April 28th, 2008
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
Yahoo News
LOS ANGELES – The number of pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes has more than doubled in seven years, a California study found, a troubling trend that means health risks for both mothers and newborns. And the number of diabetic teenagers giving birth grew fivefold during the same period, according to the study, the largest of its kind.
Expectant mothers who don’t control their diabetes face an increased risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. Their babies have a higher chance of being born with birth defects.
“These are high-risk pregnancies,” said Dr. Florence Brown, an expert on pregnancy and diabetes. “All women with pre-existing diabetes need to plan their pregnancies.”
Brown is co-director of the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center diabetes and pregnancy program in Boston. She had no role in the study, which was done by researchers at Kaiser Permanente, a California-based health care provider.
The researchers focused on health records from more than 175,000 ethnically diverse women who gave birth in a dozen Kaiser hospitals in Southern California from 1999 to 2005. Experts believe the findings likely reflect the overall U.S. population.
The actual number of pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes was small. In 1999, there were 245 such women; by 2005, there were 537. That translates to a rate that rose from 8 per 1,000 pregnancies to 18 per 1,000.
The rate increased the greatest among 13- to 19-year-olds giving birth. It ballooned from about 1 per 1,000 pregnancies to 5.5 per 1,000 during the seven-year period.
Blacks, Asians and Hispanics were more likely to have diabetes before pregnancy than whites.
To continue reading:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_he_me/diabetes_pregnancy
April 23rd, 2008
by Martin Abbugao, News Yahoo.com
Wed Apr 23, 7:08 AM ET
The world risks wiping out a new generation of antibiotics and cures for diseases if it fails to reverse the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species, experts warned Wednesday.
Biodiversity loss has reached alarming levels, and disappearing with it are the secrets to finding treatments for pain, infections and a wide array of ailments such as cancer, they said, citing the findings of a coming book.
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said more than 16,000 known species are threatened with extinction, but the number could be more.
“We must do something about what is happening to biodiversity,” he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the UN-backed Business for the Environment conference. “Societies depend on nature for treating diseases. Health systems over human history have their foundation on animal and plant products that are used for treatment.”
Technological revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries took the focus on finding cures away from nature as pharmaceutical companies relied on technical components to make medicines, he said.
These companies are increasingly turning back to nature as they run out of chemical combinations, he said.
But the world is “losing the intellectual patents of nature before we even have the chance to understand or unravel them,” Steiner said.
“This is the tragedy of not understanding biodiversity,” he said, adding it would be a “big fallacy” to think that biodiversity is not linked to the phenomenon of climate change.
The book, previewed at the conference, cited the example of the southern gastric brooding frog discovered in the rainforests of Australia in the 1980s. It has since become extinct.
Research on those frogs could have led to new insights into preventing and treating human peptic ulcers which affect 25 million people in the United States alone, according to the authors of the book, “Sustaining Life”.
Valuable medical secrets which the frogs held “are now gone forever,” the book’s key authors, Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein, were quoted as saying in a press statement.
The book contains a chapter describing how seven threatened groups of organisms — amphibians, bears, cone snails, sharks, non-human primates, gymnosperms and horseshoe crabs — can be valuable in finding cures for diseases.
The Panamanian poison frog, for example, can make pumiliotoxins that may lead to medicines for heart disease, while alkaloids from the Ecuadorian poison frog could be a source for painkillers, it says.
Cone snails produce a compound which has been shown in clinical trials to be a pain reliever for advanced cancer and AIDS patients, according to the book.
David Suzuki, a Canadian scientist and environmental activist, blamed environmental degradation on the world’s heavy focus on economic progress.
“We are creating an illusion that everything is fine, and we are getting richer and richer. But we’re doing it at the expense of our children and grandchildren… all in the name of economic growth and progress,” he said in a keynote address via video conference.
One solution will be to “take our eyes off the economy,” he suggested.
“The real bottom line is clean air, clean water, clean soil that gives us our food, clean energy that comes from the sun, and biodiversity. These are ultimately the most important needs that we have to fight for at all cost.”
Hundreds of international business executives, government officials, environmentalists and others have gathered for conference.
It was organised by the UNEP and the UN’s Global Compact, an initiative which brings companies together with the UN and other agencies to support environmental and social principles.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080423/sc_afp/unenvironmentclimatehealth
April 22nd, 2008
From Insulite Laboratories’ Weekly Health Support Message
As if the health benefits that sleep brings were not enough motivation to get plenty of “shut-eye”, a good seven or eight hours every night could also help you avoid weight gain.
Researchers found that people who slept for less than six hours a night – or more than nine – put on more weight than those who slept for seven or eight hours each night.
The new study, published, appropriately enough, in the journal Sleep, found those who did not get enough sleep gained almost 4.4lbs compared to those who slept for the recommended number of hours over a period of six years.
Those who had too much sleep gained 3.5lbs more than those who slept for the recommended number of hours. Short-sleepers were 27% more likely to become obese and long sleepers were 21% more likely to take the same path than those who had an average night’s sleep.
The reason that the amount of sleep a person gets can govern their weight is because sleep affects hormone levels, especially those involved in appetite and feeling full after a meal.
Research leader Jean-Philippe Chaput, of Laval University in Quebec, Canada, said: “Our study provides evidence that both short and long-sleeping times predict an increased risk of future body weight and fat gain in adults.”
Sleep experts say the chances of getting a good night’s rest increase if you go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even at weekends, and set a relaxing routine before getting into bed such as having a bath or reading.
Watching television in bed is not recommended and it is best to avoid stimulants such as alcohol, caffeine, chocolate and exercise in the evening. If you have trouble getting to sleep, it is best to get up and do something relaxing like reading until you feel ready for sleep.
A regular exercise regime combined with a balanced, nutritious diet can improve sleep patterns and help reverse an underlying cause of excess weight and obesity, namely the imbalance of blood glucose and insulin called Insulin Resistance. By reversing this latter condition, you can facilitate weight loss.
If left unchecked, obesity can also lead to the cluster of increased risks for heart disease called Metabolic Syndrome (Syndrome X) as well as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) – a leading cause of menstrual irregularity and infertility, acne and other skin conditions, excess facial hair and female hair loss. Overweight women do not have a monopoly on PCOS, however. Up to 50% of PCOS sufferers may be females who are of normal weight or even lean.
Overweight men are at greater risk of prostate cancer. Insulin Resistance-linked weight problems are also associated in both sexes with Type 2 Diabetes. Before the onset of this latter condition, however, most people develop reversible Pre-Diabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are elevated beyond normal but not high enough for a diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes.
If ignored, Pre-Diabetes may lead to the Type 2 variety, which can only be managed for the rest of a person’s life. Many Diabetics require daily injections of insulin.
Type 2 Diabetes severely increases the risk of blindness, amputation and kidney disease, as well as a heart attack or stroke. Some 90% of people with Type 2 also suffer from excess weight or obesity.
www.pcos.insulitelabs.com
April 18th, 2008
by Elizabeth Cohen
CNN Medical Correspondent
CNN.com/Health
April 17, 2008
Decide priorities: Is doctor’s politeness as important as successful outcomes?
Look for specific criticisms, not just negative general characterizations
If many people make similar observations, criticism, it’s worth noting
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Traditionally, people have found doctors by word of mouth: Find someone you trust, and ask whom they use.
These days, many people are using electronic word of mouth. Put “doctor ratings” into a search engine and you’ll come up with a list of sites where people rate physicians and make comments.
Last month, Angie’s List — the place you go to find a good plumber — joined the club by starting a doctor section, and even Zagat’s, the folks who rate restaurants, is launching a doctor rating service.
A lot of doctors aren’t crazy about these sites and point out that random, anonymous opinions don’t truly measure a physician’s quality. But many consumer health experts say these sites are here to stay, and can be helpful if used properly. Here are five tips for smart surfing on physician rating Web sites.
1. Decide what you care about
Are you looking for a long-term medical partner like a pediatrician or internist, or are you looking for a specialist for a short-term relationship?
This is important because many of the comments on these sites have to do with logistics (”a very dictatorial front office” writes one reviewer on ratemds.com about a gastroenterologist) or character (”Dr. X is quite pretentious,” writes another reviewer on the same site). Nasty secretaries and a haughty doctor can be bad news if this is someone you’ll be seeing often. But if the doctor’s going to yank out your tonsils and you’re never going to see her again, do you really care that she’s full of herself and her office staff is mean?
“The ‘what’ is as important as the ‘who,’ ” says David Lansky, president of the Pacific Business Group on Health. “If I want a heart surgeon, I’m going to look for different things than if I’m looking for a primary care doctor.”
2. Look for volume
It’s a matter of statistics: The more reviews you read, the more likely you are to get an accurate assessment. “I would check a lot of different Web sites,” says Carol Cronin, executive director of the Informed Patient Institute. “Look across them, not just within one.”
Speaking of volume, a common concern about doctor rating sites is that one angry patient can make multiple nasty comments, using a different name each time (or, conversely, that the physician herself could go on and make multiple glowing comments).
But Martin Schneider, chairman of the Informed Patient Institute, says these sites have ways of detecting when one person is making several comments under different names. Back in the 1990s, Schneider was president of a now-defunct doctor rating site called thehealthpages.com. “Even back then, we had to the technology to stop that from happening,” he says.
3. Look for specifics, not adjectives
“A general statement like, ‘Dr. Smith is really a jerk,’ doesn’t tell you much,” says Steven Findlay, a health care analyst for Consumers Union. “It doesn’t get to the quality of care they deliver.”
Findlay says to look for reviews with specific examples of what the doctor did right or wrong. “Let’s say someone’s writing about how a doctor handled a kidney stone,” he says. “You want to know how quickly that doctor got you to an X-ray. How quickly did they assess the X-ray? Did you get the medicine you needed? Did the doctor monitor the case and follow-up?”
4. Look for patterns
Once you’ve found specifics, look for patterns. Five complaints that say the same thing are statistically more meaningful than five complaints about different issues, says Dr. Robert Wachter, associate chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
“If I look someone up and they have five dings all on a similar theme and I have a choice, I’m going to go elsewhere,” says Wachter, who blogs on health care quality issues.
To continue reading:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/04/17/ep.finding.docs.online/index.html
