(HealthDay News) — Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft have become very popular in recent years. Though most companies conduct background checks on prospective drivers, you should still take precautions when using these services, says LIM College. When ridesharing, the school urges you to: Check the driver’s rating. Avoid riding in the front seat. Always wear your seatbelt. Follow along with your own GPS or the app. Travel in groups. Allow family and friends to track your location. Trust your instincts.
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Health Tip: Autumn Driving Safety
(HealthDay News) — Wet leaves, fog, sun glare, frost and wildlife are some of the driving hazards that motorists encounter each Autumn, says the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. To stay safe while driving at this time of year, PennDot encourages you to: Slow down and use caution, especially where there are deer crossing signs. Be most careful during morning and evening, when wildlife is most active. Increase your following distance in severe weather. Check that your headlights, taillights, treads and wiper systems are working properly. Always wear your seatbelt. Never drive impaired.
Exercise Tweaks to Revitalize Your Workout Regimen
Is your workout routine in a slump? To keep challenging your body, it’s important to tweak your regimen every three months or each season. By aligning these changes to seasonal changes, you can also start the right prep for the next season’s sports, such as training for skiing in the fall and hiking in the spring. To begin, grab a calendar and chart out your key dates and activities. Not all the changes to your program have to be dramatic, according to the American Council on Exercise. Challenging yourself can be as simple as changing your strength-training equipment from free weights to resistance bands or to bodyweight-only exercises like push-ups, wall sits and crunches. If you’ve been exercising solo, one effective change is to build in a social component. Ask a friend to join you for workouts or sign up for a class you’ve always wanted to try. You’ll have more fun and be more accountable when others are involved. Look into any worksite wellness programs that your employer has made available to you. Classes held at your office complex means no need to travel to a gym. If time constraints have been limiting your workouts to the weekends, this convenience should make it easy to add weekday sessions to your schedule. If a worksite program isn’t in place, talk to your employer about starting… read on >
Opioids Won’t Help Arthritis Patients Long-Term: Study
Opioid painkillers may temporarily ease the discomfort of arthritis, but they have no clear lasting benefit, a research review finds. In an analysis of 23 clinical trials, researchers found that, on average, opioid medications were somewhat effective at easing pain in patients with osteoarthritis. That’s the common form of arthritis in which cartilage cushioning the joints gradually wears down, leading to swelling, stiffness and pain. But the trials found no evidence that opioids improved patients’ quality of life or helped with their depression. And any benefits for pain seemed to wane with time. “We found that the magnitude of these effects is small and continues to decrease over time,” said lead researcher Dr. Raveendhara Bannuru. He is director of the Center for Treatment Comparison and Integrative Analysis at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston. Treatment guidelines for chronic pain, other than cancer-related pain, already say opioids should be a last resort. With osteoarthritis, Bannuru said, the drugs are only recommended if a patient has not gotten relief from other medical therapies, and if surgery — like knee or hip replacement — is not an option. Instead, patients should try to exercise regularly and maintain a healthy lifestyle. As for medications, Bannuru said, topical versions of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) — like ibuprofen and naproxen — are a “first choice.” These creams or ointments help people avoid… read on >
The On-Again, Off-Again Weight-Loss Diet
Being on a weight-loss diet day in and day out for months on end can be challenging and even discouraging. What’s more, following the same never-ending diet could be the reason you aren’t getting the results you’re looking for. A study in the International Journal of Obesity found an alternative that can provide better weight loss results and is easier to stick with. The “MATADOR” study recruited 51 participants, all obese men. MATADOR is short for Minimizing Adaptive Thermogenesis And Deactivating Obesity Rebound. After four weeks in which their caloric needs were calculated, participants followed either a continuous diet or a “restricted intermittent diet” of two weeks on followed by two weeks off for 16 weeks. Men who followed the restricted intermittent diet achieved greater weight loss at the conclusion of the study. This suggests that a two-week-on, two-week-off diet plan could help you shed unwanted weight and keep it off. One theory is that the breaks keep your metabolism from resetting at a lower caloric need, a reset that makes it harder to keep losing weight without more calorie cuts. There’s one caveat to trying this strategy on your own: It’s important to refrain from overindulging during your off weeks. Make sure your eating during off-weeks is balanced, with a variety of foods totaling about 500 calories a day more than you eat during… read on >
Veterans Often Hit Hard by Deaths of Fellow Soldiers
As Americans pay tribute to all veterans who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces Monday, new research suggests that how comrades died can affect levels of grief among soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Our goal was to better understand how combat veterans experience the deaths of their military comrades in battle or by suicide, and what factors predict the nature and level of their grief,” said study senior author Roxane Cohen Silver. She is a professor of psychological science, public health and medicine at the University of California, Irvine. More than 5,400 U.S. military personnel have died in combat since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began in 2001 and 2003, respectively, according to the latest casualty report from the U.S. Department of Defense. And a 2017 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America survey found that 58% of respondents said they knew a veteran who had died by suicide, and 65% knew a veteran who had attempted suicide. The study included hundreds of veterans of the two wars and discovered that a number of factors influence grief over the loss of comrades. Suicide death is unexpected and can make acceptance of the loss more difficult, the findings showed, while combat death was described as expected and heroic, and can help make it easier to accept the loss. Bonds forged in combat intensify… read on >
Think Vaping Is Heathier for Your Heart Than Smoking? Think Again
Vaping isn’t necessarily better for your heart health than smoking tobacco, a pair of new studies argue. They report that use of e-cigarettes negatively affects risk factors for heart disease in ways similar to traditional tobacco cigarettes: Levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides are elevated in people who use e-cigarettes, according to results from the first study. E-cigarette users also experience a decrease in blood flow to the heart muscle, the second study says. “People are making the assumption if they switch from cigarettes to e-cigarettes, their risk will be substantially reduced of cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, deputy chief science and medical officer for the American Heart Association, and co-author of the first study. “That’s not necessarily the case.” Both studies are to be presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting, in Philadelphia. Research presented at meetings is typically considered preliminary. For the first study, researchers evaluated 476 healthy adults who took no daily heart medications to see how smoking might affect their cholesterol levels. Of these participants, 285 were tobacco cigarette smokers, 45 were e-cigarette smokers, 52 were “dual users” who smoke and vape, and 94 were nonsmokers. All tobacco users — including vapers — had higher total cholesterol levels, as well as higher levels of triglycerides and “bad” LDL cholesterol, the study found. Researchers said they found the… read on >
TV Binges, Video Games, Books and Sports Taking Toll on Sleep
Nearly nine in 10 American adults lose sleep to binge watch TV, a new survey finds. The more than 2,000 U.S. adults who took part in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) poll in September ranked sleep as their second-highest priority, with family being first. But despite considering sleep important, 88% said they’d stayed up late to watch multiple episodes of a TV show or streaming series. The rate was highest (95%) among 18- to 44-year-olds. Many also delay bedtime to play video games, read and watch sports, the survey revealed. “It’s encouraging that Americans rank sleep as one of their highest priorities, but choosing to binge on entertainment at night instead of sleeping has serious ramifications,” AASM president Dr. Kelly Carden said in an academy news release. Younger adults (aged 18 to 34) were more likely than those 35 and older to have stayed up late to play video games (72% versus 38%), and men were more likely to do so than women (59% versus 42%). Two-thirds of respondents said they’d lost sleep to read. Women were more likely to do so than men (71% versus 61%), the survey found. Nearly 60% of adults lost sleep to watch sports, including 75% of men and 45% of women. Adults between 25 and 54 years of age were more likely than those in other age… read on >
Supplements Don’t Prevent Kidney Disease in Type 2 Diabetics
Taking vitamin D and fish oil supplements won’t prevent kidney disease in people with type 2 diabetes, a new study finds. Many diabetics use the supplements, hoping they will have a positive effect on their kidneys and heart, the researchers said. “We wanted this study to clarify whether these supplements have any real kidney benefit in adults with diabetes. Even if it’s not the result we hoped for, closing a chapter is useful for patients and clinicians and researchers alike,” said lead author Dr. Ian de Boer. He is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in Seattle. The researchers hoped the supplements would be beneficial because animal studies and lab experiments had suggested that anti-inflammatory and other properties in these supplements might prevent or slow progression of kidney disease in people with type 2 diabetes. And in humans, other research has found a link between kidney problems and low levels of vitamin D and diets lacking fish. For the study, which was part of the nationwide Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (VITAL), the researchers looked at kidney function in more than 1,300 people with type 2 diabetes. Study participants were randomly assigned to get vitamin D and fish oil supplements; vitamin D and a fish oil placebo; fish oil and a vitamin D placebo; or two placebos. Over five… read on >
New Tool Predicts Odds of Kidney Disease
Imagine that your doctor could predict your risk of kidney disease in the next five years with a simple calculation. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore report they have done just that. “With the risk equations that we’ve developed, physicians should be able to determine with high accuracy who will or won’t develop chronic kidney disease in the next few years — and our analyses suggest that they can maintain that accuracy in a variety of clinical settings globally,” researcher Dr. Josef Coresh said in a university news release. He’s a professor in the department of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Hopkins. This new calculation uses a mix of factors that include age, high blood pressure and diabetes to predict if someone is likely to develop chronic kidney disease. The calculator should help doctors identify patients who are most at risk for kidney disease and would benefit the most from early treatment, they said. Although chronic kidney disease is a progressive condition, its progression can be slowed or stopped if caught early, the researchers noted. In the study, Coresh’s team used data on more than 5 million people from 28 countries. Using that data, they developed an equation using known chronic kidney disease risk factors that doctors could use to predict which patients are likely to develop chronic kidney disease.… read on >