Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, August 27th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Fatty Food Pictures?
Looking at images of high-calorie foods stimulates the brain's appetite control center, which leads to an elevated desire for food. This stimulation of the brain's reward areas may contribute to overeating and obesity. This is a striking finding because the current environment is inundated with advertisements showing images of high-calorie foods.
Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting, June 2012

Health Alert: GlaxoSmithKline Pleads Guilty!
GlaxoSmithKline, the world's 4th largest company, pled guilty to fraud and agreed to pay $3 billion dollars to resolve criminal and civil charges against the company. The matter relates to failure to report the safety data of certain prescription drugs, as well as false price reporting. It is the largest payout by a drug company over fraud, and the largest healthcare fraud case to date. James M. Cole, Deputy Attorney General said, "Today's multi-billion dollar settlement is unprecedented in both size and scope. We are determined to stop practices that jeopardize patients' health, harm taxpayers, and violate the public trust and this historic action is a clear warning to any company that chooses to break the law."
Medical News Today, June 2012

Diet: Muscle Power and Caffeine.
As we age, our muscles naturally change and weaken. A study found caffeine boosts power in older muscles, suggesting the stimulant could aid elderly people to both maintain their strength and reduce their risk for falls and injuries. With the importance of maintaining a physically active lifestyle to preserve health and functional capacity, caffeine could prove beneficial to the aging population.
Society for Experimental Biology, June 2012

Exercise: Good Reasons.
Exercise increases your stroke volume (the amount of blood the heart pumps with each beat), improves your self-esteem, and reduces your susceptibility for coronary thrombosis (a clot in an artery that supplies the heart with blood).
Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, 1996
Chiropractic: A Recommendation By A Prominent Physician.
 
"[The] best people to manage back pain are osteopathic and chiropractic physicians. Why? Because they are specially trained in the mechanical abnormalities which cause 95% of back pain and they know how to correct these defects manually."
~ Paul Hemenway Altrocchi, MD, MPH - former Professor of Neurology at Stanford Medical School

Wellness/Prevention: Leave Your Car At Home?
People who walked 150 minutes per week had lower health care costs and mortality rates.
European Journal of Public Health, June 2012

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, August 20th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Feeling Sleepy?
One third of all workers sleep less than six hours each day, instead of the recommended 7-9 hours. People especially at risk of not getting enough sleep include those in the health care, social assistance, and transportation fields.
CDC, June 2012

Health Alert: Cancer and Aging.
Why does our risk of developing cancer increase as we age? By the time we stop growing in our teens, we accumulate a large percentage of the mutations we will have during our lifetime. There's a mismatch between the mutation curve and the cancer curve, meaning that if cancer is caused by reaching a tipping point of mutations, then we should see higher cancer rates in 20-year-olds, as this is when the mutation rate is highest. The body's healthy cells function best in healthy, younger tissue; however, in older tissue, cancerous cells may adapt better in that environment than healthy cells and more easily propagate.
Oncogene, June 2012

Diet: Food Industry Should Be Regulated?
"The obesity crisis is made worse by the way industry formulates and markets its products, and so must be regulated to prevent excesses and to protect the public good," writes Kelly Brownell, a leading food expert. He argues that left to regulate itself, the food industry has the opportunity, if not the mandate from shareholders, to sell more products irrespective of their impact on consumers. Thus, government, foundations, and other powerful institutions should push for regulation of, and not collaboration with, the food industry.
PLoS Medicine, July 2012

Exercise: Good Reasons.
Exercise reduces your risk of developing Type II (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes, reduces the risk of developing breast cancer and improves mental cognition (a short-term effect only).
Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, 1996

Chiropractic: Joint Friction?
The supplement chondroitin sulfate significantly reduces the friction coefficient of articular cartilage, which, in turn, leads to a decreased risk of joint degeneration.
Journal of Biomechanics, 2007

Wellness/Prevention: Vitamin D and Fractures.
Taking 800-2,000 IUs of vitamin D per day significantly reduces the risk of most fractures in men and women age 65 and older. In a study, the top 25% of Vitamin D consumers sustained 30% fewer hip fractures and 14% fewer fractures of other bones. There was no benefit to taking Vitamin D supplements in doses below 800 IUs. The cost of treating a hip fracture is $26,912.
New England Journal of Medicine, June 2012

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, August 13th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Catching Colds? The risk of contracting a cold, regardless of pre-existing immunity, after being exposed to cold viruses is 52% less in parents compared with those who have no children. The finding may be expected considering that when children get colds, the parents may develop protective antibodies against the specific viruses that cause these colds. However, the findings revealed that based on levels of antibodies to the study viruses, the lower risk of colds in parents could not be explained by preexistin immunity. Volunteers who were parents tended to develop fewer colds irrespective of whether or not they had protective levels of antibodies. One possible explanation may be that being a parent improves regulation of immune factors (cytokines) that are triggered in response to infection. According to earlier research, cytokine responses explain the protective effects of psychological factors, such as lower stress or a positive attitude against the risk of colds. American Psychosomatic Society, July 2012

Health Alert: Cortisone. Injections of corticoid preparations can have severe side effects. In 278 cases of complications after corticoid injections, medical errors were found to have been committed in 40% of cases. Typical errors include faulty asepsis, treatment without indication, and injections that were too closely spaced in time or in excessive doses. Deutsches Arzteblatt International, July 2012

Diet: The Not So Small Intestine. Have you ever wondered how your body gets nutrients out of your food? Your small intestine absorbs most of your food; however, the small intestine is not that small. The average surface of the human small intestine is about the size of a tennis court! Gray’s Anatomy

Exercise: Good Reasons. Exercise improves respiratory muscle strength and muscle endurance (particularly important for asthmatics), reduces your risk of having a stroke and helps you to burn excess calories. Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health, 1996

Chiropractic: Move Your Joints! Range-of-motion exercises can help maintain normal joint function by increasing and preserving joint mobility and flexibility. The Cleveland Clinic, 2007

Wellness/Prevention: Constant Change. A big reason to stay healthy is that the cells of your body are constantly replaced. Eating right and exercising will give the new cells the best chance to become healthy cells. For example, did you know that humans shed and re-grow outer skin cells about every 27 days? That’s almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime! Gray’s Anatomy

Quote: “Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”  ~Albert Einstein

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, August 6th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Stress and Violence. Children exposed to community violence exhibit a physical stress response for up to a year, suggesting that exposure to violence may have negative long-term health consequences. In the short-term, violence is linked with aggression, depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms and academic and cognitive difficulties. Journal of Adolescent Health, July 2012 Health Alert: Health Care Costs For Kids. In 2010, per capita spending on children's health care increased to $2,123 (an 18.6% increase from 2007), with spending on health care for infants and toddlers being noted as disproportionately high. Even though children below the age of 3 made up 17% of the covered child population, they cost the 31.4% of the total amount for children's health care, with per capita spending reaching $3,896 in 2010. Health Care Cost Institute, July 2012 Diet: Eating Fish! Regular fish consumption can decrease colorectal cancer risk by 12%. American Journal of Medicine, June 2012 Exercise: Eat Less, Move More, and Live Longer. In a study on dietary restriction (DR) involving fruit flies, the flies that were also physically active experienced longer lives. This study establishes a link between DR-mediated metabolic activity in muscle, increased movement and the benefits derived from restricting nutrients. Flies on DR who could not move or had inhibited fat metabolism in their muscle did not exhibit an extended lifespan. If this finding extends to humans, then simply restricting nutrients without physical activity may not increase longevity. Cell Metabolism, July 2012 Chiropractic: Good Vibrations. The health of your joint cartilage is improved with vibratory motion. Vibrations allow the hyaluronic acid to be directed evenly among chondrocytes and the extracellular matrix, thus improving delivery of nutrients to chondrocytes in deeper layers and improving transportation of waste products. The average 70 kg (154 lbs) person has roughly 15 grams of hyaluronan in the body, one-third of which is turned over (degraded and synthesized) every day. Arthritis & Rheumatism, 2006 Wellness/Prevention: No Warning! Heart disease is the #1 killer today, and 60% of the time there are no warning signals! American Heart Association