Beating Insomnia
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Many Americans suffer from insomnia .
Insomnia can be caused by a variety of factors, including consumption of caffeine, nicotine or alcohol; stress or anxiety; a change in sleep schedules; snoring or nightmares.
The American Sleep Association offers advice on how put this sleep disorder to bed.
Daily Drinking Cuts Heart Disease Risk for Men
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Having a drink or two each day appears to be better for the heart than having a drink just now and then, at least for middle-aged men, a Danish study finds.
Men who drank moderately each day had a 41 percent lower risk of heart disease than abstainers, while the risk was only 7 percent lower for those who drank on no more than one day a week, the researchers found. The team found no such benefit to daily drinking for women, however.
“This is one more study suggesting that a modest to moderate amount of alcohol in the world of heart disease is reasonably healthy,” said Dr. Richard A. Stein, clinical professor of medicine at Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York, and a spokesman for the American Heart Association.
Oral cancer screening
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Screening for cancer involves examination for early stages in the development of the disease even though there are no apparent symptoms. This holds true for oral and mouth cancers where your dentist or oral hygienist can detect changes in the tissues of the mouth when they are pre-cancerous or very small tumors.
The screening procedure is quick and painless, cost effective, and can be performed by a dentist, dental hygienist, or doctor. If abnormalities are found, a referral to an oral surgeon is usually recommended.
Mixing insulin analogs for Type 1 kids is safe, say researchers
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We’re usually told it’s a big health and safety no-no to mix ‘n’ match medications, right? Well, here’s an exception that affects diabetics. Apparently, youngsters with Type 1 diabetes and their parents/caregivers can safely mix rapid-acting and long-acting insulin analogs in the same syringe. The results of a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics (April 2006) show that doing so does not compromise blood sugar stability in the long-term.
Examples of rapid-acting insulin analogues are Apridra and NovoRapid. Lantus is an examples of a long-acting insulin glargine. For some kids, mixing the two together could potentially reduce the number of insulin shots required daily. This is always good news for children and their parents.
UK drug addicts fuel jail overcrowding - top judge
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Drug addicts are deliberately committing crime to receive treatment in prison, fuelling chronic overcrowding, the top judge in England and Wales said.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said short sentences were pointless and that drug users convicted of less serious offences should receive treatment outside prison.
Overcrowding was “absolutely fatal” for the treatment of inmates, he added.
New Protein Target for Antiviral Drug Development
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Using small molecules containing platinum, Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers have created a process to inhibit a class of proteins important in HIV and cancer.
The findings may help researchers develop new drugs to fight HIV or cancer by selectively targeting proteins known as zinc fingers.
In the May 30 issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, researchers reported that a zinc finger protein, known as HIV NCp7, can be inhibited when it is exposed to a platinum complex. They observed that when the HIV NCp7 protein interacts with platinum, the zinc portion of the molecule is ejected from the protein chain. This causes the protein to lose its tertiary structure or overall shape. For these molecules, shape is an important property that enables the protein to carry out certain biological functions.
Abortion pill a big hit in Britain
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Records in Britain show that as many as 10,000 women had an abortion at home last year, using abortion drugs.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) says that of the 32,000 terminations it provided in the first nine weeks of pregnancy, almost one-third were “medical” and involved the abortion pill.
As far as the BPAS is concerned this represents some measure of success in terms of sexual health.
Flu vaccine safe in healthy infants
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The trivalent influenza vaccine can be safely given to healthy children 6 to 24 months of age, doctors report in the journal Pediatrics.
“We see no indications of serious side effects from the influenza vaccine in young children, and we would urge parents to have their young children vaccinated against influenza,” Dr. Michael J. Goodman from HealthPartners Research Foundation, Minneapolis, Minnesota told Reuters Health.
“The whole reason this vaccine is now being recommended for infants and young children is that they can get quite sick with influenza,” Goodman explained. “Over the past few years, several studies have shown that the rate of hospitalization related to influenza for young children is similar to that for people over age 65.”
Mom’s high BP tied to greater preterm survival
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Pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) is associated with lower infant mortality in preterm infants, Canadian researchers have observed.
Study investigator Dr. Shi Wu Wen told Reuters Health that PIH might serve some adaptive role for the fetus in the face of trouble.
However, “it’s important to stress that the findings should not be viewed as an encouragement not to treat PIH.” The risks of such a course outweigh any potential benefits, Wen, from the University of Ottawa, said.
New vaccine reduces the risk of shingles
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A new vaccine which reduces the risk of shingles (herpes zoster) for use in people 60 years of age and older has won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The vaccine, Zostavax, is designed to treat shingles which is caused by the reactivation of the virus that causes chickenpox and is a painful disease characterized by a blistering rash.
The varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox, the varicella-zoster virus lies dormant following an attack of chickenpox, in certain nerve tissue and as people age, the virus sometimes reappears in the form of shingles.
Cognitive behavioral therapy effective in treating irritable bowel syndrome
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According to the latest research behavioral therapy was more effective in treating the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) than being on a waiting list for treatment.
It seems that all it took for more than a 70 percent improvement rate to be seen was four sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy.
For the research Dr. Jeffrey M. Lackner, of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and colleagues randomly assigned 59 patients with irritable bowel syndrome to one of three treatments; patients in one group received 10 sessions of standard cognitive behavioral therapy, while another received 4 sessions of minimal contact cognitive therapy but with minimal contact, and a self-help workbook to take home.
Rise in Turkish girls’ suicides worries activists
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Bahar Sogut was 14 when she shot herself in the head with her father’s gun. Her mother and grandmother, who live in a small mud-built house in a village outside Batman in Turkey’s poor southeast, said it was her fate.
“She died with Allah’s (God’s) bidding,” her mother, Nefise Sogut, told Reuters. Fate was the only explanation either gave for what happened.
Bahar Sogut was one of 14 people—10 of them women and girls aged under 23—who have killed themselves this year in Batman, a city of 250,000 people, activists say. Another was aged 12 and threw herself off a building opposite her school.
Rising suicides among women in the mainly Kurdish southeast has prompted the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Yakin Erturk, to visit the region, where rights activists say families are forcing young women into suicide because the government has clamped down on so-called “honour killings”.
Daily drink can bring health benefits - for men
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Moderate drinking reduces the risk of heart disease but the beneficial effects of alcohol seem to work differently in men and women, Danish researchers said on Friday.
They found that for men drinking daily seems to have the biggest positive effect on health while in women the amount of alcohol consumed may have more of an impact.
“The risk of heart disease was lowest among men who drank every day,” said Janne Tolstrup of the National Institute for Public Health in Copenhagen.
Sleeping pill rouses people in a permanent vegetative state
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South African researchers have found that a drug commonly used as a sleeping pill can temporarily revive people in a permanent vegetative state to the point where they can have conversations.
The drug Zolpidem which is commonly used to treat insomnia has this effect within 20 minutes but wears off after four hours and the patients return to their permanent vegetative state.
The drug was used with three patients all men around 30 who had suffered brain damage in car accidents.
Pioneering the Three-Year Osteopathic Family Physician Degree
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The Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) is taking a lead position in the future of medical education by introducing a new program to attract more physicians to family practice. LECOM is continuing its mission to help grow the osteopathic medical profession by starting a Primary Care Scholars Pathway (PCSP) that will reduce the time it takes to become a family physician.
The LECOM PCSP has received approval from the American Osteopathic Association Committee on Osteopathic College Accreditation and backing of the American College of Osteopathic Family Practice. The PCSP will condense four years of medical education into three years in order to graduate more family doctors sooner and to save these students one year of expenses that adds to the mounting debt held by medical college graduates.
The AOA COCA approved the substantive change requested by LECOM to initiate the Primary Care Scholars Pathway in the 2007-2008 academic year. The program will begin with six students in the first year, eight in 2008-2009, 10 in 2010-2011, and 12 students in 2011-2012. The new program will not affect the approved class size, which the AOA has set at 250 students in 2007.
