Jul 10
18
Would you get an Alzheimer’s test?
Greg Kalkwarf was a teenager when his grandfather told him and his brother, with increasing anger and frustration, “Dean, get out there and milk the cows!”
There were indeed cows at his grandparents’ farm, but Dean — Kalkwarf ’s uncle — wasn’t there, and the grandchildren weren’t supposed to be milking them.
“The confusion or the memory loss of Alzheimer’s — now as I look back, it’s like, that’s what was going on,” said Kalkwarf, 39, a marketing representative in Denver, Colorado. His grandfather died from Alzheimer’s complications, and now his mother has it at 65. “It’s saddening and disheartening to watch someone you love disappear like that,” he said.
Kalkwarf is one of many children of the 5.3 million people living with Alzheimer’s in the United States who face the terrifying possibility of inheriting a predisposition to the disease. Now that there are tests in the works for early detection of brain injury due to Alzheimer’s, as well as other biological markers of the disease, the question becomes: Would you want to know?
When Anne Feeley was diagnosed in April 2006 with an aggressive form of brain cancer, doctors told her to prepare for the worst.
But Feeley was determined not to take the diagnosis lying down.
Her psychiatrist told her that most children who suffer from cancer do best when they can “forget” they have the disease.
So instead of retreating to her bed, Feeley began working with a personal trainer the week she was released from the hospital, running and doing yoga to build her strength and endurance — even while sporting staples in her head from the surgery to remove her tumor. Within a year, she completed a half-marathon.
Sandra Gordon is dreading menopause. The 46-year-old from Weston, Connecticut, watched her mother’s memory falter in her mid-50s, due to changing hormone levels. “Every time I get my period I say to myself, ‘Yes! I’m so relieved!’ ” says Gordon.
She’s not alone. Many women recall their mothers’ hot flashes, sleepless nights, or unexpected mood swings — not to mention thinning hair, sagging skin, and wrinkles — with apprehension.
But hearing your mother’s account of menopause can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, says women’s health expert Christiane Northrup, M.D., the author of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause.”
“One of my patients said to me, ‘My mother always told me the best years of her life started after menopause, and therefore I looked forward to it and never had a single problem.’ Another told me, ‘My mother told me this is the worst thing that can ever happen to you and I’m terrified,’ ” she says.
Either way, your mother’s menopause isn’t always a predictor of what your experience will be. It’s not all hereditary, and there are a few things you can do to make your own transition easier.
You may want to think twice before strapping on those sky-high Manolos.
A new study shows that regularly wearing high heels can cause muscle and tendon changes in your legs — to the point where wearing flats or flip-flops can be painful.
Wearing two-inch heels (or higher) five or more days a week shrinks a woman’s calf muscle fibers by 13 percent, on average. It also thickens her Achilles tendon — which attaches the calf muscle to the heel — by 22 percent, according to the study, which was published Thursday in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
These changes alter the resting position of the ankle, causing the foot to point down more than normal. For some habitual high-heel wearers, this can make switching from stilettos to flats a shock, says the lead author of the study, Robert Csapo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna’s Centre of Sport Sciences and University Sports, in Austria.
When most people think of suicide, they think of psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. But new research suggests that lung trouble may also play a role.
Two new studies conducted in Asia and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry report that asthma — and even days of unusually bad air pollution — appear to increase the risk of suicide.
As improbable as the link may sound, researchers suggest that respiratory problems may worsen a person’s mental state.
In the air pollution study — the first to examine a possible connection with suicide — researchers in South Korea tracked air quality and suicides in seven cities during 2004.
More than 4,300 suicides were reported that year. Just under half of those who committed suicide had at least one chronic health condition, such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or mental illness.
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
The Russian capital’s shiny new metro station is called Dostoevskaya, after author Fyodor Dostoevsky. But that’s not what’s getting the buzz in the international press.
The Moscow station has grayscale mosaics depicting scenes from Dostoevsky’s stories, which are characteristically dark and violent. One image shows the “Crime and Punishment” protagonist murdering two women with an ax, and another shows a man holding a gun to his head. The latter isn’t the focal point of the station; it’s one of several artistic renderings of Dostoevsky’s fiction on the walls.
Still, the artwork has been raising eyebrows among mental health professionals and bloggers alike. The question remains: Could this subway station become a place that encourages suicidal behavior?
By the CNN Wire Staff
A prominent Food and Drug Administration researcher sharply criticized a safety study by the manufacturer of the diabetes drug Avandia on Tuesday as an FDA panel weighed whether to yank the drug from the market.
The study, dubbed RECORD by GlaxoSmithKline, came under attack throughout the first of two days of hearings by the 33-member FDA advisory committee.
“You can’t trust it, and if we do trust it, we’re engaging in the willing suspension of disbelief,” said Dr. David Graham, the FDA scientist who first flagged deadly side effects of the painkiller Vioxx.
Graham’s report followed a strongly worded FDA report last week that called the RECORD study “inappropriate and biased.” It accused Glaxo of repeatedly submitting sloppy data and failing to follow up on reports of problems among patients, including deaths.
The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs will hold a hearing Tuesday afternoon into the safety lapses at the John Cochran VA Medical Center in Missouri.
The hospital is under fire because it may have exposed more than 1,800 veterans to life-threatening diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.
The center in St. Louis, Missouri, recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan.
Carnahan said in late June that he was calling for a investigation into the issue and had sent a letter to President Obama about it.
Jul 10
14
Hot flashes? Losing weight may help
Overweight women who experience hot flashes — the uncomfortable flushing and sweating spells that accompany menopause — may be able to cool those symptoms by losing weight, a new study suggests.
“If you’re a woman who is overweight or obese, you can substantially improve your hot flashes by losing weight through diet and exercise,” says Alison Huang, M.D., the lead author of the study and a professor of internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“Weight loss isn’t just something that will benefit your long-term health 10, 20, or 30 years from now,” she adds. “It can make a real difference in your symptoms and quality of life right now.”
Previous research has shown that women with higher body-mass indexes tend to experience worse hot flashes. Until now, however, few studies have tried to measure the immediate effect that weight loss has on symptoms.
In restaurants in this township outside Cape Town, South Africa, barbecue grills crackle with chains of sausage, marinated chicken quarters and boulder-sized slabs of beef and lamb.
Organ meats — livers, lungs and hearts — are sold in bustling marketplaces.
In the city, customers order fried chicken, meat pies, biltong (beef jerky), French fries, sausages called boerewors and burgers, a combination of Western and South African fast foods.
Along with growing prosperity, a culture of high-fat foods has taken hold in urban South Africa. In a country where malnutrition is one of the major causes of children’s deaths, South Africa is also experiencing an increase in obesity-related conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.
Jul 10
10
‘Angels’ fight cancer on the road
For years, Kathy Broussard flew her single-engine Piper Cherokee across Texas, bringing critically ill patients to Houston for life-saving medical treatments.
“I would pick up patients and drop them off … and they would call a cab, and that was how it was done,” said Broussard, who was part of a group of volunteer pilots who flew in patients from all over Texas.
In 1999, one of her frequent-flyer patients, Eva, called Broussard and said she wouldn’t be coming in.
“She started crying and says, ‘Kathy, I don’t have cab fare.’ ”
Houston, Texas, is home to many medical centers, including MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s premier cancer treatment facilities. But cab fare from Houston’s main airports to the treatment centers can range from $50 to more than $100 each way.
Jul 10
10
Are hospitals deadlier in July?
More than 16,000 U.S. medical school graduates are awarded M.D. degrees each year, and many enter their residency programs at teaching hospitals in July. Now, a growing body of research suggests that month might be a more deadly time in U.S. hospitals.
According to a recent study from the University of California, San Diego, deaths from medication errors increase by 10 percent during July, a so-called July effect as students graduate from medical school and enter residency programs.
Researchers examined more than 240,000 death certificates of people who died of complications from medication errors between 1979 and 2006, and found mortality rates consistently spiked in July, especially in counties with teaching hospitals.
“No one has been able to suggest anything else besides the appearance of new medical residents. That’s the first month they start their new jobs and have expanded autonomy,” says David Phillips, a professor of sociology and lead author of the study. He says although it’s possible that the increase can be linked to administrative or other events specific to July, the most notable link is the start of new medical residents.
It was prom night, May 2009, and Linda Rivera of Las Vegas, Nevada, was making goodies for her twin sons’ party.
Breaking out a tub of cookie dough, she nibbled on a couple of bites as she portioned scoop after scoop onto the baking sheet. She never thought much about it. She had made cookies from refrigerated cookie dough a dozen times before.
The party went off without a snag. And Linda went on with life. But two days later, she began to feel sick — really sick.
“I felt like I had the cold, the flu, something like that ” she said. “It seemed like it would pass but I started throwing up. I even had blood in my stool.”
It got so bad, her husband, Richard, took her to the hospital. Physicians in the emergency room diagnosed irritable bowel syndrome and sent her home. But she didn’t get better. Her husband knew something was wrong. “She was vomiting every five minutes.”
She told him, “If I have to go through this one more day, I will die,” he said.
Flawed, limited and inaccurate. The complaints against the body mass index are many.
Among them: The BMI, which measures weight relative to height, doesn’t accurately calculate body fat. It deems athletes or muscular people to be obese and underestimates body fat in older people.
But it’s inexpensive and simple, so the BMI continues to be the public health agencies’ standard for assessing for obesity.
A study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics suggests another simple, straightforward measurement could be used to supplement the BMI: neck circumference.
Parents who believe that playing video games is less harmful to their kids’ attention spans than watching TV may want to reconsider — and unplug the Xbox. Video games can sap a child’s attention just as much as the tube, a new study suggests.
Elementary school children who play video games more than two hours a day are 67 percent more likely than their peers who play less to have greater-than-average attention problems, according to the study, which appears in the journal Pediatrics.
Playing video games and watching TV appear to have roughly the same link to attention problems, even though video games are considered a less passive activity, the researchers say.
“Video games aren’t less likely than television to be related to attention problems,” says the lead author of the study, Edward Swing, a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology at Iowa State University, in Ames. “They were at least as strong as television at predicting attention problems.”
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