Staying Healthy: Healthy Habits for Men

Juggling jobs, relationships, social obligations, bills, and staying on top of a healthy gym routine is a lot to handle. As a woman, trying to find the time to eat better seems to be the last thing on my list and it can’t be much easier for men. Here are a few tips for making men’s lives a little bit better from morning to night:

Eat Breakfast
Eating breakfast everyday keeps your metabolism in check, your weight down, and your cravings at bay. Filling up on fiber early on keeps you satisfied throughout the day. Dr. Oz recommends oatmeal with dried fruits, nuts, and his own personal touch…flaxseed oil.

Work through Pain
Sometimes taking the load off of a sore back, neck, or legs is worse for you than if you work through the pain. Experts suggest that nursing your pain isn’t always the best course of action because resting can weaken your muscles and you may lose strength over time. If you haven’t pulled any muscles or slipped any discs, take an anti-inflammatory pain reliever and stay on your feet.

Snack like a Squirrel
You don’t have to hoard nuts for the winter, but grabbing a handful during the middle of the day can actually keep you healthier than eating a bag of chips or waiting until dinner to satisfy your food cravings. Full of omega-3 fatty acids, these are the type of proteins we look for in our diets from fish, also known as good fats.

Sweat is Your Friend
While walking to the office or public transit is eco-friendly and cost efficient, chances are you don’t get the full cardio effect until you do your time on the treadmill. Sweat away your toxins and reduce your blood pressure and risk of heart attack by switching up your routine; the wetter the better. Tacking on weight training makes your body work harder to bulk up and lose any extra pounds that may be damaging to your frame. Aside from looking better to your partner, you may feel better and be able to get more sleep, more on that later. For more stamina, find a workout buddy!

Be Friendly
When men get stressed, they often clam up and don’t tend to talk about their problems. Women, on the other hand, can usually tell a story until their lips bleed. With more stress in the world than ever, it’s no wonder your body may not be feeling up to par. Grab a beer—or your partner—and tell them what’s on your mind, sharing may just save your life or keep the stress away.

Save for a Rainy Day
Like the harmful stressors everyone puts upon themselves at any moment, a lot of these have to deal with financial woes. If you are able, sock away some of your paycheck every month to save for a rainy day or an emergency by investing some of that worth in a separate savings account you can run to if you need to, but put your own limits on how you are allowed to spend it. Down the road, merely thinking about how to spend that extra cushion you set aside can make even the gloomiest day perk up a bit.

Go Between
We have all been conditioned to learn that brushing your teeth two times a day is the normal but in order to keep your oral health at its best, go deeper with floss. Your best bet is to floss before bedtime to clean the bacteria from the hard to reach spots in your mouth so it doesn’t grow into a problem overnight.

Sleep like a Baby
If you are a parent, you understand the importance of getting a child to go to bed at a certain time every night in order to keep their mind and body stable and free from grouchiness. You should treat your sleeping patterns the same way. Set a bed time and keep it—at least during the work week—and get at least seven hours of sleep. Professionals advise that sleeping regularly can stave off calories and stress because being groggy can incur bad decisions like eating greasy food or sucking down your usual morning coffee in half the time.

http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/mens-health/staying-healthy-healthy-habits-men-3807.html

Antipsychotic Drugs Can Cause Rapid Weight Gain in Kids

Obesity is still a big problem within our country, and now one of the medications prescribed for children could be a factor in their weight gain. Up to one-third of adolescents and children who took some of the common antipsychotic drugs for the first time became overweight or obese in as little as 11 weeks, which in turn raised their risk for diabetes and heart disease.

Researchers said that doctors who prescribe these antipsychotics to children should carefully consider the benefits against the risk, and keep a close eye on the children who are taking these medications. Dr. Christopher Varley and Dr. Jon McClellan from the Seattle Children’s Hospital wrote in a commentary for the Journal of the American Medical Association that, “These data confirm prior findings that children and adolescents are highly vulnerable to antipsychotic medication. These results challenge the widespread use of atypical antipsychotic medications in youth.”

Dr. Monica Michell, a child psychiatrist at the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York who was not involved with this study, said that these findings caution us and underscores the long-term potential harm that these drugs can cause. She also stated, “For children, who are not psychotic or bipolar, these medicines should be a last resort."

This study looked at four of the most common antipsychotic medications used in children: Risperdal or risperidone made by Johnson & Johnson, Zyprexa or olanzapine made by Eli Lilly, Abilify or aripiprazole made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Seroquel or quetiapine made by AstraZeneca.

A research team, led by Dr. Christopher Correll from Zucker Hillside Hospital and the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York, studied approximately 272 teens and children who were between the ages of 4 to 19 that suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and aggressive or disruptive behavior spectrum disorders.

After approximately 11 weeks, the participants that took Zyprexa gained an average of 18.7 pounds, those who took Seroquel gained 13.4 pounds, those who took Risperdal gained 11.7 pounds and those who took Abilify gained 9.7 pounds. Altogether, 10 to 36 percent of participants became overweight or obese within 11 weeks. Correll stated, “The weight gain is dramatic, rapid and pervasive.” However, he said, not all of the medications performed the same.

The children who took Zyprexa showed to have the most dramatic weight gain and the biggest changes in their metabolic factors such as cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar, which can cause diabetes and heart problems. Abilify, a medication that is usually not linked with weight gain in adults, did cause the kids to gain weight, but was not shown to raise blood sugar levels or cholesterol. Correll hopes to be able to conduct more research to help determine what caused these differences. He said, “We will look at genetics and look at blood samples to see what changed early on that predicted weight gain.

Currently, only two atypical antipsychotics are approved for children to take, Abilify and Risperdal. However, in June, a Food and Drug Administration panel of experts backed the wider use of Seroquel, Zyprexa, and Pfizer’s Geodon for teens and children.

At the time, many of the panel members expressed their concerns about the rising sales of the drugs to young people and the lack of long-term studies for safety. The members were especially worried about the chance that the drugs might be misused to treat other conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The FDA has still not acted on the panel’s endorsement.

Last November, a panel of outside experts called on the FDA and other U.S. healthy agencies to help study the long-term effects of prescribing these antipsychotic medications to kids.

Zyprexa is Lilly’s top-selling medication with sales of over $4.7 billion last year. Seroquel is the second-best seller for AstraZeneca with over $4.5 billion for the year 2008.

It is always best to consult with your physician about your child’s disorder and find out what is the best solution, while keeping the immediate and long term effects of the medications in mind.

http://www.healthnews.com/family-health/child-health/antipsychotic-drugs-can-cause-rapid-weight-gain-kids-3802.html

Excess Diet Soda Consumption Increases Risk of Health Problems

What do heart disease, stroke, cancer, obesity, tooth decay, osteoporosis, diabetes, and dementia have in common? It may surprise you to know that all of these health problems have been linked to the excess consumption of soft drinks. Unless fortified, soft drinks contain little or no vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein, or other essential nutrients, and often displace other healthier choices in people’s diets, such as water, milk and tea. What they do contain—simple sugars or sugar substitutes, carbonation, caffeine, and often food additives such as artificial coloring, flavoring, and preservatives—are the real troublemakers, directly or indirectly contributing to a wide array of illnesses, some of which are listed above. But results of a new study suggest that drinking just two artificially sweetened soft drinks a day can result in an increased risk of declining kidney function; a finding that may change the way we view excess when it comes to sodas.

The study, conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, examined the effects of sodium and artificial sweeteners on kidney function among 3,256 women, median age of 67, who were already participating in the Nurses’ Health Study. The participants submitted food questionnaires that asked about their average beverage intake—whether they drank beverages less than once a month, one to four times a month, two to six times weekly, once daily but less than twice, or twice a day or more often, and whether the beverage was sugar sweetened or artificially sweetened soda.

When the researchers compared the kidney function of the women, they found that 372 had a 30 percent or more decline in kidney function. Further analysis of the diet information revealed that the decline was associated with drinking two or more artificially sweetened soft drinks a day. This held true even after considering other factors, such as age, physical activity, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Researcher Dr. Julie Lin, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a staff physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said, “Thirty percent is considered significant,” especially since most of the participants had well-preserved kidney function at the beginning of the study.

Higher dietary sodium intake was also found to be associated with a greater kidney function decline, but no link was found with less than two artificially sweetened sodas or with the sugar-sweetened beverages.

Dr. Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition for Washington University, St. Louis, says the link found “calls for more studies where actual intake can be assessed, rather than taking the information from food frequency questionnaires, which could be subject to mistakes.” She also wonders if the link might have come about because of long-term consumption, as many of the participants were older adults. Regardless of the mechanism, she says diet drinks are “generally low in important health-promoting nutrients, so keeping them as a small part of your eating plan would be a smart step.”

Many health experts say the problem is that people don’t always drink their sodas in moderation. Calories from beverages make up 21 percent of the total daily calories consumed by Americans over 2 years old, predominantly soft drinks and fruit drinks with added sugars, according to a 2004 article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “Many people either forget or don’t realize how many extra calories they consume in what they drink, yet beverages are a major contributor to the alarming increase in obesity,” said Dr. Barry Popkin, director of the University of North Carolina Interdisciplinary Obesity Program.

In 2006, a panel of experts assembled by Popkin published a “Beverage Guidance System,” which recommended people should drink more water and limit or eliminate high-calorie beverages with little or no nutritional value. The panel emphasized the need for children and teenagers to drink more milk. “Fortified soy milk is a good alternative for individuals who prefer not to consume cow milk,” the panel said.

The study, “Associations of Sweetened Beverages with Kidney Function Decline,” was presented last week at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual conference in San Diego, California.

http://www.healthnews.com/nutrition-diet/excess-diet-soda-consumption-increases-risk-health-problems-3821.html

The Best Chance for Smoking Cessation: Patch & Lozenge Combo

A smoker who is trying to kick the habit has the best odds for triumph over cravings by utilizing a nicotine patch in combination with a nicotine lozenge. This is the key finding of a first ever study that compared the effectiveness of several popular smoking cessation products used alone or in various combinations. The results of the analysis appear in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The patch-lozenge combination therapy was shown to be more successful than other methods studied, including antidepressant use. The reasoning behind the success of the patch when used in conjunction with the lozenge holds that the combination offers the best imitation of the actual highs and lows associated with nicotine addiction. While the patch supplies a constant supply of nicotine replacement, the lozenge supplies a boost of nicotine for those times that smokers have an extra craving. By using the two treatments together smokers are given the control they need to quit.

According to Megan E. Piper, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, “If you combine these different types of nicotine replacement you're going to get the best bang for your buck.” She then added, “But also remember that in this study people got a lot of counseling. It was that combination that resulted in a 40 percent quit rate.”

In measuring the success rate for smoking cessation at six months after the initial quit date, results indicated that only the patch-lozenge intervention performed better than a placebo. Smokers who used the patch-lozenge combination were also more likely to have stopped smoking after only one week. In addition, they were more likely to have achieved one full day without smoking.

Piper noted that this type of research has not been done in the past due to cost constraints and other factors. She stated, “As each medication comes out, it is tested against a placebo” but never compared to other smoking cessation methods.

The study involved 1,504 adult smokers who expressed a desire to quit. All participants had smoked at least 10 cigarettes per day for six months prior to the study. They were randomly assigned to receive a placebo, or one of five different smoking cessation interventions that included either nicotine lozenge, nicotine patch, the antidepressant bupropion (also marketed as Zyban and Wellbutrin), nicotine patch plus nicotine lozenge, or bupropion plus nicotine lozenge. Therapy lasted for 8 to 12 weeks, and smoking rates were assessed at one week, eight weeks, and six months after the quit date. In addition, each participant received a total of six individual counseling sessions with an assigned case manager.

GlaxoSmithKline, marketer of Wellbutrin, provided free medication to patients. A second prescription drug, marketed by Pfizer and known as Chantix, is also approved for smoking cessation use in the United States. However, Chantix was not included in the study.

Only one serious adverse event occurred during the study period, which involved hospitalization of a participant for seizures that were possibly related to the study medication. The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Center for Research Resources.

http://www.healthnews.com/medical-updates/the-best-chance-smoking-cessation-patch-lozenge-combo-3822.html