Month: February 2014

5 Natural Back Pain Remedies That Work

Lower-back problems are the number two reason people visit a doctor, second only to the common cold and flu. If you’re prone to pain, you may already be treating it with OTC medications or trying to prevent it by strengthening your core and back. Consider these pill-free treatments another weapon in your arsenal.

Yoga
People who took a weekly 75-minute class for 12 weeks found that they had diminished lower-back pain symptoms and less need for pain meds than those who didn’t, according to a 2011 study in Archives of Internal Medicine. Can’t stomach downward dog? Researchers found similar results among those who took a 50-minute weekly intensive stretching class instead.

Osteopathic Manual Therapy (OMT)
Six sessions of OMT—during which a doctor of osteopathy stretches and uses gentle pressure on muscles and joints—led to substantial improvement in about half of people with lower-back pain after 12 weeks, according to a University of North Texas Health Sciences Center study published last March. Nearly two-thirds reported moderate improvement.

Comfrey Root
Using an ointment that contains this plant-based extract reduced lower-back pain by 95%, according to a 2009 study conducted by Merck and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Look for comfrey-root ointment in health food stores or online. Just don’t use it for more than 10 days at a time—it can be toxic.

Acupuncture
It may relieve lower-back pain more effectively than meds or physical therapy, according to a 2009 study done at Group Health Cooperative for Health Studies in Seattle and Northern California Kaiser Permanente in Oakland.

Massage
A third of people who got one weekly for 10 weeks reported significant relief from their lower-back pain, compared with 4% who didn’t go for rubdowns, according to a 2011 study in The Annals of Internal Medicine.

Source: health news

 

If You Have An Irregular Heartbeat, Take Blood Thinners

The American Academy of Neurology on Monday issued new guidelines on the use of blood thinners for people with an irregular heartbeat, after last considering the issue in 1998. Since then, several new anticoagulants have proven at least as effective as the traditional warfarin treatment for non–valvular atrial fibrillation, and is safe for those who’ve survived stroke or its precursor, a transient ischemic attack.

Dr. Antonio Culebras, an Academy fellow at SUNY Upstate Medical University, says blood thinners are especially important for people at risk of stroke. “The World Health Organization has determined that atrial fibrillation is nearing epidemic proportions, affecting 0.5 percent of the population worldwide,” he said in a statement.

Although presenting no immediate danger, an irregular heart rhythm allows blood to collect in the heart’s upper chambers, where it may clot. Eventually, blood clots forming in the heart may flow to the brain, obstructing vessels and arteries. Approximately one in 20 Americans with an untreated irregular heartbeat will suffer stroke this year, the Academy says. To date, doctors have exercised caution in prescribing blood thinners, wary of the risk of bleeding. However, new drugs on the market carry a reduced risk of bleeding in the brain, with much greater convenience. Patients on warfarin today require frequent blood testing to monitor risk for bleeding.

But wait, there’s more. A greater safety profile for blood thinners extends the range of patients who might benefit. Such drugs may now help more elderly patients, including those with dementia and those at moderate risk of falls — factors considered too dangerous for the old-line of anticoagulants.

“Of course, doctors will need to consider the individual patient’s situation in making a decision whether or not to use anticoagulants, and which one to use, as the risks and benefits can vary for each person,” Culebras said.

Source: Medical Daily

 

Acetaminophen, pain killer during pregnancy affects behavior problems in kids

Pregnant women have long been assured that acetaminophen can treat their aches, pains and fevers without bringing harm to the babies they carry. Now researchers say they have found a strong link between prenatal use of the medication and cases of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children.

The findings do not establish that prenatal exposure to acetaminophen — which is also an ingredient in Excedrin and is known in Europe and other parts of the world as paracetamol — caused the observed increase in hyperactivity disorders. But they underscore that medications are only “safe” for pregnant women until studies become sensitive enough to detect subtle problems, said Dr. Daniel Kahn, a UCLA obstetrician who was not involved in the research.

“We used to count a baby’s 10 fingers and 10 toes and assume that any drug his mother took must have been safe,” said Kahn, a specialist in fetal-maternal health. Now observational studies like this are capable of picking up on possible drug effects that are less obvious and harder to measure. As such research moves forward, he said, it’s best to follow a “less is better” rule when it comes to taking medications during pregnancy.

Source: Los Angeles Times

 

Switching Schools May Give Your Kids Psychotic Symptoms

Changing schools can be a wrenching social and emotional experience for students, say researchers from Warwick Medical School in the U.K. And the legacy of that struggle may be psychosis-like symptoms of hallucinations and delusions.

Dr. Swaran Singh, a psychiatrist and head of the mental health division at Warwick, became curious about the connection between school moves and mental health issues after a study from Denmark found that children moving from rural to urban settings showed increased signs of psychoses. The authors also noted that the students had to deal with not just a change in their home environment, but in their social network of friends at school as well.

Singh was intrigued by whether school changes, and the social isolation that comes with it, might be an independent factor in contributing to the psychosis-like symptoms.

Working with a database of nearly 14,000 children born between 1991 and 1992 and followed until they were 13 years old, Singh and his colleagues investigated which factors seemed to have the strongest effect on mental health. The children’s mothers answered questions about how many times the students had moved schools by age nine, and the children responded to queries about their experiences either bullying others or being victims of bullying. The survey even included a look at the children’s in utero environments, and their circumstances from birth to age 2, by asking the mothers about where they lived (in urban or village areas, for example), and about financial difficulties or other family social issues.

Based on their analysis, says Singh, switching schools three or more times in early childhood seemed to be linked to an up to two-fold greater risk of developing psychosis-like symptoms such as hallucinations and interrupting thoughts. “Even when we controlled for all things that school moves lead to, there was something left behind that that was independently affecting children’s mental health,” he says.

Factors such as a difficult home environment – whether caused by financial or social tension, or both – living in an urban environment, and bullying contributed to the mental health issues, but switching schools contributed independently to the psychosis-like symptoms.

Singh suspects that repeatedly being an outsider by having to re-integrate into new schools may lead to feelings of exclusion and low self-esteem. That may change a developing child’s sense of self and prime him to always feel like an outlier and never an integrated part of a social network; such repeated experiences of exclusion are known to contribute to paranoia and psychotic symptoms.

Bullying created a secondary way in which repeated school moves could lead to mental health issues — bullying is known to be associated with psychotic symptoms, and mobile students are more vulnerable to bullying,

The negative emotional experiences students go through in trying to adjust to new schools can have physiological consequences as well. “Repeated experiences of being defeated in social situations leads to changes in the brain and in the dopaminergic system,” says Singh. That makes the brain more sensitive to stress, and stress, with its surges of cortisol, can lead to unhealthy neural responses that can contribute to mental health problems. “Something about chronic marginalization, and chronic exclusion, is neurophysiologically damaging,” he says.

Source: health and time

Night Eating Disorder Signals More Dangerous Mental Issues

Do you eat a lot of food at night, even after you feel full? Then you may want to see a specialist. Researchers have discovered a fairly rare eating disorder whose signature is excessive eating may just signal other mental health issues.

“Night eating syndrome is characterized not only by eating at night–certainly many college students might have a late night study fest with eating–but it’s also characterized by other things, like feeling that you can’t eat in the morning, and feeling like you have to eat in order to go back to sleep,” said Rebecka Peebles

The new findings are important amidst National Eating Disorders Week, which began on Feb. 23. The week brings awareness to devastating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

“Eating disorders are complicated and vexing problems and we don’t exactly understand the pathophysiology of them,” said Aaron Krasner, Director of the Adolescent Transitional Living Program

The latest study reveals a new type of disorder. While it overlaps with binge eating, though, it’s not the same. It occurs in just under 3 percent of students after controlling for binge eating, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a problem that shouldn’t be examined further. In fact, those with night eating disorders were also more likely to have a history of depression and self-injuring.

“Often times these people are eating throughout the night,” said Cristin Runfola,

“They might even be waking up and feeding multiple times throughout the night, so if you’re frequently hearing that someone’s getting out of bed throughout the night and you’re noticing that food is missing there might be something going on.”

The findings help reveal a bit more about this disorder, and also about binge eating disorder. By learning as much as possible about these disorders, researches can better treat individuals who suffer from them.

Source: Food world news

Health and Happiness: Men beat Women

A new survey has found that men are more healthier as well as happier about their appearance than women who are more concerned about their looks, making them less happy.

Health and Happiness, a nationwide study of 2,000 men and women revealed that men reported a higher rate of happiness when it came to their weight, shape, appearance, and the way they are perceived by others.

However, the survey found women to be more self-conscious and slightly less satisfied with their happiness levels at around 49 percent.

It also said that women are much more likely to try dieting than men.

On stress levels, 60 percent of women felt anxious once a week or more while almost 60 percent of male respondents said they only felt stressed once a month.

Men rarely feel depressed as over 70 percent of them claim they rarely felt down or had mood swings, whereas half of women admitted to feeling low or unhappy at least once a month, if not more.

When it comes to wellness, men are again leading as almost half of them said they rarely got headaches compared to 64 percent of women who said they experienced them at least once a month or more.

Also, 70 percent of men said bloating and poor digestion would only occur once a month or less, while it was a daily or weekly problem for half of women.

Patrick Holford, leading nutrition expert and who conducted the research said: “The general perception is that women are more health conscious, but what this survey shows is that women do actually have more health issues to deal with, especially relating to digestion, mood, anxiety and sleep.”

“The results also show that respondents, regardless of their gender, considered the absence of disease to be an indicator of good health. But being healthy means more than that – it’s abundance of well-being indicated by good energy levels, a stable mood and a sharp mind, all of which achieve optimum health,” added Holford.

Source: Zee news

Social media affecting teens’ concepts of friendship, intimacy

Social media is affecting the way kids look at friendship and intimacy, according to researchers.

The typical teenager has 300 Facebook friends and 79 Twitter followers, the Pew Internet and American Life project found in its report, Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.

And some have many more.

The 2013 study also says the norms around privacy are changing, and the majority of teens post photos and personal information about themselves for all their on-line contacts to see.

More recent survey data released last week by the Canadian non-profit digital literacy group MediaSmarts shows Canadian youth do take some steps to protect their privacy – for example, by not posting their contact information on social media.

But the paper, Online Privacy, Online Publicity, also points out that most kids have only a limited understanding of things such as privacy policies, geo-location services and the implications of sharing their passwords.

The research contributes to an emerging picture of how teens’ ideas about friendship and intimacy have been influenced by their immersion in the on-line world, says Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA developmental psychologist and the director of the Children’s Digital Media Center @ Los Angeles.

In her own research, Greenfield has found that young people feel socially supported by having large networks of on-line friends, and these are not necessarily friends they ever see face-to-face.

“We found in our study that people, college students, are not getting a sense of social support from being on the phone. They’re getting social support through bigger networks and having a sense that their audience is large.”

The result is a decline in intimate friendships, Greenfield says. Instead, many young people now derive personal support and affirmation from “likes” and feedback to their postings.

“The whole idea behind intimacy is self-disclosure. Now they’re doing self-disclosure to an audience of hundreds.”

Other research at UCLA shows teens’ increasingly preferred mode of communication with their friends, texting, makes them feel less connected and bonded than face-to-face communication.

Graduate student Lauren Sherman studied various forms of communication between pairs of friends. She found the closer the experience was to in-person conversation, the more emotionally connected the friends felt. For example, video chat rated higher than a phone call, but the phone created a closer connection than texting.

“I don’t think digital communication in itself is a bad thing,” said Sherman, “but if we’re losing out on opportunities to connect with people as well as we can, that’s a problem.”

Studies have estimated teens typically send more than 3,000 texts a month.

Greenfield says that indicates kids are opting for efficiency of connection over intimacy.

Source: CBC news

Solitary confinement: A man lives 29 years in a box

140221103649-rosolitary 2bert-king-mock-cell---restricted-story-top

Robert King still remembers well the dimensions of his cell: 6 x 9 x 12 feet. There was a steel bed and a sink that doubled as a toilet where he would also wash clothes.

King spent 29 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana. He has been free since 2001, but still has difficulty with geographical orientation.

“I get confused as to where I am, where I should be,” he said.

King joined researchers and legal experts at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago this month to talk about the mental and physical health consequences of solitary confinement.

“The widespread consensus among mental health professionals is that solitary confinement, for the overall majority of mentally ill prisoners, places them at severe risk of additional harm,” said Craig Haney, director of the program in legal studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The talk was timely. This week, New York state agreed to several changes that would limit the use of solitary confinement for disciplining some groups of inmates, including those under 18 or pregnant women. The agreement stemmed from a class-action lawsuit.

The New York State Department of Corrections provided to CNN a statement from its acting commissioner, which read in part: “These are important reforms that will make the disciplinary practices in New York’s prisons more humane, and ultimately, our state’s criminal justice system more fair and progressive, while maintaining safety and security.”

r-SOLITARY-CONFINEMENT-large570

A department spokesperson said no statement was available on the general use of solitary confinement.

A brief history of solitary confinement
There are about 80,000 people being held in some sort of solitary-type confinement in the United States, Haney said.

Prisoners in solitary confinement tend to be restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed, Haney said. Sleeping, eating and defecating all take place inside that space. For exercise, prisoners in solitary confinement often get a short time in a cage rather than an outdoor yard — perhaps one hour per day.

Haney, who has studied prisons and punishment for more than four decades, estimates that about one-third of people in solitary confinement in this country are mentally ill, although some prison systems do not permit mentally ill inmates to be placed in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement was used broadly in the 19th century, but the punishment was then largely abandoned because of the view that “it was doing more harm than good,” Haney said.

Correctional practice began to reincorporate solitary confinement in the late 1970s and 80s, as prisons began to get overcrowded, Haney said. He believes prison systems turned to solitary confinement as a short-term solution to controlling disruptive or violent behavior, lacking the resources to provide positive incentives or programming.

But overcrowding in prisons turned out to be permanent and mostly increased each year.
Prison systems continued to struggle over what to do to resolve conflicts or stop violence or disruption in the institutions. They put more prisoners in solitary confinement and left them there for longer periods of time, Haney said.

“I think the cost of solitary confinement is now being critically examined and rethought, and prison systems are beginning to ask themselves whether this is worth it, and whether or not it does not create more harm than good,” he said. “Courts are pushing them to consider the inhumanity of the practice, as well.”

Source: CNN news

Giving blood pressure medications right after stroke not beneficial

A major study has found that giving patients medications to lower their blood pressure during the first 48 hours after a stroke does not reduce the likelihood of death or major disability.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

At least 25 per cent of the population has high blood pressure, which greatly increases the risk of stroke. Lowering blood pressure has been shown to reduce the risk of stroke. The study investigated whether there also would be a benefit to lowering blood pressure immediately after a stroke.

The study included more than 4,000 stroke patients in 26 hospitals across China who were randomly assigned to receive or discontinue blood pressure medications. At 14 days or upon hospital discharge, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups in mortality or disability.

Blood pressure often is elevated following a stroke.

“But in most cases, treatment is unnecessary because the blood pressure declines naturally over time, and lowering blood pressure may be contraindicated,” said stroke specialist Dr Jose Biller, chair of the department of neurology of Loyola University Medical Centre. “It is important not to over treat and cause low blood pressure because the most important objective is to maintain adequate blood flow to the brain.”

Dr Biller was a member of the study’s Data and Safety Monitoring Board. Dr Paul K Whelton, former president and CEO of Loyola University Health System, was chair of the monitoring board.

First author of the study is Dr Jiang He of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

The study is called the China Antihypertensive Trial in Acute Ischemic Stroke (CATIS). It involved patients who had suffered ischemic strokes, which account for about 85 per cent of all strokes. Such strokes are caused by blood clots that block blood flow to a part of the brain.

Source: India Medical Times

Homemade Energy Drink : Natural energy drinks

The intention of coming up with a recipe for a homemade version of the store bought energy drinks, but after doing some research and discovering how unhealthy they are for us

A system of three drinks and some energy boosting ideas that are going a long way to helping us keep energy up all day long! Here’s the good on the drinks:

The Fire Hydrant – 3-4 8oz glasses throughout the day

  • filtered water
  • 1 slice lemon
  • 1 pinch cayenne pepper

Other than getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, staying hydrated is the most important thing you can do to help keep your body functioning at optimum levels. So this drink is just water with a squeezed lemon slice and a pinch of cayenne pepper. The lemon not only tastes good, but is also super alkaline* which helps your body maintain a healthy pH level. The cayenne pepper helps raise energy levels naturally and provides protection for your heart by helping to maintain proper cardiovascular movement throughout the body. Combining this with 4-5 glasses of regular water will bring you up to your recommended 8 glasses of water per day!

*For an explanation of lemons’ miraculous transition from acidic outside of the body, to alkaline once ingested, visit this link: http://phbalance.wikispaces.com/Lemons+Alkaline%3F

The Quick Fix  – as needed, during the day
(I don’t recommend drinking it at night as it might keep you up)

  • hot water
  • 1 1/2 – 2 tsp honey (to taste)
  • 1 inch of fresh ginger root
  • 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
  • 1/4 tsp tumeric

Cut off two thin slices of ginger and place in your cup or mug.
Use a garlic press to juice the remaining ginger into your mug.
Add both spices and fill your mug with hot water and stir.

This is the closest thing I found to a non-caffeine/refined sugar pick me up! And I find it pretty delicious. Ginger speeds up metabolism and increases circulation. It also aids in the digestive process which can help stave off the post lunch coma that contributes to the afternoon slump. Turmeric, a cousin of ginger, also helps speed things up in the body, including energy levels! And Cardamom has long been valued medicinally for its ability to increase circulation and improve energy. Honey is mother nature’s equivalent of an energy shot and is one of the best kinds of sugars for your body.

The Heavy Lifter– 1 glass in the morning

  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1/4 cup raw almonds or 2 tbsp almond butter
  • 1 scoop of high quality whey protein powder (low sugar content)
  • 2 washed kale leaves
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt
  • 1 tbsp ground flax seeds
  • 1 cup milk of choice (I used unsweetened almond milk)

According to Dr. Oz, sixty percent of women don’t get enough protein in their diets and that is often the number one reason for fatigue! (http://www.doctoroz.com/media/print/11196) A morning protein shake is a really easy and delicious way to make sure that you’re starting the day off well fueled. Pair this with a piece of whole grain toast and you have everything you need to give you a solid energy foundation for the day.

Source: stumble upon