Mowing The Lawn is good for your heart

We all know we’re supposed to exercise daily, but precious few of us do. And it only seems to get harder with age.

There’s a reason to try harder, though. Tacking more years of good health on to your life may be as simple as mowing the lawn more often and engaging in other everyday physical activities.

Researchers in Sweden measured the health of almost 4,000 60-year-olds in the late 1990s. A dozen years later, they checked back in. The people who had been active but not “exercising” at age 60 had a 27 percent lower risk of heart attack and stroke over that time, and a 30 percent lower risk of death.

The most active people also had trimmer waists, and better HDL cholesterol, triglycerides and blood glucose levels, considered risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.

That’s compared to people who are sedentary, which tends to become more common as people age.

What kind of activity does it take to get those kinds of numbers? Things like mowing the lawn, housework, fix-it projects, and gardening, bicycling, for a nice Scandinavian touch, “gathering mushrooms or berries.”

That last one got me thinking of my 92-year-old dad, who gathered 15 pounds of chanterelle mushrooms just a few weeks ago near his home in Oregon. Dad also mows the lawn, cleans the gutters and fixes the roof. He grows roses, tomatoes and grapes, too.

You could say he does this because he’s cheap. He’s a child of the Great Depression after all. Or maybe he’s just restless. Either way, he’s in good shape, or if he’s jogged even once in his life, it’s news to me.

Other recent studies on non-mushroom-gatherers have found similar health benefits for the kind of simple daily activity that doesn’t require Spandex pants, including walking or biking for transportation instead of driving.

The Swedish researchers also looked at people who were doing the kind of moderate-to-vigorous activity that we’re all supposed to be doing for 150 minutes a week, according to federal guidelines. Regular exercisers had better blood pressure numbers than non-exercisers. When it came to cardiovascular health and risk of death, they didn’t lower their risk any more than the active non-exercisers, unless they were getting a lot of high-intensity exercise, more than 30 minutes three times a week.

The study was published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This study doesn’t prove that being active is what made these people healthier, of course. It could be they were more active because they were healthier to begin with and then stayed that way. But the researchers tried to account for that by excluding people who already had heart disease and other health problems.

Other recent reports showing that being sedentary is pretty much a death sentence, mowing the lawn sounds less like a chore and more a gift of life.

Source: http://inagist.com/all/395295874374701056/

Swaddling babies can cause hip problems, surgeon warns

A pediatric orthopedic surgeon is warning about the potential for hip problems in babies now that swaddling has made a comeback.

Nicholas Clarke of Southampton University Hospital in England wrote in the Archives of Disease in Childhood that swaddling can be safe, so long as it doesn’t prevent the baby’s legs from bending up and out at the hips – a position that allows for the natural development of hip joints. The legs must not be tightly wrapped, he wrote.

He noted nine of 10 infants in North America are now swaddled in the first six months of life, and demand for swaddling clothes soared by 61% in the U.K. between 2010 and 2011.

Swaddling is used to soothe a baby and help them sleep, but pulling the blanket around the baby too tightly could cause hip misalignment, which could turn into osteoarthritis later in life, Clarke said.

Source: http://bit.ly/1f1HVrL

10 Reasons to Give Up Diet Soda

When taken at face value, diet soda seems like a health-conscious choice. It saves you the 140-plus calories you’d find in a sugary soft drink while still satisfying your urge for something sweet with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose. But there’s more to this chemical cocktail than meets the eye.

It confuses your body

Artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar, so over time products like diet soda dull our senses to naturally sweet foods like fruit, says Brooke Alpert, RD, author of The Sugar Detox. Even more troubling, these sugar stand-ins have been shown to have the same effect on your body as sugar. “Artificial sweeteners trigger insulin, which sends your body into fat storage mode and leads to weight gain,” Alpert says.

It could lead to weight gain, not weight loss

Diet soda is calorie-free, but it won’t necessarily help you lose weight. Researchers from the University of Texas found that over the course of about a decade, diet soda drinkers had a 70% greater increase in waist circumference compared with non-drinkers. And get this: participants who slurped down two or more sodas a day experienced a 500%greater increase. The way artificial sweeteners confuse the body may play a part, but another reason might be psychological, says Minnesota-based dietitian Cassie Bjork. When you know you’re not consuming any liquid calories, it might be easier to justify that double cheeseburger or extra slice of pizza.

It’s associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes

Drinking one diet soda a day was associated with a 36% increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes in a University of Minnesota study. Metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of conditions (including high blood pressure, elevated glucose levels, raised cholesterol, and large waist circumference) that put people at high risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, Bjork explains.

It has no nutritional value

When you drink diet soda, you’re not taking in any calories—but you’re also not swallowing anything that does your body any good, either. The best no-calorie beverage? Plain old water, says Bjork. “Water is essential for many of our bodily processes, so replacing it with diet soda is a negative thing,” she says. If it’s the fizziness you crave, try sparkling water.

Its sweetener is linked to headaches

Early studies on aspartame and anecdotal evidence suggests that this artificial sweetener may trigger headaches in some people. “I have several clients who used to suffer from migraines and pinpointed their cause to diet soda,” Bjork says.

It’ll ruin your smile over time

Excessive soda drinking could leave you looking like a Breaking Bad extra, according to a case study published in the journalGeneral Dentistry. The research compared the mouths of a cocaine-user, a methamphetamine-user, and a habitual diet-soda drinker, and found the same level of tooth erosion in each of them. The culprit here is citric acid, which weakens and destroys tooth enamel over time.

It makes drinking more dangerous

Using diet soda as a low-calorie cocktail mixer has the dangerous effect of getting you drunk faster than sugar-sweetened beverages, according to research from Northern Kentucky University. The study revealed that participants who consumed cocktails mixed with diet drinks had a higher breath alcohol concentration than those who drank alcohol blended with sugared beverages. The researchers believe this is because our bloodstream is able to absorb artificial sweetener more quickly than sugar.

It’s associated with depression

A recent study presented at a the American Academy of Neurology meeting found that over the course of 10 years, people who drank more than four cups or cans of soda a day were 30% more likely to develop depression than those who steered clear of sugary drinks. The correlation held true for both regular and diet drinks, but researchers were sure to note that the risk appeared to be greater for those who primarily drank diet sodas and fruit punches. Although this type of study can’t prove cause and effect, its findings are worth considering.

It may be bad for your bones

Women over 60 are already at a greater risk for osteoporosis than men, and Tufts University researchers found that drinking soda, including diet soda, compounds the problem. They discovered that female cola drinkers had nearly 4% lower bone mineral density in their hips than women who didn’t drink soda. The research even controlled for the participants’ calcium and vitamin D intake. Additionally, a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that cola intake (all kinds, not just diet) was associated with low bone-mineral density in women.

It may hurt your heart

Just one diet soft drink a day could boost your risk of having a vascular event such as stroke,heart attack, or vascular death, according to researchers from the University of Miami and Columbia University. Their study found that diet soda devotees were 43% more likely to have experienced a vascular event than those who drank none. Regular soda drinkers did not appear to have an increased risk of vascular events. Researchers say more studies need to be conducted before definitive conclusions can be made about diet soda’s effects on health.

Source: http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20739512_last,00.html

3 Kids Get E. Coli Infections from Dayton Petting Zoo

At least three Minnesota children are recovering from E-coli infections after visiting a pumpkin patch and farm. The Minnesota Department of Health is investigating after they say the children had been in contact with animals at Dehn’s Pumpkins in Dayton, Minn.

The department is following up with groups that have visited the farm since Oct. 12.

The three cases were all children, ranging in age from 15 months to 7 years and are residents of the Twin Cities metro area. One child is hospitalized with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious complication of an E. coli infection characterized by kidney failure. The others were not hospitalized and are recovering, according to the MDH.

The MDH says E. coli is common around animals like cattle and goats and that this is not unique to Dehn’s Farm. Access to cattle and goats at Dehn’s farms has been closed pending the investigation, but the pumpkin patch remains open. The owners are cooperating with the investigation.

MDH Officials stress if you come in contact with animals such as cows and goats that you should wash hands thoroughly with soap and water immediately after.

Symptoms of E. coli include severe stomach cramps and diarrhea with a low-grade or no fever.

Source; http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3200943.shtml

Woman who never aged dies at 20

A woman who never aged has died.

Brooke Greenberg, of Reisterstown, Maryland, looked and behaved like a toddler until her last breath.

Brooke was eventually diagnosed by her physician with “Syndrome X”, an unidentifiable and unexplained rare disease – which is known to affect only about six people in the world – where they do not age physically or mentally since early childhood.

“While the outside world may have noticed Brooke’s physical stature and been puzzled by her unique development state, she brought joy and love to her family,” Rabbi Andrew Busch, who delivered the eulogy at the funeral yesterday, told the New York Daily News. “Her parents, three sisters and extended family showered her with love and respected her dignity throughout her entire life.”

Brooke and her family appeared on Katie Couric’s talk show in the US in January.

They said Brooke could not talk, had baby teeth and still had to be pushed about in a chair.

“From age one to four, Brooke changed. She got a little bit bigger. But age four, four to five, she stopped,” her father told Couric.

Source: fox news

 

How Music Can Boost Our Workouts

Making music — and not just listening to it — while exercising makes the exercise easier, a remarkable new experiment finds, suggesting that the human love of music may have evolved, in part, to ease physical effort.

Researchers and exercisers have long known, of course, that listening to music alters the experience of exercising. Earlier studies have shown, for instance, that briskly paced music tends to inspire equally briskly paced workouts, and that music also can distract and calm nervous competitors before a race or other high-pressure situation, improving their subsequent performance.

But to date, no one had thought to investigate whether creating — and not merely hearing — music might have an effect on workouts, let alone whether the impact would be qualitatively different than when exercisers passively listen to music pumped through gym speakers or their ear buds.

So, for the new study, which was published online last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognition and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and other institutions began by inventing an electronic kit that could be integrated into the internal workings of weight-training machines, transforming them into oversize boom boxes. Once installed, the kit would produce a range of propulsive, electronic-style music with a variety of sound levels and rhythms, depending on how the machine’s weight bar or other mechanisms were manipulated during workouts.

The researchers installed the kits into three different workout machines, one a stair-stepper, the other two weight machines with bars that could be raised or pulled down to stimulate various muscles.

They then recruited a group of 63 healthy men and women and divided them into groups, each of which was assigned to use one of the musically equipped machines during a strenuous though brief six-minute exercise session.

As the volunteers strained, their machines chirped and pinged with a thumping 130 beats per minute, the sound level rising or falling with each individual’s effort and twining with the rhythms created by the other two exercisers. “Participants could express themselves on the machines by, for instance, modulating rhythms and creating melodies,” said Thomas Hans Fritz, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute who led the study.

The groups were, in effect, D.J.’ing their workouts, creating sounds that echoed their physical efforts.

During a separate exercise session, each group used the same machines, but minus the musical add-ons, while elsewhere in the gym, other volunteers sweated at the musically equipped machines, meaning that one group was passively listening to sounds created by another.

Throughout each workout, the researchers monitored the force their volunteers generated while using the machines, as well as whether the weight lifters’ movements tended to stutter or flow and how much oxygen the volunteers consumed, a reliable measure of physical effort. Afterward, the scientists asked the volunteers to rate the tolerability or unpleasantness of the session, on a scale from 1 to 20.

Tabulated afterward, the results showed that most of the volunteers had generated significantly greater muscular force while working at the musically equipped machines than the unmodified ones. They also had used less oxygen to generate that force and reported that their exertions had felt less strenuous. Their movements were also more smooth in general, resulting in a steadier flow of music.

Creating their own rhythms and melodies had lowered the physiological cost of exercise and greatly increased its subjective allure compared with when the exercisers passively listened to virtually the same music, Dr. Fritz said.

A similar dynamic may have motivated early humans to whistle or hum while they hunted or tilled and later to raise their voices in song during barn raisings and other intense physical labor, he said.

But why orchestrating your own soundtrack should have more physical benefit than merely hearing similar music in the background is not altogether clear.

“We think that the observed effects are most probably due to a greater degree of emotional motor control,” when you actively engage in making music, Dr. Fritz said. Emotional motor control, as opposed to the more workaday “deliberate” type that normally guides our muscular movements, he said, operates almost below consciousness. Your body responds to it with little volition and you move, he said, with reduced effort and increased joy. This is “musical ecstasy,” Dr. Fritz said, and it seems to have permeated, to some degree, the gym where the exercisers composed music while sweating.

Unfortunately, the musical kits that Dr. Fritz and his colleagues have developed are not available commercially, although they may be in the future. For now, he said, you may need to content yourself with purposely ignoring the supplied soundtrack at your local gym and instead singing to yourself. Perhaps harmonize, no matter how tunelessly, with a workout partner. Disdain naysayers and music lovers. You will be, in the felicitous phrasing of Dr. Fritz, “jymming; that’s like jamming, but with a ‘y’ from ‘gym.’”

Source: http://nyti.ms/1aBf66B

Sneaky Hairstyle Tricks To Disguise Gray Roots

If you find gray roots and regrowth peeking through too soon, try one of these handy tricks to disguise them as long as possible:

 1.) Don’t pluck: You may feel tempted to pluck those grays away, but try to resist. Plucking can damage the hair follicle and can possibly lead to bald patches.

2.) Braided styles: French braids or braids along your hairline (like Blake Lively’s or Jada Pinkett Smith’s below) are a great way to tuck away grays and conceal any appearance of regrowth between color applications.

3.) Change your part: For some women, more grays appear on one side of the head than the other. Plus, parting your hair in the same place can make regrowth more prominent. You can switch your part to the other side or try a slightly messy part to help conceal the grays.

4.) Clever clips: Embellished clips or barrettes can conceal root growth and grays. Try twisting and pinning your roots underneath the colored hair. Or, clip hair into a half-up hairstyle to cover grays at the crown and part if you don’t have time to color yet.

5.) Headband or scarf: Wrap a carefully-placed headband or scarf around your head to cover up the roots and leave only your colored ends showing.

6.) Powder: If you’re in a pinch and can’t color your hair, find a colored powder makeup, such as eye shadow or foundation, which matches your hair color. Use a damp brush and dab powder over roots to temporarily camouflage them.

Wipe out gray roots at home with the perfect hair color match from eSalon, which provides personalized hair color made just for you! First time clients can get a full color kit for only $9.95* (50% off!) with a satisfaction guarantee.

Source: http://bit.ly/185vma6

Smokers most likely to think about quitting smoking every Monday

Monday is the day when smokers are most likely to think about quitting smoking, a new study of Google search queries has found.

Researchers from San Diego State University, the Santa Fe Institute, The Monday Campaigns and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined weekly patterns in smoking cessation contemplations for the first time.

They monitored global Google search query logs from 2008 to 2012 in English, French, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish for searches related to quitting, such as ‘help quit smoking’.

The study found that people search about quitting smoking more often early in the week, with the highest query volumes on Mondays, using a daily measure representing the proportion of quit smoking searches to all searches.

This pattern was consistent across all six languages, suggesting a global predisposition to thinking about quitting smoking early in the week, particularly on Mondays.

English searches, for example, showed Monday query volumes were 11 per cent greater than on Wednesdays, 67 percent greater than on Fridays, and 145 percent greater than on Saturdays.

In total for all six languages, Monday query volumes were 25 percent higher than the combined mean number of searches for Tuesday through Sunday.

“Popular belief has been that the decision to quit smoking is unpredictable or even chaotic,” said the study’s lead author, San Diego State University’s John W Ayers.

“By taking a bird’s-eye view of Google searches, however, we find anything but chaos. Instead, Google search data reveal interest in quitting is part of a larger collective pattern of behaviour dependent on the day of the week,” Ayers said.

“Campaigns for people to quit may benefit from shifting to weekly cues. We know it takes smokers many quit attempts before they succeed, so prompting them to try again on Mondays may be an effective and easy to implement campaign,” said Joanna E Cohen, coauthor and Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Global Tobacco Control.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine.

 See more at: http://bit.ly/175rdbj

Cervical Cancer vaccine may miss mark for some black women

A black female’s genetic make-up may reduce the effectiveness of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in curbing rates of cervical cancer among that population, according to preliminary findings by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Epidemiology Department.

Cautioning that more research is needed before these early findings can be fully confirmed—HPV researchers elsewhere say it’s not been proven that other regions are witnessing the same patterns as those shown in this new study—the North Carolina research team investigated the potential interplay between the vaccine and different types of HPV diagnosed among the 572 Durham County, N.C. women who enrolled in the study.

“It was a single population from a single clinic. All of these women came a small geographic area, and we know that women tend to have sex partners in the area where they live,” Dr. Rebecca Perkins, a Boston University researcher of HPV in poor and under-served communities and gynecologist told the Grio. “It’s hard to [apply] take this to any other states or, for that matter, to a health center outside of Duke.”

Of the 572 women, ages 18 and older, 280 of them were black and 292 were non-Hispanic whites.

In reviewing cervical pap smears taken since 2010, more than half of the women had changes associated with developing cervical cancer — 239 early-stage and 88 in the advanced stage. And many of the women — 73 percent — were infected with more than one type of HPV. There are 40 subtypes in total.

The HPV vaccine prevents infection from subtypes 16 and 18. Combined, those two account for 70 percent of cervical cancers, these researchers wrote.

In the study out today, the white women with early and advanced pre-cancerous abnormalities tested positive for the HPV 16 and HPV 18 subtypes. But in black women, neither HPV 16 nor HPV 18 was commonly found.

Instead, the most commonly detected subtypes during the early precancerous stage were HPV subtypes 33, 35, 58 and 68. HPV subtypes 31, 35, 45, 56, 58, 66 and 68 were the most commonly detected in black women with advanced-stage pre-cancerous abnormalities.

“Compared with white women, we saw that African-American women had about half as many infections with HPV 16 and 18, the subtypes that are covered by HPV vaccines,” said Adriana Vidal, Ph.D., an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke and the study’s lead investigator, according to a press release. “Since African-American women don’t seem to be getting the same subtypes of HPV with the same frequency, the vaccines aren’t helping all women equally.”

This study has not been approved for publication in a medical journal, through the authors has applied to have their work published, Duke Medical Center spokeswoman Rachel Harrison told the Grio via email.

The research team is slated to present its findings during the American Association for Cancer Research’s 12th annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, which opens Monday in National Harbor, Md.

Morehouse School of Medicine’s Dr. Hedwige DiDi Saint-Louis said she hopes these preliminary findings lead no one to reflexively believe the vaccine is either ineffective or unnecessary. She will continue to encourage her patients to get vaccinated, she said.

In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the HPV vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer, a disease which kills a greater percentage of black women than white women. Sold under the brand names of Gardasil or Cervarix, the drug has been a debate for many, largely because it’s recommended for boys and girls to begin getting the series of three vaccination shots starting when they are about 11 or 12 years old.

One U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study concluded that the vaccine had cut in half the rate of sexually transmitted disease infections in teen girls.

Although a new HPV vaccine targeting HPV subtypes 16, 18 and seven other types is currently being tested in clinical trials, the Duke and University of North Carolina researchers noted that, even if approved for use, it may not address the challenges detailed in their research.

Similarly, Saint-Louis added that this study spotlights the lingering question of whether pharmaceutical firms, among others, are doing enough to ensure that their clinical trials include all racial and ethnic groups. Coupled with that is a lingering reluctance of many non-whites to sign up for trials that do exist.

“With most of these clinical trials, there’s an issue with recruiting African-Americans and other minority populations,” Saint-Louis said. “ … Always, we need to look at genetic differences in disease and treatment. The goal in clinical trials should be to get as wide a circle of participants as possible so that the trials represent the population at large. Then, you can confidently generalize about what the findings truly mean.”

Taking race-based genetics into account should be a front-end priority for drug-makers aiming to make effective medicines, Saint-Louis said. “If it isn’t, that greatly increases the likelihood that [pharmacology] is going to miss something that makes a difference for minority groups.”

Patricio Meneses, an epidemiologist and HPV researcher at Fordham University in New York City, said drug-makers might be better advised—and the public better served—by developing a more powerful “second-generation vaccine that actually attacks the biology of virus … after it gets inside the body’s cells.”

The current vaccines don’t go that far, he added. They work by keep the many subtypes of viruses from attaching to the outside of cells.

Source: http://on.thegrio.com/1avcwLs

UN confirms 10 polio cases in northeast Syria

The UN’s health agency said on Tuesday it has confirmed 10 polio cases in northeast Syria, the first confirmed outbreak of the diseases in the country in 14 years, with a risk of spreading across the region.

 Officials are awaiting lab results on another 12 cases showing polio symptoms, said World Health Organization spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer.

Rosenbauer said the confirmed cases are among babies and toddlers, all under 2, who were “under immunized”.

The polio virus, a highly contagious disease, usually infects children in unsanitary conditions through the consumption of food or liquid contaminated with feces. It attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyze, and can spread widely and unnoticed before it starts crippling children.

“This is a communicable disease — with population movements it can travel to other areas,” said Rosenbauer. “So the risk is high of spread across the region.”

Syria had launched a vaccination campaign around the country days after the Geneva-based WHO said it had received reports of children showing symptoms of polio in Syria’s Deir el-Zour province, but the campaign faces difficulty with lack of access in many parts of the war-torn country.

Nearly all Syrian children were vaccinated against the disease before the civil war began more than 2 years ago. Polio was last reported in Syria in 1999.

The Syrian conflict, which began as a largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar Assad in March 2011, has triggered a humanitarian crisis on a massive scale, killing more than 100,000 people, driving nearly 7 million more from their homes and devastating cities and towns.

UN officials have warned of the spread of disease in Syria because of lack of access to basic hygiene and vaccinations.

Source: http://bit.ly/1hpRza0