Tuesday 24 March 2015

Binge-Eating Disorder And Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Binge-Eating Disorder And Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
A sedative cast-off to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may also help treat binge-eating disorder, preceding research suggests. At higher doses tested, the prescription drug Vyvanse curtailed the immoderate food consumption that characterizes binge-eating disorder. Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine dimesylate) is solely approved in the United States to study ADHD, and no drug has been approved to curb binge-eating disorder. Binge-eating - only recently recognized by the psychiatric community as a separate disorder - is characterized by recurring episodes of excessive food consumption accompanied by a sense of loss of control and philosophic distress, the study authors noted.

It is also associated with obesity. "Right now the most commonly used medications are epilepsy drugs," said bookwork co-author Dr James Mitchell, president of the Neuropsychiatric Research Institute in Fargo, ND. "And they do relieve patients to eat well and cut down on weight. However, their team effect profiles are not great, with their impact on cognitive mental impairment in peculiar making them difficult for many patients to tolerate".

What Mitchell found most impressive in the new study on Vyvanse was the drug's effectiveness and that it was "very well tolerated". The 14-week study, reported in the Jan 14, 2015 online copy of JAMA Psychiatry, was funded by Shire Development, LLC, the industrialist of Vyvanse. The researchers tracked outcomes amid roughly 260 patients with moderate to beastly binge-eating disorder between 2011 and 2012. All of the participants were between 18 and 55 years old, and none had a diagnosis of any additional psychiatric disorders, such as ADHD, anorexia or bulimia.

The volunteers were divided into four groups for 11 weeks. The beginning guild received 30 milligrams (mg) of Vyvanse daily, while the assist and third groups started with 30 mg a day, increasing to 50 mg or 70 mg (respectively) within three weeks. A fourth society took an slothful placebo pill. Vyvanse did not appear to help curtail binge eating at the lowest dosage. But kith and kin taking the higher doses experienced a bigger drop in the number of days they binged each week compared with the placebo group, the researchers found.

Monday 23 March 2015

Healthy Eating While Pregnant

Healthy Eating While Pregnant.
Despite concerns over mercury exposure, club women who tie on the nosebag lots of fish may not harm their unborn children, a new study suggests. Three decades of scrutinize in the Seychelles, the islands in the Indian Ocean, found no developmental problems in children born to women who put away ocean fish at a much higher rate than the average American woman, the den concluded. "They eat a lot of fish, historically about 12 fish meals a week, and their mercury vulnerability from fish is about 10 times higher than that of average Americans," said burn the midnight oil co-author Edwin van Wijngaarden, an associate professor in the University of Rochester's department of Public Health Sciences in Rochester, NY "We have not found any organization between these exposures to mercury and developmental outcomes".

The omega 3 fatty acids found in fish unguent may protect the brain from the potential toxic goods of mercury, the researchers suggested. They found mercury-related developmental problems only in the children of women who had moo omega 3 levels but high levels of omega 6 fatty acids, which are associated with meats and cooking oils. "The fish lubricant is tripping up the mercury. Somehow, they are interacting with each other.

We found benefits of omega 3s on lingua franca development and communications skills". The uncharted findings come amid a reassessment regarding the risks and rewards of eating fish during pregnancy. High levels of mercury baring can cause developmental problems in children, the researchers noted. Because all high seas fish contain trace amounts of mercury, health experts for decades have advised with a bun in the oven mothers to limit their fish consumption.

For example, current guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration recommends that productive women limit consumption of fish to twice a week. But in June, the FDA announced that it plans to update those recommendations and commend that pregnant women nourishment a minimum of two to three servings a week of fish known to be low in mercury. The FDA says these encompass shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock and catfish.

Monday 2 March 2015

Kidney Stones And High Levels Of Calcium

Kidney Stones And High Levels Of Calcium.
Some subjects who realize the potential recurring kidney stones may also have high levels of calcium deposits in their blood vessels, and that could simplify their increased risk for heart disease, new research suggests. "It's stylish clear that having kidney stones is a bit like having raised blood pressure, raised blood lipids such as cholesterol or diabetes in that it is another meter of, or risk factor for, cardiovascular virus and its consequences," said study co-author Dr Robert Unwin, of University College London. Unwin is currently boss scientist with the AstraZeneca cardiovascular and metabolic diseases innovative medicines and at development science unit, in Molndal, Sweden.

The main message: "is to begin to undergo having kidney stones seriously in relation to cardiovascular disease risk, and to drill preventive monitoring and treatments, including diet and lifestyle". Some 10 percent of men and 7 percent of women come out kidney stones at some point in their lives, and delve into has shown that many of these people are at heightened risk for high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease and generosity disease, the researchers said.

But study author Dr Linda Shavit, a senior nephrologist at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, and her colleagues wanted to on out whether the heart issues that can happen in some of those with kidney stones might be caused by high levels of calcium deposits in their blood vessels. Using CT scans, they looked at calcium deposits in the abdominal aorta, one of the largest blood vessels in the body. Of the 111 public in the study, 57 suffered recurring kidney stones that were comprised of calcium (kidney stones can be made up of other minerals, depending on the patient's circumstances, the researchers noted), and 54 did not have kidney stones.

Thursday 26 February 2015

The Red Flag About The Dangers Of Smoking

The Red Flag About The Dangers Of Smoking.
Little to no advancement is being made in curtailing tobacco use in the United States, a changed report from the American Lung Association contends. The Surgeon General's 1964 announcement raised the red vexillum about the dangers of smoking. Tobacco, however, still claims nearly 500000 lives each year and costs up to $333 billion in healthfulness care expenses and lost productivity in the United States, says the lung association's annual arrive for 2014. "Despite cutting US smoking rates by half in the carry on 51 years, tobacco's ongoing burden on America's health and economy is catastrophic," said Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association.

So "Tobacco use remains the foremost preventable cause of liquidation and it impacts almost every system in the body, contributing to lung cancer, soul attacks, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and even sudden infant eradication syndrome," he said in an association news release. Researchers who evaluated tobacco control policies in the United States said most states earned barren grades. Only two states - Alaska and North Dakota - are funding their confirm tobacco prevention programs at the revised levels recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the State of Tobacco Control come in released Jan 21, 2015.

On the go crazy side, 41 states and the District of Columbia dog-tired less than half of what was recommended, the researchers found. Although several states, including Connecticut, Maine and Ohio, inched closer to a thorough tobacco cessation benefit for Medicaid enrollees, only two states - Indiana and Massachusetts - currently specify this benefit. "State up progress on proven tobacco control policies was virtually nonexistent in 2014. No federal passed a comprehensive smoke-free law or significantly increased tobacco taxes, and not a unattached state managed to earn an 'A' grade for providing access to cessation treatments.

Friday 20 February 2015

The Benefits Of Physical Activity

The Benefits Of Physical Activity.
People who are sitting should focus on flat increases in their activity level and not dwell on public health recommendations on exercise, according to new research. Current targets denominate for 150 minutes of weekly exercise - or 30 minutes of tangible activity at least five days a week - to reduce the risk of long-lasting diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Although these standards don't need to be abandoned, they shouldn't be the cardinal message about exercise for inactive people, experts argued in two separate analyses in the Jan 21, 2015 BMJ. When it comes to improving robustness and well-being, some liveliness is better than none, according to one of the authors, Phillip Sparling, a professor in the School of Applied Physiology at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

And "Think of drive up the wall or physical activity as a continuum where one wants to move up the regulate a bit and be a little more active, as opposed to thinking a specific threshold must be reached before any benefits are realized. For mobile vulgus who are inactive or dealing with chronic health issues, a weekly goal of 150 minutes of train may seem unattainable. As a result, they may be discouraged from trying to work even a few minutes of somatic activity into their day.

People who believe they can't meet lofty exercise goals often do nothing instead, according to Jeffrey Katula, an companion professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC This "all or nothing" mindset is common. Health benefits can be achieved by doing less than the recommended expanse of solid activity, according to the second analysis' author, Philipe de Souto Barreto, from the University Hospital of Toulouse, France.

Having A Drink For Heart Failure

Having A Drink For Heart Failure.
Having a sip each date might help lower a middle-aged person's odds for heart failure, a new study reveals. The examination suggests that men in their 40s, 50s and 60s who drink as much as seven comparably sized glasses of wine, beer and/or spirits per week will foretell their gamble for heart failure drop by 20 percent. For women the associated drop in hazard amounted to roughly 16 percent, according to the study published online Jan 20, 2015 in the European Heart Journal. "These findings suggest that drinking juice in moderation does not contribute to an increased chance of heart failure and may even be protective," Dr Scott Solomon, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a log news release.

While the study found an association between mollify drinking and a lower risk of heart failure, it wasn't designed to prove cause-and-effect. And the findings shouldn't be second-hand as an excuse to booze it up, the researchers said. "No even of alcohol intake was associated with a higher risk of heart failure in the study ," said Solomon, who is also ranking physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

But he stressed that "heavy demon rum use is certainly a risk factor for deaths from any cause". Another expert agreed that moderation is key. "As we have seen in many studies, manage alcohol use may be protective," said Dr Suzanne Steinbaum, numero uno of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "Although it would not be recommended as a 'therapy' to safeguard the heart, it is clear that if alcohol is part of one's life, recommending judge use is essential for cardiac protection, including the reduction of heart failure.

Monday 16 February 2015

Why Vaccination Is Still Important

Why Vaccination Is Still Important.
US well-being officials have inscrutable numbers to back up their warnings that this season's flu shots are less than perfect: A new study finds the vaccine reduces your imperil of needing medical care because of flu by only 23 percent. Most years, flu vaccine effectiveness ranges from 10 percent to 60 percent, reported the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite the reduced effectiveness of this season's flu shot, "vaccination is still important," said dispose disclose framer Brendan Flannery, an epidemiologist with the CDC.

So "But there are ways of treating and preventing flu that are especially consequential this season". These number early treatment with antiviral drugs and preventing the spread of flu by washing hands and covering coughs. Twenty-three percent effectiveness means that there is some better - a little less flu in the vaccinated group. Flu is normally more common among unvaccinated Americans "but this year there is a lot of influenza both in grass roots who are vaccinated and in people who are unvaccinated".

The findings are published in the Jan. 16 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. As of inopportune January, the middle of flu season, flu was widespread in 46 states, and 26 children had died from complications of the infection, CDC figures show. The vaccine's reduced effectiveness highlights the destitution to gift serious flu promptly with antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu or Relenza, the CDC said. Ideally, treatment should start within 48 hours of symptoms appearing.

Music And Heartbeat Disorder

Music And Heartbeat Disorder.
A heartbeat fray may have influenced parts of composer Ludwig van Beethoven's greatest works, researchers say. "His music may have been both figuratively and physically heartfelt," theme co-author Dr Joel Howell, a professor of internal prescription at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in a university news broadcast release. The unheedful composer has been linked with numerous health woes, and historians have speculated that the composer may have had an arrhythmia - an unsystematized heartbeat.

Now, a team that included a musicologist, cardiologist and medical historian suggest that the rhythms of undoubted sections of Beethoven's most renowned pieces may reflect the irregular rhythms of his heart. "When your consideration beats irregularly from heart disease, it does so in some predictable patterns. We think we perceive some of those same patterns in his music. The synergy between our minds and our bodies shapes how we experience the world.

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Why Low-Fat Products Are Not As Popular As Natural Fats

Why Low-Fat Products Are Not As Popular As Natural Fats.
The creaminess of fat-rich foods such as ice cream and salad dressing petition to many, but remodelled affirmation indicates that some people can actually "taste" the fat lurking in luxurious foods and that those who can't may end up eating more of those foods. In a series of studies presented at the 2011 Institute of Food Technologists annual union this week, scientists said research increasingly supports the whim that fat and fatty acids can be tasted, though they're primarily detected through smell and texture.

Those who can't come up against the fat have a genetic variant in the way they process food, researchers said, in any way leading them to crave fat subconsciously. "Those more sensitive to the fat content were better at controlling their weight," said Kathleen L Keller, a dig into associate at New York Obesity Research Center at St Luke's Roosevelt Hospital.

And "We mark these people were protected from avoirdupois because of their ability to detect small changes in fat content". Keller and her colleagues wilful 317 healthy black adults, identifying a common variant in the CD36 gene that was linked to self-reported preferences for added fats such as butters, oils and spreads.

The same separate was also found to be linked with a selection for fat in fluid dairy samples in a smaller group of children. Keller said it was consequential to confine the study sample to one ethnic group to limit possible gene variations.

Her tandem asked participants about their normal diets and how oily or creamy they perceived salad dressings with obese content ranging from 5 percent to 55 percent. About 21 percent of the party had what the researchers called the "at-risk" genotype, reporting a fondness for fatty foods and perceiving the dressings to be creamier than other groups, she said.

Saturday 10 January 2015

Acupuncture Can Treat Some Types Of Amblyopia

Acupuncture Can Treat Some Types Of Amblyopia.
Acupuncture may be an noticeable scheme to treat older children struggling with a certain form of lazy eye, late research from China suggests, although experts say more studies are needed. Lazy eye (amblyopia) is essentially a status of miscommunication between the brain and the eyes, resulting in the favoring of one eye over the other, according to the National Eye Institute. The turn over authors noted that anywhere from less than 1 percent to 5 percent of mobile vulgus worldwide are affected with the condition. Of those, between one third and one half have a personification of lazy eye known as anisometropia, which is caused by a difference in the degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness between the two eyes.

Standard curing for children involves eyeglasses or contact lens designed to correct heart issues. However, while this approach is often successful in younger children (between the ages of 3 and 7), it is triumphant among only about a third of older children (between the ages of 7 and 12). For the latter group, doctors will often chore a patch over the "good" eye temporarily in addition to eyeglasses, and healing success is typically achieved in two-thirds of cases.

Children, however, often have trouble adhering to area therapy, the treatment can bring emotional issues for some and a reverse form of lazy eye can also accompany root, the researchers said. Study author Dr Dennis SC Lam, from the segment of ophthalmology and visual sciences and Institute of Chinese Medicine at the Joint Shantou International Eye Center of Shantou University and Chinese University of Hong Kong, and his colleagues clock in their observations in the December dissemination of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

In the search for a better option than patch therapy, Lam and his associates set out to research the potential benefits of acupuncture, noting that it has been used to treat dry eye and myopia. Between 2007 and 2009, Lam and his colleagues recruited 88 children between the ages of 7 and 12 who had been diagnosed with anisometropia.

About half the children were treated five times a week with acupuncture, targeting five unambiguous acupuncture needle insertion points (located at the prune of the leader and the eyebrow region, as well as the legs and hands). The other half were given two hours a age of plat therapy, combined with a minimum of one hour per day of near-vision exercises such as reading.

After about four months of treatment, the examine team found that overall visual acuity improved markedly more among the acupuncture crowd relative to the patch group. In fact, they noted that while lazy eye was successfully treated in nearly 42 percent of the acupuncture patients, that form dropped to less than 17 percent in the midst the patch patients.

Saturday 3 January 2015

Amphotericin B And Flucytosine For Antifungal Therapy

Amphotericin B And Flucytosine For Antifungal Therapy.
A medicine regimen containing two vigorous antifungal medicines - amphotericin B and flucytosine - reduced the jeopardy of dying from cryptococcal meningitis by 40 percent compared to healing with amphotericin B alone, according to new research in April 2013. The study also found that those who survived the malady were less likely to be disabled if they received treatment that included flucytosine. "Combination antifungal treatment with amphotericin and flucytosine for HIV-associated cryptococcal meningitis significantly reduces the risk of dying from this disease," said the study's starring role author, Dr Jeremy Day, head of the CNS-HIV Infections Group for the Wellcome Trust Major Overseas Program in Vietnam. "This set could save 250000 deaths across Africa and Asia each year.

The indicator to achieving this will be improving access to the antifungal spokesman flucytosine," said Day, also a research lecturer at the University of Oxford. Flucytosine is more than 50 years unused and off patent, according to Day. The drug has few manufacturers, and it isn't licensed for use in many of the countries where the saddle with from this disease is highest.

Where it is available, the limited supply often drives the cost higher, Day noted. "We aspire the results of this study will help drive increased and affordable access to both amphotericin and flucytosine. Infectious complaint specialist Dr Bruce Hirsch, an attending medical doctor at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, NY, said that in the United States, "the use of these medicines, amphotericin and flucytosine, is the usual defined of care for this dangerous infection, and is followed by long-term treatment with fluconazole another antifungal".

But, Hirsch esteemed that this infection is unusual to see in the United States. That's decidedly not the case in the rest of the world. There are about 1 million cases of cryptococcal meningitis worldwide each year, and 625000 deaths associated with those infections, according to library background information. Meningitis is an infection of the meninges, the heedful membranes that cover the brain and the spinal cord.

Wednesday 24 December 2014

A New Approach To The Regularity Of Mammography

A New Approach To The Regularity Of Mammography.
A unique arrive challenges the 2009 recommendation from the US Preventive Services Task Force that women between 40 and 49 who are not at violent risk of breast cancer can probably wait to get a mammogram until 50, and even then only shortage the exam every two years. A well-known Harvard Medical School radiologist, penmanship in the July issue of Radiology, says telling women to wait until 50 is precisely out wrong. The task force recommendations, he says, are based on faulty study and should be revised or withdrawn.

So "We know from the scientific studies that screening saves a lot of lives, and it saves lives amongst women in their 40s," said Dr Daniel B Kopans, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and chief radiologist in the breast imaging division at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) said its recommendation, which sparked a firestorm of controversy, was based in field and would hold many women each year from expendable worry and treatment.

But the guidelines left most women confused. The American Cancer Society continued to exhort annual mammograms for women in their 40s, and young breast cancer survivors shared resilient stories about how screening saved their lives. One main mess with the guidelines is that the USPSTF relied on incorrect methods of analyzing data from breast cancer studies, Kopans said.

The danger of breast cancer starts rising gradually during the 40s, 50s and gets higher still during the 60s, he said. But the statistics used by the USPSTF lumped women between 40 and 49 into one group, and women between 50 and 59 in another group, and predetermined those in the younger catalogue were much less likely to develop breast cancer than those in the older group.

That may be true, he said, except that assigning mature 50 as the "right" age for mammography is arbitrary, Kopans said. "A helpmate who is 49 is similar biologically to a woman who is 51," Kopans said. "Breast cancer doesn't supervise your age. There is nothing that changes abruptly at age 50".

Other problems with the USPSTF guidelines, Kopans said, take in the following. The guidelines cite research that shows mammograms are authoritative for a 15 percent reduction in mortality. That's an underestimate. Other studies show screening women in their 40s can bust deaths by as much as 44 percent. Sparing women from unnecessary be anxious over false positives is a poor reason for not screening, since dying of breast cancer is a far worse fate. "They made the self-centred decision that women in their 40s couldn't tolerate the anxiety of being called back because of a in dispute screening study, even though when you ask women who've been through it, most are pleased there was nothing wrong, and studies show they will come back for their next screening even more religiously," Kopans said. "The effort force took the decision away from women. It's incredibly paternalistic". The assignment force recommendation to screen only high-risk women in their 40s will failure the 75 percent of breast cancers that occur among women who would not be considered dear risk, that is, they don't have a strong family history of the disease and they don't have the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes known to build up cancer risk.

Saturday 6 December 2014

Family Doctors Will Keep Electronic Medical Records

Family Doctors Will Keep Electronic Medical Records.
More than two-thirds of kids doctors now use electronic fitness records, and the percentage doing so doubled between 2005 and 2011, a unusual study finds. If the trend continues, 80 percent of family doctors - the largest bunch of primary care physicians - will be using electronic records by 2013, the researchers predicted. The findings produce "some encouragement that we have passed a critical threshold," said scan author Dr Andrew Bazemore, director of the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Primary Care, in Washington, DC "The significant preponderance of primary care practitioners appear to be using digital medical records in some variety or fashion".

The promises of electronic record-keeping include improved medical heed and long-term savings. However, many doctors were slow to adopt these records because of the exorbitant cost and the complexity of converting paper files. There were also privacy concerns. "We are not there yet," Bazemore added. "More duty is needed, including better information from all of the states".

The Obama dispensation has offered incentives to doctors who adopt electronic health records, and penalties to those who do not. For the study, researchers mined two inhabitant data sets to see how many family doctors were using electronic trim records, how this number changed over time, and how it compared to use by specialists. Their findings appear in the January-February subject of the Annals of Family Medicine.

Nationally, 68 percent of family doctors were using electronic constitution records in 2011, they found. Rates varied by state, with a low of about 47 percent in North Dakota and a violent of nearly 95 percent in Utah. Dr Michael Oppenheim, blemish president and chief medical information officer for North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY, said electronic record-keeping streamlines medical care.

Diabetes In Young Women Increases The Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease

Diabetes In Young Women Increases The Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease.
New into or finds that girls and juvenile women with type 1 diabetes show signs of jeopardy factors for cardiovascular disease at an early age. The findings don't definitively confirm that type 1 diabetes, the kind that often begins in childhood, directly causes the gamble factors, and heart attack and stroke remain rare in young people. But they do upon the differences between the genders when it comes to the risk of heart problems for diabetics, said study co-author Dr R Paul Wadwa, an subsidiary professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver.

And "We're since measurable differences early in life, earlier than we expected," he said. "We insufficiency to make sure we're screening appropriately for cardiovascular peril factors, and with girls, it seems like it's even more important". According to Wadwa, diabetic adults are at higher jeopardize of cardiovascular disease than others without diabetes.

Diabetic women, in particular, seem to lose some of the safeguarding effects that their gender provides against heart problems, Wadwa said. "Women are protected from cardiovascular bug in the pre-menopausal state probably because they are exposed to sex hormones, mainly estrogen," said Dr Joel Zonszein, a clinical cure-all professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. "This sanctuary may be ameliorated or lost in individuals with diabetes".

It's not clear, however, when diabetic females begin to use their advantage. In the new study, Wadwa and colleagues looked specifically at order 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes since it's often diagnosed in childhood. The researchers tested 402 children and progeny adults aged 12 to 19 from the Denver area.

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Harm To Consumers From Changes In The Flexibility Of The Expenditure Account

Harm To Consumers From Changes In The Flexibility Of The Expenditure Account.
It's the occasion of year for vacation parties, gift shopping and open-minded enrollment, when many employees have to make decisions about their employer-sponsored health-care plans. Last year's identification health care reform legislation means changes are in store for 2011. One of the most significant: starting Jan 1, 2011, you'll no longer be able to avenge oneself for for most over-the-counter medications using a willowy spending account (FSA). That means if you're used to paying for your allergy or heartburn medication using pre-tax dollars, you're out of fluke unless your doctor writes you a prescription.

The exception is insulin, which you can still return for using an FSA even without a prescription. Flexible spending accounts, which are offered by some employers, enable employees to set aside green each month to pay for out-of-pocket medical costs such as co-pays and deductibles using pre-tax dollars. "This is basically reverting back to the direction FSAs were used a few years ago," said Paul Fronstin, a older research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, DC "It wasn't that fancy ago that you couldn't use FSAs for over-the-counter medicine".

Popular uses for FSAs embody eyeglasses, dental and orthodontic work, as well as co-pays for prescription drugs, doctor visits and other procedures, explained Richard Jensen, conduct research scientist in the department of health method at George Washington University in Washington, DC Over-the-counter drugs became FSA "qualified medical expenses" in 2003, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The respect an FSA works is an staff member decides before Jan 1, 2011 (usually during the company's open enrollment period) how much funds to contribute in the year ahead. The employer deducts equal installments from each paycheck throughout the year, although the amount amount must be available at all times during the year.

Typically, FSAs operate under the "use it or lose it" rule. You have to allot all of the money placed in an FSA by the end of the calendar year or the money is forfeited, Jensen explained. Since loosely speaking, the cost of over-the-counter medications pales in balance to the cost of co-pays and deductibles, the 2011 change shouldn't be too onerous for consumers, Jensen said.