February 12th, 2011 by Jennifer Wider, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Obesity levels are at an all-time high among men, women, and children in the United States. The need for good nutrition and regular exercise is paramount for maintaining proper health and for keeping those extra pounds at bay, especially for women.
Beginning in her late 20s and 30s, a woman’s average body weight climbs steadily each year. This increase usually continues into her 60s. For many women, the weight gain is between one to two pounds per year with some women gaining more, and others less.
Aside from weight loss, women who incorporate regular exercise into their daily schedules may lower the risks of certain diseases and conditions. A recent study presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference revealed that women who exercised for at least 150 minutes a week significantly reduced their risk of endometrial cancer, regardless of their body size.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) revealed that in order to prevent weight gain, an average woman who eats a normal diet needs 60 minutes of moderate exercise per day. If a woman is overweight or obese, 60 minutes of exercise is inadequate to keep off the weight, according to the study. In many cases she will have to modify her diet, including cutting down on overall daily caloric intake.
For older women, a dose of regular moderate exercise may slow the progression of age-related memory loss. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that exercise may even reverse changes in the brain due to the aging process. Other recent studies prove a positive correlation between exercise and a lower risk of colon cancer. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR)*
February 11th, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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I’d like to talk about how rodents, relationships, and riding relate to overall health and wellness.
This idea comes from a nicely-written New York Times piece entitled, “Does Loneliness Reduce the Benefits of Exercise?” Here, Gretchen Reynolds reviews a few intriguing studies about how relationships may affect exercise, stress hormone levels, and intelligence. The combo caught my eye.
Anyone who pays attention to wellness knows that exercise produces more flexible arteries, more durable hearts, and leaner body shapes. These benefits are obvious, and honestly, sometimes a bit tiresome to write about.
To me, a far more interesting — and lesser known — benefit of regular exercise is that it might make us smarter. Here’s where the rodents come into the story.
As was summarized in the New York Times piece, when researchers allowed rats and mice access to running wheels they observed (a) that they all ran, and (b) those rats that did run scored better on rodent IQ tests, and actually grew more brain cells. This is a striking finding because nerve cells — unlike blood, GI and skin cells, which turnover rapidly — grow very slowly, if at all.
But that’s not the entire story. The Princeton researchers wanted to know whether the rat’s social relationships could have measurable biologic effects.
It turns out that rodents — like humans — are quite social. So social, in fact, that in these trials the brain-growing effect of exercise was blunted when rodents lived alone. Compared to rats and mice that lived in groups, those that were kept in isolation failed to grow new nerve cells in response to exercise. And importantly, isolated rats produced higher levels of stress hormones than those who lived in groups, even though both groups ran the same distance. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
February 11th, 2011 by DrWes in Better Health Network, Opinion
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From the Dallas Morning News, a creative moniker if there ever was one, but it should probably be reserved for primary care specialists instead:
DALLAS — Heart attacks are the No. 1 cause of death and a major cause of disability in America. For nearly half of the casualties, the first symptom is the last. That’s how cardiovascular disease has earned the nickname “silent killer” — you never know when it will strike.
Doctors are trying to change that by treating heart disease as a progressive problem. They are becoming “heart whisperers,” seeking new tests to read the small stresses that can, unchecked, grow into big ones.
“By the time someone rolls in with a heart attack, his family will look at me bewildered, and the patient may say, ‘Doc, what happened?'” says Dr. Bruce Gordon of Heart Hospital Baylor Plano. “But it’s not what happened. It’s what’s been happening. The process has been going on for decades.”
It’s a process that can be accelerated by high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, tobacco use and secondhand smoke.
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
February 11th, 2011 by Michael Kirsch, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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I have previously posted on the ethics of paying for organ donation. I find this notion to be ethically troubling, but I believe the issue deserves fair debate. In general, my belief is that a personal anecdote should not drive policy in medical ethics. There are many individual vignettes that are poignant and heartbreaking that tempt us to relax our ethical boundaries.
For example, permitting us to harvest organs from folks who are “not quite dead,” would save lives, but society’s rights outweigh this benefit, in my view. For similar reasons, I resist efforts to relax the definition of death in order to increase the reservoir of available organs. If death is redefined as a result of a search for truth, then the process is ethically permissible. Participants in these discussions would include medical professionals, theologians, ethicists, legal experts and ordinary people.
If a result of this process would be that there would be more organs available for transplantation, then I would be supportive. The distinction is that increasing organ supply would not be the primary objective. In other words, I reject the approach of, “Hey, we need more organs to save lives. Let’s roll back the definition of death to get there.”
Recently, two sisters who were serving life sentences in Mississippi for a crime related to armed robbery were released by Governor Haley Barbour. They were not pardoned, but their sentences were indefinitely suspended. A condition of their release was that one woman must agree to donate a kidney to her sister.
The women have always maintained their innocence, and supporters have argued that the verdict was wrong or disproportionate to the crime. I am not knowledgeable on the facts and offer no view on the whether the verdict and sentence were just. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at MD Whistleblower*
February 11th, 2011 by EvanFalchukJD in Health Policy, Opinion
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Dick Quinn of Quinn’s Commentary has a pithy post about why it’s hard for the government to control healthcare costs. He says:
Nobody complains about the cost of healthcare, rather they complain about their insurance premiums or their payroll deductions for health benefits.
He’s right about what politicians react to. The healthcare reform law is loaded with things that are meant to contain the price of coverage. But I would add two words to his post:
“Nobody who votes complains about the cost of healthcare.”
It’s true: The large employers who pay for much of healthcare in America complain about the cost a lot. But they are doing something about it.
In my work, I have the opportunity to present at events with some of our Fortune 500 clients. (I have one this week with The Home Depot, hosted by the National Business Group on Health. The event information here — you have to be a member of the NBGH to participate). Listening to these customers, you get a good sense of how employers are attacking this problem.
Here are the top three trends I see benefits professionals talking about:
1. Engagement and Prevention
Doing things to help employees be enthusiastic believers in their company is high on the list of many companies’ strategic objectives. Employee benefits are an important part of that.
A senior benefits leader at a Fortune 100 employer I presented with earlier this year said his company surveyed its employees to see what they wanted in their benefits package. Number 1? That the company’s benefits show it really cares about their well-being. Benefits professionals see health benefits as an opportunity to engage employees in their jobs. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
