Life Style

Doctors Spend Very Little Time Talking About Sex With Teens

A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics has revealed that many doctors spend very little time discussing sex with their teenage patients – if they do at all. According to Counsel and Heal, researchers from Duke University analyzed the audio recordings of 253 annual doctors’ visits for adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17

A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics has revealed that many doctors spend very little time discussing sex with their teenage patients – if they do at all.

According to Counsel and Heal, researchers from Duke University analyzed the audio recordings of 253 annual doctors’ visits for adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. They found that the doctors discussed sex in only 65 percent of the visits, with the conversations lasting an average of 36 seconds. In the other 35 percent of visits, the topic of sex wasn’t brought up at all.

The study’s authors argue that such limited exchanges won’t help meet the “sexual health prevention needs of teens.”

“It’s hard for physicians to treat adolescents and help them make healthy choices about sex if they don’t have these conversations,” said lead author Stewart Alexander, associate professor of medicine at Duke. “For teens who are trying to understand sex and sexuality, not talking about sex could have huge implications.”

The study also revealed that only 4 percent of the teenage patients had prolonged discussions about sex with their doctors. Additionally, the female patients were twice as likely as their male counterparts to spend more time talking about sex.

Source: all news

Why more boomers are getting cataract surgery at a younger age

 

On the morning I got cataract surgery, my ophthalmologist joked it was his “young day,” since all his surgical patients were under 70.

I’m 43. I first noticed the haziness in my left eye about this time last year and thought it was a dirty contact. A few months later, I went to my doctor and got a huge shock.

My doctor appeared just as surprised – partly because of my age at the time, 42, and partly because I showed no sign of a cataract at an exam just six months earlier.

Only one percent of all cataract surgery patients are as young as me, according to Dr. David Chang, clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. But many more people in their 40s probably have cataracts already forming in one or both eyes and just don’t know it yet.

A cataract is a clouding of the eye’s lens. It’s the most common cause of blindness in the world — and it’s also a normal part of aging. More than 3.3 million such surgeries are performed in the country each year, said Chang, who described it as “the most common operation performed anywhere on the body.” And a recent study by the Mayo Clinic indicates an increasing number of people are having cataract surgery — and are doing so at “younger” ages. The study, which examined cataract surgeries done from 2005 to 2011 in Minnesota’s Olmsted County, found that about 20 percent of those surgeries were in patients younger than 65.

By age 80, more than half of all Americans either have a cataract or have had cataract surgery, according to the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute.

“When does it happen? Well, we could say it’s pretty common in our 50s, but there are plenty of people who have a full head of hair in their 70s. There are also a lot of people who get bald spots or start to see their hairlines recede in their 30s,” said Chang, chairman of the cataract guidelines committee for the AAO.

It took about a year from the time I first noticed hazy vision to when I finally scheduled my surgery. In between, I often felt my left eye was looking through a dirty, Vaseline-smudged window. Since it is most notable in bright light, the cataract was a nuisance when I played with my kids outdoors or drove them around on sunny days. While at the beach last summer, I felt like I was looking through a sand storm.

Shortly afterward, I had reached my annoyance threshold. That’s a similar trait doctors see among their “younger” patients, whose active lifestyles make them less willing to put up with a cataract’s inconvenience, said Dr. Rosa Braga-Mele, who chairs the cataract clinical committee of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

While the majority of cataract patients are in their 70s and 80s, Braga-Mele said she recently noticed an increase in patients between 50-65 – a range reflecting the heart of the baby boomer population, a generation living longer and less tolerant of any hurdle to their independence.

“Whereas my grandmother or even my mother might have waited until she was in her 80s because she didn’t really need her vision for what she was doing … the baby boomer population, the minute their vision starts to drop, says, ‘Well, this isn’t normal, I can’t do my job. There has to be a solution to help me function at the level I’m used to functioning at,” she said.

That was the case for Katie Roberts. At 37, she is far younger than any Boomer, but she understands why many of them would elect to have surgery as early as possible. The Morgan Hill, Calif., firefighter has had cataract surgery on both of her eyes; she was 32 when she had the first procedure.

Unlike my cataract — which had no physical cause or genetic disposition — the ones Roberts developed were a side effect from steroid medication she received in her 20s for an eye disease, pars planitis. When she first showed signs of a cataract, she initially thought she was experiencing a flare-up. Once she got the correct diagnosis, she ended up getting surgery about a month later.

“Because I have to drive a fire engine and drive at night, with lots of lights and everything going on, I got it done as soon as it was bothering me, just enough to where I was aware of it,” she said.

Dr. Bonnie An Henderson, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine, hasn’t seen the average age of her patients dip, but she believes several factors may explain why more people are having surgery. One reason is the proliferation of cell phones, computers and tablets over recent years.

“Patients may detect even a small decrease in their visual function earlier than before,” Henderson said.

In addition, diagnostic tools are more sophisticated than they were a generation ago, making it easier for ophthalmologists to evaluate and diagnose cataract severity, she said.

All doctors agree there isn’t a specific time when surgery is needed to remove cataracts. One person may not find it a bother, while someone else with the same rate of progression may find it completely disruptive.

I clearly remember the advice my doctor gave me about when to give him the green light for surgery.

“There’s no magic number when you have to get it done,” he said. “It’s whenever you’re ready to cry ‘Uncle.’”

Source: Today health

Google Glass surgeon’s new best friend? What one surgeon is saying about tech

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It’s hard to think of a way we live that Google hasn’t touched. And now, you can add surgery to the
list.

It all starts with Google Glass, which lets an expert lend a helping hand in the operating room, even
when he or she is in another state.

At the University of Alabama-Birmingham, orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Brent Ponce, prepared for a shoulder
replacement. Behind his face shield he wore Google Glass — the wearable computer. Its built-in camera
streamed live video of the procedure to another surgeon 150 miles away in Atlanta, where Dr. Phani
Dantuluri not only watched the surgery, but offered a virtual hand.

A ghostly projection of Dantuluri’s hands was superimposed over what Ponce saw on the operating table.
The merged images appeared in Ponce’s Google Glass display.
Asked what it was like when he first put on the Google Glass, Ponce said, “There’s a little bit of a
light bulb experience. We were able to say, not just ‘go left or right’ or ‘up or down,’ but we were
able to say ‘right here,’ ‘right there,’ ‘go faster from here to here’.”

On one day, Ponce and Dantuluri were testing Google Glass paired with VIPAAR, a videoconferencing
platform that allows users to interact with the picture.

It may be another year before the combined technology goes mainstream. Ponce is the only doctor testing
it in surgery.
Ponce said, “With this technology, if I’m struggling, another surgeon is able to say, ‘Hey, get your
head in the game. Let’s do this, let’s do this.’ And they’re able to walk through it together. So it’s a
little bit more of a safety net.”

Asked if it turns surgery into collaboration, Ponce replied, “Without question.”

VIPAAR plans to expand the pilot program to include more surgeons by the end of next year.

Source: cbs news

Small lifestyle changes ‘lower type 2 diabetes risk’

Modest lifestyle changes in diet and activity by South Asian families improve their chance of losing weight to lower their risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a study.

Making moderate improvements could help to improve their health and wellbeing, an Edinburgh clinical trial has found.

The Edinburgh University study was carried out in their homes as opposed to hospital clinics.

It is the first of its kind in the UK to focus on South Asian cultures.

Patients lost weight and reduced their hip and waist measurements and there were indications they were less likely to become diabetic by the end of the trial, which focused on people of Indian and Pakistani-origin.

Researchers said ethnic background and culture played an important role in shaping attitudes and behaviours towards diet and exercise.

National guidelines show South Asian people place strong emphasis on family life and eating together.

Body mass index

From a young age, South Asians are said to be sensitive or at risk of health problems linked to obesity.

Men from Pakistani and Indian communities are three times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than the general population, despite having similar body mass indexes, scientists said.

The three-year trial monitored 171 people of Indian and Pakistani background living in Scotland who were already at high risk of diabetes as shown by blood tests done at the start of the trial.

Participants were given detailed advice by dieticians and offered culturally-appropriate resources to help them manage their weight through diet and exercise.

At the same time, control groups were given basic advice, which was not culturally specific.

Professor Raj Bhopal, from Edinburgh University’s centre for population health sciences, said: “These differing approaches show us that a more family-centred strategy, with culturally tailored lifestyle advice, can produce significant benefits to people’s health through weight loss.”

The trial is published in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

Source: Pakistan Today

Tech startups create virtual farmers markets

Sara Pasquinelli doesn’t shop at the grocery store much anymore. The busy mother of two young boys buys nearly all her food from a new online service that delivers to her front door _ but it doesn’t bring just any food.

The emerging tech startup specializes in dropping off items that Pasquinelli probably would only be able to find at her local farmers market.

Minutes after her weekly GoodEggs.com order arrived at her San Francisco home, Pasquinelli unpacked bags and boxes of finger limes, organic whole milk, kiwi fruit, beef short ribs, Dungeness crab and pastured eggs.

“I don’t even remember the last time I went to the store for anything other than bananas and string cheese,” said Pasquinelli, an attorney who started using the service about a year ago.

The San Francisco-based Good Eggs is among a new crop of startups using technology to bolster the market for locally produced foods that backers say are better for consumer health, farmworkers, livestock and the environment. These online marketplaces are beginning to change the way people buy groceries and create new markets for small farmers and food makers.

“It’s a new way of connecting producers with consumers,” said Claire Kremen, a conservation biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “The more alternatives people have access to for buying food outside the industrial agricultural regime, the better it can be.”

The Good Eggs website features attractive photos of offerings such as Hachiya persimmons, chanterelle mushrooms, grass-fed beef steaks, pureed baby food and gluten-free poppy seed baguettes. It also has pictures and descriptions of the farmers and food makers. Prices are similar to what shoppers pay at a farmers market, and customers can pick up their orders at designated locations or have them delivered for $3.99 _ usually two days after they’re placed.

“There’s this wave of entrepreneurship and creativity happening in the food world, and Good Eggs is all about bringing that high-quality production right to your door,” said CEO Rob Spiro, who co-founded the startup after he sold his last company, a social search service called Aardvark, to Google Inc. for $50 million in 2010.

Good Eggs offers more varieties of fruits and vegetables than most supermarkets, but the selection is limited to what can be grown and made locally, so you can’t buy bananas in San Francisco in December.

The service started in the San Francisco Bay Area last year and recently launched in New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. There are plans to expand into more markets next year.

The founders, Silicon Valley engineers, say they want to grow the market for local food that’s led to the proliferation of farmers markets and community-supported agriculture programs that deliver boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables.

“There are a lot of people out there who want to eat locally, who want to support their local community, who want to support the producers who are doing things right, but it’s just not very convenient,” said Chief Technology Officer Alon Salant, who ran a software consulting firm before starting Good Eggs with Spiro.

The company is entering an increasingly competitive market for online grocery delivery. Major retailers such as Walmart and Safeway deliver groceries and Amazon launched its AmazonFresh service in San Francisco this month. Another San Francisco startup called Instacart allows customers to order groceries from local supermarkets and delivers in as little as an hour.

Good Eggs currently sells food from about 400 local producers that meet the company’s standards for environmental sustainability, workplace conditions and transparent sourcing of ingredients. Produce is usually picked one or two days before it’s delivered.

The startup is helping farmers such as Ryan Casey, who runs a small organic farm that grows more than 50 types of fruits, vegetables and flowers. His Blue House Farm in Pescadero, about 45 miles south of San Francisco, mainly sells its produce at farmers markets and through community agriculture programs, but Good Eggs makes up a growing share of business.

“They’re really good at marketing and finding people and connecting people with the food, which leaves me more time to do the growing,” said Casey, standing in a field of leafy greens.

Good Eggs has attracted enthusiastic foodies like Shelley Mainzer, who does nearly all her grocery shopping on the website and often emails producers with questions and comments.

After her weekly order arrived at her downtown San Francisco office, she pulled out organic cauliflower and Romanesco broccoli she bought from Blue House Farm.

“I can’t eat store-bought food anymore because it just doesn’t taste the same,” said Mainzer, who works as an executive assistant at a small investment bank. “You basically remember what things are supposed to taste like when you eat these fresh vegetables and fruits.”

Source: Journal Times

Your Wireless Router Could Be Murdering Your Houseplants

Are you slowly killing your houseplants? Probably. But there might be a reason other than neglect that they’re all yellow and wilting: your Wi-Fi router.

An experiment by a handful of high school students in Denmark has sparked some serious international interest in the scientific community.

Five ninth-grade girls at Hjallerup School in North Jutland, Denmark, noticed they had trouble concentrating after sleeping with their mobile phones at their bedsides. They tried to figure out why. The school obviously doesn’t have the equipment to test human brain waves, so the girls decided to do a more rudimentary experiment.

They placed six trays of garden cress seeds next to Wi-Fi routers that emitted roughly the same microwave radiation as a mobile phone. Then they placed six more trays of seeds in a separate room without routers. The girls controlled both environments for room temperature, sunlight and water.

After 12 days, they found the garden cress seeds in the router-less room had exploded into bushy greenery, while the seeds next to the Wi-Fi routers were brown, shriveled and even mutated. See for yourself:

Teacher Kim Horsevad told the Daily Dot that her students did the test twice with the same results. She was quick to point out that while the students did the experiment to test only one variable to the best of their ability, it is a high school experiment and this isn’t a professional study.

“Some of the local debate has been whether the effects were due the cress seeds drying up because of heat from the computers or Access Points used in the experiment, which is a suggestion I can thoroughly refute,” Horsevad said. “The pupils were painstakingly careful in keeping the conditions for both groups similar. The cress seeds in both groups were kept sufficiently moist during the whole experiment, and the temperature were controlled thermostatically. The computers were placed so that the heat would not affect the seeds, which was verified by temperature measurements. Still, there may be confounders which neither the pupils or I have been aware of, but I cannot imagine what they would be.”

She said the results are clearly dramatic and could trigger additional research. Two scientists, neuroscience professor Olle Johanssen at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Dr. Andrew Goldsworthy at the Imperial College in London, have both expressed an interest in the experiment and may repeat it in a professional lab environment.

Perhaps coolest of all, the students were awarded for their work at the Danish national science fair.

Source: mashable

How to Keep Your Kitchen Germ-Free

Most of us practically live in our kitchens, but if we’re not careful bacteria can take up residence there too, says cleaning pro Laura Dellutri, author of Speed Cleaning 101. “It’s the busiest germ factory in your house.” Here, how to fight back.Countertop

The problem: You bake a cake and spill some batter with raw egg in it, and don’t get it all wiped up. Later you make a turkey sandwich on the same spot.

Fix: Use a disinfecting wipe or spray after any food prep to kill lingering bacteria. To truly banish the yucky stuff, the cleanup-product label should say that it kills 99.9% of germs and bacteria, Dellutri says.

Faucet filter
The problem: You bump the dirty dishrag against the faucet as you’re rinsing it out, or dirty water or food splashes up on it. Bacteria can grow, and so can lime-scale residue if you have hard water.

Fix: Take out the filter and soak it in white vinegar overnight once a week.

Cutting board
The problem: It’s used for everything from chopping scallions to slicing roast beef.

Fix: After washing with hot soapy water and rinsing, spray the board with a mixture of one teaspoon of bleach to 16 ounces of water that you keep in a clearly labeled spray bottle. Then rinse the board with hot water or toss it in the dishwasher on high.

The “cleanest” boards? Dellutri says glass or plastic are best because they’re nonporous and most resistant to germs. If you love wood, choose the dishwasher-safe kind that’s been treated with Microban, an antimicrobial compound. Whatever the material, throw out your board if it’s very worn or has lots of knife-cut indentations on it; they can trap bacteria.

Dish towel
The problem: You rinse your pieces of chicken and wipe your hands on the towel before continuing to cook. Salmonella alert!

Fix: During food prep with raw meat, use paper towels (not cloth) and toss them. And wash hands immediately with soap and water.

Knife block
The problem: You use a knife to clean a piece of fish, then rinse it and return it—wet—to the knife block. That can cause mold, which can grow in just 24 to 48 hours.

Fix: Scrub your knives with dish-washing liquid and hot water, then wipe them thoroughly with a dry cloth before putting them into the knife block. Better yet, keep your knives in a drawer or on a magnet strip.

Sink
The problem: All the stuff you rinse in the sink—shrimp, the turkey—leave behind bacteria, juices, and blood.

Fix: Disinfect with bleach and water right after you’ve cooked with raw meat, eggs, or poultry.

Sponge
The problem: You use it to wipe up everything from crumbs to meat juices—and then put it back in a holder or on the edge of the sink.

Fix: Clean your sponges every few days by soaking them in a bowl of water with one teaspoon of bleach. Or zap the dirty sponge in the microwave (place it in a bowl and cover it with water) for two to three minutes. (Don’t do this if the sponge has a metal scrubber side).

Those leftovers
The problem: While you’re busy cleaning the kitchen, the leftovers sit out too long.

Fix: Stick ’em in the fridge right away. If they’re warm, leave the lid off to chill faster. Food that’s between 40 and 140 degrees F allows bacteria to grow much faster; the goal is to get leftovers below 40 degrees as quickly as possible. After reheating, stir, and use a thermometer to make sure they’re 165 degrees, the temp at which bacteria is killed
Source: Healthy Living

 

Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds For the Better

How technology boosts our cognitive abilities — making us smarter, more productive, and more creative than ever before It’s undeniable: technology is changing the way we think. But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson votes yes.

The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and investigation. We learn more and retain information longer, write and think with global audiences in mind, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter and better connected, both as individuals and as a society.

In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation — from the printing press to the telegraph — has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old. Thompson introduces us to a cast of extraordinary characters who augment their minds in inventive ways.

There’s the seventy-six-year-old millionaire who digitally records his every waking moment, giving him instant recall of the events and ideas of his life going back decades. There are the courageous Chinese students who mounted an online movement that shut down a $1.6 billion toxic copper plant.

There are experts and there are amateurs, including a global set of gamers who took a puzzle that had baffled HIV scientists for a decade and solved it collaboratively — in only one month. But Smarter Than You Think isn’t just about pioneers, nor is it simply concerned with the world we inhabit today. It’s about our future.

How are computers improving our memory? How will our social “sixth sense” change the way we learn? Which tools are boosting our intelligence — and which ones are hindering our progress? Smarter Than You Think embraces and interrogates this transformation, offering a provocative vision of our shifting cognitive landscape.

Source: Amazon

A technology can help detect drowsy drivers

A Dutch luxury bus company is testing technology that monitors whether a driver is becoming drowsy.

Royal Beuk BV said Tuesday it is outfitting 20 vehicles from six different charter vacation bus lines with a system designed by Australian company Seeing Machines.

It uses infrared light and a camera to register eye movements to see whether a driver’s gaze is distracted from the road for too long, or if he is blinking progressively more slowly — signs he may be close to nodding off.

If the system’s software algorithms determine there’s a problem, it will first sound an alarm for the driver. Further alarms will pull in human assistance or intervention

“What we see is that drivers learn very quickly not to be distracted from the road,” Ken Kroeger, the CEO of Seeing Machines, said in a telephone interview. “However, you can’t train someone to not be tired.”

Other technologies with a similar goal are on the market.

Mercedes and Volvo have both introduced automobile systems that measure drowsiness by analyzing steering wheel movements, while Ford uses cameras to check whether a car is drifting out of its lane.

Cheaper solutions include ear-mounted devices that sound an alarm if a head has fallen forward, and a variety of smar tphone apps that try to predict sleepiness or just keep a sleepy driver awake.

After completing trials during this winter and next summer’s holiday seasons, Beuk will act as European distributor for Seeing Machines.

Canberra-based Seeing Machines has previously signed deals with Caterpillar and BHP Billiton. The industrial version of the systems cost up to $20,000 each — in vehicles that can cost more than a million. The slimmed-down version going into the buses will cost less than $5,000, and the company hopes eventually to market them to the trucking industry as well.

Fatigued drivers are a major cause of road accidents, said University of Pittsburgh Professor Timothy Monk, who studies the effect of sleep disturbances. He said he couldn’t speak to the merits of the Seeing Machines system Beuk is installing, but he applauded the effort.

“We’re just starting to recognize that driving drowsy is a lot like driving drunk, only there’s no social taboo on it,” he said. “But it’s just as dangerous, and you’re just as dead at the end of it.”

Source: fox news

Poor sleep affects mood, lifestyle in obese

Scientists have linked inadequate sleep to mood disturbances and lower quality of life in extremely obese people, said a study.

“There was a clear association between the sleep problems such as short sleep duration, and the psychological disorders, and with quality of life,” said G. Neil Thomas, lead supervisor, study methodology lead, and reader in epidemiology at the Department of Public Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Birmingham in Britain.

The study results appear in the December issue of the journal Sleep, reports the Science Daily.

“This study emphasizes the need for physicians to conduct routine screenings for sleep problems among people with severe obesity,” said M. Safwan Badr, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

“Improving sleep quality, and quantity will provide a physical, mental, and emotional boost for people, who are making the difficult lifestyle changes involved in managing obesity.”

Source: Times of India