Health

Starting a fitness program may be one of the best things you can do for your health. With your doctor’s OK to exercise, physical activity can reduce your risk of chronic disease, improve your balance and coordination, help you lose weight — even improve your sleep habits and self-esteem. And there’s more good news. You can do it in just five steps. Step 1: Assess your fitness level You probably have some idea of how fit you are. But assessing and recording baseline fitness scores can give you benchmarks against which to measure your progress. To assess your aerobic and muscular fitness, flexibility and body composition, consider recording: Your pulse rate before and after a one-mile walk How long it takes to walk one mile How many push-ups you can do at a time How far you can reach forward … Read more

If you experience frequent headaches and the medications you’re taking aren’t working effectively, why not consider natural treatments instead? Since stress is a major cause of and contributor to headaches it makes sense that alternative treatments for them are familiar stress reduction recommendations: biofeedback and relaxation (well documented as effective headache treatments), acupuncture, massage, herbs, and diets (less well documented as effective). Let’s start with biofeedback. Small metal sensors attached to your skin measure muscle tension, brain waves, skin temperature, and other vital signs. Stress, through the fight/flight response, reduces skin temperature by constricting blood vessels while relaxation dilates them, warming the skin.According to the Cleveland Clinic, biofeedback trains you to send blood flow to your brain for headache management. Most studies show that it reduces the frequency and duration of headaches in children and adults and seems equivalent to … Read more

The deaths of two patients prescribed a powerful painkiller as a headache treatment were among four fatalities linked to the recently approved drug, its manufacturer reported Thursday. All four deaths apparently involved improper use of the drug, called Fentora, manufacturer Cephalon Inc. said. The Food and Drug Administration was monitoring the situation, a spokeswoman said. The FDA approved the drug in September for use only by cancer patients already taking morphine or other prescription narcotics for their pain. Fentora contains fentanyl, which is similar to morphine, but far more potent. Besides the two headache patients, the other deaths involved a suicide and a patient administered the drug outside the recommended dosing. “None of the reports were in cancer patients, which leads us to believe they were inappropriate candidates for the product,” Cephalon spokeswoman Candace Steele said. Cephalon reminded doctors and … Read more

Researchers are calling for the creation of a collaborative registry to assess the risk of serious injuries when treating children using spinal manipulation. A recent study done in part by the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, concludes that although serious adverse events have been identified when spinal manipulation is used to treat children, their true incidence remains unknown, and these events must be better reported. Patient safety demands a greater collaboration between the medical community and other health care professionals, the study suggests. A team of researchers representing multiple professions that provide spinal manipulation conducted the study, the results of which were published in a recent issue of the journal Pediatrics. They reviewed data drawn from 13 international studies conducted over a period of more than 40 years and found that adverse reactions in children appeared to be rare … Read more