CMS to Review Gender Change Surgery

WASHINGTON -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it would reconsider covering gender change surgery under Medicare for patients with gender identity disorder.

Formerly called transsexual surgery, the procedure is not currently reimbursed by Medicare, under a policy dating back to 1981. At that time, the agency determined that gender change surgery was "experimental" and therefore not eligible for coverage.

The new review was prompted by two individuals who wrote to CMS, arguing that gender identity disorder and surgical gender change treatment were now accepted in medical practice. One of the petitioners cited a 2008 American Medical Association resolution backing "public and private health insurance coverage" for treatment of gender identity disorder.

CMS's decision to reconsider coverage of surgical treatment triggers an initial 30-day public comment period, which will end April 27. In announcing the review, the agency said it was "particular interested in clinical studies and other scientific information relevant to the topic under review."

In general, CMS requires evidence that a treatment is both effective and medically necessary before it will approve Medicare coverage.

Although allowance of Medicare coverage would probably benefit few transgender individuals directly, such determinations often affect coverage policies for Medicaid and private health plans.

News Source: www.medpagetoday.com

Valley fever on the rise

Cases of valley fever — a respiratory fungal infection that causes flu-like symptoms and can linger for years or even decades after a person’s exposed — have been climbing steadily in California and other parts of the southwestern United States over the past decade, according to a CDC report released last week.

That might not seem like much of an issue for Bay Area residents, since the fungus that causes it — called Coccidioides — isn’t really found around here. But it’s widespread in the soil of the Central Valley and other parts of California, and even driving down the dusty I-5 on the way to Los Angeles can cause an infection, says Dr. David Stevens, a Stanford professor and chief of infectious disease at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, who has studied valley fever for more than a decade.

PMost people recover from valley fever without any treatment at all, but some can suffer serious, even deadly effects.

Symptoms of valley fever include fever, coughing, chest pains and fatigue. For more information about why reports of the illness have been climbing, read our story here.

News Source: blog.sfgate.com

China bird flu: Two men die in Shanghai

Two men have died in the Chinese city of Shanghai, after contracting a strain of bird flu not previously known in humans, Chinese officials say.

The men, aged 27 and 87, both fell ill with the H7N9 strain in February and died some weeks later in March, Xinhua news agency reported.

A woman of 35 who caught the virus elsewhere is said to be critically ill.

It is unclear how the strain spread, but the three did not infect each other or any close contacts, officials say.

While both men who died were in Shanghai, the third victim was reported in Chuzhou in the eastern province of Anhui.

According to China's National Health and Family Planning Commission, all three became ill with coughs and fevers before developing pneumonia.

Commission experts said on Saturday the cause had been identified as H7N9, a strain of avian flu not thought to have been transmitted to humans before.

There is no vaccine against the strain, the commission said, adding it was currently testing to assess its ability to infect humans.

Another strain of bird flu, H5N1, has led to more than 360 confirmed human deaths since 2003 and the deaths of tens of millions of birds.

The World Health Organization says that most avian flu viruses do not infect humans and the majority of H5N1 cases have been associated with contact with infected poultry.

News Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Bacteria find 'key to treating obesity without surgery'

Weight loss after gastric band surgery may be partly caused by changes to micro-organisms that live in the gut, say US researchers.

A study in mice has shown that surgery causes different types of bacteria to colonise the gut.

Transferring samples of those bacteria into healthy mice caused them to rapidly lose weight without surgery.

But the Harvard University researchers said they could not yet explain the mechanism behind their results.

There are differences in the bacteria in the stomachs and intestines of obese people compared with those who are of a normal weight.

And in people who have had gastric bypass operations to help them lose weight, the types of microbes that are found in the gut change.

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Start Quote

The ability to achieve even some of these effects without surgery would give us an entirely new way to treat the critical problem of obesity.”

Dr Lee Kaplan
Harvard Medical School
In the latest study, researchers compared three groups of obese mice on a high-calorie diet.

One group was given a gastric bypass
One was given a sham operation, and the high-calorie diet continued
One was given the same fake operation but then fed a low-calorie diet to promote weight loss
A week later the mice who had undergone the real obesity surgery had different bacteria in their guts, with an increase in types usually seen in lean individuals and a drop in types associated with obesity.

Three weeks after surgery they had lost about 30% of their bodyweight, the researchers reported in Science Translational Medicine.

There was little change in micro-organisms present in the mice who had had sham operations, even though the group on the low-calorie diet lost just as much weight as the mice who had had the bypass surgery.

Metabolism impact
Researchers then transferred samples from the guts of the three groups of mice into other germ-free mice.

Those who received bacteria from the bypass mice, lost a significant amount of weight in two weeks but the others saw no change.

It is not yet clear how the microbes influence weight loss, but one theory is that they have an impact on metabolism.

"We need to learn a good deal more about the mechanism by which a microbial population changed by gastric bypass exerts its effects," said study author Dr Lee Kaplan, an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"The ability to achieve even some of these effects without surgery would give us an entirely new way to treat the critical problem of obesity, one that could help patients unable or unwilling to have surgery."

Co-author Peter Turnbaugh added: "It may not be that we will have a magic pill that will work for everyone who's slightly overweight.

"But if we can, at a minimum, provide some alternative to gastric bypass surgery that produces similar effects, it would be a major advance."

Prof David Haslam, from the National Obesity Forum, said: "We know the effects of bariatric surgery are not just mechanical and we don't know the full reasons why it works so well, especially in the resolution of diabetes.

"There is more to it than meets the eye."

News Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Eating more fiber may lower stroke risk

Increasing your fiber intake may decrease your stroke risk.

A new study shows that each seven-gram increase of fiber intake was associated with a 7 percent decrease in first-time stroke risk.
Dietary fiber -- which is found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes -- is the part of the plant that your body doesn't absorb during digestion. Not only does it make you feel full faster, it aids in digestion and helps prevent constipation. To eat seven grams, you'll have to consume one serving of whole wheat pasta plus two servings of fruits or vegetables.

Studies have shown that fiber can reduce risk factors for stroke like high blood pressure and high blood levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) "bad" cholesterol, the study authors pointed out. Strokes kill 130,000 Americans each year, or 1 in 18 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Greater intake of fiber-rich foods -- such as whole-grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts -- are important for everyone, and especially for those with stroke risk factors like being overweight, smoking and having high blood pressure," lead author Diane Threapleton, M.Sc., Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leeds' School of Food Science & Nutrition in Leeds, United Kingdom, said in a press release.

Study: Too much salt linked to 2.3 million yearly deaths worldwide
Green tea, coffee may reduce stroke risk by 20 percent
Even ancient mummies had clogged arteries, study finds
Researchers looked at eight studies published between 1990 and 2012 that looked at all kinds of strokes. Four specifically analyzed risk of ischemic stroke -- when a clot blocks a blood vessel from bringing blood to the brain -- which accounts for 87 percent of strokes. Three looked at hemorrhagic stroke, which is when a blood vessel bursts. The researchers looked at all the findings together and factored in other stroke risk factors like age and smoking.

Fiber can come in two forms, soluble (which means it can dissolve in water) and insoluble. Total dietary fiber increases were shown to make a difference, but it was unclear which form helped more.

The authors noted that American women consume about 13 grams of fiber, and men eat about 17 grams a day. The American Heart Association recommends at least 25 grams per day, which equals six to eight servings of grains and eight to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables.

"(Increasing) seven grams a day increase is an achievable goal," senior author Victoria J. Burley, a senior lecturer in nutritional epidemiology at the University of Leeds in England, said to the Los Angeles Times. "You're talking about swapping white bread for whole wheat or increasing vegetable and fruit by two portions a day."

Lona Sandon, a registered dietitian and an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told HealthDay that this shows that choosing healthier options like a plant-based diet can help people, because Americans don't eat enough fruits and vegetables.

"In the end this is about getting down to basics: eating four to five cups of fruit a day, making half your grains whole grains, that kind of thing," Sandon, who was not involved with the study, said. "If you want to be healthy, we know this works."

News Source: www.cbsnews.com

Chinese herbs may reduce hot flashes

(Reuters Health) - Women taking a Chinese herbal formula experienced less than half the number of menopausal hot flashes they had before the treatment, according to a new study from Hong Kong.

Among women taking an herbal mix called Er-xian decoction (EXD), the frequency of daily hot flashes dropped by 62 percent, compared to a 52-percent drop seen among women taking a placebo.

"It's a modest effect, but not a zero effect," said Katherine Newton, a researcher who has studied herbal menopause therapies at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.

Newton, who was not involved in the research, said she'd want to see more, long-term studies demonstrating that these herbs are safe before she would recommend them to women, but that the current study makes EXD look promising as an alternative menopause treatment.

Hormone replacement therapy is considered the most effective therapy for menopause-related symptoms, but potential health risks from hormones have women looking for alternatives, said Yao Tong, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and one of the authors of the new study.

Er-xian decoction (EXD) contains compounds extracted from the roots, stems or leaves of six Chinese herbs, processed into granules then packaged in sachets to be made into a tea.

Although previous studies have found that EXD can help reduce hot flashes, they were not high quality experiments, the researchers write in the medical journal Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society.

To get a more reliable assessment of how well EXD works, they asked 101 women in their 40s and 50s, who were at or near menopause and experiencing symptoms, to drink an herbal formula twice a day for 12 weeks.

Half of the women drank a 15 gram dose of EXD, while the other half drank a fake remedy that consisted of tea, caramel and an herbal compound called gardenin.

For two weeks prior to the treatment, the women logged their hot flashes.

Those in the EXD group reported an average of 5.8 hot flashes each day, and those in the other group experienced five daily.

After the treatment, the number of hot flashes dropped to 2.2 in the EXD group and 2.5 in the other group.

Three months after the treatment ended, hot flashes stayed put at 2.2 a day for women who had drank EXD, while they went up slightly to 2.9 a day for women who had drank the placebo.

"Menopausal flushing is notoriously responsive to fluctuations and placebo responses in clinical trials, yet they have rigorously demonstrated an improvement in favor of active treatment" with Er-xian decoction, said Dr. Alan Bensoussan, the director of the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research at the University of Western Sydney, in an email to Reuters Health.

The severity of the hot flashes also declined to a greater degree in the EXD group, from a three out of four at the beginning of the study to a 1.6 at the end.

Among women who drank the fake remedy, hot flash severity went from three to 2.3 on a four-point scale.

The trend continued three months later, with hot flash severity returning to baseline for women who drank the placebo, but only rising slightly to a 2.1 for women who drank EXD.

"It's a small effect, but a measurable effect," said Newton, who was not part of the research.

The researchers did not compare EXD to other menopause treatments, so it's unclear how it would perform compared to them.

But Newton told Reuters Health that the results put EXD "in the ball park of other studies of non-hormonal therapies that aren't as effective as hormones but do show some promise."

Tong and her colleagues write in their report that traditional Chinese medicine views menopause symptoms as related to deficiencies in kidney yin and yang, which regulate the function of the body.

"The composition of EXD includes herbs for enhancing both kidney yin and kidney yang to treat menopausal symptoms," they write.

Tong also said in an email to Reuters Health that her earlier research has shown EXD increases hormonal and anti-oxidant functions in the body.

Er Xian preparations are available online, costing about $30 for 42, 2-gram packets.

The problem, Bensoussan pointed out, is that the chemical composition can change from batch to batch and from supplier to supplier.

Tong said a company has shown interest in developing the formulation she and her colleagues used in the study.

However, Bensoussan, who was not involved in the research, noted, "The researchers have not reported accurate chemical profiling (definition) of the formula based on key putative bioactives or selected chemical markers in the formula. This is important for its reproducibility and for long term use in the marketplace."

News Source: www.reuters.com

Blood Test Might Spot Pancreatic Cancer Early, Study Finds

FRIDAY, March 29 (HealthDay News) -- A new blood test that detects deadly pancreatic cancer earlier than usual might slightly improve patients' odds for survival, a small Japanese study suggests.

"This new diagnostic test may be a safe and easy screening method that could improve the prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer through earlier detection," said lead researcher Dr. Masaru Yoshida, an associate professor in the division of metabolomics research at Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine. "A drop of blood contains a lot of information."

Currently, the 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 5 percent, largely because the cancer usually has spread by the time it is detected.

The new approach relies on metabolomics technology, an emerging science that focuses on small molecules. The blood test measures byproducts of metabolism, called metabolites, found in the blood.

By looking for differences between the levels of metabolites in patients with and without pancreatic cancer, the researchers are able to identify those with cancer.

Finding pancreatic cancer earlier means more patients can have the tumor removed and live longer than most patients do now, Yoshida noted.

"Conventional tests using blood or imaging are not appropriate for pancreatic cancer screening and early detection, so new screening and diagnostic methods for pancreatic cancer are urgently required," Yoshida said.

Currently, in more than 80 percent of cases of pancreatic cancer, the cancer has metastasized, or spread, making it inoperable, he explained.

One expert doesn't think this test is a breakthrough.

"It's an improvement, but not a breakthrough," said Dr. James D'Olimpio, director of supportive oncology at North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute in Lake Success, N.Y.

"The problem is it's not early enough," he said.

Even if the cancerous tumor can be removed, it's usually too late, he said. By the time the cancer is detected, even in the early stage suggested by their test, the cancer has most likely spread beyond the pancreas, D'Olimpio pointed out.

"The test is able to detect cancer when it is at stage 1, but it's a fatal disease once it gets past stage 0," D'Olimpio said. (Staging, which refers to the severity of a person's cancer, usually runs from 0 to 4.)

"The cure rates of these patients is still going to be less than 20 percent," he said.

For the study, published online March 29 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the researchers used a technology called gas chromatography mass spectrometry to analyze the blood from study participants.

The researchers randomly assigned 43 pancreatic cancer patients and 42 healthy participants to what they called a training set, where they made their initial findings. To validate their findings, they also tried the test on 42 patients with pancreatic cancer, 41 healthy people and 23 people with chronic pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).

The researchers found 18 metabolites that were significantly different in patients with pancreatic cancer, compared with the healthy patients.

They refined their test using four metabolites to identify patients with pancreatic cancer.

The test had a sensitivity of 71.4 percent and a specificity of 78.1 percent when it was used with patients with pancreatic cancer and patients with chronic pancreatitis, the researchers reported. Sensitivity measures the accuracy of the test in identifying people with pancreatic cancer and specificity measures the accuracy of the test in weeding out those who didn't have the disease. Chronic pancreatitis is sometimes mistaken for cancer, so cutting down false positives is important.

News Source: health.usnews.com

Oklahoma dentist called 'public health menace'

Free health screenings start today for patients of an Oklahoma dentist who’s being called a public “health menace.”   His Tulsa office was reportedly so unsanitary, it made investigators sick.

W. Scott Harrington may have exposed up to 7,000 patients to HIV and hepatitis over the past six years. Health officials will start screening his patients for possible exposure today.  CNN's Susan Candiotti says people will be get  three blood tests for hepatitis B, C and HIV.  The results will take about two weeks.

Susan Rogers, executive director of the Oklahoma Board of Dentistry called the case one of the worst she's ever seen.   The dirty conditions included rusted equipment, needles reused in drug vials and non-sterile gauze.

News Source: www.hlntv.com

Mandela Is Treated for Pneumonia

JOHANNESBURG—Former South African President Nelson Mandela is being treated for pneumonia but is responding to doctors' efforts while he remains in the hospital for a third day, South Africa's presidency said.

The presidency previously said Mr. Mandela had been admitted on Mar. 27 due to a recurring lung infection. Saturday, it provided more details.

"Former President Nelson Mandela was admitted to hospital...due to a recurrence of pneumonia. Doctors advise that due to the lung infection, former President Mandela had developed a pleural effusion which was tapped," said Mac Maharaj, a spokesman for President Jacob Zuma, in a statement. "This has resulted in him now being able to breathe without difficulty. He continues to respond to treatment and is comfortable."

The 94-year-old former leader was admitted to an unidentified hospital overnight on Thursday, his second hospitalization this month. This follows a 19-day stay in December for an operation to have gallstones removed and to treat a lung infection. Mr. Mandela has battled lung problems for decades, having been diagnosed with the early stages of tuberculosis while he was in prison. The frequency of his hospital stays has increased in recent months.

Mr. Mandela, elected South Africa's first black president in 1994 as a member of the African National Congress, served as president for one term after spending more than a quarter of a century behind bars for his efforts to end apartheid.

He has largely avoided public view in recent years as his health has deteriorated. He made a rare appearance during the final of the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa, circling the field in a golf cart with his wife, Graca Machel. After his presidency, he largely stayed out of politics.

His ex-wife, Winnie Mandela, told reporters on Friday outside of her church in Soweto that Mr. Mandela was "doing well."

"It is very inspiring that at least we have the whole world on our side. It is a very difficult time," she said.

Mr. Zuma called on the nation not to panic over Mr. Mandela's health earlier in the week, while acknowledging the antiapartheid hero was at an advanced age and in frail health.

As Mr. Mandela's health remains in the spotlight, the party he led in South Africa's first democratic elections has also come under scrutiny. Bitter political infighting has divided the ANC. While South Africa has achieved political equality, there is still a large gap between rich and poor and unemployment is high. Mining-sector strikes at the end of last year that killed around 50 people highlighted the serious problems the country still faces.

News Source: online.wsj.com

Restaurant meals for kids fail nutrition test: U.S. consumer group

(Reuters) - The menus offered to children by most U.S. restaurant chains have too many calories, too much salt or fat, and often not a hint of vegetables or fruit, according to a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The group, which has agitated for everything from healthier popcorn at the movies to calorie labeling in supermarkets, found that among almost 3,500 combinations surveyed, kids' meals failed to meet nutritional standards 97 percent of the time.


That was a marginal improvement over 2008 when such meals failed to meet standards 99 percent of the time.

Every children's meal offered at popular chains such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, Dairy Queen, Hardee's, McDonald's, Panda Express, Perkins Family Restaurants and Popeyes fell short of standards adopted by the center from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutritional recommendations.

The meals also fell short of standards set by the National Restaurant Association's Kids LiveWell Program, said the CSPI, which titled its study, "Kids' Meals: Obesity on the Menu."

"Most chains seem stuck in a time warp, serving up the same old meals based on chicken nuggets, burgers, macaroni and cheese, fries, and soda," said Margo Wootan, CSPI nutrition policy director. "It's like the restaurant industry didn't get the memo that there's a childhood obesity crisis."

Among the meals singled out was Applebees' grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough bread, fries and two percent chocolate milk, which has 1,210 calories, 62 grams of fat and 2,340 milligrams of sodium.

The combo meal had nearly three times as many calories as the CSPI's criteria for four- to- eight-year-olds suggest.

At Ruby Tuesday, the macaroni and cheese, white cheddar mashed potatoes and fruit punch combo has 870 calories, 46 grams of fat and 1700 milligrams of sodium, said Wootan.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that children eat no more than 2,300 milligrams of salt each day to avoid high blood pressure, which can lead to coronary disease, stroke and other ailments.

Being overweight as a child leaves a person vulnerable to heart disease, diabetes and a shortened life span. About one-third of American children are now considered overweight and 17 percent are considered obese, according to USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The CSPI cited Subway restaurants' Fresh Fit For Kids meal combinations as exceptions to the salty, fatty norm.

Subway serves apple slices with its kid-sized sub sandwiches and offers low-fat milk or bottled water instead of soda. All eight of its children's meals met CSPI's nutrition criteria.

A few other establishments have begun to offer side dishes beyond French fries. In fact, every child's meal at Longhorn Steakhouse now comes with fruit or a vegetable.

"More chains are adding fruit, like apple slices, to their menus, but practically every chain could be adding more vegetable and whole grain options," said Ameena Batada, an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Wellness at the University of North Carolina Asheville.

Labeling can be a potent tool. The report cited two studies that indicated customers who are provided with calorie counts on the menu sometimes gravitate toward healthier choices.

To produce its study, the CSPI looked at 50 top U.S. chain restaurants, finding 34 of them had meals designed for children and were willing to provide nutritional data. It analyzed those meals and meal combinations.

News Source: www.reuters.com

Fringe therapy may help heart patients, study finds

A treatment that removes heavy metals from the body has long been touted as an alternative therapy to combat hardening arteries. Now a 10-year, $31-million clinical trial has found that chelation therapy does help heart attack patients slightly reduce their risk of serious heart problems — but not enough for the researchers to encourage mainstream cardiologists to offer it to their patients.

The trial revealed a very modest benefit for patients who took chelation therapy rather than a placebo, according to results published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

The findings came in for harsh criticism by other experts who worried that the results might encourage patients to take up a still unproven and potentially dangerous treatment.

"It's a type of medical quackery that has been around for many decades," said Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Chelation therapy was introduced around World War II as an antidote against an arsenic-based poison gas called Lewisite. The drug tested in the JAMA study — called ethylenediamine-tetraacetic acid, or EDTA — was used to treat lead poisoning in Navy personnel who repainted ships' hulls.

About 50 years ago, it came into vogue as an apparent way to remove mineral-rich deposits of plaque that can cause arteries to harden in a condition known as atherosclerosis.

Though still on the fringe, chelation therapy has been gaining traction: A National Center for Health Statistics report estimated that 111,000 patients had the expensive, time-consuming therapy in 2007 — a 68% jump from 2002. Patients clearly needed more information about this unproven treatment, said Dr. Judith Hochman, a cardiologist at New York University who was not involved in the study.

"There was an imperative to study it," Hochman said.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute — two branches of the National Institutes of Health — agreed to fund it. Researchers from 134 facilities agreed to administer a cocktail comprising disodium EDTA, vitamins and electrolytes or a placebo to 1,708 patients who were at least 50 years old and had suffered a heart attack at least six weeks earlier. The 40 infusions were spread out over more than a year.

The researchers found that chelation did reduce patients' overall risk of heart problems, such as stroke and angina requiring hospitalization. Chelation patients' heart attack rate was 6%, compared with 8% for those on the placebo.

The strongest effect was seen with procedures to reopen the coronary artery: 15% of chelation patients needed them, compared with 18% of patients who got the placebo treatment. The difference was small, but it was just enough to be statistically significant, said Dr. Gervasio Lamas, the Columbia University cardiologist who led the study.

"I can't overemphasize how unexpected these results were," he said.

But the clinical trial was beset by a host of problems, said Nissen, who wrote an editorial in JAMA that was deeply critical of the study. Many of the patients dropped out of the trial, thus weakening the results, he said. What's more, some of the patients were treated in alternative medicine centers that sold unproven remedies such as aromatherapy and crystal therapy.

"How do you get good research done at places like that?" Nissen said. "I think you don't."

In addition, the Office for Human Research Protections in the Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation, mentioning — among several other concerns — that a few researchers had been involved in insurance fraud and three were convicted felons.

Lamas said all researchers were thoroughly trained for their duties, whether they were doctors experienced in clinical trials or alternative medicine practitioners with expertise in chelation treatments. He also said some patients were bound to drop out of a study that was so time-consuming. (Each infusion lasted several hours.)

JAMA Editor in Chief Howard Bauchner said the study was put through the wringer before it was published, with the results vetted by a team of cardiologists, statisticians and other researchers. It deserved to be published regardless of negative attitudes toward the paper, he said.

But the findings are far from definitive, Hochman said: "The therapy's not ready for prime time."

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University cardiologist who was not involved in the study, said that any apparent benefits to chelation would be hard for physicians to swallow.

"A lot of people thought this would be a good study because it would be a chance to disprove a therapy that had little support among mainstream academics," Krumholz explained. "It's a terrific group of investigators who've addressed an interesting question, who've come up with a surprising result that nobody knows what to do with."

News Source: www.latimes.com

Cancer-Afflicted Teenager Celebrates her Prom at Hospital

Meeting another aspect of friendship, a US teenager suffering from cancer celebrated her prom night at her hospital bed; an event organized by her friends.

Katelyn Norman celebrated prom with her LaFollette classmates and family members at her room in the East Tennessee Children's Hospital as she couldn't move to the venue. She suffers from worst phase of bone cancer.

Doctors have already said the disease has crossed the medical help. Her condition is also deteriorating.

Keeping her inability aside, her friends made her taste this happening teenage event. The prom was organized by her school and local community. She was supposed to attend the event but fell sick at the last moment.

Prom organizer Sharon Shepard said that Katelyn told her "the prom must go on". So, the party reached the hospital bedside. Her room was fully decorated with candles and her date placed a small bouquet on her wrist.

After she was diagnosed with cancer, she has had her bucket list goals. So, in order to fulfill these innocent aspirations of her, her friends joined hands to organize a rare but beautiful event like this.

There was an elegant site outside her window where thousands of people had arrived in a 1.6km-long candle-lit vigil. This lovely gesture by her friends was appreciated by Katelyn and her family.

News Source: topnews.ae

Temporary tattoos can cause long-lasting allergic reactions: FDA

That temporary henna tattoo may leave a longer-lasting physical effect than you had hoped for, and it may not be pretty, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday.

That’s because an extra ingredient included in the longer-lasting “black henna” tattoos in wide use today — hair dye including p-phenylenediamine, or PPD — can cause nasty allergic reactions in some people, including redness, blisters, oozing lesions, increased sensitivity to sunlight and permanent scarring.  Reactions can occur right after a tattoo is applied to the surface of the skin or can appear up to two or three weeks later, the FDA reported.

Henna is a reddish-brown pigment that comes from the flowering plant Lawsonia inermis, which is native to tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and Asia.  People have used natural henna as a cosmetic and a dye for hair and fabrics for thousands of years.  But so-called black henna, often used in tourist destinations and other specialty shops, is a different product and may not include natural henna at all. A key ingredient in the temporary tattoos is dye containing PPD, the same stuff used to color hair, to make the embellishments darker and longer-lasting.

Though the FDA consumer alert dealt with tattoos, PPD also causes allergic reactions elsewhere.  A growing number of people, including me, break out in itchy welts when they color their hair with PPD-containing dyes. In my experience, this includes pretty much any product that effectively covers gray, even those advertised as "natural."

A recent study in the Journal of the German Society of Dermatology identified PPD as the culprit in the cases of seven people who developed allergic reactions to hair and eyelash dyeing.  All had histories of sensitization to PPD after receiving black henna tattoos. It took about six years post-sensitization for the reaction to the hair dye to appear.  The authors of the report added that PPD allergies could “have occupational impact, especially for hair dressers and cosmeticians.”

Some states have regulations overseeing temporary tattoos but others don’t, the FDA update reported.  The agency asked people who suffer reactions to temporary tattoos (or other cosmetics) to notify MedWatch or a regional consumer complaint coordinator or to call 1-800-FDA-1088, to report the problem.

News Source: www.latimes.com

Can You Smell Obesity?

According to the latest research, it may be on your breath.

It turns out that obesity may be detectable as a gas, thanks to organisms that inhabit our gut. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers extend our knowledge about the hidden universe of the microbes that live within us to show that obesity is associated with certain populations of microbes that give off a distinctive gas.

To be more specific, obesity may smell a lot like…methane, which is to say, like not much at all, since methane in its naturally-occurring state is actually odorless. In the study. Dr. Ruchi Mathur, director of diabetes in the department of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and her colleagues analyzed the breath of 792 men and women of various ages. Mathur focused on detecting methane in the breath, since animal studies found that the presence of a certain family of organisms called archaea, which are older than bacteria and colonize the gut, was linked with weight gain and conveniently released small amounts of methane gas. Mathur also knew from her own work analyzing the gas makeup of the breath from bariatric surgery patients that those releasing higher levels of methane in their breath tended to have a body mass index (BMI) nearly 7 points higher on average than those with lower levels.

(MORE: The Good Bugs: How the Germs in Your Body Keep You Healthy)

And sure enough, Mathur found that among the nearly 800 participants she tested, those with higher levels of methane (3 or more parts per million over 90 minutes) and hydrogen gases (20 or more parts per million) in their breath also tended to be heavier, with a BMI about 2.4 points greater than those with normal levels of the gases and about six percent more body fat on average.

“Our hope is that this is one piece of the complex puzzle that is obesity,” says Mathur, “and that by identifying people who are obese because they have this microorganism, we can manipulate and work with the gut microbiome to lead to benefits in weight loss in that subgroup.”

(MORE: What Do Gut Bugs Have to Do With High Cholesterol? A Lot)

The culprit, she believes, is a member of archaea known as Methanobrevibacter smithii, which is present in the intestinal tract of about 70% of people, but elevated in about 30%. It’s that smaller group of individuals who might be genetically predisposed to harboring levels of M. smithii that might put them at higher risk of developing obesity. M. smithii harvests hydrogen molecules from neighboring microbes in the gut, which it then transforms into methane gas. The more it scavenges hydrogen from its environment, the more other microbes produce. But all of that activity is focused on extracting energy and nutrients from food, so along with the hydrogen gas, the microbes are also packing in more calories for the host, which can lead to weight gain. It’s also possible, says Mathur, that the release of methane slows the transit of digested food through the intestinal tract, and that could increase the time for additional calories from digested food to be absorbed and added to the body’s tally.

In order for M. smithii to thrive, it needs the hydrogen from surrounding microbes, and that may be why people with higher levels of both hydrogen and methane gases in their breath were heavier than those with elevated levels of methane or hydrogen alone.

(MORE: Skim Milk May Not Lower Obesity Risk Among Children)

So how does this help control the obesity epidemic? For those whose weight gain may be due in part to the activity of M. smithii, controlling the organisms with antibiotics or other medications could slow down the rate at which they pack on the pounds, and these individuals could easily be identified with a relatively simple breath test.

Mathur and her colleagues are also working with the American Diabetes Association to test a group of people with prediabetes who are overweight or obese and have elevated levels of methane in their breath. The researchers will test the participants’ glucose tolerance, the time it takes for digested food to transit through the intestinal tract, and the amount of calories in the patients’ stool. Then they volunteers will be given an antibiotic to essentially wipe out the population of M. smithii and the same parameters will be measured again, to see if eliminating the microbes will help change the patient’s weight profile and alter their trajectory toward diabetes.

She is also studying a group of children to see how early M. smithii buildup occurs, and how soon in development it starts to set up a pattern of weight gain that might then be interrupted by changing the composition of the gut microbial world. “From an evolutionary perspective, our relationship with the microorganisms that live in us has basically been symbiotic, and we have evolved together,” she says. “We’ve had that relationship for millenia, but it is just now being explored and discovered in more detail.” And, when it comes to controlling the obesity epidemic, could lead to the (sweet?) smell of success.

News Source: healthland.time.com

Social isolation 'increases death risk in older people'

Social isolation is associated with a higher risk of death in older people regardless of whether they consider themselves lonely, research suggests.

A study of 6,500 UK men and women aged over 52 found that being isolated from family and friends was linked with a 26% higher death risk over seven years.

Whether or not participants felt lonely did not alter the impact of social isolation on health.

Age UK says cuts to services for older people are compounding the problem.

It is not the first time that loneliness and social isolation has been linked with poor health.

But researchers wanted to find out if it was the emotional aspect of feeling lonely that was having an impact or the reality of having little social contact.

Those who were socially isolated - that is had little or no contact with friends or family - were more likely to be older and unmarried and have long-standing illnesses limiting their mobility, such as lung disease and arthritis.

People who described themselves as feeling lonely were more likely to be female and have a wider range of health conditions, including depression.

'Surprise' findings
Both social isolation and feeling lonely were associated with a higher chance of death.

Continue reading the main story
“
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This study shows more clearly than before that being lonely and isolated is not only miserable, it is a real health risk”

Michelle Mitchell
Age UK
But after adjusting for factors such as underlying health conditions, only social isolation remained important.

That risk did not change when researchers added in whether or not someone felt lonely in their isolation.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said they were surprised by their findings.

Study leader Prof Andrew Steptoe, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at University College London, said: "Social connections can provide emotional support and warmth which is important but they also provide things like advice, making sure people take their medication and provide support in helping them to do things.

"It would suggest that those practical aspects are quite important for older people's survival.

"There's been such an increase in people living alone. In the last 15 years, the number of 55 to 64-year-olds living alone has increased by 50%.

"And it might be that people in those circumstances aren't looking after themselves so well."

Michelle Mitchell, director general at Age UK, said: "This study shows more clearly than before that being lonely and isolated is not only miserable, it is a real health risk, increasing the risk of early death."

She added that cuts to local authority budget cuts may exacerbate the problem of isolation for many older people.


"Across the country day care centres, often the only regular social life that many older people enjoy, are closing, social care support which can enable older people to leave the house is being cut down to the bare minimum, and too many older people are hidden behind closed doors struggling to cope."

News Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Weekly challenge: Design a better condom for $100,000

Have an idea for a better condom that will entice men outside of committed relationships to wear one every time? Send it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They’re offering $100,000 in a start-up grants and up to $1 million in continued funding to anyone who designs the “next generation condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use.”

While the current generation of condoms are cheap and effective at reducing unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections like HIV, they also decrease sensation “creating a trade-off that many men find unacceptable,” according to the Foundation. In many African countries, condom use has been stigmatized -- an indicator that a man is infected with HIV. (Some women won’t sleep with a man who wears one for this reason.)

Female condoms haven’t fared any better: They’re more expensive, harder to insert, and require the same negotiation between partners to use.

“This need for negotiation precisely illustrates the barrier preventing greater use that we seek to address through this call,” wrote the Foundation folks on their Grand Challenges website.

Creating a condom that provides more pleasure and doesn’t carry a stigma? That’s a pretty tall order and one that may require innovative thinking: An invisible condom like Wonder Woman’s airplane? One that’s grafted on like a second skin?

There already are dozens of condoms on the market that purport to offer increased pleasure by providing tingling or warming sensations on contact. It should be interesting to see what sorts of ideas ordinary folks come up with that condom makers haven’t thought of already.

Are you up for the challenge?

News Source: www.boston.com

Which is worse, isolation or loneliness?

Henry David Thoreau relished isolation but didn't feel lonely. Marilyn Monroe was a social butterfly but died lonely.

Their separate fates -- Thoreau dead of tuberculosis at 44, Monroe of suicide at 36 -- can't tell us much scientifically, but a study of an elderly population in England might shed more light.

Having few social contacts may be more deadly than feeling alone, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Even when physical and mental health are factored out, isolation still led to a higher mortality rate than feeling lonely did among the 6,500 elderly British people whose health outcomes over a six-year period were studied.

A similar look at retired Americans in 2012 reinforced multiple studies that link loneliness to potentially fatal illnesses, including heart trouble and high blood pressure.

British and U.S. populations have become more solitary. People living alone compose more than a quarter of U.S households, and the proportion of Americans who said they had no one to talk to about important matters grew from 10% in 1985 to 25% in 2004, according to authors of the British study. A 2010 European survey revealed that more than a quarter of Europeans age 50 and older reported that they met friends, colleagues or family less than once a month.

Separating the effects of loneliness from those of isolation, however, has not been easy for those who study rates of illness and death. While isolation can be measured directly — by how many friends you have or how often you have contact with family — loneliness is more subjective, measured through survey questions about whether social needs and expectations are being met.

The National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, funded both the British study and last year’s report on U.S. retirees.

Loneliness and isolation “should get lots of attention because they may be as important, as joint factors, as smoking,” said Richard Suzman, director of the National Institute on Aging’s division of behavioral and social research.

Studies that involve interventions would help separate the different effects of loneliness and isolation, he added.

“Isolation wins out this time, but I’d want an experiment to verify that,” Suzman said.

News Source: www.latimes.com

Too Much TV May Make Kids Antisocial, Study Suggests

TUESDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Five-year-olds who watch television for three or more hours a day are a bit more likely to fight, steal and have other antisocial behaviors by the age of 7, a new study suggests.

The researchers also found that time spent playing computer or electronic games had no effect on children's behavior, according to the report published online March 25 in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

For the study, the investigators analyzed data gathered from about 11,000 children in the United Kingdom who were born between 2000 and 2002. When the children were ages 5 and 7, their mothers filled out a questionnaire designed to assess how well-adjusted the children were, and also provided information about the amount of time their children spent at age 5 watching TV and playing computer or electronic games.

At age 5, nearly two-thirds of the children watched TV for between one and three hours a day, 15 percent watched TV for more than three hours a day, and less than 2 percent watched no TV. Only 3 percent of the kids spent three or more hours a day playing computer or electronic games when they were 5 years old, the study authors reported.

After taking into account other factors, such as parenting and family dynamics, the researchers concluded that there was a significant association between watching TV for three or more hours a day at age 5 and a "very small" increased risk of antisocial behavior by age 7.

But watching a lot of TV was not associated with emotional or attention problems, the authors noted in a journal news release.

These findings -- and previous studies showing that too much screen time can have a harmful effect on youngsters' physical health and schooling -- suggest that parents are right in limiting TV time for their children, concluded study author Alison Parkes, of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, and colleagues.

The study found an association between increased TV watching at age 5 and a small increased risk of antisocial behavior at age 7, but it didn't find a cause-and-effect relationship.

News Source: health.usnews.com

Many babies starting solid foods too early, CDC study says

Many young children may be switching to solid foods months too early, according to federal researchers.

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) finds more than 40 percent of parents introduced solid foods to their infants before they were 4 months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children start eating solid foods when they are between 4 to 6 months of age.

"Clearly we need better dissemination of the recommendations on solid food introduction," study author Dr. Kelley Scanlon, an epidemiologist with the CDC, told The New York Times. "Health care providers need to provide clear and accurate guidance, and then provide support to help parents carry out those recommended practices."

Pediatricians have urged new moms to breast-feed their children exclusively for the first six months of their lives, with supplemental breast-feeding continued over the course of a year once solid foods are introduced.
Generally by the time babies reach 4 to 6 months of age, a child can hold his or her head up in a high chair, open his or her mouth when food comes their way, and weighs enough to (about 13 pounds or more) to be ready for solid foods, according to the academy.

Scanlon and her team analyzed data from about 1,300 mothers who introduced solid foods to their infants during the first year of pregnancy, and were asked the reasons behind their decisions.

Researchers found the highest percentage of infants whose moms introduced solid foods before 4 months were among those who fed exclusively with formula (52.7 percent) and the lowest percentage of those who started early were among infants who were breast-fed exclusively (24.3 percent).

The most common reasons for introducing solid foods early were: "My baby was old enough," "My baby seemed hungry," "I wanted to feed my baby something in addition to breast milk or formula," "My baby wanted the food I ate," "A doctor or other health care professional said my baby should begin eating solid food," and "It would help my baby sleep longer at night."

Moms who were most likely to start solid food too early were younger, unmarried, less-educated or received government assistance through the WIC program.

The research was published March 25 in Pediatrics.

Introducing solid foods too early can cause health risks, according to the researchers, because babies' bodies may not yet prepared for chewing and swallowing. Introducing solid foods too early may also suggest mothers are cutting short breast-feeding. Children who aren't breast-fed are at higher risk for obesity, diabetes, respiratory and ear infections, eczema, and tend to require more doctor visits, hospitalizations and prescriptions, according to the CDC.

Scanlon told HealthDay that pediatricians need to provide accurate, clear messages about appropriate cues feeding, such as, "a baby who's crying a lot isn't always hungry."

Breast-feeding may not stave off childhood obesity like previously thought
CDC: More US mothers are breast-feeding but overall rates still low
Antibiotics for ear infections: Pediatricians release new guidelines
Dr. T.J. Gold, a pediatrician with Tribeca Pediatrics in Brooklyn, told the New York Times some parents who are aware of the best age to feed their infants may be turning to solid foods because they're struggling to make ends meet.

"The formula gets really expensive, especially in the 4-to-6-month window," Dr. Gold said. "And if you have more than one child and you're already preparing food for the whole family, it's much easier to just start sweeping things off your plate."

News Source:  www.cbsnews.com

More fatal food: Salty diets leading to 2.3M deaths each year

For the second time in a week, scientists are warning us that what we’re eating is killing us.
This time it's salt.
Cardiologists gathered for a meeting in New Orleans report that excessive salt in our diets contributed to a stunning 2.3 million deaths around the world in 2010 – including fatal heart attacks, strokes and other heart-related diseases.


They say that these unnecessary deaths represent 15 per cent of all deaths that year.
“We found overall, 2.3 million deaths in 2010 around the world were due to eating too much salt,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, of the Harvard School of Public Health, told CTV News. “The magnitude of the impact was really surprising.”
Earlier this week, Harvard researchers revealed that sugary drinks -- such as soft drinks, juices and sports drinks -- were major factors behind spiking rates of obesity and diabetes, resulting in an estimated 180,000 premature deaths around the globe each year.
For the salt study, researchers analyzed more than 240 surveys of sodium intake in 50 countries between 1990 and 2010. They then looked at studies that measured how high amounts of sodium affect blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease, which includes both heart disease and stroke.
They concluded nearly 1 million of the deaths they attributed to excess salt in peoples’ diets came prematurely – meaning in those younger than 69 years. They also found:
60 per cent of the deaths occurred in men, 40 per cent were in women.
Heart attacks caused 42 per cent of the deaths;
strokes caused 41 per cent;
the remainder resulted from other types of cardiovascular disease.
84 per cent of the deaths due to too much sodium were in low and middle-income countries.
Dr. Bob Reid, a researcher with the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, says the study is one with an important message.
“The connection they are trying to draw is that sodium affects our blood pressure. And how high our blood pressure is affects our risk of heart disease and stroke,” he told CTV News. “It helps quantify the total deaths, and it is a large number.”
Health Canada recommends that Canadians aim for about 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, and no more than 2,300 milligrams -- the equivalent of about a teaspoon of salt. But research shows the average Canadian consumes 3,400 milligrams per day.
Dr. Reid says it’s clear that we need to be reminded to avoid salt whenever we can.
“We have to become much better at preventing disease… and this is an example of that,” he said.
The Salt Institute objects to the study, calling it misleading and the "latest example of statistical abuse that distorts the health debate."
They note that the researchers didn’t track actual deaths; they simply used a statistical model to estimate the deaths – a model that the institute calls “highly flawed.”
“The fact that the authors of this study and the American Heart Association chose to represent this shoddy modeling exercise as evidence of authentic cardiovascular mortality figures reveals an agenda far more rooted in sensationalist politics than in science,” the group said in a statement to CTV News.
"This latest statistical study is not rooted in reality, but is based upon the small, potential reductions in blood pressure that may be experienced by some individuals if they cut out three-quarters of their salt -- a challenge repeatedly shown to be impossible everywhere in the world."


News Source: www.ctvnews.ca

Flu took a heavy toll on children this season

The CDC says 105 children died of the flu this season, emphasizing the importance of vaccinating everyone older than 6 months.

The flu has claimed the lives of 105 children this season, says a report out today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year, a very mild year for flu, 34 children died, but this year, the deaths were more in line with a typical year. Flu seasons vary greatly in severity. In the 2003-2004 season, 153 children died, according to CDC numbers. The death toll is up to date as of March 16, but Michael Jhung, a medical officer in CDC's Influenza Division, said more deaths are possible: "Flu season is winding down but it's not over."

Of the children who died, 90% had not been vaccinated against the flu. "That's a remarkable number," Jhung said. Though this season's flu vaccine was not particularly effective in those over 65, it worked well in children, he said.

The CDC recommends an annual flu vaccination for everyone over age 6 months. Overall, 52% of all American kids got flu shots this year.

Of the children who died this year, 60% were at high risk from flu complications, either because they were under 2 or had a pre-existing medical condition, the CDC said. "The really telling proportion is the flip side of that: 40% of these deaths were in kids who were healthy," Jhung said.


The high number of children lost to the flu "is just profoundly sad," said William Schaffner, a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. "Here we are in the 21st century, and this ancient scourge visits us every year and can still have such a profound effect on our children."

Even with the best hospital care, some children don't survive a bout with the flu, said Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist. "It reminds us that this is a virus that doesn't just involve the throat and the chest," he said. "It involves the whole body."

Though the flu shot is less effective than other common vaccines, getting one reduced the likelihood that a child would need to see a doctor for the flu by 60%, the CDC said. "It's the best one we have," Schaffner said of the flu vaccine. "Every death prevented is worth it."

Flu hit the USA beginning in late October and early November, about a month earlier than usual, Jhung said. It peaked in late December and early January, when it usually peaks towards the end of January and into February. The flu started in the South, hit the Northeast, then worked its way west, but there were weeks where every region had elevated activity.

This season the flu caused "moderately severe" illness, especially in hard-hit places such as Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and parts of the upper Midwest, Schaffner said. "Several parts of the country were really inundated with it," he said. "They were backed up in the emergency room."

The CDC has tracked flu deaths in children since the 2003-2004 season, when 153 kids died of influenza. Like this year's outbreak, the flu season that year was early and intense.

Influenza is unpredictable, Schaffner said. Last year, the mildest flu season on record, influenza killed 34 children. The H1N1 pandemic killed 348 children from April 15, 2009, to Oct. 2, 2010.

Regina Booth, a Colorado mother, speaks about the importance of flu shots through an advocacy group called Families Fighting Flu. Two years ago, the flu killed her son Austin, a healthy 17-year-old. Before he died, Booth says, her family didn't bother with flu shots.

She said in a written statement, "Now there wouldn't be a flu season that goes by that I wouldn't get my children vaccinated to protect them."

The flu strains that will be in next season's flu vaccine have already been selected and vaccine manufactures are working on them, Jhung said. They will ship in August, and people can begin to get vaccinated in early September.

News Source: www.usatoday.com

Warning: Excessive tea drinking can be hazardous to your health

You can never be too rich or too thin, perhaps, but you certainly can drink too much tea.

That’s the bottom line of an unusual case report published in this week’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Doctors at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit treated a 47-year-old woman who had suffered from pain in her lower back, hips, legs and arms. She was also missing all of her teeth because they had become brittle.

Something was wrong with her bones. Sure enough, X-rays revealed that the vertebrae in her spine showed signs of a painful condition called skeletal fluorosis.

Doctors gave her a blood test to measure the concentration of flouride in her system. A typical healthy person has less than 0.10 of a milligram of flouride per liter of blood; the patient had 0.43 mg per liter, according to the journal report.

Skeletal fluorosis can strike people who drink water with high concentrations of fluoride (much higher than in parts of the United States that add fluoride to the water supply). Industrial workers who inhale fluoride dust and fumes are also vulnerable, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Neither of those conditions was a factor with the Michigan patient. But she did admit to drinking a lot of black tea.

For most people, black tea isn’t a huge source of fluoride -- an entire liter typically contains 1 to 5 milligrams, though some reports put the figure as high as 9 mg, studies have found. But heavy tea drinkers have been known to develop skeletal fluorosis.

For instance, this 2011 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism reported on a 48-year-old woman who developed the condition “after consuming 1–2 gallons of brewed orange pekoe tea daily for more than three decades.” And this 2008 case report in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research reported on a 49-year-old woman who got it after drinking two gallons of instant tea every day since she was 12 years old.

How does our Michigan patient compare? She told doctors that she drank a pitcher of tea every day for the last 17 years. This wasn’t your typical tea -- she brewed hers with 100 to 150 tea bags per pitcher. (That must have been one extra-large pitcher.)

News Source: www.latimes.com

Celebrate World Oral Health Day and help your smile

Happy World Oral Health Day! Each year on March 20, World Oral Health Day is a great time to reevaluate the health of your teeth, gums and mouth, and determine what you can do to ensure your smile stays beautiful. This event reflects upon the importance of oral health and how it affects our lives and the rest of our body, and it gives the world an opportunity to raise awareness and encourage communities, families and organizations to take the appropriate measures to lower risks of oral disease.

"World Oral Health Day is a really good opportunity to find a dentist. Personal recommendations are a huge part of everyday society, from the restaurants we visit to the films we watch," Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, Dr. Nigel Carter told the UK-based publication, Female First. "The research shows the most successful way of finding a dentist involves nothing more than a few conversations with friends. That element of trust people have in their dentist is reassuring, and could result in vast improvements in oral health over time."

In light of this world-wide event, here are a few tips and tricks to making sure your teeth, gums and mouth stay healthy and fresh! The mouth is, after all, the gateway to one's health and one of the first things others notice.

Go natural
Making the switch to natural products is much easier than you may think - and it can change the overall health of your mouth in no time! Did you know that most store-bought toothpaste contains sodium lauryl sulfate, which can cause canker sores and dry out the mouth? Go ahead, take a look at the current toothpaste you're using, and it's likely one of the ingredients. TheraBreath's toothpaste is specifically designed to stop bad breath and fight cavities without the harsh side effects of traditional brands.

You may want to ditch that mouthwash in your cabinet as well. If you use mouthwash comparison with a traditional product and TheraBreath's oxygenating rinse, you'll notice that TheraBreath doesn't use alcohol as an ingredient. This is why your mouth feels like it's burning when you use mouthwash. But, don't take our word for it. Mouthwash comparison between an alcohol-free and traditional mouthwash with alcohol in it may surprise you. TheraBreath uses natural, kosher, vegan and sensitive teeth-friendly ingredients to get rid of bad breath without the pain.

Eat your veggies
This may take you back to your childhood, but we'll tell you why it's so important to eat your fruits and veggies for your oral health. Fresh produce contains vitamins and minerals that build strong and durable teeth, while other abrasive foods help to get rid of odor-causing plaque - it's like brushing your teeth while eating. Fruits and veggies that are high in vitamin C help to reduce the plaque in your mouth as well, and promote gum health and reduce the risk of gingivitis. Since these foods have high water content, they promote saliva production in the mouth, which beats dry mouth and flushes away bad breath.

Cut out the sugar
Bacteria that cause bad breath and other oral health issues love sugar. Whether it's the splash in your coffee or the sugar in your after-lunch gum, bacteria accumulate when they are "fed" sugar. Reducing your intake of sugary treats is a great way to increase your overall oral health. Can't give up your desert? No problem. You should make sure to drink a glass of water after consuming any sugar-filled treat because it helps to rinse away the sugar before bacteria begin to take action.

News Source: www.therabreath.com

‘Safe Kids’ Asks Parents To Keep Medication Out Of Reach

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Parents of children five and under are being asked to “up their game” in terms of keeping the kids from getting their hands on adult medicines.


According to the second report from Safe Kids Worldwide on medication poisonings, a child gets ER treatment for this about every eight minutes and the trend, unfortunately, is up. But so is the solution, says Philadelphia-native Kate
Carr, Safe Kids president and CEO, as in “up and away”, not only for prescription drugs, but over-the-counters, and all sorts of other things.

She says, if you need a prompt about taking your meds.

“Don’t leave it on the counter. Program your cell phone to give you that reminder when you need to take medication, that way you can tuck it in a kitchen cabinet or somewhere and still get the reminder that you’re looking for. It doesn’t have to sit out in the sight of a child.”

Carr says two dangerous times are when you take your child to visit in another home, and when someone visits yours.

News Source: philadelphia.cbslocal.com

Axe Body Spray Put A Kid In The Hospital

Freedom High School in Bethlehem, PA says Axe Body Spray is responsible for sending one of its students to the hospital. According to a statement on the school’s website, exposure to the fragrance  triggered a severe allergic causing a student to be rushed to the hospital by an ambulance. In light of this incident, the school has decided to ban the use of Axe Body Spray on on campus.
It was only a matter of time. Because who are we kidding? Axe Body Spray smells like shit. It’s hazardous to the nose. Now, if only the rest of the world could take a cue from Freedom High School and ban the use of Axe Body Spray everywhere, I think we’d all be happier.

News Source: www.thefrisky.com

Looking To Lose Weight? Don't Lose Any Sleep Over It

In a society where health trends seem to change with the weather — one week it's all about chia seeds, the next, kombucha is the number-one cure-all — one health fix remains controversy-free: sleep. By now, you probably know all about the positive effects that good sleep habits can have on your physical and psychological health. But, according to a recent study published by The University of Colorado, your sleep habits may have much more of a direct and immediate effect on your weight than any of us thought.

In the study, which measured sleep and its effects on metabolism, appetite, and weight among 16 healthy men and women, researchers found that while sleep deprivation actually spikes your metabolism, even just a few nights of meager sleep can lead to marked, immediate weight gain (in this study, that meant an average of two pounds over a period of a week). The reason? Sleep deprivation caused participants to eat more food at mealtimes, crave more caloric (a.k.a. carb- and fat-heavy) foods, plus it affected the participants' eating cycles. When the participants were kept up until midnight and only slept for five hours, they tended to indulge in much more post-dinner eating, and tended to skip breakfast. All of these changed habits added up to an intake of six percent more calories a day.

The take-home here: it seems that before focusing on diet or exercise, people seeking to lose weight should focus first on their sleep habits. If you're truly looking to get healthy, that whole burning-the-candle mid-week and sleeping in on the weekends plan is probably messing with your weight-stabilization mojo. The science has spoken: Good sleep habits are absolutely integral to your health, so it's definitely in your best interest to move sleep from the bottom to the tippy-top of your priority list. Trust us, you won't regret it.

News Source: www.refinery29.com

Key to cancer prevention may be keeping your heart healthy

New research finds that people who follow the American Heart Association's "Life's Simple 7" steps to lower their risk for heart disease get an added bonus of protection against cancer. The more steps you follow, the better the risk reduction, according to the study.

"This can help health professionals provide a clear, consistent message about the most important things people can do to protect their health and lower their overall risk for chronic diseases," study author Dr. Laura J. Rasmussen-Torvik, an assistant professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, urged doctors in a statement.

Just what are the "Simple 7" tips to stave off heart disease?

Being active: If adults get at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity each day -- like brisk walking -- five times per week, they can lower risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes, says AHA.
Keeping a healthy weight: Too much fat - especially around the waist, known as visceral fat - raises risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. About one-third of U.S. adults are obese.
Eating a healthy diet: A diet low in saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, sodium and added sugars along with a diet high in whole grain fiber, lean proteins and colorful fruits and vegetables could dramatically boost health, AHA says.
Maintaining cholesterol: When you have too much "bad" LDL cholesterol, plaque can form in veins and arteries that cause heart attacks, strokes.
Keeping blood pressure down: The AHA says high blood pressure -- or hypertension -- is the "single most significant risk factor for heart disease." Hypertension also puts strain on the kidneys.
Regulating blood sugar levels: Diabetes can cause blood sugar to rise to dangerous levels, damaging the heart, kidneys, eyes and nerves over time.
Not smoking: Smoking damages the entire circulatory system, says AHA, increasing risk for coronary heart disease, hardened arteries, aneurysm and blood clots.
For the new study, published March 18 in the AHA's journal Circulation, researchers tracked more than 13,000 white and black Americans enrolled in a long-running study of atherosclerosis risk that kicked off in 1987. Participants were interviewed at the study's start to gauge their health habits, and about 20 years later, researchers looked at cancer registries and hospitals to determine that more than 2,800 of the participants had developed cancer. Lung, colon, rectum, prostate and breast cancers were most common.

The researchers found that those who followed six or seven of the AHA's tips reduced their risk for cancer by 51 percent, compared to participants who followed zero of the health tips. Meeting four factors led to a 33 percent risk reduction, but even following one or two was tied to a 21 percent drop in cancer risk.

When the researchers removed smoking from their analysis, which is often flagged as a major risk factor for cancer or heart disease, the researchers found participants who followed five or six of the remaining health tips had a 25 percent lower risk of having cancer compared to those who followed none.
"Quitting smoking is very important, but there are other factors you need to be aware of if you want to live a healthy life," Rasmussen-Torvik said.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, told HealthDay that past studies have suggested eating one way to avoid heart disease, another to avoid diabetes and another to prevent cancer.

"This never made sense," said Katz, who was not involved in the research. "Take good care of your body by exercising it, feeding it well and sparing it exposures to such toxins as tobacco, and it is far more likely to take good care of you, sparing you heart disease and cancer, not to mention other chronic diseases."

News Source: www.cbsnews.com