Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Avoid Bad Reactions to Meds
2. Potato is Safest Food on Menu
3. Music Therapy May Ease Depression
4. Passive Smoking Raises Lung Cancer Risk
5. Americans Get Too Little Sleep
1. Avoid Bad Reactions to Meds
Bad reactions to a prescribed medication send more than 175,000 older Americans to the emergency room each year. Just 10 commonly used medications — almost all of them for heart disease or diabetes — account for half of these reactions. The March 2008 issue of the Harvard Heart Letter offers tips about safely taking these important but potentially tricky medications.
Warfarin: Check your bleeding time (INR) regularly. Take care if you are also taking a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug such as aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen. Keep your intake of green, leafy vegetables and alcohol steady from day to day.
Insulin: Check your blood sugar several times a day. Take care to store your insulin properly and carry a ready supply. Be aware of the signs of low blood sugar.
Digoxin: Check your pulse when you are calm and relaxed. If it is slower than it should be, call your doctor. Take care if you begin using an over-the-counter medication that may interfere with digoxin, such as antacids, cold or sinus medicine, or laxatives. Call your doctor if you experience vision changes, drowsiness, or confusion.
Aspirin and clopidogrel: Check that you are taking the right dose at the recommended times. Take care when you are using these medications together or with warfarin. Call your doctor if you experience any bleeding warning signs.
Oral medications for diabetes: Check your blood sugar as your doctor directs. Take care with these drugs if you have any type of kidney or heart disease. Be aware of the signs of low blood sugar.
Editor's Note:
2. Potato is Safest Food on Menu
A new British study has identified the lowly potato as the safest food on the menu, saying it is the least likely food to cause fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, and migraine.
The study, which involved giving food intolerance tests to over 8,000 volunteers, found that less than one percent of the participants tested positive for potatoes. “When you consider that each and every person in the UK eats on average 200lb of potatoes a year, this is really quite surprising,” said study spokesman Les Rowley. “Whereas some food intolerances appear to be caused by too much of the same food, on a too regular basis, it seems that the potato is the exception to the rule.”
Rowley said he believes the potato causes few problems because it breaks down easily in the digestive system, and added that the three foods which most often cause reactions are cow’s milk, yeast, and egg white.
Editor's Note:
3. Music Therapy May Ease Depression
Music therapy might help ease the symptoms of depression, though its effectiveness as a stand-alone intervention is not certain, according to a recent review of five small studies.
Four of the studies found reduced depression symptoms in participants receiving music therapy compared to those who did not. The fifth study did not find any difference.
The benefits of music appeared greatest when providers used theory-based therapeutic techniques rather than “winging it.”
“In the four studies where there was an impact, there was a very coherent theoretical framework, a very coherent explanation of what went on in the session and obvious reasons why the therapists were there,” said lead author Anna Maratos. “In the study that showed no effect, there didn’t seem to be any theoretical underpinning to the intervention. We have no idea why the therapist was there, really.”
Therapeutic interventions included listening to music in groups, body movement and painting to music, and improvised singing.
The review appears in the most recent issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research.
Editor's Note:
4. Passive Smoking Raises Lung Cancer Risk
The results of a study published in the International Journal of Cancer confirm that passive smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, especially adenocarcinoma, among non-smoking Japanese women.
"Although smoking is a major cause of lung cancer, the proportion of lung cancer cases among Japanese women who never smoked is high," Dr. Norie Kurahashi, of the National Cancer Center, Tokyo, and colleagues write. "As the prevalence of smoking in Japan is relatively high in men, but low in women, the development of lung cancer in non-smoking Japanese women may be significantly impacted by passive smoking."
In a population-based study, the researchers examined the association between a husband's smoking and the lung cancer risk in his non-smoking wife. The authors also assessed the association between passive smoking from other sources -- at the workplace or during childhood -- in women with lung cancer who never smoked.
A total of 109 cases of lung cancer were diagnosed among 28,414 lifelong non-smoking women over an average follow-up of 13.3 years. Of these women, 82 developed adenocarcinoma.
Overall, 49 percent of the women were exposed to passive smoking from husbands who were current smokers. Compared with women married to men who never smoked, those married to current smokers had a 34 percent increased risk of all types of lung cancer.
Passive smoking from husbands who were current smokers was associated with a statistically significant two-fold increased risk of lung adenocarcinoma.
Passive smoking in the workplace also increased the risk of all lung cancers by 32 percent and the risk of adenocarcinoma by 16 percent.
No association was observed between passive smoking in childhood and lung cancer risk.
These findings are supported by the mechanism of sidestream smoke through the nasal passages, which shows that the volatile components of sidestream smoke are more likely to reach the outer portions of the lungs compared with mainstream smoke, Kurahashi and colleagues point out.
"Particularly in Japan, where room sizes tend to be small and living conditions congested, sidestream smoke may be directly transmitted to non-smoking women before dilution by room air," they add.
SOURCE: International Journal of Cancer, February 2008.
Copyright Reuters
Editor's Note:
5. Americans Get Too Little Sleep
With late-night TV watching, Internet surfing and other distractions, Americans are getting less and less sleep, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.
And all this sleeplessness can be a nightmare for your mental and physical health, CDC experts cautioned, calling sleep loss an under-recognized public health problem.
Sleep experts say chronic sleep loss is associated with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease, depression, cigarette smoking and excessive drinking.
The CDC surveyed 19,589 adults in four states. Ten percent reported they did not get enough sleep or rest every single day of the prior month, and 38 percent said they did not get enough in seven or more days in the prior month.
The CDC survey was conducted in New York, Hawaii, Delaware and Rhode Island, asking people how many days in the prior month they got insufficient rest or sleep, without asking specifically how many hours they slept.
But the CDC released nationwide data collected separately showing that across all age groups, the percentage of adults reporting sleeping six hours or fewer a night increased from 1985 to 2006.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends adults get seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Children ages 5 to 12 should get nine to 11 hours and those 11 to 17 need 8-1/2 to 9-1/2 hours.
"At night, we're doing everything except for sleeping — we're on the Internet, we may be watching TV. With these new lifestyles we have kind of taken sleep for granted as something that we can do when we have time or we can catch up on it on the weekends," CDC behavioral scientist Lela McKnight-Eily, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
"We don't realize that sleep is a vital part of overall health and that chronic sleep loss is related to both physical and mental health issues," she added. "It's getting worse."
Darrel Drobnich, National Sleep Foundation chief executive officer, added that several thousand people die on U.S. roads yearly in accidents involving drowsy drivers.
"Americans are definitely sleep deprived. They don't get the amount that even they say that they want," Drobnich said.
The CDC said 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep loss and sleep disorders in a country of 300 million.
The CDC four-state survey found that younger adults are more likely than older adults to report getting too little sleep. It also found overall that 30 percent of respondents said they got enough sleep every day of the past month, and 33 percent got too little on one to six days in the prior month.
Lela McKnight-Eily urged people who often get too little sleep to see a doctor to see whether lifestyle issues are to blame or whether they might have a sleeping disorder. People can also try to establish a regular sleep schedule and avoid caffeine or other stimulants before bedtime, she added.
Copyright Reuters
Editor's Note:
Editor's Notes:
Offline 
Send Email