Healthy Me - At Home and Away: Wisconsin

Showing posts with label Wisconsin. Show all posts

Monday, November 15, 2010

Be fit, have fewer colds

Another benefit of exercising cited!
-----

Stamina 55-1610 InMotion E1000 Elliptical Trainer

Jillian Michaels: Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism

The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises: Four Weeks to a Leaner, Stronger, More Muscular YOU!

P90X Extreme Home Fitness Workout Program - 13 DVDs, Nutrition Guide, Exercise Planner

PARIS: Couch potatoes are nearly twice as likely to catch a cold, and a third likelier to suffer bad symptoms of a cold, compared with counterparts who keep fit, American researchers reported on Tuesday.

They tracked 1,002 adults in Wisconsin aged 18-85 for 12 weeks in the autumn and winter of 2008, monitoring them for respiratory illness and weight and quizzing them about diet, lifestyle and aerobic exercise.

People who described themself as fit or who exercised up to five days a week or more, had between 4.4 and 4.9 "cold" days on average.

For those who fell in the middle category of fitness, and exercised between one and four days a week, this was 4.9-5.5 days.

But among counterparts who said they were of low fitness and who exercised only one day a week or less, the tally was between 8.2 and 8.6 days.

Good fitness also caused the severity of cold symptoms to fall by between 31 and 41 per cent lower compared with the most sedentary lifestyle.

Bouts of exercise unleash a temporary rise in immune defences, helping to boost preparedness against viral intruders, the study suggested.

It cited figures that the average adult in the US can expect to have a cold two to four times a year, and children between half a dozen and 10 colds a year. The cost to the US economy is put at around 40 billion dollars annually.

The paper, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, is headed by David Nieman, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

- AFP/jl

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:Be fit, have fewer colds
-----

Monday, September 28, 2009

Beware of premature cornea ageing

Image via Wikipedia

CONTACT LENS WEARERS…

Neo Chai Chin
chaichin@mediacorp.com.sg

HERE's one more thing for contact lens wearers to be wary of - your corneas may be prematurely ageing.

Wearing contact lenses with low oxygen permeability for prolonged periods can damage the cornea, a transparent layer covering the eye. And the majority of Asians are using such lenses, said Australian eyecare expert Professor Brien Holden (picture).

This, in turn, may cause conditions like dry eyes, and cause the corneas to look "older" than normal. A sign of the latter is when the cells on the innermost layer of the cornea become varied in size - a condition called polymegethism, which is closely associated with corneal exhaustion syndrome, said Prof Holden of the University of New South Wales.

Cell density decreases with age, but studies have shown that a lack of oxygen accelerates the process. When that happens, a person may then have to cease wearing contact lenses altogether, he said.

Prof Holden, who is also chief executive of the Institute for Eye Research, an Australian company, was in Singapore yesterday.

"The first thing to do is to consult your local optometrist or ophthalmologist and talk to them about whether you are showing signs of excessive redness of the eye associated with low oxygen of your lenses, " he told Channel NewsAsia.

However, the "simplest thing" is to wear high oxygen permeable contact lenses or silicon hydrogel lenses, he said.

Singaporeans, it seems, are already making the switch.

Optometrists told Today of a rapid uptake since silicon hydrogel lenses became readily available four years ago.

President of the Singapore Optometric Association David Chong said over half his customers are using them. For optometrist Dr Koh Liang Hwee, the number is three in 10 monthly disposable lens users, and nine in 10 bi-weekly disposable lens users.

Silicone hydrogel lenses cost about 20 per cent more than regular soft lenses, they said.

To spread awareness, contact lens manufacturer Ciba Vision is launching a premature corneal ageing campaign this month.

A better alternative however, is to avoid wearing contact lenses altogether, said Dr Ray Manotosh of the Department of Opthalmology at the National University Hospital (corrected at 3:15PM, Sep 1).

"Contact lenses have many side effects (including) infection related to hygiene, and bacterial infection where you can lose your eyesight," he said.

Dr Manotosh added that compared with hard lenses (usually worn on doctor's prescription), the incidence of polymegethism among soft lens wearers is low.

But for those who insist on wearing contact lenses, "silicon hydrogels are the better lens, and the preferred lens should be those for daily wear instead of weekly or bi-weekly wear", he said.

From TODAY, Health – Tuesday, 01-Sep-2009

Thursday, June 4, 2009

6 new A(H1N1) deaths reported in US

06/05/2009 | 09:18 AM

(Updated) MILWAUKEE — Health officials in a half dozen states reported deaths from swine flu on Thursday, and said all six patients had been diagnosed with other health problems.

An adult living in Milwaukee became Wisconsin's first resident to die with the H1N1 virus. City Health Commissioner Bevan Baker would not release any details except to say that the person had a common underlying health condition that he would not specify.

Pennsylvania also reported its first death from the illness. The 55-year-old Berks County woman who died with the flu had significant underlying health issues, a health department spokeswoman said.

In Illinois, a 74-year-old man from Gurnee died Tuesday, according to the Lake County Health Department. Officials said he had significant medical conditions that increased his vulnerability.

Officials in California said a 9-year-old Concord girl had been diagnosed with swine flu and had a bacterial infection before she died May 29. The patient who died in Utah also was under 18, according to Gary Edwards, executive director of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department.

In Arizona, a 64-year-old woman living in Pinal County became the fifth person in the state to die from complications of swine flu, authorities said. The woman had underlying health conditions and was being treated for pneumonia at the time of her death last week, health officials said. - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Swine flu goes person-to-pig; What's next?

English: Main symptoms of swine flu. (See Wikipedia:Swine influenza#Swine flu in Humans). Model: Mikael Häggström. To discuss image, please see Template talk:Häggström diagrams References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention > Key Facts about Swine Influenza (Swine Flu) Retrieved on April 27, 2009 Joint pain added from general influenza: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention > Influenza Symptoms Page last updated November 16, 2007. Retrieved April 28, 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By MARGIE MASON,AP Medical Writer AP - 2 hours 44 minutes ago

MEXICO CITY - Now that the swine flu virus has passed from a farmworker to pigs, could it jump back to people? The question is important, because crossing species again could make it more deadly.

The never-before-seen virus was created when genes from pig, bird and human viruses mixed together inside a pig. Experts fear the virus that has gone from humans back into pigs in at least one case could mutate further before crossing back into humans again. But no one can predict what will happen.

"Could it gain virulence? Yes," Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said Sunday. "It could also become milder. It could go in both directions."

Canadian officials announced Saturday that the virus had infected about 200 pigs on a farm _ the first evidence that it had jumped to another species. It was linked to a farmworker who recently returned from Mexico, where 19 people have died from the virus. The farmworker has recovered, and the mildly infected pigs have been quarantined.

Agriculture officials believe the worker may have sneezed or coughed near the pigs, possibly in a barn. About 10 percent of the herd experienced loss of appetite and fever, but all are recovering.

Experts say pork _ even from infected pigs _ is safe to eat.

Lubroth stressed that sick people should avoid contact with swine, but said healthy farmworkers don't need to take any extra precautions because the chance of catching flu from a pig is small.

Unlike the H5N1 bird flu virus, which infects the blood, organs and tissue of poultry, most swine flus are confined to the respiratory tract, meaning the risk of a human getting infected by a pig is "probably 10 or a 1,000 times less," Lubroth said.

But pigs are of special concern because they share some basic biological similarities with humans, and they have served as "mixing vessels" in which various flu strains have swapped genetic material. That's what happened to create the current swine flu strain.

Scientists are unsure when the virus leaped from pigs to humans _ possibly months or even a year ago _ but it was identified as a new strain about a week and a half ago. Since then, nearly 800 cases have been confirmed worldwide. The only death outside Mexico occurred when a Mexican toddler died in a Texas hospital.

There have been sporadic cases of pigs infecting humans with influenza in the past. Most cases resulted in mild symptoms, typically among people who were in close contact with sick pigs. A few deaths have been recorded, and limited human-to-human transmission also has been documented, but nothing sustained.

Dr. Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has worked on SARS and bird flu outbreaks, said there may be more pig-to-human cases that have gone unnoticed because surveillance among swine populations tends to be weaker than among poultry stocks.

Given that the past three flu pandemics _ the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957-58 Asian flu and the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 _ were all linked to birds, much of the global pandemic preparedness has focused on avian flus.

"The world has been watching and preparing and trying to prevent a pandemic from an avian influenza reservoir," he said. "The focus has been on birds, and here is a virus that's coming from a swine reservoir. Now it's a human virus."

-----
From Yahoo! News; source article is here.