It’s the time of the year when we’re feeling grateful for being healthy, having a loving family and a job, but do you know gratitude can also keep your heart healthy? A study led by Paul Mills, professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine recruited 186 men and women who suffered from heart disease “either through years of sustained high blood pressure or as a result of a heart attack or even an infection of the heart itself.” During the study Prof. Mills asked each participant to fill out a questionnaire to rate how grateful they were for the people, places or things in their lives. “We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue ...
Yolanda Molina was diagnosed with cancer after Daisy, her Yorkie/Schnauzer hit her left breast. “The pain was so severe that tears rolled down my face,” Molina said. Two days after the incident, Yolanda found out she had breast cancer. “It’s said that God does not give us more than we can handle. I had been diabetic for28 years and under a doctor’s care for clinical depression, so I already had two strikes against me. After my first chemo treatment, I thought at the time that death had to be better,” Molina said. After going through chemo, diabetes and depression Yolanda won the battle against cancer. “Through it all, Daisy has been constantly by my side. I think about the night she “found” my lump. I think that her jumping on me made the lump come out. I ...
RJ Manchester and Erica Asti, staffers at the Florida Hospital for Children, along with Dr. Angela Fals and her team, spent years working with obese children and families in their Central Florida CCFW clinic. The local childhood overweight and obesity rates ranged from 32% in Orange County (28.7% Latino population) to 64% in Osceola County (48.6% Latino). The team was growing increasingly concerned about younger and younger patients with obesity-related health complications. “We were having some of the youngest patients we’ve ever had in the weight and wellness clinic with pre-diabetes and diabetes,” Asti said. They wanted to step up in a big way.
An underlying issue: No P.E. Asti and Manchester and the CCFW team discovered that many parents misidentified their ...
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease (NIAMS) has launched a new Spanish-language website that provides free health information on conditions of the bones, joints, muscles, and skin. “Many diseases in our scientific portfolio, including lupus, arthritis, and osteoporosis have profoundly negative effects among Latinos … in terms of prevalence and poor health outcomes,” said NIAMS Director Dr. Stephen Katz. “We are committed to providing quality health information to all people, no matter what language they speak or what culture they identify with.” The new site features easy-to-use navigation tools to help Spanish-speaking individuals identify and locate NIAMS health topics. Some of the features offered include improved access to NIAMS ...
Two new cholesterol drugs are too expensive, according a to a new report-Time Magazine informs. The report, published by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review looked at Repatha and Praluent, both recently approved by the FDA, and “weighed their benefits, including preventing heart attacks and death, against their prices.” Repatha costs $14,100 a year and Praluent costs $14,600, but according to researchers the cost should be $3,615 to $4,811 a year. “The price would actually have to drop even further, to an annual drug cost of $2,177, for the “total costs of these new drugs to come down to a level at which doctors and insurers would not have to try to limit patient use in some way to keep overall health care cost growth within bounds,” the researchers ...
The end of the summer is near, and as school lunches must be packed, parents are wondering what to put in their kid's lunch. Will what a student eats, make him or her achieve better results in school? A recent article states that hydration, nutrition and sleep are key areas to help kids succeed in school. In fact, Mary Pat Turon-Findley MS, RD, LD, a clinical dietitian in the Division of Nutrition Therapy at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, encourages parents to start prepping kids with healthy meals, plenty of rest and sleep one week before school starts. Some Tips for a fresh start to the new school year are as follows: Start with a healthy morning meal ( fresh eggs, fruit, whole grains, low-fat dairy products)
Make sure students have a healthy ...
This report discusses methods and outcomes of estimating the cost effectiveness of four nationally implemented childhood obesity interventions: (1) sugar-sweetened beverage excise tax; (2) eliminating tax subsidy of TV advertising to children; (3) early care and education policy changes; and (4) state policy for active physical education. There are limitations when comparing the cost per unit of reduction in body mass index (BMI) across interventions; however, when compared to clinical interventions, the cost effectiveness of these prevention interventions is remarkable. The cost per unit change in BMI for the prevention interventions assessed in this study range from $1.16 to $401. However, the study cited that the cost per unit change in BMI for a primary care-based ...
Mexican-American and Dominican-American children are found to be at a higher risk of experiencing depression and somatization due to authoritarian parenting, according to a new research from The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Social Work. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, examined the prevalence of anxiety and depression and somatization (when a person has physical symptoms, but no physical cause can be found) in children aged 4-6 from Mexican and Dominican descent. According to the study Latino children experienced higher levels of anxiety, depression and somatization than the general population. According to the researchers 50 percent of Latino youth are at risk of anxiety and 10 percent are at risk for depression and ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a brain stimulation device to help patients battling with Parkinson’s disease, which disproportionately affects Latinos, Health Day reports. The BRIO Neurostimulation system is "an implantable deep brain stimulation device to help reduce the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, a movement disorder that is one of the most common causes of tremors," the FDA said in a news release. The Brio System was approved by the FDA after two clinical trials, one involving 127 patients with essential tremor who used the device for six months, and one involving 136 patients with Parkinson’s disease who used the Brio system for three months. "Both groups showed statistically significant improvement on their ...
