السبت، 30 أبريل 2016
Antibiotics in Your Food: Should You be Concerned?
The demand for food products “raised without antibiotics” is growing fast. In 2012, sales of these products had increased by 25% over the previous three years (1). The overuse of antibiotics in food-producing animals is being blamed for the increase in resistant bacteria, also known as “superbugs.” When these are passed to humans they can […] The article "Antibiotics in Your Food: Should You be Concerned?" appeared first on http://ift.tt/1UKvwir
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الجمعة، 29 أبريل 2016
Today's Hair Style Could Cause Hair Loss Tomorrow
Black women who prefer scalp-pulling hairdos seem especially at risk, study indicates
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16 Breakfasts Kids Will Love
With hectic mornings, it’s easy to skimp on breakfast. Check out WebMD's tasty, healthy options your kids (and you!) won’t be able to resist.
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12 Healthy Snacks Kids Will Love
Have you run out of ideas for kids’ snacks that are both healthy and delicious? Try these creative combos from WebMD.
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The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Summarized in One Tender Photo
Among images of Syrian refugees in a makeshift camp inside a Budapest train station, “it was the black-and-white photo that grabbed my heart,” writes Omid Safi, director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and onbeing.org columnist. “A moment of affection, tenderness, and love, in the midst of months of chaos. In their love, their tenderness, and their hope, there is hope for all of us.”
Photograph by Zsíros István
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Generic Crestor Approved by FDA
Generic Crestor Approved by FDA
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Zika Was in Haiti Long Before Brazil Outbreak
Scientists aren't sure exactly what triggered widespread infections in the Americas
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Smog May Boost Risk for Several Cancers
Study finds even small increases in pollution raised overall odds of dying from disease by 22 percent
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Avoid Food Poisoning? There's an App for That
USDA product helps consumers track expiration dates
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Make Household Cleaners Last Longer: 11 Thrifty Tricks to Try
Extend the lifespan of everything from kitchen sponges to bars of soap.
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15 Common Words That Used To Mean Completely Different Things
There was a time when 'Girl' meant 'Boy,' 'Bully' meant 'Sweetheart,' and 'Fizzle' meant 'Fart.' Let's return there together.
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First Commercial Zika Test Approved by FDA
First Commercial Zika Test Approved by FDA
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Kids of Older Moms May Have a Leg Up on Peers
They tend to be taller, better educated, and societal changes over time may be behind trend, study suggests
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Many Manly Men Avoid Needed Health Care
Gender stereotypes can have dangerous consequences, research suggests
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Building Muscle Could Boost the Most Important One
People with heart disease should prioritize weight training over weight loss, study says
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Teen Birth Rate at Record Low in U.S.
They're delaying sex, using more effective birth control, CDC researcher says
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This Just Might Be the Happiest Photo Ever Taken
Some call it the happiest photo ever taken. On a fall day in 1950, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt spotted a drum major practicing his high steps on a playing field. “I saw a little boy running after him,” he recalled. “All the faculty children ran after the boy. And I ran after them.” Eisenstaedt snapped the shot on impulse while covering the University of Michigan’s famous marching band for Life magazine.
Life’s director of photography, David Friend, called Drum Major an “ode to joy.” In 1993, President Bill Clinton agreed; when he was offered any Eisenstaedt print as a gift, this is the one he reportedly chose.
Need a little more joy? Here is the happiest country in the world.
Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt from Life Magazine
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The 16 Best Foods to Control Diabetes
Figuring out the best foods to eat when you have diabetes can be tough. The main goal is to keep blood sugar levels well-controlled. However, it’s also important to eat foods that help prevent diabetes complications like heart disease. Here are the 16 best foods for diabetics, both type 1 and type 2. 1. Fatty […] The article "The 16 Best Foods to Control Diabetes" appeared first on http://ift.tt/1UKvwir
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10 Ways Dermatologists Wake Up With Younger-Looking Skin
These insider secrets of skin doctors fight signs of aging overnight so you can rise and shine with glowing skin.
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9 Surprising First Aid Items Already in Your Car
Caught on the road without a proper first aid kit? These common items will help in a pinch.
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8 Silent Signs You Aren’t Getting Enough Vitamins
Even if you eat healthfully, you may fall short of key vitamins and minerals. Sometimes inadequacies have everything to do with diet—and other times they're more linked to medications or lifestyle habits. See if you have any of these nutrient deficiency symptoms, then follow our advice for getting more.
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7 Horror Films Inspired By True Stories
Norman Bates, Jaws, and Freddy Krueger may be the stuff of nightmares—but they were all real.
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الخميس، 28 أبريل 2016
Coffee, Wine May Mean Healthy Gut; Sodas May Not
Study examines how food and medications affect makeup of bacteria in people's tummies
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Annual Flowers: What to Know to Help Them Thrive
Follow these tips to achieve a bountiful, colorful garden full of annual flowers.
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Mild Air Pollution of Concern in Pregnancy
Study found risk for a leading cause of premature birth began below EPA standards
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Could a Cellular Tweak 'Switch Off' Gray Hair?
Scientists spot a molecular signal controlling skin and hair color
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Do Screens Give You Headaches? This Town Without Wi-Fi Might Be Your Salvation
You can’t make a call or send a text on your cell phone in Green Bank, West Virginia. Wireless Internet is outlawed, as is Bluetooth. As you approach the tiny town on a two-lane road that snakes through the Allegheny Mountains, the bars on your cell phone fall like dominoes, and the scan function on the radio ceases to work. The rusted pay phone on the north side of town is the only way for a visitor to reach the rest of the world. It’s a premodern place by design, devoid of the gadgets and technologies that define life today.
The reason for the town’s empty airwaves is visible the moment you arrive. It’s the Robert C. Byrd telescope, aka the GBT, a gleaming white, 485-foot-tall behemoth of a dish. It’s the largest of its kind in the world and one of nine in Green Bank, all of them government owned and operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).
The telescopes aren’t the “ocular” kind you’re probably thinking of. They’re radio telescopes, so instead of looking for distant stars, you listen for them. There’s a long line of astronomers all over the world who want to use the GBT, a telescope known to be so sensitive that it can pick up the energy equivalent of a single snowflake hitting the ground.
Such a highly tuned listening tool needs total technological silence to operate, so in 1958, the Federal Communications Commission established a one-of-a-kind National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area encompassing Green Bank where, to this day, electromagnetic silence is enforced every hour of every day.
“Life here isn’t perfect, but at least I’m not in bed with a headache all the time.”
Residents who live within a ten-mile radius of the Green Bank observatory are allowed to use landline telephones, wired Internet, and cable televisions, but microwave ovens, wireless Internet routers, and radios are forbidden. You can have a cell phone, but you won’t get a signal.
Lately, because of how much its way of life diverges from the rest of America’s and whom that has attracted, Green Bank (pop. 143) has come to feel smaller than ever. For locals, the technology ban is a nuisance. For others who come to Green Bank for their health, the town has become a refuge.
A Mysterious Illness
In 2007, Diane Schou, now 66, moved with her husband, Bert, 69, to Green Bank from Cedar Falls, Iowa, hoping that living free of technology would relieve her relentless headaches—headaches, she insists, that were caused by signals from a cell phone tower near her home. The Schous are members of a growing community who say they suffer from “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or EHS, caused by exposure to radio frequencies. The symptoms, according to sufferers, also include nausea, insomnia, and chest pains.
Mainstream medicine doesn’t recognize the syndrome, but Diane and Bert couldn’t be more sure. After her declining health forced her to give up her job as an agricultural scientist, the couple drove hundreds of thousands of miles across the United States seeking a respite from her condition. After returning from a sojourn with relatives in Sweden—the first country to consider EHS a disability—the Schous heard about the Quiet Zone from a national-park ranger in North Carolina. The couple pulled into Green Bank shortly thereafter, and Diane lived in her car behind a convenience store to give the town a try.
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“Life here isn’t perfect,” Diane says. “But at least I’m not in bed with a headache all the time.”
Fellow sufferers heard about Diane, and soon she was letting visitors stay in her home when they came to experience life in Green Bank. By 2010, roughly two dozen “electrosensitives” had moved to Green Bank. Jennifer Wood, a former architect before electrosensitivity felled her, remembers walking into the Schous’ home and being welcomed by a handful of other electrosensitives. “It was just like family,” Wood says.
But not everyone in Green Bank has been so keen to meet the new neighbors. Diane ruffled some feathers when she tried to get the local church to remove its fluorescent lights, which electrosensitives find excruciating, and when she told people to stop using their cell phones as cameras around her. The senior center, one of the town’s few gathering places, obliged her request to replace the fluorescent lights in one area, but when she asked that her food be delivered to her from the center’s kitchen—so she wouldn’t have to walk under other fluorescents—Green Bankers began to protest.
“There have been some rough spots in dealing with other members of the community,” says the diplomatic sheriff David Jonese, whose Pocahontas County department has been called in several times to mediate disputes between old-timers and newcomers. “They want everybody in the stores and restaurants to change their lighting or turn their lights off when they’re there, which creates some issues,” he says.
Echoes of the Past
As you might guess, friction between the locals and the transplants has happened before in Green Bank. After breaking ground on the initial telescope in 1957, the NRAO needed to hire PhDs and engineers, and it began hiring scientists from out of town. But the locals—some of whose farms and homes had been condemned and displaced to other parts of town to make room for the observatory’s campus—didn’t take so kindly to the influx. In 1965, a group of farmers even complained to their members of Congress that observatory scientists had caused a crop-killing drought.
“I remember one fella said the observatory would make it rain when they wanted it to,” says Harold Crist, a 90-year-old Green Bank native who worked for the telescope at one time.
The big-city transplants didn’t immediately warm to the locals either, but with time came acceptance. Today many Green Bankers work various jobs at the telescope. The campus’s cafeteria is a favorite lunch spot for locals. And more than a few scientists moonlight as artists, with work hanging in the local art center.
“We’ll be so far out of the loop one of these days that we won’t be able to catch up.”
At Green Bank Elementary-Middle School, right next door to the telescope, you’d expect to find teenagers bemoaning the unavailability of the cool gadgets they see on TV. But that’s not the case. According to one seventh grader, plenty of kids in Green Bank have smartphones, and although they can’t get a signal, they’ve found a work-around. By connecting to a home Wi-Fi network (that the telescope interference protectors apparently haven’t picked up on), kids don’t need a cell network to talk to their friends—they can just use the new texting functions in apps like Facebook’s Messenger and Snapchat. Teenagers and technology, it seems, will always find a way.
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The End of Quiet?
A force outside Green Bankers’ control may ultimately settle the clash of old-timers and newcomers, of technology and tranquillity: the fate of the thing that started all the trouble in the first place—the telescope.
It’s funded entirely by the National Science Foundation, and in 2013, in a wave of belt tightening across the federal government, a committee recommended shutting down the campus. NSF hasn’t said whether it will accept the proposal, but a decision is expected this year. If Washington chooses to divest, and the observatory can’t find outside funding, it could close by 2017.
Which might spell the end of Green Bank’s quaint life free of Wi-Fi.
Some say that in the long run, that may be best for the town. “We’ll be so far out of the loop one of these days that we won’t be able to catch up,” says Crist, who raised six children in the Quiet Zone and watched some of them move away. “People come back home and think we’re living in the Dark Ages.”
But a shuttered telescope would obviously be a nightmare for the electrosensitives who are just making inroads with the locals.
In the fall of 2013, Monique Grimes married Tom Grimes, a native Green Banker who owns a spacious hundred acres where lambs and sheep roam. Tom says his wife, who moved to town from Florida when her EHS symptoms forced her to quit her job as a speaker for a public policy group, helps out around the farm, and he introduces her to locals. “They get to know me first as Mo, not as an electrosensitive,” Monique says. “Now friends of ours have gone so far as to replace the lightbulbs in their house because they want me to come to visit.”
Whatever happens to the telescope, Monique is pretty convinced that her version of the science will prevail and that future generations will see the folly of iPhones and laptops just like past ones did of asbestos and cigarettes. As one sympathetic doctor told her, “You were just born a hundred years before your time.”
“Or after,” Tom quips, knowing there’s a decent chance they’re sitting in the last quiet place on earth.
In July 2015, the NRAO received funding for the Green Bank Telescope for at least five more years.
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19 Questions You’re Too Embarrassed to Ask Your Gynecologist
Everything you ever wanted to know about sex, body odor, and bladder problems, but were afraid to ask.
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Yellow Fever Outbreak: Is the U.S. at Risk?
An ongoing yellow fever outbreak in Africa has global health and infectious diseases experts concerned. The virus is mosquito-borne and can be deadly. WebMD has the details.
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17 Horse Jokes to Tell When You Watch the Kentucky Derby
These gags will win you a Triple Crown in joke telling.
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Critics Call on FDA to Ban Concentrated Caffeine
Critics Call on FDA to Ban Concentrated Caffeine
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Counterfeit Opioid Poisonings Spread To Bay Area
Vomiting, breathing problems, lethargy, unconsciousness result from pirate pills laced with fentanyl.
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Hearing Aids May Help Keep Seniors' Minds Sharp
Ability to stay engaged in conversation could help ward off dementia, study suggests
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9 Things You Didn’t Know About the First Mother, Eve
We don’t know a whole lot about Eve. We don’t know exactly how many children she had nor at what age she died, although Adam was 930 years young when he passed away. So who was this mysterious woman who begat us all? We tried to fill in some of the blanks.
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Does Rosacea Boost Risk for Alzheimer's?
Danish study finds a correlation, but patients shouldn't worry unduly, experts say
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Gotta Minute? Get a Good Workout
Study found 60 seconds of intense exercise as effective as 45 minutes of moderate exertion
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Are Oats and Oatmeal Gluten-Free? The Surprising Truth
Oats are a highly nutritious grain with many health benefits. However, there is a lot of confusion about whether oats and oatmeal contain gluten. Oats are naturally gluten-free, but often get contaminated with gluten from other grains. This article explores whether you should include oats in a gluten-free diet. What’s The Problem With Gluten? Gluten-free […] The article "Are Oats and Oatmeal Gluten-Free? The Surprising Truth" appeared first on http://ift.tt/1UKvwir
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7 Concussion Symptoms You Should Never Ignore
Anyone with a concussion should be checked by a health care professional if at all possible. If you’re the one with the injury, don’t rely solely on your own assessment for signs you’re getting worse and need reevaluation. These signs of concussion should never be ignored.
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7 Surprising Foods That Give You Seriously Bad Breath
Haunted by halitosis? Check your menu for these culprits—then reach for a simple-but-reliable bad breath cure like your toothbrush, sugarless gum, or a refreshing glass of water.
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10 Signs You Could Be Headed for Cancer
Smoking can cause at least 15 different types of cancer. And nearly 9 out of 10 lung cancers are from puffing away on cigarettes. Burn those two facts into your head if you haven't yet quit. Then read on to learn what else affects your risk.
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الأربعاء، 27 أبريل 2016
Psoriasis Tied to Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes
A genetic link is one theory for the possible association, researchers say
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Sleep Doesn't Come Easy After a Brain Injury
And that may affect daytime performance at work or school, research suggests
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7 Signs of Ovarian Cancer You Might Be Ignoring
Symptoms of ovarian cancer can be vague, but detecting ovarian cancer early could be key to survival.
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Spanking: More Harm Than Good?
It can lead to psychological, learning problems in kids, analysis of 75 studies suggests
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The 7 Deadliest Emergency General Surgeries
Gastrointestinal and bowel operations top the list because they're often done without planning or preparation, experts say
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4.5M Pounds of Pilgrim's Pride Chicken Recalled
4.5M Pounds of Pilgrim's Pride Chicken Recalled
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Type 2 Diabetes May Damage Hearing, Study Finds
Researchers recommend auditory testing of diabetic patients
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Mindfulness May Help Ease Recurrent Depression
Review of 9 studies suggests it helps patients better cope with troubling thoughts and emotions
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Yeast Infection Drug May Raise Miscarriage Risk
Agency recommends alternatives to fluconazole for mothers-to-be until its review is complete
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Statins Might Not Lower Colon Cancer Risk: Study
But cholesterol levels may be associated with reduced chance of disease
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Racial, Ethnic Health Disparities Persist: Report
But infant death rates, numbers of uninsured are improving, government analysis reveals
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What Are Essential Oils, and Do They Work?
Essential oils are often used in aromatherapy, which is a form of alternative medicine. However, some of the health claims associated with them are controversial. This article explains what you need to know about essential oils and their health effects. What Are Essential Oils? Essential oils are compounds extracted from plants. The oils capture the […] The article "What Are Essential Oils, and Do They Work?" appeared first on http://ift.tt/1UKvwir
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Sense of Direction Trouble and Early Alzheimer's
It's hoped virtual testing could predict disease long before symptoms develop
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After an Abnormal Pap: 5 Things You Should Do Next
An abnormal Pap test result doesn’t have to be scary when you know the right steps to take.
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Racial, Ethnic Health Disparities Persist: Report
But infant death rates, numbers of uninsured are improving, government analysis reveals
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Yeast Infection Drug May Raise Miscarriage Risk
Agency recommends alternatives to fluconazole for mothers-to-be until its review is complete
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These Supplements May Boost Antidepressant Effects
Data from 8 randomized clinical trials suggests a benefit, but consult with your doctor first, experts say
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Quiz: Which of These Dumb Criminals Is Telling the Truth?
A former art lecturer at MIT was sentenced to a year in jail for robbing a bank. Although he admitted to committing the crime, he insisted he should not serve time.
His excuse: It was done as part of a performance art piece. Source: masslive.com
After a Breathalyzer test showed her blood alcohol level was more than four times the legal limit, a New York State woman was arrested. But, she said, there was an explanation.
Her excuse: She suffered from auto-brewery syndrome, which meant her body created alcohol. Source: CNN
Another disputed DUI occurred in Wisconsin. The 75-year-old driver told officers he hadn’t touched a drop.
His excuse: His blood alcohol level was high because of his dinner—beer-battered fish. Source: WISC-TV
On February 7, at 4:30 p.m., a driver was pulled over for topping 100 mph. The man, however, asked the police officer to be quick, as he was in a hurry.
His excuse: He had tickets for the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California, and kickoff was at 6:30. Police were skeptical, since the stop occurred in Pennsylvania. Source: pennlive.com
When a Florida bicyclist was detained, police found crack cocaine in his pants pocket. “Wait, what?!” said the man.
His excuse: He had no idea how the crack had gotten into the pants because they weren’t his pants. The cash the cops found? Yeah, that was his, but not the drugs. Source: Sun-Sentinel (Miami)
A Pennsylvania man was convicted of pulling off ten armed robberies. Although the heists were caught on videos that showed his face, he denied responsibility.
His excuse: Of course the guy in the videos looked like him. It was his “evil twin.” Source: Las Vegas Sun
So who’s telling the truth?
Let’s raise a glass to auto-brewery syndrome lady!
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Imagine Being a Cancer Survivor—Then Getting a Second Type of Cancer All Over Again
Just two weeks after completing the New York City marathon, Nebraska teacher and track coach Andrea Kabourek, 32, learned she had breast cancer. Irreverent, tough, and optimistic, she sailed through her double mastectomy and chemotherapy, missing only six days of teaching while she received eight rounds of powerful, cancer-killing drugs. The chemotherapy was successful, and Kabourek thought she had beaten cancer. She went back to her two loves: teaching and travel.
But just about a year later, in 2011, Kabourek found herself winded after running halfway around the track and then walking up a single flight of stairs. This time, she was diagnosed with leukemia, which most likely developed as a “side effect” of her original chemotherapy treatment. “It’s like the small print on the back of the bottle,” says Kabourek, who was stunned by the development.
After more chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, Kabourek is back at Lincoln East High School. But she’s disturbed that some of the same drugs that led to her leukemia were deployed again to destroy her bone marrow’s abnormal (along with normal) cells before her transplant.
A ‘Secondary Cancer’ Diagnosis
Kabourek joined the growing ranks of cancer survivors who are confronting second, new malignancies—not a recurrence or spread of their original disease. Sometimes, as with Kabourek, the new cancer is an aftereffect of powerful radiation or chemotherapy treatments. Other times, genetic or familial risks play a role. And sometimes, lifestyle—diet or exposure to toxins—is to blame. The numbers are surging: An astonishing one in six people with a new cancer diagnosis had previously been diagnosed with a different cancer. “If you lump together all second cancers, it’s a very common diagnosis,” says Marie Wood, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Only initial breast, prostate, and lung cancers affect more people.
Second cancers entered the breakfast-table consciousness of millions a few years ago, when Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts, a breast cancer survivor, revealed that she now has a form of bone marrow cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). As with about one in five MDS patients, previous chemotherapy and/or radiation likely caused Roberts’s new life-threatening condition (she’d received both types of cancer treatment five years earlier).
An astonishing one in six people with a new cancer diagnosis had previously been diagnosed with a different cancer.
Not long after, Kathy Bates revealed she had completed breast cancer treatment, nine years after first being treated for ovarian cancer. And Sharon Osbourne, a colon cancer survivor, announced that after testing positive for a breast cancer gene, she had undergone prophylactic mastectomy to avoid developing a new cancer.
Second cancers may be an unavoidable risk of lifesaving cancer treatment. But there are ways for people to minimize that risk. Here’s what doctors should be telling their cancer patients … and what all of us should know about the new front in the war against cancer.
“Many chemotherapy drugs are themselves cancer-causing agents.”
The chemo that’s eliminating a first cancer may cause another later; while targeting the DNA of cancer cells, the drugs also affect normal cells. Among the cells affected are the stem cells in bone marrow that go on to create red and white blood cells, making leukemia—blood cancer—a later risk. According to the American Cancer Society, several types of chemotherapy have been linked to leukemia, usually two to ten years after initial treatment. Johns Hopkins researchers reported that about one in every 200 women—one half of one percent—receiving chemo for breast cancer develops leukemia within ten years. It’s a relatively small number, but it’s five times higher than women treated with surgery alone.
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What you can do: Make sure the benefit of the chemotherapy you receive is worth the risk. Various genetic tests are helping doctors tailor treatments for individual patients. These tests aim to maximize the chance of a cure and avoid toxicity—including the risk of second cancers—whenever possible by treating only those most likely to benefit.
Sharon Hayden, 62, of Niuli’i, Hawaii, was able to avoid chemotherapy this way. When she developed stage 2 breast cancer in 2012, she was offered a test of gene activity in the tumor. The analysis revealed she had a low risk of recurrence and would receive little added benefit from chemo.
The test Hayden benefited from, called Oncotype DX, became available in 2004; since then, about 300,000 women have had their tumors analyzed. “In about 37 percent of the women, the results changed decisions about treatment, and there has been about a 20 percent decrease in the use of chemotherapy, usually in favor of hormonal treatment alone,” says Steven Shak, MD, chief medical officer at Genomic Health. The company has a similar test available for colon cancer and prostate cancer.
“Even targeted radiation treatment can lead to second cancer decades later.”
For many cancer patients, radiation treatment controls tumor growth, decreases recurrences, and improves survival. Like chemotherapy, though, radiation itself is a cancer risk. As patients live longer after treatment, the possibility of a radiation-induced tumor rises. At the National Cancer Institute (NCI), researcher Amy Berrington de Gonzalez, PhD, analyzed what happened to adult patients in the decade after they reached the five-year survival mark for 15 different types of radiation-treated cancers: About 8 percent of the second cancers that occurred were related to the initial radiation. In absolute numbers, that translates to five extra cancers for every 1,000 patients treated.
While the overall rate was fairly low, greater second-cancer risks were found among those who received higher doses of radiation and those who were younger at initial treatment. Testicular and cervical cancer patients, who tend to be young adults, had higher rates of second cancers attributed to their radiation treatment than prostate and endometrial cancer patients, who tend to be older when treated.
What you can do: Ask your radiologist if she’s doing everything possible to shield your healthy tissue; the more targeted the treatment, the better. Hayden, for example, was treated for her breast cancer in a facedown position with her breast hanging through a special opening, keeping vital organs out of harm’s way. Protective measures are also available for prostate cancer by using 3-D imaging to map the prostate’s location and minimize radiation to surrounding organs.
“Your daughter will always have to be closely monitored.”
Twenty years ago, when she was 15, Ruth Rechis, PhD, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and received that era’s state-of-the-art chemotherapy and radiation at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Called mantle field therapy, the treatment exposed a wide area of her neck and chest to radiation. Now 35, Rechis and others like her find themselves at far higher risk of early breast cancer—up to 30 percent by age 50, compared with 4 percent in other women—as well as heart damage and other radiation aftereffects. “It can be a burden to keep explaining why I need a mammogram and an EKG that other women my age don’t,” says Rechis, director of research at the Livestrong Foundation.
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When cancer occurs in children and teens, they face a lifetime risk of a second malignancy more than five times greater than their peers who had cancer-free childhoods. Part of the reason is simply time; once cured, childhood survivors have many more years to develop a second cancer than someone first diagnosed at age 50 or 60. But cancer treatment is also harsher on children’s developing bodies. Aggressive chemotherapy and radiation can damage growing tissues, so childhood survivors need special monitoring throughout their lives.
What you can do: Make sure your child gets a post-cancer treatment plan, and share it with all her physicians. If you’re a childhood cancer survivor yourself, make sure you’re up-to-date on all recommended screenings. “If you were treated at a young age and aren’t sure of your risks, ask your doctor for recommendations, and find out whether you can do anything to prevent a second cancer or have it diagnosed earlier,” says Elizabeth Ward, PhD, vice president for intramural research at the American Cancer Society.
If you don’t know the details of your treatment history, contact the hospital where you were initially treated. Or seek help from one of the NCI-designated centers with survivorship programs. Download a guide (written for health professionals but available to the public) created by the Children’s Oncology Group at survivorshipguidelines.org.
“The lifestyle factors that contributed to your first cancer can raise your risk of a second.”
There is a strong connection between many lifestyle factors and the development of primary cancer,” says Jennifer Ligibel, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and senior physician at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. But changing these habits isn’t always easy. The leading culprit: tobacco. A smoker who has survived lung cancer, for example, is at a fivefold higher risk of developing laryngeal cancer. Other exposures that may increase second-cancer risk: heavy alcohol use (especially in smokers) and certain hormones, chemicals, and infections.
What you can do: You can’t change your genetics or your medical history, but you can control health habits—diet, exercise, smoking, and alcohol consumption.
“Consider genetic testing.”
Some inherited genetic mutations increase cancer risk by inhibiting the ability of other genes—cancer-protective ones—to do their jobs. These mutations, dubbed cancer genes, can dramatically raise the risk of first and subsequent cancers. The most common cancers with a genetic component include breast, ovarian, prostate, and colon cancers. In recent years, doctors have tested people suspected of having cancer genes so they could take steps to avoid future malignancies or detect them at their earliest, most treatable stages. Sharon Osbourne was tested before she opted for a prophylactic double mastectomy.
Andrea Kabourek, the track coach, was young when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her grandmother had died of ovarian cancer. Based on those facts, she was tested for a common genetic mutation associated with both cancers, called BRCA1, and was found positive. She plans to have her ovaries removed after age 35, which will drastically reduce her risk.
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What you can do: If you developed a cancer at an age considered young for developing it, or if you have a strong family history of certain cancers, talk to a genetic counselor. She can help you decide whether you should have one of the dozens of cancer genetic tests now available and help you interpret the results. The tests help determine what cancers you are at increased risk for, but they can’t determine with certainty whether you’ll develop any cancer.
Physicians also need to know your family history of cancer to monitor you appropriately. “Say you had breast cancer at 40, and your dad had colon cancer. That might be enough of a concern to start your colon cancer screening earlier than the standard guidelines,” says Dr. Wood.
“Try not to focus only on the cancer you’ve already had. You’re going to need to get tested for other cancers too.”
“First-cancer survivors may not realize they are at higher risk for some seemingly unrelated cancers. For example, in October, the Mayo Clinic reported that non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivors have around a 2.5 times greater risk of melanoma than other people. The earlier cancer in the bone marrow crowds out the forming immune system cells, creating the higher second-cancer risk, explains Jerry Brewer, MD, associate professor of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
With age, the risk of developing many cancers rises, whether or not you’ve been diagnosed before. Unfortunately, many cancer survivors are not as vigilant as they should be about screenings. Surprisingly, their oncologists may not be urging the right tests either. “Health-care professionals can get so focused on the one cancer that they forget about all the others,” says Christine Hill-Kayser, MD, radiation oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Florida reported in July that 20 to 30 percent of well-insured survivors don’t get even the standard tests recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
What you can do: Develop a survivorship plan with your physicians; the plan should outline your risks, recommend preventive measures, and include a schedule for medical screenings so that if you do develop another cancer, it can be treated early. For anyone who finished treatment without a written plan, a do-it-yourself version is available at livestrongcareplan.org, created by Dr. Hill-Kayser and colleagues for the University of Pennsylvania’s oncolink.org. The site will prompt you for information (type of cancer, treatment details) and then provide recommendations from professional organizations for second-cancer monitoring.
“Second cancers may be on the upswing, but the news isn’t all bad.”
More than 12 million Americans are cancer survivors—four times the number from the early 1970s. “It’s really important to understand the tremendous advances that have been made. Second cancers are a substantial clinical and public health problem now because people are living so much longer after first cancers. It’s an adverse consequence of a real success story,” says Lindsay Morton, PhD, investigator in the division of cancer epidemiology and statistics at the National Cancer Institute.
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7 Signs You Might Be Lactose Intolerant
A stomachache after a glass of milk is probably nothing, but if you feel sick every time you eat dairy, you might be facing a bigger problem.
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17 Light Bulb Jokes That Make You Sound Smart
A smart light bulb joke: Is there such an animal? Indeed, there is! This breed of gag is known by its world-weary insouciance, obscure literary references, snarky jabs at intellectuals, and the need for the joke teller to look up words like insouciance before using them.
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الثلاثاء، 26 أبريل 2016
Americans Getting Adequate Water Daily, CDC Finds
Men take in an average of 14 cups a day, women almost 12
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Gold Emblem Tea Recalled by CVS
Gold Emblem Tea Recalled by CVS
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Gold Emblem Tea Recalled by CVS
Gold Emblem Tea Recalled by CVS
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Night Shift Work May Be Tough on a Woman's Heart
But study found the effect waned after nurses stopped working odd hours
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The Worst Advice Allergy Docs Have Ever Heard
Nearly half of Americans have some type of allergy—how many of these allergy myths have you fallen for?
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Day Care Kids: Stomach Bugs Earlier, Fewer Later
Protective effect seen from preschool to age 6, study says
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These Incredibly Stupid Ideas Are Somehow Changing the World for the Better
A City Pays People Not To Kill One Another
Our reaction: I’m sorry, did you say you’re paying people not to kill one another? I thought so. Are you nuts?! What sort of message does this send?
But it worked! Ten years ago, Richmond, California, a city of 104,000, had one of the highest murder rates in the country. Millions were spent on crime-prevention programs, but nothing worked. It got so bad that the city council declared a state of emergency.
But since the town instituted a plan to pay the toughest gang members to follow a Life Map that would keep them out of trouble, the city’s murder rate dropped 77 percent from 2007—when the program was initiated—to 2014. During that period, homicides in the rest of the county rose.
The idea was the brainchild of DeVone Boggan, 49, the CEO of a youth-mentoring consultancy in nearby Oakland. Once his plan was approved by the city council, Boggan created the Office of Neighborhood Safety.
According to Mother Jones, ONS staff members, most of them former felons, use police data as well as intelligence they gather on the street to determine the gang members most likely to kill or be killed.
Up to 50 gangbangers are offered a monthly stipend for nine months ranging from $300 to $1,000 to stick to their Life Map. Staff members help gang members attain a driver’s license or GED. They also arrange anger management classes, job training, and other specialty courses that might help them develop the skills needed to keep them off the streets. The better they do at avoiding trouble, the more money they make.
The thinking behind paying for good behavior is simple, criminologist Barry Krisberg told the Washington Post: “If you can’t stabilize their financial situation, they’ll go back to dealing dope, and drugs is a dangerous business.”
To be sure, other factors, such as gentrification and a new police chief who put a priority on community policing, are often cited as contributing to Richmond’s drop in crime. All these influences have combined to recast Richmond’s image as a modern Dodge City.
“Young men who are historically responsible for gun violence in this city are making better decisions about how they negotiate everyday conflicts,” Boggan told the Contra Costa Times.
Richmond’s mayor, Gayle McLaughlin, agrees: “[Our] old reputation is dying off.”
To Stem Malpractice Suits, Hospitals Should Admit Their Mistakes
Our reaction: Oh, the ambulance chasers are gonna love this. If you admit wrongdoing, they’re gonna bleed you dry! Why not just hand over the bank account?!
Hmm, the hospitals may be onto something: When a patient perceives, correctly or not, that a doctor or hospital has made a mistake, the doctor’s or hospital’s knee-jerk reaction is typically to circle the wagons and deny guilt. A study from Johns Hopkins found that only 2 percent of American hospitals let patients know when a mistake has occurred. But that may be changing. Oregon passed a law stating that an apology from a doctor won’t be used against him or her, while the University of Michigan Health System has launched a groundbreaking initiative.
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According to U.S. News & World Report, “the University of Michigan Health System pioneered the Disclosure, Apology, and Offer model, in which patients who have been the victim of an error are quickly told, issued an apology, and offered a settlement.” As a result, the hospital system’s legal costs dropped some 60 percent, and it had 36 percent fewer medical claims lodged against it.
While admitting a grave medical error may seem like career suicide in today’s litigious society, the fact is, what most patients and their family members really want are to know the facts and to be treated fairly.
As Richard Boothman, a former trial lawyer, told U.S. News & World Report, doctors can disarm angry patients by simply saying, “I could and should have done better—I’m sorry.”
Do You Need A Kidney? Take Out An Ad
Our reaction: What are you thinking?! Don’t you know what kind of creeps answer ads like these? Go through the proper channels to get a kidney.
Success! After having not felt well for weeks, Christine Royles, a South Portland, Maine, restaurant worker and mother of one, took time off to visit her doctor. The diagnosis he gave her was devastating: She had lupus and anca vasculitis, an autoimmune disease that affects blood vessels. As a result, both her kidneys were failing, and she would need a transplant. Royles, only 23, was placed on a donor transplant list along with 100,000 other people, then waited for a call.
But Royles grew impatient. Being tethered to a dialysis machine for ten hours a day will have that effect. So, using a marker, she wrote an ad on the rear window of her Kia in the hope that some kind-hearted soul would see it and respond. The ad read: “Looking for someone 2 donate their kidney. Must have Type O blood. (You only need one kidney.)” She then included her phone number.
Josh Dall-Leighton was on a shopping trip with his family when he spotted the plea on the back of the Kia. According to the Portland Press Herald, Dall-Leighton, a 30-year-old corrections officer and father of three, immediately told his wife, “I need to do this.”
He called the number on the ad, then took the requisite tests that proved he was a match.
Last June, doctors successfully removed both of Royles’s failing kidneys and replaced them with one of Dall-Leighton’s healthy kidneys.
Royles’s debatable (or brilliant) solution brought out the heroism in Dall-Leighton, though he doesn’t see it that way. His actions were practical, he told the Press Herald. “If my wife needed a kidney, and I couldn’t provide for her, I would hope that somebody else would help her out.”
Since Prostheses Take An Emotional Toll On Kids, Make Them With Legos
Our reaction: Have you ever had kids? Know what they do with Legos? They lose them! Having a prosthesis isn’t fun and games!
Why it’s ingenious: When it comes to kids, maybe prostheses should be fun and games. Children missing limbs suffer from both physical and psychological handicaps. Carlos Torres Tovar wondered if there was a way to make these kids the life of the party.
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Tovar, a Colombian designer who studied at Umea University in Sweden, created a prosthetic arm with a three-finger gripper, powered by a specialized motorized adapter, much like many other prostheses. But here’s where it gets interesting: The gripper can be easily snapped off the device in favor of a gadget made entirely of Legos, one the child designs and creates. Want an airplane for an arm? Here’s your chance! How about a doll? Go for it. A Maserati? Vroom!
Dario, then an eight-year-old from Colombia, was born with a partially developed right arm that stopped growing at the elbow. Last year, he became the first to test the new device. With the help of family and staff members, he created a battery-powered remote-controlled backhoe, which he fitted onto his arm after removing the gripper.
Dario’s friend joined him at the test. The friend has two fully functional arms, but he got swept up into the spirit and built a Lego spaceship. Dario snapped that onto his arm, and soon the two were off in outer space.
The reason Lego- compatible prostheses make kids happy is simple, Tovar told qz.com. It’s social: “When you assemble a Lego set, you assemble it with your parents or your friends, or you even make a new friend with them.”
To Fight Drought, Pour 96 Million Plastic Balls Into Reservoirs
Our reaction: Shouldn’t they try pouring more water into the reservoir instead? There’s already enough garbage in our drinking water!
A brilliant effort: The skies finally opened up over California recently, but after five years of devastating drought, everyone wants to make sure the water stays in the reservoir and isn’t lost to evaporation. To that end, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has dumped “shade balls” into the reservoir. By blocking the sun’s rays from the water, the balls will reduce evaporation by 300 million gallons a year; they’ll also keep “the water clear of dust and critters, hinder algae growth, and prevent chemical reactions between sunlight and chlorine,” says USA Today.
The balls, which have at least a ten-year life span, are just four inches in diameter and are made from the same BPA-free plastic material as milk jugs. At 36 cents a pop, or $34.5 million total, the shade balls are a lot cheaper than the EPA’s alternative: Create a floating cover for the reservoir at a cost of $300 million.
Pouring 96 million plastic balls into a reservoir might strike some as crazy talk, but desperate times require desperate measures. As Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti told huffingtonpost.com, “This is emblematic of the kind of creative thinking we need to meet those challenges.”
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