Preventing and managing stress can help lower your risk of serious health problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, and depression. You can prevent or lessen stress by:
Planning ahead.
Preparing for stressful events
Some stress is hard to avoid. You can find ways to manage stress by:
Noticing when you feel stressed
Taking time to relax
Getting active and eating healthy
Talking to friends and family
Being prepared and in control of your situation will help you feel less stress. Follow these tips for preventing and managing stress.
1. Plan your time.
Think ahead about how you are going to use your time. Write a to-do list and decide which tasks are the most important. Be realistic about how long each thing will take.
2. Prepare yourself.
Prepare ahead of time for stressful events like a job interview or a hard conversation with a loved one.
Picture the event in your mind.
Stay positive.
Imagine what the room will look like and what you will say.
Have a back-up plan.
3. Get active.
Physical activity can help prevent and manage stress. It can also help relax your muscles and improve your mood. Try a new activity like yoga or gardening.
4. Eat healthy.
Give your body plenty of energy by eating fruits, vegetables, and protein.
5. Drink alcohol only in moderation.
Dont rely on alcohol and drugs to manage your stress. If you choose to drink, drink only in moderation. This means no more than 1 drink a day for women or 2 drinks a day for men.
6. Talk to friends and family.
Tell your friends and family if you are feeling stress. They may be able to help.
7. Get help if you need it.
If your stress doesn't go away or keeps getting worse, you may need help. Over time, stress can lead to serious problems like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or anxiety.
These conditions can be treated with talk therapy (called psychotherapy) or medicines. A mental health professional (like a psychologist or social worker) can help you deal with stress. Stress is a normal part of life, and lots of people need help to manage it better.
The teen years are the time in life when people are most probable to drive fast, have unprotected sex and experiment with alcohol and drugs, and a new study suggests they do these things because they enjoy the thrill.
"The reason that teenagers take risks is not a problem with foreseeing the penalty. It was more because they chose to take those risks," Stephanie Burnett, of the University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, explained in a university news make public.
In the study, Burnett and colleagues asked 86 males aged 9 to 35 to play a computer having a bet game. The players had choices between risky and secure options. The findings, published March 24 in the journal Cognitive Development, found that teens -- especially 14-year-olds -- were the most likely to choose unsafe options.
"This is the first facts from a lab-based study that adolescents are risk-takers. We are one step forward in determining why teenagers appoint in extremely risky behaviors such as drug use and unsafe sex," Burnett said. "The onset of adolescence marks an blast in 'risky' activities --from dangerous driving, unsafe sex and experimentation with alcohol, to poor dietary habits and physical inactivity. This contributes to the so-called 'health paradox' of adolescence, whereby a peak in lifetime physical health is paradoxically accompanied by towering mortality and morbidity."
They come loaded with vitamin E, to help more medicine get to cornea, researcher says.
A team of researchers has created special contact lenses for glaucoma patients that come loaded with vitamin E, using a design that could essentially lengthen the amount of time a medication bathes an afflicted eye.
This strategy could reduce the significant waste of medication that happens with traditional eye drops, but so far the concept has only been tested in beagles.
"Currently, the way we deliver medication to the eye is very bad and very ineffective," said study author Anuj Chauhan, an associate professor in the department of chemical engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "And this approach is wonderful because it delivers drugs for a long period of time."
Chauhan and his colleagues are to present their findings Wednesday at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in San Francisco.
According to the Glaucoma Research Foundation, glaucoma starts as a symptom-less disease that, through damage to the optic nerve, can ultimately rob a patient of his or her sight. The disease accounts for approximately 9 percent to 12 percent of all blindness in the United States, and the World Health Organization notes that it is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide.
There is no cure for the estimated 4 million Americans who have the disease, and once vision is lost, it cannot be restored. However, treatments -- including medicine and surgery -- do slow down or halt disease progression.
Vitamin E is thought to aid vision because of its antioxidant capacities, and several studies have already explored the notion that it could help combat glaucoma when used in conjunction with prescription drugs.
The current research focused on contact lenses that can be worn for up to a month.
The authors note that their study has already revealed that contacts pre-loaded with vitamin E can extend drug-delivery duration by upwards of 100 times when compared with regular commercial lenses. Delivery of medications via eye drops only exposes the eye to two to five minutes of treatment, they added.
Human trials to test the approach are still one to two years away, Chauhan said. But he added that, if successful, this drug-delivery method could have multiple applications beyond the goal of improving glaucoma treatment.
"This could have significant benefits for several millions of patients, from both a therapeutic angle and a prevention angle," he said. "Because not only could it provide better drug relief for glaucoma, but it could potentially address a number of other eye diseases, such as cataracts and dry eye. And the neutroceuticals of vitamin E also block UV light exposure."
"But what will actually work out in the future only time will tell," Chauhan cautioned.
Meanwhile, Dr. Alfred Sommer, a professor of ophthalmology and dean emeritus at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, expressed some reservations about the approach.
"A delivery mechanism to essentially bathe the eye in slow and continuous medication to target a whole range of diseases from macular degeneration to glaucoma has been a holy grail for ophthalmology for many years," he noted. "But by and large the efforts to do this have not proven successful, although it would certainly be nice to have."
"But since the most effective glaucoma drops we have today you only have to put in once a day, the question then is, would people really put a contact lens in their eye when they don't really otherwise use contacts?" Sommer asked. "That is speculative, particularly when we strongly advise contact lens wearers never to wear a lens overnight. So, it's not immediately apparent to me what the advantages would be for glaucoma."
At the same meeting, a research team out of Iowa State University is scheduled to report Wednesday on a new technology that might be able to catch glaucoma in its pre-symptomatic, early stages.
Led by Iowa State assistant professor Chenxu Yu, the team said they believe they are on the verge of a diagnostic "breakthrough" with the aid of infrared laser light -- via a method called "Raman spectroscopy" -- that shines through the eye's pupil to take a "snapshot" of the retina. They hope the high-tech picture could one day be used to identify biochemical signs of glaucoma in its infancy.
Study shows that risk declines as number of children rises.
There may be something about raising children that helps shield women from suicide, a study involving over a million Taiwanese mothers suggests.
In fact, women's suicide rates declined as the number of children they cared for rose, the team reported March 22 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
"People have always known this clinically, although it's never been statistically or empirically verified," said Dr. Jon Shaw, director and professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "Clearly, women with children who are still being cared for by the mother decreases the likelihood of the mother hurting or killing herself partly because she's so emotionally invested in the children and, in a very complex way, killing herself means killing her children as well, and depriving them of a mother."
In fact, there's other evidence suggesting that the protective effect of having offspring extends to fathers as well, Shaw said.
This large study, out of Taiwan, also extends our knowledge base to more areas of the world.
"Because this is the first study in Asia, it adds some international confirmation for the finding," said Alan L. Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology and president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention. "Now we can say that [the phenomenon] is not specific to any specific part of the world."
Until now, the most convincing studies on motherhood and suicide have been conducted in Norway, Denmark and Finland, all of which found a lower risk of suicide in mothers versus women without children.
According to background information in the paper, men have a higher suicide rate than women -- three times as high in Western countries and twice as high in Taiwan.
These authors followed almost 1.3 million women in Taiwan who had given birth at least once. The study spanned 20 years, from 1987 to 2007.
Compared to women with one child, those who had at least two live births had a 39 percent lower chance of committing suicide, while those who had three or more children had a 60 percent lower chance than women who had just one child.
The study's author, Chun-Yuh Yang from Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan, couldn't report the rate of suicide among women with no children because no data is kept on pregnancies that end before term. He also noted that a cause-and-effect relationship linking motherhood to reductions in suicide could not be established from this type of research.
But Berman said that bonds between people, including the parent-child relationship, are known to help keep suicide at bay.
"We've known that, in general, attachments, relative to the lack of attachments, are protective against suicide assuming there's no significant psychiatric disorder in the individual," Berman said. "The data across the globe has almost universally pointed to higher rates of suicide among those who are divorced and widowed and single and never-married."
The study author pointed out another confounding factor: Underlying psychiatric disorders such as depression may prevent women from getting married or having children in the first place.
"Being married and with children for any number of hypothesized reasons provides a sense of being needed as a nurturer, as an emotional support, of having one's own emotional life reasonably in control to provide support," Berman explained.
Most should be getting supplement to meet 400 IU daily requirement, study finds.
Most infants in the United States aren't getting enough vitamin D and should be given supplements, a new federal government report shows.
In 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics raised the recommended daily requirement of vitamin D for infants from 200 International Units (IU) a day to 400 IU, the researchers noted. However, too few infants are getting these new levels.
"Vitamin D receptors are present in almost every type of cell in the body," said lead researcher Cria G. Perrine, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epidemic Intelligence Service in the Office of Workforce and Career Development, and Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity.
Lack of vitamin D has been linked to many diseases including cancer, type 1 diabetes and respiratory problems, Perrine added.
Vitamin D is also essential for bone development, Perrine said. Although there is no national estimate, many kids are still getting rickets, which is a softening of the bones that can lead to fractures and deformities.
"Most infants, starting at birth, will need a vitamin D supplement," Perrine said.
To make sure your baby is getting enough vitamin D, Perrine said there are vitamin D drops and liquid multivitamins for infants. "Pretty much all the drops are single doses for 400 IUs," the researcher noted.
The report is published in the March 22 online edition of Pediatrics.
For the study, Perrine's team collected data on infants included in the Infant Feeding Practices Study II, which was done from 2005 to 2007. Using these data, the researchers estimated how many infants were getting the recommended levels of vitamin D. They estimated these levels for babies from 1 month to 10.5 months.
The researchers found that among infants who were exclusively breast-fed, only 5 percent to 13 percent, depending on age, were getting enough vitamin D. For infants who were breast-fed but also got formula, 28 percent to 35 percent were getting 200 IUs of vitamin D a day, but only 9 percent to 14 percent were getting 400 IUs a day.
For infants fed exclusively with formula, 81 percent to 98 percent were getting 200 IUs a day, but only 20 percent to 37 percent were getting the recommended 400 IUs.
"In the past, it was assumed that children receiving formula didn't need a vitamin D supplement, because they were getting it from the formula," Perrine said.
Although they were getting enough formula to meet the 200 IU recommendation, most formula-fed infants won't get enough vitamin D to meet the 400 IU recommendation, Perrine noted.
In addition, the investigators found that only 1 percent to 13 percent of infants were being given a vitamin D supplement.
"Most infants need a vitamin D supplement, and we are not only talking about only breast-fed children," Perrine said.
Samantha Heller, a dietitian, nutritionist and exercise physiologist, said that "low levels of vitamin D may not seem like a big deal but we are finding out it is. Research is suggesting that low vitamin D levels are linked to autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, as well as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, mood dysregulation, muscle problems, certain cancers and more."
Heller added: "Sun exposure is one of the best ways to get vitamin D since it is not found in many foods. However, for people living in northern latitudes the sun is not strong enough to generate vitamin D production many months of the year. In addition, we encourage people to use sunscreen to protect against skin cancers, which also minimizes skin's ability to produce vitamin D."
Supplements are the next best option, Heller said. "Experts now recommend a minimum of 800 to 1,000 IU per day for adults and children year round. In July 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that infants who are exclusively or partially breast-fed receive 400 IU of supplemental vitamin D daily, beginning in the first few days of life," she said.
"This study suggests that parents are unaware of the need for vitamin D supplementation in infants and other studies show the same for older children. Health professionals need to get the word out to the public that infants, children, adolescents and adults need to get appropriate amounts of vitamin D all year,"
Darker roasts have fewer irritants than lighter brews, researchers find.
For millions of coffee-lovers with delicate stomachs, scientists may have found a way to enjoy an eye-opening cup of java without gastrointestinal discomfort.
European researchers studying stomach-irritating chemicals in coffee have unexpectedly found one that actually inhibits acid production in the stomach.
"The major import of our work is that it provides scientific evidence that you can produce a more stomach-friendly coffee by varying the processing technology," said study author Veronika Somoza, professor and chair of the Research Platform of Molecular Food Science at the University of Vienna, Austria.
The finding offers the promise that coffee makers can produce a blend that will be easier on the tummy, Somoza said.
The results were to be presented Sunday at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in San Francisco.
The scientists looked at coffee's effect on human stomach cells using a variety of preparations, including dark-roast, regular roast, decaffeinated and stomach-friendly. Instead of one single element, they identified a mixture of compounds -- caffeine, catechols and N-alkanoly-5-hydroxytriptamides -- as the chemicals in coffee that promote the production of stomach acid.
But a fourth chemical, N-methylpyridinium, which is more common in dark roasts, such as espresso and French roast blends, was found to inhibit acid.
N-methylpyridinium is a product of the roasting process itself, resulting in dark roasts that are less likely than lighter ones to cause stomach irritation, according to the research.
Whether the findings will translate to human coffee drinkers remains unclear. The authors hope to conduct tests with human coffee drinkers this year.
Dr. Joseph Vinson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania who has studied the antioxidant properties of coffee, said the study suggests the possibility of a less troublesome brew.
"Cell studies can be legitimate. They can lead to human studies that will say the same thing," said Vinson. "She [Somoza] has figured out a research approach that is one way to do it, and it's a question of whether it is relevant to the human realm."
Vinson predicted it will be.
"There's more than enough data [in the study] to make it interesting," said Vinson. "There can be this special coffee that doesn't bother you."
The potential market for a kinder, gentler coffee is huge. About 40 million people in the United States alone avoid java, often because of acid reflux disease, a common stomach problem for coffee drinkers, according to background information from the American Chemical Society. Stomach-friendly coffees are already on the market, but some doctors don't recommend them for people with acid reflux, which pushes stomach contents back up the esophagus, causing heartburn.
Among them is Dr. Anthony A. Starpoli, director of gastroesophageal research at St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers in New York City, who doesn't advise drinking decaffeinated coffee either.
"When you say you can have a little, it becomes a license to do whatever you want," said Starpoli about the advice he gives his patients. "I'm very strict about coffee," he added, because it causes serious stomach trouble for some.
The study suggests some balance of "good guys" and "bad guys" in coffee, and the process used to make it more stomach-friendly eliminates both, he noted. The study's identification of components causing problems for coffee drinkers is a valuable finding and supports his medical advice that some people should avoid drinking coffee entirely, he said.
"It shows a reason, and you always need to have a reason. At the end of the day, if you have significant acid reflux disease, you should not drink coffee," said Starpoli.
Many medications prevent acid reflux, and Starpoli believes they help. But he cautions against their overuse by folks who take them so they can have coffee, wine or other heartburn-inducing foods. The medicines can inhibit the acid that kills helpful bacteria, sometimes causing diarrhea and other serious problems, and can also become addictive, Starpoli said.
Production of a less-irritating coffee would be welcome news, because so many patients resist giving up their daily java, he said.
"It's almost a completely non-negotiable item for some of them," he said.
The following are various types of cancer and their risk factors:
* Breast- Family history of breast cancer, late childbearing, childlessness, obesity.
* Bladder- Smoking (nearly half of cases), hair dye - bladder cancer is more common in men than women.
* Cervical- First intercourse at an early age, history of genital herpes, multiple sexual partners.
* Colorectal- Being over 50 with colon polyps or ulcerative colitis, high-fat, low-fiber diet and smoking and family history of these disorders or colon cancer.
* Leukemia- benzene, Exposure to radiation benzene and other chemicals.
* Lung- Smoking (83 percent of cases), radiation, exposure to asbestos and secondhand tobacco smoke.
* Lymphoma- Being 50 and more than 50, no other known risk factors.
* Oral- Smoking, heavy alcohol use and chewing tobacco.
* Pancreatic- high-fat diet, Smoking.
* Prostate- More than 80 percent of cases occur after 65, risk increases with age.
* Skin- family history of skin cancer, frequent sun exposure, Fair skin, severe sunburn in childhood.
* Uterine- Being post-menopausal with a history of infertility, ovulation failure or abnormal bleeding, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity.
Carpal tunnel syndrome includes a number of conditions characterized by swelling, pain, tingling and weakness in the wrists and hands.
The National Women's Health Information Center says you can help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome by taking these precautions:
1.When you work at a computer, make sure your equipment is kept at an ideal height and distance, limiting strain on your hands and wrists. Also, keep your elbows near your sides as you type. 2. Take a break once an hour. 3. Scatter activities that require repetitive movements of the hands and wrists. 4. Gently stretch and bend your hands and wrists in the opposite direction from typical movements. 5. Keep your muscles warm while you work. Consider fingerless gloves if you work in a cold office.
Giving a kidney carries few health risks, with donors living just as long or sometimes even longer than those who don't donate, the largest study to date of donors has found.
Using data on more than 80,000 U.S. residents who donated a kidney between 1994 and 2009, researchers found that donors lived now as long as people who were matched for age, gender, ethnic background and other health and demographic factors but who did not donate a kidney.
The normal length of follow-up was more than six years, although researchers had more than 12 years of data on 10,000 donors, according to the analysis in the March 10 issue of theJournal of the American Medical Association.
"On average, if you compare someone who has donated and lives with one kidney and compare them to someone just like them who lives with two kidneys, there is no increased risk of mortality," said study author Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon and director of clinical research in transplant surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Each year, about 6,000 living donors in the United States have a kidney removed to save another. About half donate to save a blood relative, Segev said. The other half donate to a friend or loved one, such as a spouse. A small number, about 100 a year, donate a kidney to save a stranger's life, Segev said.
"People who donate kidneys are heroes," Segev said. "They take risks for the direct benefit of another person."
In the study, researchers examined data from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) national registry and compared it to data on more than 9,000 participants in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
While kidney donation is very safe, it's not totally without risk, the researchers noted. About 25 donors died within 90 days of the operation, putting the risk of death at 3.1 per 10,000 donors compared to 0.4 per 10,000 people who did not donate.
Although the researchers did not specifically study cause of death, complications from kidney removal could include major bleeding, reactions to anesthesia or blood clots, similar to those that could occur with any surgery, Segev said.
Men had higher surgical mortality than women, and blacks were more likely to die than whites or Hispanics, as were donors with high blood pressure.
"There is a three in 10,000 chance you will die from the operation. That is a real risk," Segev said. "While the risk is not zero, it happens to be one of the safest operations you can ever possibly have."
For comparison, the risk of death following gallbladder removal, also measured to be among the safest operations, is 18 per 10,000.
One year following the donation, the risk of death among those who donated was the same as those who didn't donate. And beyond that, donors had a similar -- and even a bit lower -- risk of dying as those who didn't donate. Five years out, the risk of death was 0.4 per 10,000 donors and 0.9 per 10,000 non-donors. Twelve years out, the risk of dying was 1.5 per 10,000 donors and 2.9 per 10,000 non-donors, according to the report.
There are two likely reasons why some people with one kidney may live longer than those with two, said Dr. Matthew Cooper, chairman of the UNOS living donor committee and director of kidney transplant and clinical research at University of Maryland School of Medicine.
One enlightenment is that those who donate, knowing they have only one kidney, see a doctor more frequently and take better care of themselves. Another possibility is that donors go through a rigorous screening process, which may mean healthier people are selected to begin with, Cooper explained.
"This study reaffirms what many of us have read in the transplant literature and recognize in our own practices," Cooper said. "Kidney donation is a safe process in the hands of a responsible transplant center that values the long-term health of living donors."
Still, the study authors noted that it's important to continue to monitor and gather data on donors over the long term. The national registry includes health information only up to a year or two post-transplant. The researchers used the Social Security Death Master File to determine who died, but could not study quality of life or any other health issues that might have developed.
"In that long gap of time between one year and many decades after the surgery, we don't have a lot of information about what happens with living donors," Cooper said.
Previous research has also shown kidney donation to be overwhelmingly safe. A study published in 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine tracked nearly 3,700 kidney donors from as far back as 1963 and found their life expectancy was the same as those who didn't donate.
