Wednesday 12 March 2014

Health Insurance At The Last Minute

Health Insurance At The Last Minute.
Attention last-minute shoppers: If you resolve to believe a health plan through one of the new health insurance exchanges, and you want coverage starting Jan 1, 2014, you must personate quickly. In most states, Monday, Dec 23, 2013 is the deadline for selecting a delineate that takes effect on the first day of the green year. "We would really encourage people to start now. Don't wait until the deadline to enroll," said Cheryl Fish-Parcham, spokesman director of health policy at Families USA in Washington, DC People fundamental to leave themselves enough time to gather the information they need to concluded an insurance application, select a health plan and pay the premium by the health plan's deadline, she said.

The pre-Christmas clan to buy health insurance is another consequence of the troubled launch of the Affordable Care Act's HealthCare jot gov website and website difficulties in a number of state-run well-being insurance exchanges. Since the October launch of the health exchanges, sign-up and premium-payment deadlines have been extended to give kith and kin more time to enroll for coverage, but the new cut-offs come amid the celebration rush. Many people aren't aware of the various deadlines under the law, sometimes called Obamacare.

What's more, the deadlines may alter by state and by health insurer, health insurance agents and brokers said. "There is a lot of confusion," said Anna Causey, blemish president of Combined Insurance Services Inc, a Pensacola, Fla-based benefits broker. Some hoi polloi mistakenly feel they have until Dec 31, 2013 to enroll in a plan that takes effect on Jan 1, 2014. Others don't make happen they could pay a federal tax penalty if they don't have health bond in place by March 31, she said.

Under the Affordable Care Act, most adults will pay a $95 fine - or 1 percent of income - in 2014 if they don't have health guarantee coverage. The penalty rises to $695 - or 2 percent of income - by 2016. To sidestep the penalty, people must enroll in a plan by Feb 15, 2014 or limit for an exemption from the penalty. If you're in the market for health insurance, here are some key dates to board in mind: What's the latest I can enroll in coverage for Jan 1, 2014? Consumers shopping on HealthCare stipple gov, the federal portal serving individuals in 36 states, have until 11:59 PM ET on Monday, Dec 23, 2013, to enroll if they want coverage to opt for essence on the first day of the new year.

Dangerous Bacteria Live On Chicken Breasts

Dangerous Bacteria Live On Chicken Breasts.
Potentially baleful bacteria was found on 97 percent of chicken breasts bought at stores across the United States and tested, according to a unripe ruminate on in Dec 2013. And about half of the chicken samples had at least one personification of bacteria that was resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics, the investigators found. The tests on the 316 unrefined chicken breasts also found that most had bacteria - such as enterococcus and E coli - linked to fecal contamination.

About 17 percent of the E coli were a category that can cause urinary tract infections, according to the study, published online and in the February 2014 issuing of Consumer Reports. In addition, a little more than 11 percent had two or more types of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Bacteria on the chicken were more unmanageable to antibiotics used to promote chicken growth and to prevent poultry diseases than to other types of antibiotics, the mull over found.

These findings show that "consumers who buy chicken breast at their local grocery stores are very liable to get a sample that is contaminated and likely to get a bug that is multi-drug resistant. When people get upset from resistant bacteria, treatment may be getting harder to find," said Dr Urvashi Rangan, a toxicologist and principal director of the Food Safety and Sustainability Center at Consumer Reports. The armoury has been testing US chicken since 1998, and rates of contamination with salmonella have not changed much during that time, ranging from 11 percent to 16 percent of samples.

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Walks After Each Food Intake Are Very Useful

Walks After Each Food Intake Are Very Useful.
Older adults at jeopardy for getting diabetes who took a 15-minute footpath after every meal improved their blood sugar levels, a unheard of study shows in June 2013. Three short walks after eating worked better to dial blood sugar levels than one 45-minute walk in the morning or evening, said result in researcher Loretta DiPietro, chairwoman of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in Washington, DC. "More importantly, the post-meal walking was significantly better than the other two train prescriptions at lowering the post-dinner glucose level," DiPietro added.

The after-dinner years is an especially unprotected time for older people at risk of diabetes, DiPietro said. Insulin movie decreases, and they may go to bed with extremely high blood glucose levels, increasing their chances of diabetes. About 79 million Americans are at peril for type 2 diabetes, in which the body doesn't pass enough insulin or doesn't use it effectively.

Being overweight and sedentary increases the risk. DiPietro's new research, although tested in only 10 people, suggests that down walks can lower that risk if they are taken at the hand times. The study did not, however, prove that it was the walks causing the improved blood sugar levels.

And "This is among the first studies to really address the timing of the exert with regard to its benefit for blood sugar control. In the study, the walks began a half hour after finishing each meal. The inspection is published June 12 in the journal Diabetes Care.

For the study, DiPietro and her colleagues asked the 10 older adults, who were 70 years quondam on average, to uncut three different exercise routines spaced four weeks apart. At the study's start, the men and women had fasting blood sugar levels of between 105 and 125 milligrams per deciliter. A fasting blood glucose draw a bead of 70 to 100 is considered normal, according to the US National Institutes of Health.

Saturday 1 March 2014

The Presence Of Drug-Resistant Staph Reduces The Survival Of Patients

The Presence Of Drug-Resistant Staph Reduces The Survival Of Patients.
Cystic fibrosis patients with methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in their respiratory region have worse survival rates than those without the drug-resistant bacteria, researchers have found. The additional study, published in the June 16 debouchment of the Journal of the American Medical Association, included 19,833 cystic fibrosis patients, grey 6 to 45, who were enrolled in the lessons from January 1996 to December 2006 and followed-up until December 2008.

During the con period, 2,537 of the patients died and 5,759 had MRSA detected in their respiratory tract. The undoing rate was 27,7 per 1000 patient-years amongst those with MRSA and 18,3 deaths per 1000 patient-years for those without MRSA.

Thursday 27 February 2014

In The Recession Americans Have Less To Seek Medical Help

In The Recession Americans Have Less To Seek Medical Help.
During the set-back from 2007 to 2009, fewer Americans visited doctors or filled prescriptions, according to a untrodden report. The report, based on a evaluation of more than 54000 Americans, also found that national disparities in access to health care increased during the so-called Great Recession, but emergency subdivision visits stayed steady. "We were expecting a significant reduction in health care use, specifically for minorities," said co-author Karoline Mortensen, an assistant professor in the department of health services provision at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

So "What we saw were some reductions across the gaming-table - whites and Hispanics were less likely to use physician visits, prescription fills and in-patient stays," she said. "But that's the only inconsistency we saw, which was a surprise to us. We didn't learn a drop in emergency room care". Whether these altered patterns of health protection resulted in more deaths or suffering isn't clear.

In terms of unemployment and loss of income and haleness insurance, blacks and Hispanics were affected more severely than whites during the recent economic downturn, according to grounding information in the study. That was borne out in health care patterns. Compared to whites, Hispanics and blacks were less conceivable to see doctors or fill prescriptions and more likely to use emergency department care, Mortensen said.

Mortensen believes the Affordable Care Act will serve level access to heed for such people, and provide a buffer in the event of another economic slide. "Preventive services without cost-sharing will draw people to use those services," she said. "And insuring all the people who don't have health insurance should steady the playing field to some extent".

Children Allergies To Peanuts Can Be Suppressed

Children Allergies To Peanuts Can Be Suppressed.
Help may be on the procedure for children with dangerous peanut allergies, with two new studies suggesting that slowly increasing consumption might raise kids' tolerance over time. Both studies were small, and designed to set up upon each other. They focused on peanut-allergic children whose immune systems were prompted to slowly come about tolerance to the food by consuming a controlled but escalating amount of peanut over a period of up to five years. "The course goal with this work is not to allow patients with peanut allergies to consciously sup peanuts, but to prevent the severe symptoms that can occur should they have accidental ingestion," noted study co-author Dr Tamara Perry, an underling professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine in Little Rock, Ark. "Of process the ultimate goal would be to upgrade tolerance that would allow these patients - children and adults - to eat peanuts," Perry added. "And the immunotherapy job being carried out now shows a lot of potential promise in that direction".

Perry and her associates are slated to deal out their findings Saturday at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) conference in New Orleans. A peanut allergy can cause sudden breathing problems and even death. According to the AAAAI, more than three million subjects in the United States report being allergic to peanuts, tree nuts or both.

In one study, Perry and colleagues at Duke University placed 15 peanut-allergic children on a slow, but escalating uttered dosage program, during which they consumed little amounts of peanut food. Another eight peanut-allergic children were placed on a placebo regimen.

Among the children exposed to these carefully rising doses of peanut, annulling reactions were emollient to moderate, requiring therapeutic intervention only a handful of times, the authors noted. At the program's conclusion, a "food challenge" was conducted. The confront revealed that while the placebo group could only safely weather 315 milligrams of peanut consumption, the 15 children who participated in the immunotherapy program could indulge up to 5,000 milligrams of peanuts - an amount equal to about 15 peanuts.

Having concluded that the dosage program afforded some evaluation of short-term "clinical desensitization" to peanuts, the research team then explored the program's budding for inducing long-term protection in a second trial. Eight of the children who had participated in the word-of-mouth dosing program for anywhere between 32 and 61 months were then subject to an oral peanut problem four weeks after being taken off the dosing program.

All of the children - at an average long time of about four and a half years of age - demonstrated lasting immunological changes that translated into a newly developed "clinical tolerance" to peanuts, the researchers said. And although the children perpetuate to be tracked for complications, peanuts are now a behalf of their standard diets.

Monday 24 February 2014

Smoking And Excess Weight Can Lead To A Cancer

Smoking And Excess Weight Can Lead To A Cancer.
Men with prostate cancer may upward their survival chances if they repay animal fats and carbohydrates in their parliament with healthy fats such as olive oils, nuts and avocados, new research suggests June 2013. Men who substituted 10 percent of their common calories from animal fats and carbs with such strong fats as olive oil, canola oil, nuts, seeds and avocados were 29 percent less acceptable to die from spreading prostate cancer and 26 percent less able to die from any other disease when compared to men who did not make this healthy swap, the study found. And a scarcely bit seems to go a long way.

Specifically, adding just one daily tablespoon of an oil-based salad dressing resulted in a 29 percent drop risk of dying from prostate cancer and a 13 percent reduce risk of dying from any other cause, the study contended. In the study, nearly 4600 men who had localized or non-spreading prostate cancer were followed for more than eight years, on average. During the study, 1064 men died.

Of these, 31 percent died from magnanimity disease, marginally more than 21 percent died as a issue of prostate cancer and slightly less than 21 percent died as a outcome of another type of cancer. The findings appeared online June 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine. The swot can't say for sure that including healthy fats in the food was responsible for the survival edge seen among men.

Monday 17 February 2014

US Population Is Becoming Fatter And Less Lives

US Population Is Becoming Fatter And Less Lives.
Being too portly can curtail your life, but being too skinny may cut longevity as well, a new study suggests. Using evidence on almost 1,5 million white adults culled from 19 separate analyses, researchers from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that 5 percent of the US people can be classified as morbidly chubby - a number five times higher than previously thought. With a body bags index (BMI) of 40 or higher, the morbidly obese had a death figure more than double that of those of normal weight, according to study author Amy Berrington de Gonzalez.

BMI is a depth of body fat based on height and weight. Those with BMIs between 25 and 30 are considered overweight, while BMIs over 30 are considered obese. The study, which sought to settle an optimal BMI range, showed it to be between 20 and 25 in those who never smoked, and 22,5 to 25 in those who did.

Two-thirds of American adults are classified as either overweight or obese. "We were focusing mostly on gamy BMI - over 25 - and the end was to clear the relationships between weight and longevity rather than expect to find anything completely new," said Berrington de Gonzalez, an investigator with the National Cancer Institute's class of cancer epidemiology and genetics in Bethesda, Md.

Although her body did not calculate the number of life years potentially corrupt due to obesity, they determined the highest death rates for this group were from cardiovascular disease. About 58 percent of examine participants were female, and the median baseline age was 58.

Thursday 13 February 2014

African-Americans Began A Thicket To Die From Breast Cancer

African-Americans Began A Thicket To Die From Breast Cancer.
Black heart of hearts cancer patients are more fitting to die than white patients, regardless of the typeface of cancer, according to a new study in 2013. This suggests that the lower survival rate to each black patients is not solely because they are more often diagnosed with less treatable types of breast cancer, the researchers said. For more than six years, the researchers followed nearly 1700 boob cancer patients who had been treated for luminal A, luminal B, basal-like or HER2-enriched teat cancer subtypes.

During that period, about 500 of the patients had died, nearly 300 of them from tit cancer. Black patients were nearly twice as likely as ashen patients to have died from breast cancer. The researchers also found that black patients were less likely than creamy patients to be diagnosed with either the luminal A or luminal B breast cancer subtypes.

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Beta Blockers May Also Help Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer

Beta Blockers May Also Help Lung Cancer Patients Live Longer.
New check in suggests that beta blockers, medications that are cast-off to control blood to and heart rhythms, may also help lung cancer patients live longer. The researchers found that patients with non-small-cell lung cancer being treated with emission lived 22 percent longer if they were also captivating these drugs. "These findings were the first, to our knowledge, demonstrating a survival sake associated with the use of beta blockers and radiation therapy for lung cancer," said lead researcher Dr Daniel Gomez, an deputy professor in the department of radiation oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

So "The results betoken that there may be another mechanism, generally unexplored, that could potentially reduce the rates of tumor spread in patients with this very aggressive disease," he added. The clock in was published Jan 9, 2013 in the Annals of Oncology. For the study, Gomez's set compared the outcomes of more than 700 patients undergoing radiation therapy for lung cancer.

The investigators found that the 155 patients irresistible beta blockers for heart problems lived an commonplace of almost two years, compared with an average of 18,6 months for patients not taking these drugs. The findings held even after adjusting for other factors such as age, present of the disease, whether or not chemotherapy was given at the same time, closeness of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and aspirin use, the researchers noted. Beta blockers also improved survival without the cancer spreading to other parts of the body and survival without the disease recurring, they added.

Friday 7 February 2014

Increased Risk Of Suicide Among Veterans With Bipolar Disorder

Increased Risk Of Suicide Among Veterans With Bipolar Disorder.
Military veterans with psychiatric illnesses are at increased peril for suicide, says a unexplored study. The greatest jeopardy is among males with bipolar disorder and females with substance revile disorders, according to the researchers at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and Healthcare System and the University of Michigan. Overall, bipolar upheaval (the least common diagnosis at 9 percent) was more strongly associated with suicide than any other psychiatric condition.

The researchers examined the psychiatric records of more than three million veterans who received any typeface of concern at a VA facility in 1999 and were still alive at the beginning of 2000. The patients were tracked for the next seven years.

During that time, 7684 of the veterans committed suicide. Slightly half of them had at least one psychiatric diagnosis. All of the psychiatric conditions included in the scrutiny - depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, essence manhandle disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and other angst disorders - were associated with increased risk of suicide.

A New Technique For Reducing Cravings For Junk Food

A New Technique For Reducing Cravings For Junk Food.
Researchers piece that they may have hit on a budding trick for weight loss: To eat less of a certain food, they suggest you prophesy yourself gobbling it up beforehand. Repeatedly imagining the consumption of a food reduces one's edacity for it at that moment, said lead researcher Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor of social and conclusion sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Most people think that imagining a chow increases their desire for it and whets their appetite. Our findings show that it is not so simple," she said.

Thinking of a food - how it tastes, smells or looks - does multiplication our appetite. But performing the mental symbolism of actually eating that food decreases our desire for it, Morewedge added. For the study, published in the Dec 10, 2010 flow of Science, Morewedge's team conducted five experiments. In one, 51 individuals were asked to dream up doing 33 repetitive actions, one at a time.

A jurisdiction group imagined putting 33 coins into a washing machine. Another collection imagined putting 30 quarters into the washer and eating three M&Ms. A third circle imagined feeding three quarters into the washer and eating 30 M&Ms. The individuals were then invited to nosh freely from a bowl of M&Ms.

Those who had imagined eating 30 candies in truth ate fewer candies than the others, the researchers found. To be ineluctable the results were related to imagination, the researchers then mixed up the experiment by changing the number of coins and M&Ms. Again, those who imagined eating the most candies ate the fewest.

Tuesday 4 February 2014

The Number Of End-Stage Renal Disease In Diabetic Patients Decreased By 35% Over The Past 10 Years

The Number Of End-Stage Renal Disease In Diabetic Patients Decreased By 35% Over The Past 10 Years.
The percentage of different cases of end-stage kidney complaint requiring dialysis among Americans diagnosed with diabetes level 35 percent between 1996 and 2007, a new study has found. The age-adjusted figure of end-stage kidney disease, also known as end-stage renal disease (ESRD), that was linked to diabetes declined from 304,5 to about 199 per 100000 kinsfolk during that time. The declining rates occurred in all regions and in most states.

No grandeur had a significant increase in the age-adjusted rate of unusual cases of the condition, the researchers report in the Oct 29, 2010 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ESRD, which is kidney bankruptcy requiring dialysis or transplantation, is a costly and disabling health that can lead to premature death. Diabetes is the matchless cause of ESRD in the United States and accounted for 44 percent of the approximately 110000 cases that began healing in 2007.

Sunday 2 February 2014

Dialysis Six Times A Week For Some Patients Better Than Three

Dialysis Six Times A Week For Some Patients Better Than Three.
Kidney failing patients who double-barrelled the number of weekly dialysis treatments typically prescribed had significantly better sensitivity function, overall health and general quality of life, new scrutinization indicates. The finding stems from an analysis that compared the impact of the 40-year-old standard of concern - three dialysis treatments per week, for three to four hours per period - with a six-day a week treatment regimen involving sessions of 2,5 to three hours per session. Launched in 2006, the similarity involved 245 dialysis patients assigned to either a typical dialysis schedule or the high-frequency option. All participants underwent MRIs to assess pluck muscle structure, and all completed quality-of-life surveys.

In addition to improved cardiovascular healthfulness and overall health, the analysis further revealed that two concerns faced by most kidney failure patients - blood arm-twisting and phosphate level control - also fared better under the more frequent remedying program. Dr Glenn Chertow, chief of the nephrology division at Stanford University School of Medicine, reports his team's observations in the Nov 20, 2010 online copy of the New England Journal of Medicine, to co-occur with a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nephrology in Denver.

And "Kidneys function seven days a week, 24 hours a day," Chertow respected in a Stanford University news release. "You could imagine why people might feel better if dialysis were to more closely imitative kidney function. But you have to factor in the burden of additional sessions, the rove and the cost".

Saturday 1 February 2014

Two New Tests To Determine The Future Of Patients With Diseased Kidneys

Two New Tests To Determine The Future Of Patients With Diseased Kidneys.
Researchers have come up with two budding tests that seem better able to vaticinate which patients with dyed in the wool kidney disease are more likely to progress to kidney failure and death. This could help streamline care, getting those patients who privation it most the care they need, while perhaps sparing other patients unnecessary interventions. "The late markers provide us with an opportunity to address kidney disease prior to its panel stage," said Dr Ernesto P Molmenti, vice chairman of surgery and captain of the transplant program at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Manhasset, NY - "Such primordial treatment could provide for increased survival, as well as enhanced quality of life".

And "The brute problem right now is the tests we use currently just are not very good at identifying people's progressing to either more advanced kidney bug or end-stage kidney disease, so this has big implications in trying to determine who will progress," said Dr Troy Plumb, interim key of nephrology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. But, he added, "there are affluent to have to be validated clinical trials" before these young tests are introduced into clinical practice.

Both studies will appear in the April 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, but were released Monday to match with presentations at the World Congress of Nephrology, in Vancouver. Some 23 million community in the United States have chronic kidney disease, which can often forge ahead to kidney failure (making dialysis or a transplant necessary), and even death. But experts have no real good way to predict who will progress to more serious disease or when.

Right now, kidney function, or glomerular filtration rank (GFR), is based on measuring blood levels of creatinine, a unproductive product that is normally removed from the body by the kidneys. The first set of study authors, from the San Francisco VA Medical Center, added two other measurements to the mix: GFR regulated by cystatin C, a protein also eliminated from the body by the kidneys; and albuminuria, or too much protein in the urine.