Health : How to Restart Your Workout Routine After a Break |
- How to Restart Your Workout Routine After a Break
- Health Buzz: Autism Study Was an 'Elaborate Fraud'
- Worried About Your Lung Cancer Risk? Why a Chest CT Scan May Not Be Wise
- How to Be a Better Parent in 2011
- Health Buzz: 1 in 5 Defibrillator Implant Patients Shouldn't Get Them
- Health Buzz: Is There a Depression Gene?
- Health Buzz: Healthier Habits Can Lower Cholesterol Years Later
- 6 Steps to Achieving Creativity in Business, Personal Life
- Health Buzz: Cancer Blood Test Moves Forward
| How to Restart Your Workout Routine After a Break Posted: 06 Jan 2011 02:33 PM PST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Health Buzz: Autism Study Was an 'Elaborate Fraud' Posted: 06 Jan 2011 09:48 AM PST Study Linking Childhood Vaccine to Autism a "Fraud," Charges British Journal A British doctor committed an "elaborate fraud" by faking data in a since-retracted 1998 study that linked autism to childhood vaccines. That's according to a report published Wednesday by the British Medical Journal that accuses Andrew Wakefield of misrepresenting or altering the medical histories of the 12 children he studied. Published in the journal Lancet, Wakefield's study, which linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, prompted thousands of parents to skip the shot. Some experts say immunization rates have never fully recovered. Reported U.S. measles cases hit a 12-year peak at 140 in 2008, and the majority of sick children were unvaccinated, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were later renounced by 10 of the 13 study authors and retracted by Lancet. In the new BMJ analysis, British journalist Brian Deer compared the 12 children's diagnoses to their hospital records and found that facts about all 12 had been altered. Wakefield claimed, for example, that the 12 children he studied were normal until they were vaccinated, but in fact, five had previously documented developmental problems. "Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield," BMJ journal editors wrote in a commentary, adding that the work "was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud." But Wakefield, who was stripped of his medical license in May, protested the allegations. "The study is not a lie. The findings that we have made have been replicated in five countries around the world," he told reporters on Wednesday, according to The Washington Post.
How to Be a Better Parent in 2011 If getting kids back in the groove after the holidays has you about to tear your hair out, you're not alone. U.S. News contributor Nancy Shute took heart from David Palmiter, a clinical psychologist and father of three children in Clarks Summit, Pa., whose new book, Working Parents, Thriving Families: 10 Strategies that Make a Difference (Sunrise River Press, $16.95), focuses on how hectic parents with limited time and energy can do better by their kids in 2011. Palmiter emphasizes parenting strategies that have been scientifically tested and proven effective. He tells U.S. News that the biggest is "one-on-one time with the kids. It's not 'quality time.' It's really paying attention to your child, and praising him or her. It's the difference between bowling and spending an hour looking your child in the eyes and telling her why she is important to you." But that's not all parents can do to keep their family glued together. "One of the best gifts you can give your children is your own peacefulness," Palmiter says. "It's incredibly important in terms of promoting kids' wellness. And it's also very hard for many parents to pull off, because they're so stressed about work, the economy, and jobs." [Read more: How to Be a Better Parent in 2011.] Hangover Cure? Hah. But These Tips May Help When it comes to hangovers, everyone has a swear-by-it remedy, from bingeing on cheeseburgers and fries (grease supposedly lines the stomach and slows alcohol absorption) to gulping spiked orange juice or a Bloody Mary (hair of the dog). Hundreds of others are free for the taking online, so why not pick one and get moving the day after you've had a few too many? Because "in terms of anything that's proven to, quote, cure a hangover, there isn't anything," says Michael Fingerhood, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. In 2005, researchers scoured studies as far back as the 1950s that addressed preventing or treating hangovers. They unearthed just eight that were worth a closer look, none of which could convincingly demonstrate success for their hangover tricks (such as taking a supplement of prickly-pear cactus or a yeast-vitamin pill), according to the report published in the British Medical Journal. That doesn't mean you have to be miserable all day, though. Experts say some old standbys will at least take the edge off a hangover and end it a little faster, U.S. News's Kurtis Hiatt reports. [Read more: Hangover Cure? Hah. But These Tips May Help.] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Worried About Your Lung Cancer Risk? Why a Chest CT Scan May Not Be Wise Posted: 06 Jan 2011 09:22 AM PST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| How to Be a Better Parent in 2011 Posted: 05 Jan 2011 02:35 PM PST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Health Buzz: 1 in 5 Defibrillator Implant Patients Shouldn't Get Them Posted: 05 Jan 2011 08:48 AM PST More Than 20Percent of Defibrilator Implants Shouldn't Have Been Done More than 20 percent of heart patients with implanted defibrillators shouldn't have received one, and face a greater rather than smaller risk of health complications and death. Patients who don't meet medical guidelines for an implant but get one anyway run roughly three times the risk of dying while hospitalized for the procedure than those who are qualified and receive one, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers analyzed the records of more than 110,000 people who received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD, between January 2006 and June 2009, and found that 22.5 percent of the procedures did not meet current criteria. An ICD can prevent sudden cardiac death in those with advanced heart failure by firing an electrical shock to jolt the heart back to a normal rhythm when it starts beating abnormally. But guidelines recommend against its use for patients who are recovering from a heart attack or bypass surgery, who have severe heart failure symptoms, or who have only recently been diagnosed with heart failure. According to the study's findings, however, nearly 40 percent of patients who received implants had suffered a heart attack in the previous 40 days, and 62 percent were newly diagnosed with heart failure. "Clearly there is a lack of knowledge and a lack of awareness of the guidelines, and some patients were harmed," lead researcher Sana M. Al-Khatib, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University, told Bloomberg. "More education is needed."
Want to Get in Shape? Take the Obama Challenge Remember when you were a schoolkid running a mile and groaning through push-ups to meet the president's physical fitness challenge? Now that you're all grown up you can sign up, along with your own kids, for the Obama version of the program, U.S. News reports. The latest challenge, part of first lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative to end childhood obesity, aims to get 1 million children and their parents on their feet and moving daily. Stick it out for two months or so and you earn an official Presidential Active Lifestyle Award. The PALA challenge requires adults to exercise for 30 minutes—an hour for kids—five days a week for six out of eight weeks. Or you can wear a pedometer and count your daily steps. The target for adults is 8,500 steps; for kids it's 11,000 for girls and 13,000 for boys. Sign up for free at Fitness.gov, where you can also log your activities. Online fitness tests can help you assess your endurance, muscle strength, and flexibility, and measure the progress you're making with your workouts. [Read more: Want to Get in Shape? Take the Obama Challenge.]
Is the Internet Bad for Your Brain? Hello? Web junkies? In The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, author Nicholas Carr contends that Web surfing is rewiring our minds, breaking our focus and creativity along the way, U.S. News's Michael Morella reports. "The computer screen bulldozes our doubts with its bounties and conveniences," Carr writes. "It is so much our servant that it would seem churlish to notice that it is also our master." Surveying the latest research in neuroscience and psychology—while mixing in philosophy and media history—Carr argues that digital distractions prey on our attention and ability to form new memories, thus preventing our minds from tapping their full intellectual and creative potential. Though some researchers believe that bouncing around the Web gives the mind valuable mental exercise, Carr worries that persistent multitasking just might "impede our ability to control our thoughts." [Read more: Is the Internet Bad for Brain Health?] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Health Buzz: Is There a Depression Gene? Posted: 04 Jan 2011 03:04 PM PST New Research Suggests a Gene Variant May Contribute to Depression Why do some of us develop depression while others don't? The answer may lie in our genes, suggests new research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. People with variations of a gene that transports serotonin—a brain chemical that influences mood, sexual desire, and appetite—may be at greater risk of becoming depressed—particularly after being exposed to stressful events, like childhood abuse or a medical illness, according to researchers who analyzed 54 studies involving 41,000 participants from 2001 to 2010. That doesn't mean we should press doctors for a genetic test, though: Scientists disagree about whether there truly exists a link between the serotonin-transporter gene, stress, and depression. A 2009 analysis of 14 studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no association, while a 2003 study of 800 subjects found the opposite. If you've been diagnosed with depression, lifestyle changes may offer some relief, U.S. News reported in 2009. From: Depressed and Coping: Treating Depression When Medication Fails Many mental-health practitioners are coming to believe that adjusting brain chemistry with medication isn't enough—that depression is a complex chronic disease, akin to diabetes, requiring lifestyle changes and ongoing monitoring to address underlying causes. As with diabetes, experts have begun to look for culprits in the 21st-century lifestyle. Might the isolating, sedentary, indoor computer culture explain, for example, why the disorder appears to be surging in young adults? Today's 20-somethings have a 1-in-4 lifetime risk of experiencing depression's hallmark black mood, joylessness, fatigue, and suicidal thoughts compared with the 1-in-10 risk of their grandparents' generation. Americans are 10 times as likely to have depression today as they were 60 years ago, a development that is not merely a result of increased awareness and diagnosis. There's certainly evidence that vigorous exercise has an effect on mood. Madhukar Trivedi, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and others have shown that burning off 350 calories three times a week in sustained, sweat-inducing activity can reduce symptoms of depression about as effectively as antidepressants. Brain-imaging studies indicate that exercise stimulates the growth of neurons in certain brain regions damaged during depression. And animal studies have found that physical exertion increases the production of brain molecules that improve connections between nerve cells and act as a natural antidepressant. Sunlight or light-box exposure often helps people prone to seasonal affective disorder. And there's no doubt that getting a decent night's sleep can lift the spirits. Nutrition may play a role, too: It's fairly well established that those who eat the most fish have the lowest rates of depression. Realizing that primitive societies like the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea experience virtually no depression, Stephen Ilardi, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, has been testing a cave-man-esque approach to treatment with promising results. His 14-week Therapeutic Lifestyle Change program entails large doses of simulated hunter-gatherer living in people suffering from prolonged, unremitting depression. Participants sign up for 35 minutes of aerobic exercise (running, walking briskly, biking) three days a week, at least 30 minutes of daily sunlight or exposure from a light box that emits 10,000 lux, eight hours of sleep per night, and a daily fish oil supplement containing 1,000 mg of the fatty acid EPA and 500 mg of the fatty acid DHA. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Health Buzz: Healthier Habits Can Lower Cholesterol Years Later Posted: 04 Jan 2011 12:16 PM PST Healthy Habits Can Improve Cholesterol Levels Between Youth And Adulthood Cholesterol levels can change for the better between youth and adulthood—depending on healthy lifestyle changes. The amount of bad cholesterol circulating in the blood and of triglycerides, a type of fat, vary based on lifestyle habits like eating, exercise, and smoking, according to a study published in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Australian researchers analyzed cholesterol and triglyceride levels of nearly 600 people in 1985, when they were 9, 12, or 15 years old, and again between 2004 and 2006, when they were in their 20s and 30s. They found that participants who had risky cholesterol levels when they were young had normal levels when remeasured—if they stopped smoking or lost weight. Those who put on excess weight, began smoking, or did not exercise were more likely to maintain high-risk levels into adulthood. "This research gives a very clear example of why we need to invest more in adolescent health and make it a higher priority," John Coleman, chairman of the Association for Young People's Health, told BBC News. "It is clear that young people's lifestyle choices have a long-term impact on their health, and it is cost-effective and sensible to work with them to encourage healthy habits." 6 Steps to Achieving Creativity in Business, Personal Life Suddenly creativity is big. You may not cash in as the next Andy Warhol or Taylor Swift, but tapping into your creative powers could boost your earnings—and you'll be happier, experts say. Numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Sears, have hired creativity consultants to help boost innovation, U.S. News reports. The number of business schools offering creativity classes has doubled in the past five years. "It's not enough to just be good at analytical evaluation," argues Yoram Wind, a professor of marketing who teaches a creativity course at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. And creative activity can relieve stress and enhance your mood, according to Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson, author of Your Creative Brain. Brain researchers theorize that coming up with something novel that's also useful—their definition of creativity—so fully engages attention that the brain doesn't have any resources left to devote to stress. What does it take to produce something truly original? The notion that creativity is the province of right-brain, left-handed artsy types is outdated, says Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and author of Emotional Intelligence. "The creative brain state accesses a whole range of connections throughout the brain," he says. In fact, the latest research suggests that less than a second before the proverbial light bulb switches on, a spike in gamma brain waves appears to bind cells in several regions of the brain into a new neural network. [Read more: 6 Steps to Achieving Creativity in Business, Personal Life.] Shape Up With a New Video Game Workout Health advocates have long decried video games for contributing to a sedentary culture. While those stereotypes might still hold true for some, many families' game consoles are fast becoming as suitable for the exercise room as for the den, U.S. News's Brian Burnsed reports. Microsoft's new Kinect peripheral for the popular Xbox 360 video game console uses the whole body as the controller and can be an effective, fun fitness tool. A camera tracks body movements to manipulate the action on the screen. For example, in the boxing mode for the game Kinect Sports, you throw real punches that are mirrored by your onscreen avatar in a digital boxing ring. Other games allow you to dance, drive a car, or negotiate obstacle courses. The system forces users to be active, burning calories as they play. The Kinect is just the latest innovation in motion-capture gaming. The Nintendo Wii, released in 2006, quickly became the nation's top-selling video game console because it appealed both to gamers and to families looking to stay active. The Wii and its competitor Move, which Sony released in September to use with its PlayStation 3, rely on handheld controllers to capture players' movements as they simulate playing games like tennis, ping-pong, or golf. [Read more: Shape Up With a New Video Game Workout.] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 6 Steps to Achieving Creativity in Business, Personal Life Posted: 03 Jan 2011 02:40 PM PST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Health Buzz: Cancer Blood Test Moves Forward Posted: 03 Jan 2011 12:39 PM PST Researchers Hopeful That New Cancer Blood Test Will Pan Out A new, hypersensitive cancer test could someday offer an efficient, tolerable alternative to needle biopsies, mammograms, and colonoscopies and allow doctors to better monitor the progress of their patients, experts say. Capable of detecting a single cancer cell among billions of healthy cells, the blood test is not only being touted as a new diagnostic tool, but as a way to study the effectiveness of different treatments, since doctors can use it to see if levels of abnormal cells have dropped. The test's architects at Massachusetts General Hospital are joining forces with healthcare company Johnson & Johnson in hopes of marketing the test within the next several years. "If you could find out quickly, 'this drug is working, stay on it,' or 'this drug is not working, try something else,' that would be huge," Daniel Haber, chief of Massachusetts General Hospital's cancer center and one of the test's inventors, told the Associated Press. The test also holds promise in personalizing medicine by helping to predict which treatments will work best against a particular patient's tumor. Four U.S. cancer centers will study the experimental test this year.
6 Common Myths and Misconceptions About Diabetes Nearly 24 million Americans—or 1 in 10 adults—have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which projects that by 2050, as many as 1 in 3 adults will have the disease. Diabetes is one of the major causes of heart disease, stroke, new cases of adult blindness, and leg and foot amputations not caused by injury, U.S. News reports. Those are facts. Yet there are many mistaken beliefs about diabetes. Sue McLaughlin, former president of healthcare and education at the American Diabetes Association, offered her opinion of what she says are the six most common myths and misconceptions about diabetes, based on an ADA survey of more than 2,000 Americans released in 2009. 1. Diabetes is not that serious. In fact, diabetes causes more deaths than breast cancer and HIV/AIDS combined, McLaughlin says. Still, people with type 2 diabetes—the most common form of the disease—may go a long while, even years, before being diagnosed because they may downplay their symptoms or write them off to other causes. So if you are making frequent trips to the bathroom at night; experience extreme thirst, overwhelming fatigue, or blurry vision; or notice that you keep getting infections, ask your doctor to test you for diabetes. An early diagnosis can help ward off complications. [Read more: 6 Common Myths and Misconceptions About Diabetes.] Work Out Now, Weigh Less in Middle Age Everybody knows the importance of exercise in keeping weight down. What's more surprising is that physical activity in the present may prevent weight gain many years into the future, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers who followed 3,554 people over two decades found that men who stayed highly active gained six pounds less on average after 20 years than their low-activity counterparts did. For women, the difference was a whopping 13 pounds. Waistlines were trimmer for both sexes in the high-activity groups as well. Those studied began as 18- to 30-year-olds. Their 38- to 50-year-old selves showed that consistent commitment to physical activity may mean fewer pounds tacked on during the years notoriously threatened by jiggly bellies. Highly active, moreover, doesn't necessarily mean marathoning or pumping iron for an hour, U.S. News's Kurtis Hiatt reports. While the study used a complex formula that assigned scores according to how long, how often, and how intense the participants' activities were, highly active was equivalent to spending roughly 2½ hours a week getting your heart pumping, like in a sport, brisk walking, or even gardening, says Arlene Hankinson, lead author of the study and an instructor in the department of preventative medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. [Read more: Work Out Now, Weigh Less in Middle Age.] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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