Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, December 31st, 2012

Mental Attitude: Anxious Parents?
Parents diagnosed with social anxiety disorder are more likely to exhibit less warmth and affection towards their children, criticize them more, and express doubts about their child's ability to complete a task. This can heighten anxiety in their child, and over time, can increase the chance their child will develop an advanced anxiety disorder of their own..
Child Psychiatry and Human Development, November 2012

Health Alert: Parental Math Skills and Medication Errors
Parents with poor math skills (3rd grade level or below) are 5 times more likely to measure the wrong dose of medication for their child than parents with math skills at the 6th grade level or greater. In a study of 289 parents, 27% had math skills at 3rd grade level or below.
American Academy of Pediatrics, April 2012

Diet: Red and Processed Meat.
Meat consumption increases the risk of prostate cancer. Men who consumed the most red meat had a 30% increased risk of cancer. Processed red meat was associated with a 10% increased risk of prostate cancer with every 10 grams (about one-third of an ounce) of increased intake.
American Journal of Epidemiology, October 2009

Exercise: 5 Major Reasons.
Exercise helps control your weight preventing excess weight gain or maintaining weight loss, combats health conditions and diseases, improves mood, boosts energy, and promotes better sleep.
Mayo Clinic

Chiropractic: Spinal Degenerative Joint Disease and Pain.
There are several reasons spinal degeneration causes pain: 1. Mechanical compression of nerve by bone, ligament, or the disk. 2. Biochemical mediators of inflammation. 3. Mechanical nerve compression results in decreased blood flow and swelling, which causes lack of proper motion leading to fibrotic tissue formation.
Spine, 1989

Wellness/Prevention: Get Your Sleep!
Sleep disorders lead to 253 million days of sick leave a year in the United States. 63.2 billion dollars are lost a year due to insomnia. A third of this is due to absence from work, while the other two thirds is due to a loss in productivity at work. 10% of the population suffers from insomnia. Sleep apnea affects 4-5% of the population.
University of Bergen, November 2012

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, December 24th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Bad Day? 
Researchers found that adding just a couple extra minutes of exercise to your daily exercise routine can significantly increase your outlook on life.
Penn State, October 2012

Health Alert: 'Smoke-Free' Laws!
Laws that ended smoking at work and public places have resulted in lowered hospitalizations for heart attacks by 15%, strokes by 16%, and asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by 24%. It has reduced health care costs and also increased quality of life.
Circulation, November 2012

Diet: Soda Consumption and Knee Osteoarthritis. 
After controlling for risk factors for knee osteoarthritis (obesity, age, prior knee injury, extreme stress to joints, and family history), men who drank sugary soft drinks experienced worse knee osteoarthritis progression than those who did not. This correlation was not apparent in women.
American College of Rheumatology, November 2012

Exercise: Increased Life Expectancy!
Low amounts of physical activity (75 minutes of brisk walking per week) increased longevity by 1.8 years after age 40, compared with doing no such activity. Walking briskly for at least 450 minutes a week was associated with a gain of 4.5 years.
PLOS Medicine, November 2012

Chiropractic: Now That's Fast! 
Your brain sends electric messages at 270 mph to every muscle and organ in your body.
Guyton's Physiology

Wellness/Prevention: High Blood Pressure and The Brain! 
A recent study found evidence of structural damage in the brains of hypertensive and pre-hypertensive people in their 30s and 40s. This sort of damage to the brain has been linked to cognitive decline in older people. According to Dr. Charles DeCarli, professor of neurology and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at UC Davis, "The message here is really clear: people can influence their late-life brain health by knowing and treating their blood pressure at a young age, when you wouldn't necessarily be thinking about it."
The Lancet, November 2012

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, December 17th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Math Anxiety.
People who experience high levels of anxiety about mathematics have increased activity in the brain regions connected with the feeling of physical pain. Previous research showed children with a higher math anxiety have a decreased math performance level.
PLOS One, November 2012

Health Alert: Booster Seats.
States with booster seat requirements for children up to 6-7 years olds were found to have a 35% lower rate of mortality and incapacitating injuries. States which had booster seat laws for children up to ages 4-6 had 20% lower death and incapacitating injury rates from car accidents than those without the laws.
Pediatrics, November 2012

Diet: Red Meat and Dairy Products.
As part of the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, researchers analyzed the diets of 525,000 participants to determine whether there is an association between dietary fat and pancreatic cancer. This study showed that consuming fat from red meat and dairy products is associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer. There was no association between plant-food fat and pancreatic cancer.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, June 2009

Exercise: 6,000 Steps.
Women 45-72 years old who walked 6,000 or more steps a day had a significantly lower risk of developing diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
The North American Menopause Society, November 2012

Chiropractic: Savings!
Adding Chiropractic coverage to insurance plans decreased the total cost to treat back pain by 28%, reduced hospitalization for back pain by 41%, reduced back surgeries by 32%, and reduced the cost of medical imaging (ie X-Rays and MRIs) by 37%.
WebMD, October 2004

Wellness/Prevention: BMI.
The most frequently used measurement for body fat is the body mass index (BMI). BMI is figured by dividing a person's weight (in kilograms) by his or her height in meters squared. Obesity is a BMI of 30 or higher, while an ideal BMI is 18.5-24.9. The higher the BMI, the greater the risk for diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain cancers.
American Journal of Epidemiology, November 2012

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, December 10th, 2012

Mental Attitude: Reaction To Stress.
How people react to stress determines how that stress will affect their health. Study volunteers were separated in two groups: 1) those who let their troubles affect their emotional state and 2) those who didn't let stress bother them at all. At a 10-year follow up, those who let stress affect them (group 1) were more likely to suffer from chronic health problems.
Penn State, November 2012

Health Alert: Hip Replacement and Stroke Risk.
Hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke risk is ~4% higher within 2 weeks of total hip replacement surgery. A hemorrhagic stroke is brought on by bleeding in the brain, while an ischemic stroke is brought on by arterial blockage. Total hip replacement is extremely common in the United States. Around 1 million hip replacement surgeries are done around the world every year, 300,000 in the United States alone.
Stroke, November 2012

Diet: Vitamin D Levels Decreasing?
Women with health issues such as arthritis, hypothyroidism, cancer, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis are much more likely to have inadequate levels of vitamin D during seasons with decreased daylight. 28% of women had deficient levels and 33% had insufficient levels of vitamin D. Women taking supplements were able to significantly elevate their vitamin D levels.
American Society for Clinical Pathology, November 2012

Exercise: Exercise When You're Sick?
The choice to exercise or not sometimes depends on the sickness or disease. Our bodies work harder and use more energy when we are fighting an illness. If symptoms are above the neck (sore throat, runny nose), it is probably okay to exercise. If you're sick but still want to exercise, simply reduce your intensity and duration. You should not exercise if you have body aches, fever, diarrhea or vomiting, shortness of breath or chest congestion, dizziness or light-headedness. When resuming your regular exercise routine, try starting with 50% effort and 50% duration.
Loyola University Health System, November 2012

Chiropractic: Complexity of The Brain.
How complex is the brain? One cubic inch of brain cortex contains over 10,000 miles of connecting tissue.
Guyton's Physiology

Wellness/Prevention: Staying Healthy!
"The preservation of health is easier than the cure for disease."
~ B.J. Palmer

Weekly Health Update For The Week Of Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Mental Attitude: What You See Is What You Like.
After viewing images of successful women with varying body sizes, women who had strongly preferred only thin body types now had more favorable attitudes towards other body shapes.
PLoS One, November 2012

Health Alert: Children, Cars and Second-Hand Smoke.
Just ten minutes in the back seat of a car with a smoker in the front seat increased a child's exposure to harmful pollutants by 30%, even with the front windows completely rolled down.
British Medical Journal, November 2012

Diet: Cholesterol and Probiotics.
Two daily doses (200mg) of a probiotics lowered "bad" (LDL) and total cholesterol in study participants. Probiotics are live microorganisms (naturally occurring bacteria in the gut) thought to have beneficial effects. Common sources are yogurt or dietary supplements. Those taking the probiotics had LDL levels 11.6% lower than those on placebo after nine weeks.
American Heart Association, November 2012

Exercise: Belly Fat and Sleep Quality?
Losing weight can directly aid in improving sleep quality among obese or overweight people. Sleep quality was meaningfully associated with weight loss, either from changes in diet or a healthy diet combined with exercise. Sleep quality improvement was also observed with a loss in belly fat. With an average loss of 15 pounds and 15% belly fat, sleep scores improved by 20%. Chronic sleep disruptions can elevate the risk of heart attack, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeats, and stroke.
American Heart Association, November 2012

Chiropractic: Spinal Degenerative Joint Disease.
Spinal DJD (degenerative joint disease) occurs in most people as early as 40 years of age. The degeneration is due to gravity, major traumas, and repetitive micro-traumas (activities of daily living). Once the spine degenerates, simple mechanical compression (moving) can change nerve impulses, and the central nervous system may interpret that as pain.
Pain, 1977

Wellness/Prevention: Sleep and The Immune System.
Sleep deprivation increases the risk for developing inflammation related illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and diabetes.
Biological Psychiatry, September 2008