_ Skin Skin HealthWhat Your Skin Says About Your Health By Jane Farrell articleAccording to the National Institutes of Health, our skin is the body’s largest organ. While it protects the body, it also does things such as hold fluids in, keep microbes out, regulate body temperature, and more. While most people think of skin only in terms of beauty, but there’s a lot more to it. “The way our skin looks says a lot about how healthy we are, believe it or not,” explains Dr. Sanjiv Saini of MD Dermatology, in Edgewater and Lexington Park, Maryland.
_ Medical CareAn Effective Treatment for Ebola By Sondra Forsyth articleA leading Ebola researcher from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has gone on record stating that a blend of three monoclonal antibodies can completely protect monkeys against a lethal dose of Ebola virus up to five days after infection, at a time when the disease is severe.
_ OsteoporosisWhy an Osteoporosis Drug Works By Sondra Forsyth articleRaloxifene is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved treatment for decreasing fracture risk in osteoporosis. While raloxifene is as effective at reducing fracture risk as other current treatments, the medication works only partially by suppressing bone loss. With the use of wide- and small-angle x-ray scattering (WAXS and SAXS, respectively), researchers carried out experiments at the U.S.
_ Heart HealthMobile App for Emergency Cardiac Care By Sondra Forsyth articleWhen dealing with acute cardiovascular diseases, instant access to the best recommendations can save lives. This fact led the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association (ACCA) of the European Society for Cardiology (ESC) to develop a user friendly interactive application that lets healthcare professionals have immediate access to diagnostics pathways on their mobile devices.
_ CPRYouTube CPR Videos Not Reliable By Sondra Forsyth articleIf you want to learn CPR, better not trust a YouTube video to be your teacher. According to Turkish researchers, only a handful of CPR and basic life support (BLS) videos available on YouTube provide instructions that are consistent with recent health guidelines. The study was published in August 2014 in Emergency Medicine Australasia, the journal for the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).
_ Sleep Health4 Simple Steps to Get You Back to Sleep Fast By Sondra Forsyth articleWe’ve all been there. You are wide awake at 3 a.m., your mind racing with a rising sense of panic about the difficult day ahead if you don’t fall back to sleep. What you’re experiencing is a type of insomnia, says sleep disorders specialist Harneet Walia, MD, DABSM, of Cleveland Clinic’s Sleep Disorders Center.Many underlying health problems such as chronic pain, sleep apnea or acid reflex can cause insomnia. But if your difficulty in sleeping is not due to health problems, here are some tips that can help you get back to sleep.
_ Alternative HealthWarning Issued About Chinese Wolfsbane Remedy By Sondra Forsyth articleEditor’s note: Although this item describes a case in Australia, the information could be valuable to anyone who goes to a Chinese herbal medication practitioner.A preparation prescribed by a Chinese herbal medication practitioner in Melbourne, Australia for back pain resulted in life-threatening heart changes, prompting a team of intensive care and emergency physicians to call for appropriate patient education by practitioners who prescribe complementary medications.
_ Medical Research Women's Health and WellnessFemales Ignored in Medical Research By Sondra Forsyth articleResearch done at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago has found that surgical researchers rarely use female animals or female cells in the research for their published studies, despite a huge body of evidence showing that gender differences can play a crucial role in medical research. The study was published August 28th 2014 in the journal Surgery. A "60 Minutes" segment aired in February about the problem of overlooking sex differences in biomedical research featuring Northwestern Medicine scientists Melina Kibbe M.D. and Teresa Woodruff.
_ Mental & Emotional Health7 Tips to Maintain Class and Control Through Any Life Challenge By Sondra Forsyth articleBy Sherrie Campbell PhD We all have moments when we don't love how we responded to a situation or how we acted. When you are grounded in who you are, you have a certain essence where people can feel that not much can shake you. To be elegant essentially means that you know who you are and are grounded and comfortable in that person. Many of us are emotionally out of control, lacking presence of mind, allowing life to take us on an emotional roller coaster where we feel crazy and at the mercy of our life situations, people, and emotions.
_ Mental & Emotional HealthBad Memories Turned Good By Sondra Forsyth articleRecalling an emotional experience, even years later, can bring back the same intense feelings. Researchers from the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics n Japan have revealed the brain pathway that links external events to the internal emotional state, forming one memory by engaging different brain areas. The study published in August 2014 the journal Nature also demonstrates that the positive or negative emotional valence of memory can be reversed during later memory recall.
_ Watch: How ALS Affects the Body By Sondra Forsyth articleHere's another addition to our ThirdAge Video Collection. Press play to start learning!
_ Skin Skin HealthDiscovery Could Cure Skin Infections By Sondra Forsyth articleResearchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and partners have tested the use of ionic liquids to break bacterial biofilm layer on skin. A release from the laboratory explains that biofilms, which are like a protective tent over a colony of harmful bacteria, make the treatment of skin infections especially difficult. Microorganisms protected in a biofilm pose a significant health risk due to their antibiotic resistance and recalcitrance to treatment.
_ OsteoporosisSurgery to Repair Hip Fracture Saves Billions of $ By Sondra Forsyth articleEach year, more than 300,000 Americans -- primarily adults over age 65 -- sustain a hip fracture, a debilitating injury that can diminish life quality and expectancy and result in lost work days and substantial, long-term financial costs to patients, families, insurers and government agencies. Surgery, which is the primary treatment for hip fractures, successfully reduces mortality risk and improves physical function. However, little has been known about the procedure's value and return on investment.
_ Heart HealthNew Statin Guidelines an Improvement By Sondra Forsyth articleNew national guidelines can improve the way statin drugs are prescribed to patients at risk for cardiovascular disease, a Yale University study has found. The research, published August 25th 2014 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, also showed the new guidelines produce only a modest increase in the number of patients being given the drugs.
_ Coming Next Week! September 1st to September 5th 2014 By Sondra Forsyth articleHere’s a sneak preview of the articles, slideshows, and blogs we’ll be posting during the coming week on ThirdAge, the biggest and best site for “boomer and beyond” women since 1997. As always, we’ll bring you the latest information from top experts about maintaining a healthy body, mind, and spirit as you navigate both the challenges and the joys of being a ThirdAger.
_ Wii Balance Board Helps MS patients By Sondra Forsyth articleThe Nintendo Wii Balance Board video game console can help people with multiple sclerosis (MS) reduce their risk of accidental falls, according to research done at Sapienza University in Rome and published online August 26th 2014 in the journal Radiology. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed that use of the balance board system appears to induce favorable changes in brain connections associated with balance and movement.
_ Digestive HealthHope for New Crohn's Disease Tx By Sondra Forsyth articleGenetic changes that occur in patients with a type of inflammatory bowel disease called Crohn's disease could hold clues to fighting the illness, according to research led by the University of Edinburgh in the UK and published August 26th 2014 in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. Currently, there is no way to prevent Crohn's disease and therapy is focused on treating the symptoms, which may include abdominal pain, diarrhea and severe weight loss.
_ Healthy Diet & Nutrition Medical CareChange in Tube Feeding Boosts Nutrition By Sondra Forsyth articleWhile the importance of enteral nutrition (EN), or feeding patients through a tube, in an intensive care unit is well understood, underfeeding is still common. A practice of a certain amount of feeding per hour can be interrupted by tests, procedures, or emergencies. Changing to a volume-based system, which calls for a certain nutrition volume per day, could reduce underfeeding, according to a quality improvement audit published in the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition's (A.S.P.E.N.) Nutrition in Clinical Practice journal on August 26th 2014.