Category "Health"

food 2Food expiration dates are generally guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules.

Obviously, a container of milk won’t sour at precisely 12:01 a.m. on the stamped date. But the dates on labels can be tricky.

The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate expiration dates except on baby formula. Many dates are there for the benefit of the store, not the consumer.

Kristin Kirkpatrick, the manager of nutrition services at the Cleveland Food 1Clinic Wellness Institute, offers a quick guide to label language:

– A “sell by” date indicates how long a store should display a product on its shelves. Foods can still be tasty and are safe for several days longer if stored properly.

– A “use by” or “best if used by” date comes from the manufacturer and refers to taste and texture, not safety.

– An “expiration” date is the only packaging date related to food safety. If this date has passed, throw the food out.

Unfortunately, 30 percent to 40 percent of all harvested food in this country ends up wasted, much of it by consumers who waited too long to eat it, or worried it had gone bad, according to a report last month in PLOS One.

food 3Adding to the confusion: Foods spoil at different rates, depending on their type and growing conditions, as well as how they were harvested, transported and distributed, and how they have been stored after being purchased, said Robert B. Gravani, a professor of food science at Cornell University.

Looking closely at food isn’t a good way to check for spoilage, Dr. Gravani said, because bacteria are largely invisible.

Source: New York Times

hyper 3A growing stack of medical research—including Gottesman’s recent study—suggests that high blood pressure raises risk for thinking problems, early brain aging, and even Alzheimer’s disease. These three steps may help reduce risk:

Know your number. “Have your blood pressure checked regularly,” Gottesman says. “People tend to ignore high blood pressure, particularly when they are younger, because it has no symptoms that you can feel or see. But it’s important to pay attention to it.”

Take care of higher-than-normal blood pressure right away. Talk with your doctor about what Hyperblood pressure is appropriate for you. If yours is higher than recommended, your doctor will advise you take lifestyle steps such as weight loss, regular exercise, and a lower-sodium diet that features plenty of fruits and vegetables to bring it down to a healthier level. Your doctor may also prescribe drugs that lower blood pressure.

If your doctor prescribes medications for your blood pressure, take as directed. Nearly half of all people with high blood pressure don’t have it hyper 2under control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One big reason: skipping medication or not taking it as directed.

It’s long been known that keeping your blood pressure within a healthy range helps protect against heart attack and stroke. Now a recent study from Johns Hopkins University has uncovered a new risk worth sidestepping: People with high blood pressure at midlife had greater decline in key thinking skills late in life than those with normal blood pressure readings.

Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine

heart 3Men who slept badly were twice as likely to suffer a heart attack and up to four times as likely to have a stroke compared with those who slept well, according to a Russian study presented at EuroHeartCare.

“Sleep disorders are very closely related to the presence of cardiovascular diseases. However, until now there has not been a population based cohort study examining the impact of sleep disorders on the development of a heart attack or stroke,” lead investigator Valery Gafarov, MD, PhD, professor of cardiology at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in Novosibirsk, said in a press release.

The study included 657 men ages 25 to 64 with no history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes. They were enrolled in 1994 as part of the World Health Organization’s MONICA (multinational monitoring of trends and determinants in cardiovascular disease) project.sleep

Sleep quality was assessed at baseline with the MONICA-psychosocial interview sleep disturbances scale. Incidence of new cases of myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke were determined at 5 years, 10 years, and 14 years of follow-up. The investigators used Cox proportional regression models to estimate hazard ratios.

Compared with men who rated their sleep as “good,” those who rated it “poor” or “very bad” had more than twice the risk of experiencing MI at 5 years.

This increased risk for MI was also seen at 10 years and at 14 years of follow-up.heart 2

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the men experiencing their first MI described their sleep as “poor” or “very bad.”

Compared with men who rated their sleep as “good,” those who rated it “poor” or “very bad” had nearly quadruple the risk of stroke at 5 years.

Source: Medpage Today

running 3Running marathons or completing other ultra-endurance events is not necessarily bad for the heart, although it could be. But first, a clarification: By standard definitions of exercise intensity, running or jogging is moderate or even vigorous exercise. During such exertion, the heart works hard to supply blood to working muscles and over time becomes stronger and somewhat larger.

Research has been unclear on whether these changes can become harmful. Multiple studies have shown that immediately after running a marathon, most racers show increased levels of a protein associated with cardiac damage. But those levels soon return to normal, with no lingering damage.

Years of prolonged and repeated endurance training and racing, however, might have more pronounced, lasting and running 2worrisome effects. A 2011 study of aging former Olympic runners and rowers from Britain, for instance, found that compared with healthy but unathletic men of the same age, the retired Olympians were disproportionately more likely to have scarring within their heart muscles. Similarly, in a 2013 study, people who had competed multiple times in a grueling, 56-mile cross-country ski race in Sweden had a much-higher-than-normal risk of developing heart arrhythmia within five years.

But these studies, although disquieting, “do not mean that it has suddenly become dangerous to exercise,” said Kasper Andersen, a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden who led the study of skiers. In fact, an earlier study from his lab found that, over all, runningparticipants in the ski race had a below-average risk of premature death.

Even the Olympians with heart scarring seemed largely unaffected. They were running and competing well into their 60s and 70s, that study found. Conceivably, the researchers wrote, the Olympians’ cardiac changes, which would be undesirable in most people, were normal in lifelong endurance athletes.

At this point, scientists just do not know precisely how years of endurance training might affect the heart.

So the best advice for those who enjoy endurance training is “carry on as usual,” Dr. Andersen said. “But remember to listen to your body and seek a doctor if you experience any symptoms from the heart.”

Source: New York Times

The Presidential Healthcare Center uses cardiac imaging to screen for “Athletic Heart Syndrome”

Statin 3Statin use is associated with a significant reduction in cancer mortality, conclude two separate studies, one in women, and the other in men. Both were presented here at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2015 Annual Meeting.

Specifically, statin use was associated with a 22% reduction in deaths from various cancer types in women and a 55% reduction in deaths from bone/connective tissue cancers. The study in men looked at statin use together with the antidiabetes medication metformin and found a 40% reduction in prostate cancer mortality, with the effect more pronounced in men with obesity/metabolic syndrome.

As for how such an effect is achieved, the researchers speculate that statins interfere with cell growth and metastasis by blocking cholesterol production, thereby affecting molecular pathways and the inflammatory Statinsresponse.

The results in women were presented by Ange Wang, BSE, from Stanford University School of Medicine, in California.

Dr. Wang and colleagues examined data from the Women’s Health Initiative, a 15-year research program involving postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years who were enrolled between 1993 and 1998 at 40 centers in the United States.

They determined the association between patients’ never having used statins, current statin use, and past statin use, as well as the incidence and number of deaths from cancer among 146,326 women. The median follow-up period was 14.6 years.

The researchers took into account a number of potential confounding factors, including age, race/ethnicity, statins 2education, smoking, body mass index, physical activity, family history of cancer, and current healthcare provider.

Among the participants, there were 23,067 cases of incident cancer for which complete follow-up data were available. There were 7,411 all-cause deaths, including 5,837 deaths from cancer, 613 cardiovascular deaths, and 961 deaths from other causes. In all, 3,152 cancer deaths were included in the analysis, of which 708 were among current statin users and 2443 among patients who had never used statins.

Source: Medscape

 

FHThe Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee (EMDAC) of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the thumbs-up today to recommending, for the first time, approval for a new class of medications: proprotein convertase subtilisin kexin 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors.

They voted 13 to 3 in favor of alirocumab (Praluent, FH 2Sanofi/Regeneron) for lowering LDL cholesterol in patients with hypercholesterolemia, citing likely benefit especially for patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH). Other groups predicted to get special benefit to include those at high CV risk or who don’t tolerate statins. Although there was a lot of debate without consensus about these latter groups, the vote just focused on whether the drug’s benefits exceeded its risks to support approval “in one or more patient populations.”

The biggest discussion of the day was whether the drug should be approved based only on its effect on LDL-C—even before its CV-outcomes trial has been completed. Many panel members, including chair Dr Robert J Smith (Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI), did not agree that LDL-C lowering is FH 3sufficient for establishing effectiveness for reducing CV risk. “I just don’t think it predicts clinical outcomes. I would need to see the clinical outcomes,” he said.

However, Smith was among the “yes” votes today, noting that patients with HeFH really need this drug—a point that came out throughout all discussions. During the public-hearing session, 14 of 16 speakers gave strong approval for the medication, with most sharing stories of how they and/or family members have struggled with this disorder.

Source: Medscape

liver 1As the severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) increases, so does the risk for death and cardiovascular disease, according to data from a large population study reported at the meeting sponsored by the European Association for the Study of the Liver.

There was a 50% increase in the adjusted all-cause morality rate when comparing patients who developed nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)liver 3 with those who had NAFLD (hazard ratio of 1.5).  The risk of death was also five times as high when comparing patients with NASH-related cirrhosis to those with NAFLD, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 5.1.

Heart failure (HF), atrial fibrillation (AF), type 2 diabetes mellitus, and chronic kidney disease (CKD) rates were also increased in patients with NAFLD, compared with those in the healthy population.

“Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease has got a strong association with cardiovascular disease; it may be an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease, but that is still open to debate,” said study liver 4investigator Dr. Jake Mann, who is an academic clinical fellow in pediatrics at the University of Cambridge (England).

“What isn’t quite so clear is whether or not there is progressively increasing risk of cardiovascular comorbidities as you move from NAFLD to NASH to NASH cirrhosis,” he added at the meeting, which was sponsored by the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL).

Source: Family Practice News

bloodUsing less than a drop of blood, a new test can reveal nearly every virus a person has ever been exposed to, scientists reported on Thursday.

The test, which is still experimental, can be performed for as little as $25 and could become an important research tool for tracking patterns of disease in various populations, helping scientists compare the old and theblood 4 young, or people in different parts of the world.

It could also be used to try to find out whether viruses, or the body’s immune response to them, contribute to chronic diseases and cancer, the researchers said.

“I’m sure there’ll be lots of applications we haven’t even dreamed of,” blood 3said Stephen J. Elledge, the senior author of the report, published in the journal Science, and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“That’s what happens when you invent technology — you can’t imagine what people will do with it,” Dr. Elledge said. “They’re so clever.”

The test can detect past exposure to more than 1,000 strains of viruses from 206 species — pretty much the entire human “virome,” meaning all the viruses known to infect people. The test works by detecting antibodies, highly specific proteins that the immune system has made in response to viruses.blood 2

Tried out in 569 people in the United States, South Africa, Thailand and Peru, the blood test found that most had been exposed to about 10 species of virus — mostly the usual suspects, like those causing colds, flu, gastrointestinal illness and other common ailments.

Source: New York Times

This test is not yet commercially available but our comprehensive physicals include testing for individual viral infections and inflammation.

Have you received these tests?  How else can you confirm that you’re truly healthy and will stay healthy for many more years to come? 

Use this list as your guide:

Liver, spleen, pancreas, gallbladder, kidneys screening
Blood Pressure Monitoring

Sleep Study
Cholesterol analysis & Blood clot risk
Coronary Heart Scan Calcium Scoring
Exercise Stress Testing

Brain MRI
Blood Count
Tumor marker tracking
PSA
Thyroid, Sex Hormones (e.g. Testosterone)
Infectious Disease (e.g. Lyme, Hepatitis, Sexually transmitted)
Genetic (Celiac Disease)
Virtual Colonoscopy
Pelvic and Genital Imaging (bladder, prostate, uterus, ovaries)care
Mammogram (3D Mammography)
Lung Imaging
Pulmonary Function Testing

Pap Smear
Bone Density Assessment
Dermatology Skin Screen

Hearing Assessment
Nutrition Counseling
Travel Medicine Consultations
Routine Vaccinations
Special Vaccinations 

 

The Presidential Healthcare Center offers Corporate and Small Business options that focus on annual Preventive Executive Head shot 2Physicals which include: intensive imaging, laboratory testing, and primary care services.

The Presidential Healthcare Center already provides care for executives from:

Northrop Grumman Corporation

EADS North America Airbus

Pentagon Federal Credit Union

Ernst & Young

LaSalle Hotels

Discovery Channel Multiple

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