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Source: Harvard Health Blog
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Total 81 results found since Jan 2013.
Gout: Sleep apnea may raise your risk
Gout is the most common type of inflammatory arthritis and affects more than 8 million adults. Men are at a higher risk than women. And according to a new study, your risk for gout also climbs if you suffer from sleep apnea, a condition where your breathing repeatedly pauses while you sleep.
What exactly is gout?
Gout is triggered by the crystallization of uric acid within the joints. It happens like this: Your body produces uric acid from breaking down purines, a natural waste product of living cells. Normally, uric acid is dissolved in your blood and passes through your kidneys into your urine.
However, sometimes your bo...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 17, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Solan Tags: Arthritis Health Sleep gout sleep apnea Source Type: news
Do statins interfere with the flu vaccine?
Statins are powerful, unusual, and, like El Niño and Tom Cruise, not well understood. Statins have a huge upside. They improve survival after heart attacks and lower the risk of recurrent strokes. They are also the only cholesterol-lowering medications that have been clearly shown to reduce heart attacks and deaths in high-risk patients without heart disease. In addition to reducing cholesterol, statins also lower levels of inflammation in the body. Reducing inflammation probably helps statins to prevent heart attack and stroke. However, evidence is emerging that these statin effects may also have a downside, hindering th...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 30, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Cold and Flu Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Vaccines flu vaccine statins Source Type: news
Exercise: You may need less than you think
Regular exercise is one of the cornerstones for maintaining good health. Regular physical activity helps to prevent heart and blood vessel disease, diabetes, dementia, and even some types of cancer. But while the health benefits of exercise are indisputable, there is still a question about exactly how much exercise is needed to promote optimal health.
According to a recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association by Thijs Eijsvogels and Paul Thompson, the answer may be “not as much as you might think.”
Every little bit of exercise counts
Drs. Eijsvogels and Thompson reviewed several published studies ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 8, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Gregory Curfman, MD Tags: Diet and Weight Loss Exercise and Fitness Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Source Type: news
Four new recommendations for adolescent health
The yearly “check-up” is the perfect (perhaps only) time to not only see how kids are growing and give any needed shots, but to see how they are doing more generally — and help be sure that they grow into healthy, happy adults. After all, prevention is really what pediatrics is all about.
That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has a checklist for pediatricians called “Recommendations for Preventive Pediatric Health Care.” These recommendations, which are updated every few years, are based on the most up-to-date research about the health of children now — and in the future.
While the latest versio...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - January 4, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Prevention Source Type: news
What parents need to know about pain in newborns
Just because newborn babies can’t tell you they feel pain doesn’t mean they don’t feel pain. They do. And parents can help.
We tend to think that newborns are too little to really experience pain, and that if they do experience it, they soon forget it. However, research has shown that, indeed, babies do experience pain — and that repeated painful experiences in the newborn period can lead to both short- and long-term problems with development, emotions, and responses to stress.
This is particularly a problem for babies who need many medical procedures after they are born, such as premature babies, babies with certa...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - January 26, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Family Planning and Pregnancy Parenting Source Type: news
Stress raising your blood pressure? Take a deep breath
Stress is rampant, and high blood pressure (what doctors call hypertension) is on the rise. So it’s no wonder patients often ask if stress is causing their hypertension. We have no proof that stress alone can cause persistently elevated blood pressure. (Part of the reason is that high-quality studies quantifying stress are difficult to conduct.) But stress can certainly raise blood pressure, sometimes impressively. And stress reduction can lower blood pressure, frequently improving overall well-being. Deep, slow breathing is the oldest and best-known technique to decrease stress.
The relationship between stress and blood...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - February 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi Fisher, MD Tags: Behavioral Health Hypertension and Stroke Stress Source Type: news
Don’t shrug off shingles
If you had chickenpox as a kid, there is a good chance you may develop shingles later in life. “In fact, one in three is predicted to get shingles during their lifetime,” says Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, director of the Nerve Unit at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.
The same varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox also causes shingles. After the telltale spots of chickenpox vanish, the virus lies dormant in your nerve cells near the spinal cord and brain. When your immunity weakens from normal aging or from illnesses or medications, the virus can re-emerge. It then travels along a nerve to trigge...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - February 18, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Solan Tags: Healthy Aging Infectious diseases Vaccines Source Type: news
Decline in dementia rate offers “cautious hope”
“The number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will grow each year as the size and proportion of the U.S. population age 65 and older continue to increase. The number will escalate rapidly in coming years as the baby boom generation ages.”
2015 Alzheimer’s disease Facts and Figures
Despite these alarming projections, a report from a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) offered a few words of encouragement. Researchers from the longstanding Framingham study found that the rate of dementia has declined over the course of three decades.
Framingham researchers had been study...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 9, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Caregiving Healthy Aging Memory Mental Health Prevention cognitive decline dementia Source Type: news
A twist on the genetic link between Alzheimer’s and heart disease
Alzheimer’s disease often strikes fear in people’s hearts because it gradually erodes a person’s ability to remember, think, and learn. There is no cure, and available treatments alleviate symptoms only temporarily. An estimated 5.3 million Americans currently have Alzheimer’s disease, yet this brain disorder is far less common than heart disease. More than 85 million people in the United States are living with some form of cardiovascular disease or the after-effects of stroke, which also affects brain function.
Many people don’t realize that Alzheimer’s and heart disease share a genetic link: the apolipoprotei...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 25, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Genes Healthy Aging Heart Health Memory Mental Health Source Type: news
FDA warns parents about arsenic in rice cereal
Follow me at @drClaire
For years, rice cereal has been a go-to for parents when they start their babies on solid foods.
It’s time to change that.
In 2012, the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a report warning about high levels of inorganic arsenic in rice and rice products. Rice plants are particularly good at absorbing arsenic from the soil, in particular because they grow in a lot of water. Inorganic arsenic is a common ingredient in pesticides and other products used in farming, and can linger in the soil for a long time after it is used. It can be poisonous. In high doses it is lethal, but even small...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 5, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Parenting Safety Source Type: news
Understanding the heart attack gender gap
Imagine someone in the throes of a heart attack. If you pictured a man clutching his chest in agony, that’s understandable. At younger ages, men face a greater risk of heart disease than women. On average, a first heart attack — the most common manifestation of this prevalent disease — strikes men at age 65. For women, the average age of a first heart attack is 72.
However, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States for both genders. In fact, since 1984, more women have died of heart disease than men each year, although that is partly because women generally live longer than men.
So why do middl...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Health Heart Health Women's Health Source Type: news
Can aspirin protect against cancer?
The other day, a fit 50-year-old man came to me for a visit to review his health. As we discussed his (generally good) efforts to take care of himself, he said, “I’ve been wondering if I should take an aspirin every day. I read somewhere that it can prevent cancer.”
As a clinician, I really love it when people come in with questions that stretch my thinking. I have a stock set of answers to the “does aspirin prevent heart disease” question, but I didn’t have an easy answer to the cancer prevention question. What were the data? What should I be recommending? Is it true for everyone? Or maybe just for some people...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Lori Wiviott Tishler, MD, MPH Tags: Cancer Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Prevention Source Type: news
What to do when blood test results not quite “normal”
Picture this: you’re reading the results of your recent bloodwork, and you notice some numbers are teetering on the edge of the normal range. Should you be concerned? “It’s tricky, because in some tests, a borderline result makes no difference. In others, it might indicate an important change in health that we need to follow or act on,” says geriatrician Dr. Suzanne Salamon, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
About normal ranges and interpreting the numbers
When you look at a printout of your lab results, you’ll find the normal ranges for each blood test next to your personal results. For example, if ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 2, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Heidi Godman Tags: Tests and procedures blood test Source Type: news
What to do when blood test results are not quite “normal”
Picture this: you’re reading the results of your recent bloodwork, and you notice some numbers are teetering on the edge of the normal range. Should you be concerned? “It’s tricky, because in some tests, a borderline result makes no difference. In others, it might indicate an important change in health that we need to follow or act on,” says geriatrician Dr. Suzanne Salamon, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
About normal ranges and interpreting the numbers
When you look at a printout of your lab results, you’ll find the normal ranges for each blood test next to your personal results. For example, if ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 2, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Heidi Godman Tags: Tests and procedures blood test Source Type: news
3 reasons your child shouldn’t go “gluten-free” (unless your doctor says so)
Follow me at @drClaire
There is a puzzling and worrisome new phenomenon that I am seeing as a pediatrician: parents who are putting their children on gluten-free diets.
It’s puzzling because in the vast majority of cases it isn’t necessary — and it’s worrisome because, although parents are doing it because they think it’s healthy, a gluten-free diet can be very unhealthy for children.
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and some other grains. It’s in bread and other baked goods, cereals, pastas — and in many other foods in small amounts. For people with celiac disease, even those small amounts ca...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 7, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Healthy Eating Parenting Source Type: news
