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Symptoms of heat stroke may be eased by applying cold packs to the cheeks, hands and feet, a study suggests, potentially offering a new way to help lower body temperatures in overheated athletes.

“The cheeks, palms, and soles of the feet are special areas,” with blood vessels that don’t contract when cold packs are applied, helping to remove heat from the skin surface and cool body temperatures, said study co-author Dr. Grant Lipman, a researcher in emergency medicine at Stanford University in California.

 Heat-related illness is common, and can often be prevented by proper hydration and limited exertion outside during the hottest parts of the day. But left untreated, heat stroke can develop and be fatal. The condition kills thousands of people every year, most during the hottest months, and is a leading cause of death among young athletes, the authors write in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine.

Warning signs for heat exhaustion, a precursor to heat stroke, can include heavy sweating, clammy skin, weakness, nausea or vomiting, and fainting, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Heat stroke develops when the body temperature exceeds 39.44 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit), requiring rapid cooling with cold packs or an icy bath and then hospitalization.

Lipman and colleagues tested a new method for applying cold packs to overheated athletes to see if their alternative might be more effective than the traditional placement of cold packs on the skin over large blood vessels in the neck, groin and armpits.

They dressed ten healthy men in insulated military clothes designed to trap body heat, then asked the men to walk on a treadmill for 30 to 40 minutes in a room heated to about 40 C (104 F).

Each man did the treadmill test three times, with at least one day between trials to allow for rest and recovery. First, they finished with no treatment to help lower their body temperature. Then they got cold packs the traditional way, applied at the neck, groin and armpits. Last, they received cold packs using the new method, placed on the cheeks, hands and feet.

The average body temperature after the treadmill test was 39.2 C (102.6 F).

Without any treatment, the men cooled by an average of 0.3 degrees Celsius after five minutes and by a total of 0.42 degrees (to 101.8 F) after 10 minutes.

Ice packs on the usual spots cooled the men by an average of 0.4 degrees after five minutes and 0.57 degrees after 10 minutes (to 101.5 F). With ice packs on the hands, feet and cheeks, the decline in body temperature was steeper: 0.6 degrees after five minutes and 0.9 degrees after 10 minutes (to 100.9 F).

Source: Reuters

The benefits of staying active as we age are striking. In addition to keeping the body strong, regular exercise can reduce the risk of heart disease, blood pressure, stroke, and some cancers, experts say. It can even improve cognitive function.

But if keeping the body moving is so good for us, why do so many adults who played sports when they were young stop doing so? The reasons, according to a new study, include a lack of time, interest, or access, in addition to health issues. The study also found a clear gender and income gap.

A panel of experts gathered at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) on Thursday to discuss the findings and explore ways to keep adults in the game.

The new poll, conducted by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard Chan School, interviewed 2,506 adults over the age of 18. It found that the majority of those who had played sports when they were younger no longer did, with a significant drop-off coming after age 26. (The poll did find that about half of those surveyed said they exercised regularly, including by walking or weightlifting.)

The study revealed that while 40 percent of 18- to 21-year-olds, and 41 percent of 22- to 25-year-olds, play sports, only 26 percent of 26- to 49-year-olds do so, and just 20 percent of adults 50 and over.

Somewhat surprisingly, their own lack of participation did little to quell parents’ enthusiasm for their children’s engagement with sports. In the poll, 89 percent of parents with a middle or high school-aged child said their child benefitted greatly from playing sports, which improves mental and physical health, discipline, dedication, and social skills.

“The poll sums up the question: Is there some way to bridge a gap between the enthusiasm of the power of [sports] for health and other reasons for children, [and getting adults] to carry on after age 26?” said Robert Blendon, the Richard L. Menschel Professor at HSPH and a lead author on the report.

Blendon said about half of the adults surveyed indicated they no longer play sports because of a health problem, a lack of interest, or inconvenience. “So we’ve switched from all the advantages [for] kids,” said Blendon, “to all the disadvantages for me.”

Source: Harvard Gazette

There is huge confusion over the labels on sun creams, and manufacturers should all use the same rating system, says the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

A survey of 2,000 UK adults found one in five was unaware that the SPF rating does not mean protection against all sun damage – only that from UVB rays.

Protection against UVA rays has its own separate rating system.

Ultraviolet A rays cause skin-ageing and wrinkles. Both UVB and UVA rays from the sun can cause skin cancer.

The protection provided by sun creams and lotions against UVB rays, which cause sunburn, is denoted by the SPF or factor on the bottle.

But there are also ultraviolet A rays (UVA) to consider too, which penetrate the skin more deeply, causing it to age – but only one in three checked the UVA star rating when buying sunscreen, the survey found.

When buying a sunscreen, you should look for the level of UVA protection (denoted by a UVA star rating or the letters UVA inside a circle) and UVB protection (denoted by the SPF).

The UVA star rating ranges from zero to five and indicates the percentage of UVA radiation absorbed by the sunscreen in comparison to UVB.

Prof Jayne Lawrence, chief scientist for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: “Clearly many consumers do not realize the SPF rating applies only to the amount of protection offered against UVB rays, not UVA rays – both of which can damage the skin and cause skin cancer.

“People should not have to pick their way through complicated dual ratings information to understand how sunscreen works and the amount of protection it potentially provides.”

Source: BBC

With summer sun shining brightly across the United States (at least on most days), there is no better time to review the latest sobering findings on the damage that ultraviolet radiation can inflict on one’s skin and then take steps to prevent it.

A British research team reported in May in the journal Science that a quarter or more of cells in the skin of middle-aged people have suffered sun-induced DNA damage. Although the cells were outwardly normal, the mutations that occurred could be the first stages of cancer.

The researchers, led by Dr. Peter J. Campbell, a cancer geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England, examined the eyelid skin of four middle-aged adults — three were Western European and one was of South Asian descent — and found that hundreds of ostensibly normal cells had mutations linked to cancer, a number “way higher than we’d expect,” Dr. Campbell said. Clusters of these mutant cells, called clones, appeared in every 0.1 square inch of skin, with thousands of DNA mutations in each cell.

Although it is not known if the same rate of mutations occurs in sun-exposed skin elsewhere on the body, or in people of different ethnic backgrounds, or even how many of the mutations would progress to cancer, it is not a finding to dismiss lightly.

Douglas E. Brash, a biophysicist at Yale University School of Medicine who has studied ultraviolet damage to cells for more than 40 years and wrote a commentary on the British study, described the new findings as “a canary in a coal mine” and a warning to take the effects of ultraviolet radiation, whether from sunlight or tanning beds, more seriously.

Source: New York Times

New research shows that 50 chemicals people are exposed to daily, all of which are considered non-carcinogenic, may cause cancer when combined.

The series of studies which comprise the research, worked on by 174 scientists in 28 countries, considered links between 85 common chemicals thought not to cause cancer. Fifty were found to interact at ordinary environmental exposure levels to support cancer-related mechanisms. 

“This research backs up the idea that chemicals not considered harmful by themselves are combining and accumulating in our bodies to trigger cancer and might lie behind the global cancer epidemic we are witnessing,” said Dr. Hemad Yasaei, a cancer biologist at Brunel University London, in a press release. “We urgently need to focus more resources to research the effect of low dose exposure to mixtures of chemicals in the food we eat, air we breathe and water we drink.”

The Nova Scotia-based Getting To Know Cancer put together the task force of scientists for the first-of-its-kind look at the effects of combinations of common chemicals thought not to cause cancer. The organization gathered scientists two years ago as part of the Halifax Project, which created task forces of scientists researching the complexities of cancer and its causes.

William Goodson III, a senior scientist at the California Pacific Medical Center, said the results of the studies show not only that chemicals safe on their own are combining in the air to form mixtures that can cause cancer, but that the way chemicals are tested for safety needs to be changed.

“The way we’ve been testing chemicals — one at a time — is really quite out of date,” Goodson said. “Every day we are exposed to an environmental ‘chemical soup,’ so we need testing that evaluates the effects of our ongoing exposure to these chemical mixtures.”

Source: UPI

Men 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 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.

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

Eating half a handful of nuts every day could substantially lower the risk of early death, a Dutch study suggests. Previous studies had already indicated a link with cardiovascular health, but this is the first to look at specific nuts and diseases. Maastricht University researchers found a 23% lower chance of death during the 10-year study in people eating at least 10g (0.3oz) of nuts or peanuts a day. There was no benefit for peanut butter, which is high in salt and trans fats. More than 120,000 Dutch 55-to-69-year-old men and women provided dietary and lifestyle information in 1986, and then their mortality rate was looked at 10 years later. The premature mortality risk due to cancer, diabetes, respiratory and neurodegenerative diseases was lower among the nut consumers.  There was an average 23% lower risk of 10-year mortality across all diseases, with a decrease of:

• 45% for neurodegenerative disease
• 39% for respiratory disease
• 30% for diabetes

Prof Piet van den Brandt, who led the study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, said: “It was remarkable that substantially lower mortality was already observed at consumption levels of 15g of nuts or peanuts on average per day.” The researchers had taken into account the mitigating factor that nut consumers ate more fruit and vegetables and that women who ate nuts were often leaner, and adjusted the results accordingly, Prof Van den Brandt told the BBC.

Source: BBC

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Optional limousine service
Early (7 a.m.) appointments
Private Conference & Examination Suites
All Services performed on site
Priority Scheduling and Staff Escort throughout the facility
In office Phlebotomy & ultrasound
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Readily available above ground parking – and validation
Onsite Au Bon Pain – lunch provided after fasting
Completion of insurance claims for you with reimbursement directly back to you

The Presidential Suite at Sibley Hospital

In 2008, Rachael French, a then-healthy 22-year-old, vacationed with friends in a cabin in the woods near Gaylord, Mich.

On the last day of the trip, while at a local water park, French said she felt the sting of chlorine on an open wound, looked down and noticed a small scab on her thigh. She figured it was a spider bite.

Within hours, she remembers feeling nauseated, sore and exhausted, but chalked it up to having a busy vacation. Things became a bit foggy from there, she said.

When she was admitted to urgent care, French had a 103-degree temperature, was lethargic and in pain all over her body, and had trouble forming sentences.

“The doctor asked if he could look at the bite, and when I showed him I noticed there was a ‘bulls-eye’ ring around the bite, which I hadn’t noticed before,” French said in an email. “It was so large it covered about half of my thigh.”

The doctor removed the scab and showed French where a tick had buried itself into her skin.

“Everything happened so fast,” she said. “One minute I’m in a cabin with a few friends having a great time, the next I’m being diagnosed with Lyme disease—an incurable disease.”

Most people will make a full recovery after a course of antibiotics, but between 10 to 20 percent of patients—including French—report lingering symptoms in a condition often called “chronic Lyme disease.”

Source: Scientific American

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