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31 Percent of Indians Are ‘Suffering’: Survey

May 1, 2012 by ·

More than three out of 10 Indians are “suffering”, an increase from 24 percent last year, a survey from global polling group Gallup showed Monday.

A total of 31 percent of Indians aged 15 and older rated their lives poorly enough to be considered as “suffering”, while 56 percent were “struggling” and only 13 percent were “thriving”, Gallup said.

About 5,000 people were surveyed across India, with respondents asked to rate their current lives and future expectations on a scale of zero to 10. [Read more...]

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Sleep A Factor In Diabetes

April 27, 2012 by ·

More people pull the night shift. Teens text past midnight and stumble to class at dawn. Travelers pack red-eye flights.

Nodding off behind the wheel isn’t the only threat from a lack of shut-eye. There’s growing evidence that people who regularly sleep too little and at the wrong time suffer long-lasting consequences that a nap won’t cure: An increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other health problems.

“We have a societal conspiracy for sleep deprivation,” says Russell Sanna of Harvard Medical School’s sleep medicine division, who attended a TEDMED conference recently where scientists called sleep loss one of health care’s big challenges. [Read more...]

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Be Sure Your Child’s Shots Are Up-To-Date

April 25, 2012 by ·

This is National Immunization Week.

According to a recent report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), most parents are vaccinating their kids, with less than one percent of children not receiving any vaccines by age 19 to 35 months.

Vaccines protect the child and the community, yet a significant number of parents decide not to vaccinate their children, placing them at risk of dangerous diseases and potentially exposing other unvaccinated children to those diseases.

“While at first the vaccination process may seem daunting, initially developing a plan with your doctor will make it much more manageable,” says Dr. Sherman Alter, director of infectious disease. [Read more...]

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Women With Heart Disease More Likely To Have Baby Girls, Study Finds

April 23, 2012 by ·

Pregnant women with heart disease are more likely to give birth to girls than boys, according to a new study from Iran.

The study involved 200 pregnant women diagnosed with heart disease who were referred to a heart center for delivery. Of the 216 children born to these women, 75 percent were girls.

The number of boys born in any human population should be similar to the number of girls born, but the boy-to-girl ratio in any given country can vary depending on practices of sex selection. In Iran, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. In the heart disease study, 32 boys were born for every 100 girls. [Read more...]

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A Pain In The Neck

April 22, 2012 by ·

This is the first of two articles on pain. In this article, we look at neck pain and how we can manage it.

THERE’S only one pain that can literally, be said to be a pain in the neck – and that’s neck pain!

You might think it’s not a terribly common problem, but in fact, most of us will experience neck pain at some point in our lives, and between 10 and 15% of people may be putting up with it right now.

Although it’s an annoying problem, for most people, it won’t have a major impact on day-to-day life, and there are quite a few things you can do to help manage your neck pain now, and prevent it in the future.

What causes neck pain? [Read more...]

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For Some, Glaucoma Strikes At A Young Age

April 21, 2012 by ·

Though only 15 when diagnosed with juvenile open-angle glaucoma, A.J. Esguerra said he’s tried not to let the potentially devastating eye disease slow him down.

“It’s not the end of the world,” said Esguerra, now 23 and living in Cambridge, Mass. “I’ve continued on with all of my activities, and I look at it as just one other thing I have to deal with, and I find a way to manage.”

Like many people with the disease, Esguerra had no idea he was losing some of his peripheral vision to glaucoma. It wasn’t until he went for a routine eye exam that doctors discovered he had higher than normal pressure in his eyes. [Read more...]

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Troubled Homes May Fuel Obesity in Girls

April 18, 2012 by ·

Little girls from troubled homes are more likely to be obese at age 5 than girls from happier ones, new research shows.

However, researchers did not find that same association between boys’ weight and difficult family situations.

In the study, researchers looked at data on more than 1,600 preschoolers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which tracks the health and well-being of children born to mostly low-income, single-mother families. About half were black, 27 percent were Hispanic and 22 percent were white. [Read more...]

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