound device, allowing them to go days between injections – rather than using needles to give themselves multiple insulin injections each day.

The technique involves injecting biocompatible and biodegradable nano particles into a patient’s skin. The nanoparticles are made out of poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA) and are filled with insulin.

Each of the PLGA nanoparticles is given either a positively charged coating made of chitosan (a biocompatible material normally found in shrimp shells), or a negatively charged coating made of alginate (a biocompatible material normally found in seaweed).

When the solution of coated nanoparticles is mixed together, the positively and negatively charged coatings are attracted to each other by electrostatic force to form a “nano-network.”

Once injected into the subcutaneous layer of the skin, that nano-network holds the nanoparticles together and prevents them from dispersing throughout the body.

The coated PLGA nanoparticles are also porous. Once in the body, the insulin begins to diffuse from the nanoparticles. But the bulk of the insulin doesn’t stray far – it is suspended in a de facto reservoir in the subcutaneous layer of the skin by the electrostatic force of the nano-network. This essentially creates a dose of insulin that is simply waiting to be delivered into the bloodstream.

Using the new technology developed by Dr. Zhen Gu, senior author of a paper on the research and an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering program at NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill, and his team, a diabetes patient doesn’t have to inject a dose of insulin – it’s already there. Instead, patients can use a small, hand-held device to apply focused ultrasound waves to the site of the nano-network, painlessly releasing the insulin from its de facto reservoir into the bloodstream.

The study has been published online in Advanced Healthcare Materials.

Source: Yahoo News

5 Easy Ways to kick up Your Metabolism

Metabolism is the set of chemical transformations within the cells that is necessary for the maintenance of life. Putting it simple, right from breaking down the food to transforming it into energy, metabolism is the sum total of the entire internal biological processes.

Some people have great metabolism, as what they eat is never seen on their bodies, whereas some have it real slow. Though you can’t blame yourself for the slow metabolic rate you can definitely notch it up by following the simple tips:

Don’t skip your breakfast: ‘Eat breakfast like a king’ goes the adage. Your metabolism slows down during the night and if you skip your breakfast it further goes for a toss to conserve energy. This in turn can lead to unhealthy food choices in the day leading to weight problems. Having a healthy breakfast helps improve metabolism.

Exercise: Muscle burns more calories than fat. So, the harder your muscles work, the more post-workout rebuilding they have to do, thus increasing your metabolic rate. Go for 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a day and 30 to 40 minutes strength training twice a week to keep your metabolism up

Switch to Green tea: Green tea contain antioxidant catechin which according to researchers help improve fat oxidation and thermogenesis, your body’s production of energy, or heat, from digestion.

Spice it up: Capsaicin, which gives peppers and spices their heat, helps increase energy expenditure by 50 calories a day. So if you like it spicy, do not worry, all that spice only gives that extra need kick to your metabolism.

Sleep well: Not getting enough sleep throws off your levels of leptin and ghrelin, the hormones that help regulate energy use and appetite thus slowing the metabolism and increasing the risks of obesity.

Source: Mens health

Is Your Child Getting Enough Fiber?

Three out of four children aren’t getting enough fiber, which puts them at high risk for chronic constipation, among other things. Here are some ways to make sure your child isn’t at risk and how to incorporate more fiber in your family’s diet.

Why Fiber is Important 

Fiber is the part of natural foods (plant foods, the only place fiber is found) that isn’t digested. It provides “roughage” for everything that you eat and helps things move through the digestive process. In Dr. Rex Russell’s book, What The Bible Says About Healthy Living, he notes the importance of fiber based on a group of African men, some living in Africa and some attending school in England. The African natives ate a traditional high-fiber diet and rarely needed medical attention. The Africans who were at school in England were enjoying processed foods without fiber. They suffered from episodes of appendicitis, hemorrhoids, ulcers, and gallstones.

The term “processed foods” refers to products made with grains that are heavily processed and very far from their natural state. These include products like enriched macaroni, cookies, cakes, pies, and cereals.

Inadequate fiber intake is also believed to contribute to, and sometimes even cause, heart disease, colon cancer, high blood pressure, and adult onset diabetes. Without sufficient fiber to move food through the body, toxins and bodily waste can fester inside the body for extended periods of time.

A lack of fiber also highly contributes to obesity problems in America. Part of this results from the negligible amount of fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by Americans. Both fruits and vegetables, along with other natural foods, contain two types of fiber: soluble and insoluble. Soluble is the kind of fiber that changes as it moves through your digestive system, while insoluble doesn’t change; both are equally important.

Soluble fiber is most often found in dried beans, oats, barley, fruits and vegetables. It stabilizes blood sugar, reduces blood pressure and cholesterol, and speeds up your body’s transit time (the time it takes to move food through your digestive system and complete the digestion process). Most Americans’ transit time is around 50 to 60 hours. That’s a long time, considering the normal transit time should be around 12 to 18 hours. (If you’re interested in finding out your child’s transit time, watch her bowels after she’s eaten corn. Since corn does not digest, you will see it in her bowels and be able to estimate her transit time starting from when she ate the corn to when it was in her bowel.

How Much Fiber Do Children Need? 

Currently, children ages four to 19 years get around 12 grams of dietary fiber per day, according to Dr. Christine Williams, previously with the American Health Foundation. Dr. Williams recommends that children get at least their “age plus five” grams of fiber per day. For eight year olds, this means at least 13 grams of dietary fiber per day.

A minimum of five fruits and vegetables per day, as recommended by the USDA Food Pyramid, will give your child a large percentage of his necessary fiber. The remaining amount should come from sources such as whole grain products, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Source: Pediatrics for parents

Coffee may Help Boost Blood Flow to Fingers

Drinking coffee can certainly help you stay awake during that work meeting or get energized before a test. However, a recent study shows that drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee a day can help boost blood flow in fingers.

Researchers found that the inner lining of the body’s smaller blood vessels could actually produce more blood flow with the help of a caffeinated drink.

In fact, they note that participants who drank a cup of caffeinated coffee a day had a 30 percent increase in blood flow over a 75-minute period compared to those who just drank a decaffeinated cup.

“This gives us a clue about how coffee may help improve cardiovascular health,” lead study researcher Masso Tsutsui, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist and professor in the pharmacology department at the University of the Ryukus in Okinawa Japan said, via a press release.

Previous findings have suggested that drinking coffee can help lower the risk of dying from heart disease and stroke, and that high doses of caffeine may improve the function of larger arteries.

Researchers had each participant–ranging in age from 22 to 30 who were not regular coffee drinkers–drink one five-ounce cup of Joe a day or a decaffeinated cup. Following, their finger blood flow was measured via a non-invasive technique for gauging circulation, known as flowmetry. This experiment was repeated with each type of coffee for two days.

The researchers found that when compared to decaffeinated coffee, the caffeinated version was able to help raise participants’ blood pressure and improve vessel inner lining function.

Though it is unclear at this time how this improvement occurred, researchers hope that caffeine may help open blood vessels in order to potentially reduce inflammation.

More information regarding the study was presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2013.

Source: Science World Report

Children at risk of AIDS should be tested at birth – UN

More than a quarter of a million children each year are born infected with the virus that causes AIDS, but too few are being tested early to receive treatment and prolong their lives, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Michele Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, called for diagnostic kits to be improved for detection in babies of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, and for their “still high” current price of $25-50 to be brought down.

Children are the “forgotten” victims of the AIDS epidemic, yet 260,000 babies joined their ranks last year, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“Irrespective of the market size we need to make sure that diagnostics are made available for children,” he told a news conference in Geneva ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.

“We made a lot of progess during the last 2-3 years in terms of treatment, in terms of medicines, in terms of making sure that the molecules are more well-targeted for children. But where we are failing is also making early diagnostics.”

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories and Swiss drugmaker Roche are among the main manufacturers of HIV diagnostics, according to senior UNAIDS officials.

Some 3.3 million children under age 15 have HIV, but only 1.9 million of them require treatment today, according to the Geneva-based agency. Fewer than 650,000 or 34 percent of the 1.9 million received antiretroviral AIDS drugs in 2012, still a rise of 14 percent from the year before, it said.

Some 14 million adults with HIV need treatment, and 9 million of them or 64 percent are receiving it, a far higher coverage rate than for children.

UNAIDS has identified 22 priority countries for stopping infections in children, 21 of them in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 90 percent of women living with HIV. The other is India.

In three of these priority countries – Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi – fewer than 5 percent of infants at risk are being tested for HIV at birth, UNAIDS says.

“In priority countries, only 3 in 10 children receive HIV treatment. We have seen tremendous political commitment and results to reduce mother-to-child transmission but we are failing the children who become infected,” said Sidibe, who is from Mali.

All children under five who test positive for the virus should be put on treatment, according to Mahesh Mahalingam, UNAIDS director for its global plan for stopping new infections in children.

Current PCR tests are able to detect the virus in a baby only after the age of six weeks and require sending a blood sample to a specialised laboratory, he said.

“What we looking for are easier tests that we can administer earlier on, this will help detect the virus and start them on medicines faster. We recommend that as soon as the child is known to be HIV positive, you start on anti-retroviral drugs,” Mahalingam told Reuters.

He added: “The earlier we can diagnose, the earlier we can treat them which increase chances of child survival. Children are now getting to grow into adults. If we start pretty early they have the same chance of living as any other children.”

Source: New Vision

Nut eaters have lower cancer, heart disease risk

Help yourself to some nuts this holiday season: Regular nut eaters were less likely to die of cancer or heart disease — in fact, were less likely to die of any cause — during a 30-year Harvard study.

Nuts have long been called heart-healthy, and the study is the largest ever done on whether eating them affects mortality.

Researchers tracked 119,000 men and women and found that those who ate nuts roughly every day were 20 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who never ate nuts. Eating nuts less often also appeared to still lower the death risk, in direct proportion to consumption.

The risk of dying of heart disease dropped 29 percent and the risk of dying of cancer fell 11 percent among those who had nuts seven or more times a week compared with people who never ate them.

The benefits were seen from peanuts as well as from pistachios, almonds, walnuts and other tree nuts. The researchers did not look at how the nuts were prepared — oiled or salted, raw or roasted.

Nut eaters stayed slimmer.

“There’s a general perception that if you eat more nuts you’re going to get fat. Our results show the opposite,” said Dr. Ying Bao of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

She led the study, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. The National Institutes of Health and the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research & Education Foundation sponsored the study, but the nut group had no role in designing it or reporting the results.

Researchers don’t know why nuts may boost health. It could be that their unsaturated fatty acids, minerals and other nutrients lower cholesterol and inflammation and reduce other problems, as earlier studies seemed to show.

Observational studies like this one can’t prove cause and effect, only suggest a connection. Research on diets is especially tough, because it can be difficult to single out the effects of any one food.

People who eat more nuts may eat them on salads, for example, and some of the benefit may come from the leafy greens, said Dr. Robert Eckel, a University of Colorado cardiologist and former president of the American Heart Association.

Dr. Ralph Sacco, a University of Miami neurologist who also is a former heart association president, agreed.

“Sometimes when you eat nuts you eat less of something else like potato chips,” so the benefit may come from avoiding an unhealthy food, Sacco said.

The Harvard group has long been known for solid science on diets. Its findings build on a major study earlier this year — a rigorous experiment that found a Mediterranean-style diet supplemented with nuts cuts the chance of heart-related problems, especially strokes, in older people at high risk of them.

Many previous studies tie nut consumption to lower risks of heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer and other maladies.

In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration said a fistful of nuts a day as part of a low-fat diet may reduce the risk of heart disease. The heart association recommends four servings of unsalted, unoiled nuts a week and warns against eating too many, since they are dense in calories.

The new research combines two studies that started in the 1980s on 76,464 female nurses and 42,498 male health professionals. They filled out surveys on food and lifestyle habits every two to four years, including how often they ate a serving (1 ounce) of nuts.

Study participants who often ate nuts were healthier — they weighed less, exercised more and were less likely to smoke, among other things. After taking these and other things into account, researchers still saw a strong benefit from nuts.

Compared with people who never ate nuts, those who had them less than once a week reduced their risk of death 7 percent; once a week, 11 percent; two to four times a week, 13 percent; and seven or more times a week, 20 percent.

“I’m very confident” the observations reflect a true benefit, Bao said. “We did so many analyses, very sophisticated ones,” to eliminate other possible explanations.

For example, they did separate analyses on smokers and non-smokers, heavy and light exercisers, and people with and without diabetes, and saw a consistent benefit from nuts.

At a heart association conference in Dallas this week, Penny Kris-Etherton, a Pennsylvania State University nutrition scientist, reviewed previous studies on this topic.

“We’re seeing benefits of nut consumption on cardiovascular disease as well as body weight and diabetes,” said Kris-Etherton, who has consulted for nut makers and also served on many scientific panels on dietary guidelines.

“We don’t know exactly what it is” about nuts that boosts health or which ones are best, she said. “I tell people to eat mixed nuts.”

Source: Dallas news

Aloe vera for winters

As the temperature begins to drop, and the skin begins to dry up, it’s vital to drink lots of water and use water-based organic products like aloe vera.  Due to aloe’s high water content (over 99 per cent water) it is a great way to hydrate, moisturize and rejuvenate the skin.

Aloe vera increases the elasticity of the skin making it more flexible through collagen and elastin repair.  It helps supply oxygen to the skin cells, increasing the strength and synthesis of skin tissue and induces improved blood flow. Aloe vera-based moisturisers should be used to keep your skin soft this winter as they prevent it from drying and keeps them fresh, soft and smooth.

Also, do not forget to drink as much water possible. In addition to that herbal teas and clear soups are more creative ways to get your daily H2O intake and flush out toxins.

Source: Deccan Chronicle