Greetings…
Instead of reaching for a cup of coffee or a can of soda –
which will give you a short burst of energy — grab a handful
of your favorite nuts! A protein rich snack, which take a longer
time to absorb in your body, but will give you a longer lasting
boost! And it’s healthier for you 
Enjoy today’s issue…
Be Well,
Kris
HEALTH TIP: Why You Should Eat Breakfast…
By Elizabeth Ward, Men’s Health
In the time you spend each morning calibrating your hair
gel, you could be doing something more important, with a
much better payoff: eating breakfast. Mom was right (and
it’s okay to admit it): Breakfast is the most important
meal of the day.
It keeps you slim: Breakfast eaters are less likely to be
overweight than breakfast skippers, and successful dieters
are also more likely to be breakfast eaters.
It keeps you healthy: Eating breakfast may reduce your
risk of serious illnesses like heart disease, stroke,
diabetes, and cancer, and it strengthens your immune
system so you’re more resistant to common ailments like
colds and the flu.
It keeps you sharp: Memory and concentration get a boost
from breakfast. A study on children found that kids who
eat breakfast score higher on tests and are less likely
to suffer from depression, anxiety, and hyperactivity. It
should help you at the office, too.
Early trauma, chronic fatigue link found
ATLANTA, — Trauma during childhood could predispose the
sufferer to chronic fatigue syndrome as an adult, researchers
at Emory University in Atlanta found. In a report in
Tuesday’s Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers said
they found 62 percent of adults with chronic fatigue syndrome
suffered a childhood trauma such as neglect or abuse,
compared with 24 percent of adults who hadn’t experienced
such trauma, USA Today reported. Chronic fatigue syndrome is
unexplained exhaustion, aches and pains that last more than
six months, said Janet Squires, director of the Child
Advocacy Center at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, who
wasn’t part of the study. “It’s eye-opening to see that
things that go wrong in childhood might impact people for
the rest of their lives,” Squires told USA Today. Study
author Christine Heim said relatively few trauma survivors
develop chronic fatigue, which affects about 2.5 percent
of the adult population. Research also indicates the syndrome
could be caused by an infection or immune system problem,
she says. While the study linked trauma and chronic fatigue,
Heim said it wasn’t designed to prove that trauma actually
causes the condition. To better prove the link, researchers
must do a “forward-looking” study in which they follow
trauma survivors for many years, she said. Heim said her
study also found a possible biological explanation. Adults
with chronic fatigue had lower levels of a stress hormone
called cortisol, as do many people with post-traumatic
stress disorder.
2007 spending on prescription drugs slows
WASHINGTON, — Spending on prescription drugs in 2007 showed
the smallest increase in 40-plus years, driven by low-cost
drugs and prescriptions, the U.S. government said. The report
released Tuesday said lower spending was the key factor in
holding overall healthcare spending to its smallest increase
since 1998, USA Today reported. More than half of the
slowdown in 2007 resulted from less growth in retail pre-
scription drug spending, which rose 4.9 percent in 2007,
the lowest rate since 1963, the annual report from the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Office of the
Actuary. The U.S. tab for healthcare services rose 6.1
percent in 2007 to $2.2 trillion — $7,421 per person, the
report said. Spending on other healthcare areas such as
doctor and hospital costs and Medicare services, rose at or
above levels seen in previous years. Health costs make up
more than 16.2 percent of the economy, USA Today said. “The
big story is a very sharp slowing” in drug spending,
economist Paul Ginsburg of the Center for Studying Health
System Change, told USA Today. He said the slowdown is
probably temporary, likely tied to recent expirations of
patents on drugs such as cholesterol drug Zocor, sleep aid
Ambien and allergy drug Flonase.
Colorful mice help track hantavirus
SALT LAKE CITY,– U.S. researchers said Tuesday they’ve
determined the bigger and older a wild deer mouse is, the
more likely it is to transmit deadly hantavirus. The
University of Utah scientists used fluorescent pink, blue,
green, yellow and orange talcum powder to track wild mice
to learn which ones fought or mated with others the most
frequently and therefore were most to blame for trans-
mitting the disease. The study is the first to show the
so-called “20-80 rule” applies to a disease directly trans-
mitted among members of a single species of wildlife, the
researchers said. The unofficial rule says a small fraction
of a population (roughly 20 percent) accounts for most
(about 80 percent) of disease transmission. “If mice were
in contact with a powdered mouse, you’d see the colored bite
mark on their ear or tail, or color on their genitals,”
says Denise Dearing, a University of Utah professor of bio-
logy and senior author of the study published online in the
British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Putting
it in layman’s language, study team member Christy Clay
explained: “You knew when they got lucky.” The 20-80 rule
also may apply to other diseases such as the West Nile virus
and in tick-borne encephalitis, Clay noted. “We are not
proposing you exterminate larger mice” although they are
most likely to spread hantavirus, Clay said. “But if you
could identify places where the animals are older and
heavier, then ostensibly you could make a risk map” to show
humans living in rural areas where precautions are most
necessary, including avoid breathing dust when sweeping up
For the study, Mega and colleagues gave 162 healthy
patients Plavix and then tested them for variants of CYP
genes, blood levels of the active drug metabolite, and
platelet inhibition, and looked for links among these
variables.
Lung cancer gene suppressor identified
CINCINNATI,– University of Cincinnati researchers say
they’ve identified a tumor suppressor that may lead to new
treatments for lung cancer. Lead author Jorge Moscat said the
research focused on specific cellular events that occur in
Ras-induced tumor development to better understand the under-
lying biological mechanisms leading to cancer. “These interim
steps are critical because they help us determine how best to
intervene and stop cancer growth along the way,” Moscat,
chair of UC’s cancer and cell biology department, said in a
release. Ras is a proto-oncogenes that is expressed in up to
25 percent of human lung cancers, the report said. Using a
genetically modified mouse model, researchers found animals
who didn’t express the gene PKC-zeta developed more Ras-
induced lung cancer, suggesting a new role for the gene as
a tumor suppressor. “PKC-zeta would normally slow down Ras
transformation and put the brakes on tumor development, but
when PKC-zeta is missing or inactive as a result of genetic
alterations, tumor growth actually accelerates,” Moscat said.
The findings are published in the journal Molecular and
Cellular Biology..
‘Scrawny’ gene keeps stem cells healthy
BALTIMORE, — The discovery of a “scrawny” gene in fruit
flies may improve researchers’ ability to direct stem cell
differentiation in desired ways, U.S. researchers say. The
gene — called scrawny because of the appearance of mutant
adult flies — appears to be a key factor in keeping a
variety of stem cells in their undifferentiated state, the
researchers at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of
Embryology say in an article to be published Friday in the
journal Science. “Understanding how stem cells maintain their
potency has implications both for our knowledge of basic
biology and also for medical applications,” the researchers
say in a statement. “Our tissues, and indeed our very lives,
depend on the continuous functioning of stem cells,” embryo-
logy director Allan Spradling says. “Yet we know little about
the genes and molecular pathways that keep stem cells from
turning into regular tissue cells — a process known as
differentiation,” he says. The study found that by control-
ling the proteins that wrap the genes, scrawny genes can
silence other genes that would otherwise cause a generalized
cell to differentiate into a specific type of cell, such as
a skin or intestinal cell. While the scrawny gene has so far
only been identified in fruit flies, very similar genes that
may carry out the same function are known to be present in
all multicellular organisms, including humans, the resear-
chers say. “This new understanding of the role played by
scrawny may make it easier to expand stem cell populations
in culture, and to direct stem cell differentiation in
desired directions,” Spradling says.
STDs on the Rise in America
Today, it is very important that we protect ourselves against
any disease possible, especially the ones that can be
prevented. However, in spite of our prevention efforts, new
cases of some of the most common sexually transmitting diseases
STDs) are still on the rise.
The new report from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, “Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2007,”
stated that minorities and women in particular are much more
likely to have STDs. Experts are not surprised by this fact,
as previous studies on STDs have also shown that minorities
and women bear the greatest burden of STDs. The age of those
that are affected by the STDs hasn’t changed much either.
Approximately 19 million new sexually transmitted infections
occur annually, almost half of those affected are between the
ages of fifteen and twenty-four.
The Centers for Disease Control began a national syphilis
elimination program during the late 1990s, which was targeted
at African-American heterosexuals, especially mothers and
their babies. As a result of this program, the condition was
nearly eradicated as an ongoing health problem for people in
the United States. Dr. John Douglas, who is the director of
the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, stated that within the
last two years, the trend has reversed. He also said, “The
success we’ve been experiencing from a number of years in
African-American heterosexual populations, particularly women,
is beginning to erode.”
Syphilis started to resurface as a danger in 2001, and the
cases went up by 15.2 percent between the years 2006 and 2007.
The reported cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia together surpassed
1.4 million in the year 2007. Both of these sexually transmitted
diseases can cause infertility when left untreated. The CDC will
be addressing the rates of HIV in the United States in a later
report.
The report said that there were a record number of chlamydia cases
reported nationally this year. Douglas noted that a major strategy
to help in prevention of these diseases is detecting the infection
before it spreads, so that each case in an opportunity to prevent
the ongoing transmission. Douglas said that chlamydia is considered
to be the most common reported STD and infectious disease.
Since the early 1980s, there has been a dramatic downturn in the
cases of gonorrhea, but within the last ten years, the rates have
leveled off, especially for the African-American populations. The
CDC is currently looking into a number of ways that we can create
awareness of the problem.
STDs not only affect the individuals’ health, but also the
economy’s pocket. The CDC said that these conditions cost the U.S.
healthy care system approximately $15.3 billion dollars every year.
The new report reflects what Dr. Yolanda Wimberly, who is the
assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the Morehouse
School of Medicine and the medical director for the Center for
Excellence in Sexual Health, sees everyday in the clinics where
she works. Dr. Wimberly said that in her 14 years of practicing,
she has been diagnosing many more cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia,
and syphilis.
Based on her observations and the report, it is safe to say that
some of the efforts for prevention are not working. New and
innovative methods will be required to get through to the younger
generation, for whom the world wide web and text messaging are
very important parts of their every day life.
Many people hold the misconception that STDs usually come
along with visible signs such as a rash or bumps and irregular
discharge, but most of the STDs do not present symptoms and you
may never know you have it.
Dr. Wimberly said, “That’s how STDs are so easily spread. It’s
not people who know that they have gonorrhea and who go out say,
I’m going to spread it to all these people.’ It’s the people
who don’t even know, who maybe don’t get checked up regularly.”
It is very important to be screened at lease one time per
year, even twice a year for the younger generation. Wimberly
offers to test everyone who comes into her office for STDs,
even if they do know show any symptoms or came to see her for
another reason, if they have not been tested within the last
six months. However, Douglas said that not all physicians are
so conscientious about the testing for STDs.
Particularly when it comes to the non-minority populations,
physicians are inclined to think that the young women sitting
in from of them look pretty healthy, and they look pretty
respectable so they wouldn’t have a sexually transmitted
disease, would they? Most of the time we simply miss those
screening opportunities.
Other physicians just simply don’t want to approach the
subject of sexual relations with their adolescent female
patients. There is also the problem with getting access to
health care, because some women do not have physicians for
this very reason.
The current prevention efforts include screening programs,
promoting awareness of STDs, personal protective behaviors
such as limiting the number of sexual partners and using
condoms for protection. A key area that needs work is being
able to have normal conversations about sexual health and
STDs.
Douglas said, “If the parents assume that’s the doctor’s
business, or the teacher’s business, and don’t roll up their
sleeves and get in there themselves, and if our schools aren’t
giving comprehensive education, an dif our clergy and other
community leaders who are interested in youth well-being
aren’t including sexual health on the agenda, we’re going to
create missed opportunities.”
View the full article
Health Tips: Why Is Breakfast The Most Important Meal…
18 Jan 2009, 11:00 AM
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