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Thinning Bones? How to Tell if You Need an Osteoporosis Medication
Tweet Share on Facebook December 30, 2009 Comment (6)To hear Sally Field tell it, reversing bone loss with the drug Boniva is important because you have only "one body and one life." And the 63-year-old actress—who looks around 45 in commercials for the bone-building drug—implies that many, if not most, healthy and fit middle-aged women are on the road to osteoporosis.
They're not.
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H1N1 Vaccine Available, But Will Americans Get It?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 18, 2009 Comment (8)I predicted a few months ago that the H1N1 vaccine was going to come too late for many Americans to be protected from the virus. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 6 Americans has already been infected and that the epidemic is actually on the wane. But now finally there's enough vaccine to go around. Available doses are expected to top 100 million in our country by today. At least 24 states and some other counties and towns have enough to open distribution to everyone.
The question is: Will we actually make an effort to get the immunization after our government shelled out billions to buy it? I probably won't since I already had the classic symptoms (fever, chills, dry cough, headache) back in October. Yet the government tells me I should, because I can't tell with 100 percent certainty whether I had H1N1, given that doctors didn't test for it during the fall outbreak.
The CDC's big worry is that H1N1 will return with a vengeance in January after college kids come home for the holidays, infecting the rest of their family. They'd like to see those families vaccinated before their germinators return. And this is a legitimate point. After all, there have a number of documented H1N1 infections that have shown to be resistant to Tamiflu—possibly a sign that the virus is mutating into a drug-resistant bug.
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Statins May Soon Be Given to Those With Excess Inflammation
Tweet Share on Facebook December 17, 2009 Comment (4)The Food and Drug Administration is considering expanding the use of cholesterol-lowering statin Crestor to those who have increased levels of inflammation—but not high cholesterol. The agency moved one step closer on Tuesday after an advisory panel voted 12 to 4 (with one abstention) to approve Crestor for this expanded use, which could open the door for 6.5 million more Americans to take statins.
Have statins replaced aspirin as the new wonder drug? Should they?
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Yes, It's Safe to Eat Soy if You Have Breast Cancer
Tweet Share on Facebook December 9, 2009 Comment (5)Any woman who's been diagnosed with breast cancer asks her doctor what she can do to avoid a recurrence. Sometimes the answer is nothing, since aggressive cancers can quickly spread throughout the body regardless of what a woman does. She can, though, lower her chances of having a relapse by taking steps to reduce levels of estrogen, thought to trigger the growth of the most common breast tumors. This can be achieved by minimizing alcohol, adding exercise, and shedding excess body fat. But one recommendation—to avoid soy foods—can probably be stricken from this list, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
High in plant estrogens, soy-rich foods like soybeans, tofu, soy milk, and tempeh have been considered by some experts to be no-no's for breast cancer patients because they were thought to proliferate the growth of tumor cells and possibly to negate the effects of antiestrogen drugs like tamoxifen. But the new research, which involved more than 5,000 Chinese breast cancer survivors, found that those who had the highest intake of soy foods (more than 15 grams of soy protein a day) had about a 30 percent lower death rate and nearly a 30 percent lower rate of recurrence than those who ate the least amount of soy (5 grams or less per day). That's probably because soy also contains compounds that have anticancer effects. The researchers controlled for confounding factors like body mass index, exercise habits, tumor stage, and other differences in diet.
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Women's Preventive Health Amendment Added to Senate Reform Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook December 4, 2009 Comment (7)Women's health issues continue to be at the forefront of the political debate as the health reform bill gets bandied about in the Senate. On Thursday, the Senate approved the addition of a women's preventive care amendment "to ensure patients receive doctor recommendations for preventive health services, including mammograms and cervical cancer screening, without interference from government or insurance company bureaucrats."
And just in case anyone wondered whether this amendment was linked to the bitterly controversial mammography screening guidelines proposed last month by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the amendment states specifically that the secretary of health and human services shall not use any recommendation made by the USPSTF "to deny coverage of an item or service" under any kind of federal healthcare program. I'm assuming that this also applies to task force recommendations made for men—like a 2008 decision to recommend against screening men over 75 with the prostate-specific antigen blood test—or for other screening tests used by both sexes. But that's not clear from this amendment, which specifically applies to women. (I also don't remember the same level of outcry from men's activists when those PSA recommendations were issued last year.)
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Loneliness Is Contagious: 4 Ways to Stay Connected as You Age
Tweet Share on Facebook December 1, 2009 Comment (4)"All the lonely people, where do they all come from?" the Beatles sang in "Eleanor Rigby." Well, now researchers know: Loneliness is contagious, according to a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and can spread from person to person. Just as researchers have previously shown that happy people can make others feel exuberant, so, too, can lonely people make others feel desolate.
And this loneliness network can extend up to three degrees of separation. As the study authors write, "A person's loneliness depends not just on his friend's loneliness but also extends to his friend's friend and his friend's friend's friend." You might think: If someone has friends, how can she be lonely? But, speaking from experience, friends may talk about how "out of the loop" and disconnected they feel—even while they're conversing with each other. That sort of conversation can leave both people feeling down.
