Natural Health Tips

Health is main factor in our life. Here are nine natural health tips that can help you to make your health good & fit.

• Water is main for healthy life. So drink extra water. Drink minimum 8 glasses of water in a daytime.

• Maintain every day routine such as Get Up early in Morning, Exercise, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Sleep. Routine is main factor in healthy life.

• Use clean Water & soft cloth intended for cleaning the skin.

• Go for morning walk every day, do exercise such as walking, running, swimming, cycling for half an hour.

• Sleep at least eight hours.

• Eat baked or steamed food in its place of fried food. Do not take extra oily foods.

• Meditation and Yoga is supportive for healthy life do Meditation and Yoga.

• Intake well balanced diet, add green vegetables and fruits in your every day diet.

• Do not acquire alcohol, smoke or tobacco.

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Chronic Kidney Disease Tied to Heart Problems in Elderly

Chronic kidney disease is common among Americans over 80 years of age and is often linked with heart disease, a new study says. Researchers examined the prevalence of chronic kidney disease in 1,028 octogenarians in four U.S. communities enrolled in the long-term Cardiovascular Health Study All Stars. The prevalence of chronic kidney disease varied from 33 to 51 percent, depending on whether the researchers used blood serum levels of creatinine or cystatin C as markers of the disease.

The findings highlight the fact that using different formulas to assess kidney function in people in their 80s results in different estimates of the chronic kidney disease prevalence in this age group, the investigators said. The study authors noted that no "gold standard" to estimate the prevalence of chronic kidney disease in octogenarians has been developed or validated. However, no matter which formula was used to assess kidney function, chronic kidney disease in octogenarians was associated with cardiovascular disease. Participants with chronic kidney disease were 1.5 to two times more likely than those without chronic kidney disease to have coronary heart disease, heart failure or stroke, according to the report.

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Odds of Quitting Smoking May Be Clear on Scans

Brain scans can predict a smoker's chances of being able to quit, according to a new study. It included 28 heavy smokers recruited from a smoking cessation program. Functional MRI was used to monitor the participants' brain activity as they watched television ads meant to help people quit smoking. The researchers contacted the participants one month later and found that they were smoking an average of five cigarettes a day, compared with an average of 21 a day at the start of the study.

But there was considerable variation in how successful individual participants were in reducing their smoking. The researchers found that a reaction in an area of the brain, called the medial prefrontal cortex, while watching the quit-smoking ads was linked to reductions in smoking during the month after the brain scan. Previous research by the same team suggested that activity in the prefrontal cortex is predictive of behavior change.

In the new study, published in the current issue of Health Psychology, "we targeted smokers who were already taking action to quit, and we found that neural activity can predict behavior change, above and beyond people's own assessment of how likely they are to succeed," study author Emily Falk, director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and Department of Communication Studies, said in a university news release.

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ER Visits by Underage Drinkers Spike on New Year's

The number of emergency department visits that involved underage drinking jumped by more than 250 percent on New Year's Day two years ago, compared with other days of the year, a new U.S. study reveals. Researchers with the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that an estimated 1,980 emergency visits on Jan. 1, 2009, had something to do with underage drinking. The national average for such visits during the year as a whole was 546 per day.

Compared with other national holidays, the number of admissions on New Year's Day linked to underage drinking was 191 percent higher than on Memorial Day and 110 percent higher than on the Fourth of July, the researchers explained. "This stunning increase in underage drinking-related emergency room visits on New Year's Day should be a wake-up call to parents, community leaders and all caring adults about the potential risks our young people alcohol face for -related accidents, injuries and death during this time of year," Pamela S. Hyde, the agency's administrator, said in a news release.

"Parents, clergy, coaches, teachers and other role models must do everything they can to positively influence young people including talking with them early and often about the many health dangers underage drinking poses to their physical and emotional health and well-being," Hyde urged. Kenneth R. Warren, acting director of the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, described the finding as "very troubling" and said that it was "in line with what we already know about the increase in alcohol-related problems during the winter holidays."

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Weight-Lifting After Breast Cancer Won't Cause Lymphedema

Contrary to conventional wisdom, lifting weights doesn't cause breast cancer survivors to develop the painful, arm-swelling condition known as lymphedema, new research suggests. There's a hint that weight-lifting might even help prevent lymphedema, but more research is needed to say that for sure, the researchers said. Breast cancer-related lymphedema is caused by an accumulation of lymph fluid after surgical removal of the lymph nodes and/or radiation. It is a serious condition that may cause arm swelling, awkwardness and discomfort.

"Lymphedema is something women really fear after breast cancer, and the guidance has been not to lift anything heavier even than a purse," said Kathryn H. Schmitz, lead author of the study to be presented Wednesday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. " to tell women to not use that affected arm without giving them a prescription for a personal valet is an absurdist principle," she added. A previous study done by the same team of researchers found that exercise actually stabilized symptoms among women who already had lymphedema.

"We really wanted to put the last stamp on this to say, 'Hey, it is not only safe but may actually be good for their arms," said Schmitz, who is an associate professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and a member of the Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia. "It's almost like a paradigm shift," said Lee Jones, scientific director of the Duke Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Survivorship in Durham, N.C. "Low-volume resistance training does not exacerbate lymphedema."

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Blood Cancer Advances May Improve Survival

Advances in the treatment of blood cancers offer new hope for increased survival, according to two studies scheduled to be presented at the American Society of Hematology meeting Saturday in Orlando, Fla. Results from one study suggest that treating multiple myeloma patients with zoledronic acid can improve survival, while another group of researchers are scheduled to report on their progress in treating a particularly aggressive form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

Zoledronic acid, a type of bisphosphonate, is given to myeloma patients to bolster bone health and reduce the risk for fracture and bone pain that are a common feature of the disease.Although prior research has suggested that zoledronic acid may have a broader anti-cancer effect, the current study finds that a well-tolerated regimen of the drug can reduce the risk of death among myeloma patients.The study is published in the Dec. 4 online edition of The Lancet.

"These data add to growing clinical evidence supporting anti-cancer benefits with zoledronic acid in patients with newly diagnosed cancers," the study team, led by Gareth J. Morgan from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said in a journal news release. The authors base their conclusions on work with 1,960 multiple myeloma patients, about half of whom were treated with zoledronic acid in combination with either intensive or non-intensive chemotherapy. The other half received clodronic acid and equivalent chemotherapy regimens.

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For Many Gay Youth, Bullying Exacts a Deadly Toll

A series of suicides involving bullied gay teens has shocked much of America this past month. On Sept. 9, 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Greenburg, Ind., hanged himself after enduring constant taunts from bullies at school. Two weeks later, 13-year-old Asher Brown from suburban Houston shot himself soon after revealing he was gay. And on Sept. 27, another 13-year-old, Seth Walsh of Techachapi, Calif., died after injuries sustained from hanging himself. He too, had endured "relentless" bullying from other kids, according to The New York Times.

One more death the Sept. 22 suicide of 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi catapulted these and other suicides of young gay teens into the media spotlight. Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, allegedly broadcast surreptitious video footage over the Internet of Clementi in an intimate encounter with a young man. Last week, Clementi left a message on his Facebook page: "Jumping off bridge sorry," and then did just that. Cases like these are far from rare, and "this may be the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. David Reitman, chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender and Questioning Special Interest Group, part of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

In a statement, he said "the tragic outcome in these cases underscores the profound consequences that bullying and harassment can have on a young person." Of course any child, gay or straight, can become victims of bullying, as the much-publicized suicide in January of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, Mass., showed all too tragically. She had withstood months of bullying from schoolmates after moving from Ireland. But experts say adolescence renders young people especially vulnerable to harassment, and the difficulties of grappling with sexuality can complicate that further.

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Mother's Stress, Interference May Worsen Child's Asthma

A mother's negative emotions or behavior can worsen the severity of her child's asthma, new research suggests.In the study, Japanese researchers followed 223 mothers for a year in order to assess how their stress levels, coping skills and parenting styles influenced asthma symptoms in their children, aged 2 to 12 years old. Among children older than 7 years of age, a worsening of asthma was associated with mothers' excessive interference due to being overprotective. Among children younger than 7, more severe asthma symptoms were associated with mothers' chronic irritation and anger or a tendency to suppress expressions of emotion, the investigators found.

The study was published online Oct. 7 in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine. "A mother's stress may be verbally or non verbally conveyed to her child, and affect the child's asthmatic status via a psycho physiological pathway, such as by immunoreactivity to allergens or a vulnerability to airway infections," Jun Nagano, of the Kyushu University Institute of Health Science in Fukuoka, Japan, explained in a news release from the journal's publisher. "Our results suggest that the mothers of younger children may be advised not to worry about falling into 'unfavorable' parenting styles, but to pay more attention to the reduction of their own stress; and that the mothers of older children may be encouraged to increase their own well-being," Jun concluded.

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Moderate Alcohol Use Helps Prevent Sudden Cardiac Death: Study

In yet another study, a moderate intake of alcohol has been shown to be healthy for the heart. The current research found that when women consumed between one half to one drink a day, their risk of sudden cardiac death dropped by 36 percent. However, when women doubled their intake and had more than two drinks per day, they upped their risk of sudden cardiac death by about 15 percent. "Numerous studies have found a protective association between alcohol intake and coronary heart disease, stroke and congestive heart failure, but little research has been done on alcohol and sudden cardiac death," explained study author Stephanie Chiuve, an instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"In this study, we wanted to look at the association of moderate alcohol intake and the risk of sudden cardiac death in women. We found a U-shaped association between alcohol and sudden cardiac death," said Chiuve, which means that too little or too much alcohol intake was associated with a higher risk of sudden cardiac death than moderate intake of alcohol. "For women who choose to drink alcohol, they should have about one drink a day. That's where we saw the greatest benefit," she said. Results of the study are published in the October issue of the journal Heart Rhythm.

Although the study wasn't designed to figure out exactly how alcohol might help prevent sudden cardiac death, Chiuve said that alcohol has a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels and helps reduce the amount of plaque that collects in the blood vessels. She said that it doesn't appear that any one particular type of alcohol is more beneficial than others, suggesting that it's the ethanol contained in alcoholic beverages that provides the health boost. But, the news on alcohol isn't all good. Alcohol can also have what's known as pro-arrhythmic effects. That means alcohol can cause heart palpitations. The effect is so well-known that it's been dubbed "holiday heart syndrome."

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Chest Scans May Incidentally Help Spot Heart Disease Risk

Chest CT scans taken for routine diagnostic purposes even those not related to cardiovascular disease concerns can be used by radiologists to screen for signs of heart disease risk, new research suggests. "Radiologists can predict cardiovascular disease fairly well using incidental findings of calcifications of the aortic wall on CT, along with minimal patient information, such as age, gender and the reason for the CT," study lead author Dr. Martijn Gondrie, of the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, said in a news release from the Radiological Society of North America.

"Ultimately, this easily executed extra risk stratification has the potential to reduce future heart attacks or other cardiovascular events," Gondrie added. The study findings were released online Sept. 28 in advance of publication in the November print issue of Radiology. Gondrie and colleagues pointed out that chest CT scans have increased in quality and frequency of use over the past decade, resulting in a greater pool of incidental findings that clinicians can theoretically use to assess risk for all sorts of additional health complications. Such incidental findings can be a bonus because they do not expose the patient to additional radiation or additional scanning costs, the study authors explained.

To assess the potential usefulness of such findings, Gondrie's team analyzed incidental data regarding a number of different aortic abnormalities that had been gleaned from nearly 1,200 chest CT scans conducted for reasons having nothing to do with heart health. The researchers found that when all the various types of abnormalities cited were taken as a whole, the incidental heart-related findings were in fact helpful in predicting future heart disease risk. The authors concluded that their work "generates the much-needed insights that allow more effective utilization of the increasing amount of diagnostic information, and it could potentially change the way radiologists contribute to the efficiency of daily patient care."

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Poor Health Habits Linked to Subpar Work Performance

People who engage in unhealthy habits such as smoking, eating a poor diet and not getting enough exercise turn out to be less productive on the job, new Dutch research shows. Unhealthy lifestyle choices also appear to translate into a greater need for sick leave and longer periods of time off from work when sick leave is taken, the study reveals. The finding is reported in the Sept. 28 online edition of the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine.

"More than 10 percent of sick leave and the higher levels of productivity loss at work may be attributed to lifestyle behaviors and obesity," Alex Burdorf, of the department of public health at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues noted in a news release from the journal's publisher. Between 2005 and 2009, Burdorf and his associates surveyed more than 10,600 people who worked for 49 different companies in the Netherlands.

Participants were asked to discuss both lifestyle and work habits, rating their work productivity on a scale of 0 to 10, while offering information about their weight, height, health history and the number of days they had to call in sick during the prior year. The investigators found that 56 percent of those polled had taken off at least one day in the preceding year because of poor health. Being obese, smoking, and having poor diet and exercise habits were contributing factors in just over 10 percent of sick leave occurrences.

More News

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Better Screening Urged for Self-Injury in Teens

Doctors often fail to screen their adolescent eating-disorder patients for evidence of self-inflicted physical harm in the form of cutting or burning, new research reveals. The observation stems from work conducted by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. Led by Dr. Rebecka Peebles, the research team published its findings in the Sept. 28 online edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health. Peebles and her colleagues noted that eating disorders typically found among adolescents, such as bulimia and anorexia, are often associated with a higher risk for self-inflicted injury. This, Peebles noted in a Stanford news release, often stems from a troubled patient's need to try "to feel pain."

"Patients describe a feeling of release that comes when they cut or burn themselves," she said. "They'll cut with a razor or a scissor blade. Sometimes we've even had kids who will take the tip of a paper clip and gouge holes. To burn themselves, they'll heat up a metal object and press it to their skin, or they'll use cigarettes." Prior research has indicated that between 13 percent and 40 percent of all American adolescents engage in some form of self-injury. The practice is also linked to a higher risk for suicide, the study authors noted. To see how often this happens and how often doctors proactively screen for the association, the investigators focused on the medical records of 1,432 patients between the ages of 10 and 21 years, who had sought treatment for an eating disorder at the Comprehensive Eating Disorders Program at Packard Children's Hospital between 1997 and 2008.

More than 90 percent of the patients were female, three-quarters were white, and the average age was 15, the researchers noted. Nearly 41 percent were found to have engaged in intentional self-inflicted injury. More than 85 percent of the time this took the form of cutting themselves. Yet despite the high prevalence, only about half of the patients had been asked by hospital staff if they had hurt themselves on purpose. Those who were asked tended to fit a classic profile: they were female, older, white and had a diagnosis of bulimia and/or substance abuse of some kind. "The question is," said Peebles, "are we missing other kids who are not meeting this profile? This is part of why we wanted to look at this. If you see an innocent-looking 12-year-old boy, you don't even think of asking about self-injurious behavior. We need to get much better about universal screening."

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Most Study Volunteers Seem Willing to Share Genetic Data

Most Americans are willing to have their genetic information shared in a national database, but they first want to be asked, researchers report. The new study included participants in the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study, a long-term project tracking age-related changes in thousands of patients that's being conducted by a team at the Group Health Research Institute and the University of Washington in Seattle. When asked if their anonymous genetic and medical data could be shared in a national database, 86 percent of the ACT participants agreed. The researchers then surveyed 365 of the participants whose reason for agreeing to share their genetic data was mostly due to their "desire to help others."

Of those 365 people, 90 percent said it was important to have been asked for reconsent, which is additional informed consent that's given by research participants before their information is used for a purpose beyond what they agreed to originally. Alternatives to reconsent such as opting out, being notified, or receiving neither individual permission nor notification were unacceptable to 40 percent, 67 percent and 70 percent of the surveyed participants, respectively, the study authors found. "We were surprised that so many people felt it was important for us to ask them, even though they decided to give their consent. This indicates that even if most of a study's participants would agree to data sharing, it's still crucial to ask them," lead author Evette J. Ludman

The study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. "Trust is a two-way street, and human research requires lots of trust," Ludman said. "People have an understandable feeling of ownership over their bodies and medical records, including their genetic information. Researchers show we're worthy of trust when we ask research participants for permission to use their information in a way that they haven't already agreed to."

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Smoked Marijuana May Ease Chronic Nerve Pain

Smoking cannabis, also known as marijuana, reduced pain in patients with nerve pain stemming from injuries or surgical complications, new research shows. Twenty-one adults with chronic nerve pain were taught to take a single inhalation of 25 milligrams of cannabis through a pipe, three times a day, for five days. The cannabis contained one of three levels of potency of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana, as well as a placebo dosage containing no THC.All of the patients rotated through each of the four dosages, with nine days of no smoking in between. Patients smoking the highest potency marijuana reported less pain than those smoking samples containing no THC. Patients also reported better sleep and less anxiety, according to the Canadian study.

On an 11-point scale, the average daily pain intensity was 6.1 for those smoking 9.4 percent THC concentration, compared to 5.4 for those smoking cannabis containing no THC."Patients have repeatedly made claims that smoked cannabis helps to treat pain, but the issue for me had always been the lack of clinical research to support that claim," said Dr. Mark Ware, director of clinical research at the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal. In this small but randomized, controlled trial, "the pain reductions were modest, but significant," he said. "And it was in people for whom nothing else worked."

The study is published in the Aug. 30 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Persistent nerve pain, clinically known as neuropathy, can be very difficult to treat, Ware said. These patients had tried other treatments for neuropathy, such as opioids, anticonvulsants, antidepressants and local anesthetics, with little relief, Ware said. In addition, the THC potency levels used in the study were kept at 2.5 percent, 6 percent and 9 percent considerably less than the 12 percent to 15 percent often found in marijuana sold on the street, Ware said. Researchers kept the levels low for two reasons, Ware explained. One was to minimize the psychoactive effects, such as feeling lightheaded, dizzy, detached, nauseous or euphoric.

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Black Rice May Be Cheap Source of Antioxidants

Blueberries and blackberries have high levels of antioxidants, which help the body deal with potentially dangerous cellular oxidation, but scientists say they've also found a cheaper source of antioxidants for consumers: black rice. "Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful of blueberries, but with less sugar and more fiber and antioxidants," study co-author Zhimin Xu said in a news release from the American Chemical Society.

"If berries are used to boost health, why not black rice and black rice bran?" suggested Xu, associate professor at the food science department at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge. "Black rice bran would be a unique and economical material to increase consumption of health-promoting antioxidants." The study authors noted that black rice bran could be used to boost the health benefits of breakfast cereals, cakes, cookies and other foods. It could also be added to beverages, and may serve as food coloring, allowing food manufacturers to avoid artificial colorants, the team said in the news release. The scientists explained that pigments in black rice bran extracts range from pink to black.

In the study, the researchers tested black rice bran grown in the Southern United States. Although brown rice is the most common rice variety produced worldwide, Xu said the study results suggest that black rice bran may be healthier than brown rice bran in terms of antioxidants. In Asia, black rice is most commonly used for food decoration, such as in noodles or sushi. One variety of black rice is known as "Forbidden Rice" because in Ancient China, it was only permitted to be eaten by nobles and no one else, according to background information in the news release.The study results were scheduled to be released Thursday at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

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