Hairdo Trumps Exercise for Many Black Women, Study Finds

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Many black women put concerns about their hair above their health, according to new research.

It's estimated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that four out of five black women in the United States are overweight or obese. Yet some of them skip physical activity entirely to avoid having to have their hair restyled or restraightened, the University of Colorado School of Medicine study authors said. However, the researchers also noted a shift toward more "low-maintenance" hairstyles, which might help more women overcome these barriers to exercise.

"There is some exciting news from this study," said co-principal investigator Dr. Amy Huebschmann, director of the university's Center for Women's Health Research. "African-American women want to overcome these barriers to exercise, and we studied many African-American women who have already overcome these barriers by adjusting their hairstyles."

The study involved 51 Denver women ranging from 18 to 75 years old. The women's health was assessed, and interviewers asked about any hairstyle-related barriers to exercise they faced. They also identified any factors that motivated the women to be active.

The researchers divided the group into two categories: "exercisers" and "non-exercisers." The "exercisers" engaged in at least 60 minutes of physical activity each week. The "non-exercisers" were active for less than 60 minutes. Both groups had similar rates of diabetes, prediabetes and arthritis.

Although lack of self-discipline or money were reported as barriers to exercise, issues with hairstyle maintenance was the most frequently reported obstacle to physical activity.

Hairstyle concerns were the reason why 29 percent of black women did not exercise regularly. In contrast, only 7 percent of the black women who worked out routinely said their hair was a factor in their decision to exercise.

"We want to find solutions so women in the African-American community can get through these barriers and improve their health," said the study's co-principal investigator, Lucille Johnson Campbell, director of special initiatives for the Center for African-American Health in Denver.

To avoid spending an excessive amount of time or money to restyle their hair after a workout, some of the women involved in the study opted for more simple styles that require less upkeep, such as braids and ponytails.

Other chose to engage in "safe" activities that would not make them sweat to avoid messing up their hair.

"We had some women describe concerns of getting fired if they came to work with a low-maintenance hairstyle such as braids or natural hair, but we also heard women saying that they feel there is a growing cultural acceptance of these types of low-maintenance hairstyles," said Huebschmann in a university news release.

The study's findings were presented recently at the annual meetings of the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Society of General Internal Medicine. Data and conclusions presented at meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

More information

The U.S. Department of Health Office of Minority Health provides more information on black women and obesity.

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Kids' Lunch Boxes Often Fall Short on Nutrition

By Tara Haelle

HealthDay Reporter

THURDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A home-packed lunch isn't necessarily healthier than school cafeteria fare, a new study suggests.

The new research found that just 27 percent of the lunches third and fourth graders brought from home met three of five National School Lunch Program (NSLP) standards.

"Our findings are similar to results of other studies of children's packed lunches from across the world, which have found that high-calorie packaged foods and beverages are more common than fruits, vegetables and dairy," said Kristie Hubbard, a research associate at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

A quarter of the lunches did not have a primary entree, such as a sandwich or leftovers, and most of these lacked yogurt, cheese, peanut butter or another protein instead of an entree. Only a third of the packed lunches included fruit, and 11 percent included vegetables, yet a quarter included sugar-sweetened beverages.

Among the 42 percent of lunches with snack foods, the most common packaged foods were chips, cookies and candy, Hubbard said.

The typical snack brought for snack time was a sugar-sweetened beverage and a snack food or dessert. Only 30 percent of snacks were fruits, and only 10 percent included dairy foods.

"Perhaps people should not be so quick to judge school lunches because this is worse," said Lona Sandon, a registered dietitian and assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "What students are bringing from home is not better than what's being offered in schools."

Approximately four out of 10 youngsters bring their lunches to school instead of buying school cafeteria meals, according to the study.

For the current research, packed lunches and/or snacks of more than 600 third and fourth graders were photographed and catalogued. Parents consented to the study, but were not notified ahead of time of the exact day the researchers would look at their child's lunch.

On the day in question, nearly half the students brought lunch from home. Almost all of them also brought a snack. The other 325 students brought only a snack and planned to buy a school lunch.

Just over one in four lunches met a majority of the school lunch standards set for cafeteria meals. These standards call for a half a cup of fruit (excluding juice), 3/4 cup of vegetables, 1 ounce of grains, 1 ounce of meat/protein and 1 cup of milk.

Fifty-nine percent of kids brought a sandwich, the most commonly packed lunch food, according to the study. Water was the beverage of choice for 28 percent of lunches, according to the study.

A parent's education level didn't seem to make a difference as to what food was packed. More than 80 percent of the students' mothers had college educations or higher, noted Sandon.

"Often times we think higher education level in mothers would translate into better nutrition practices, but this is not necessarily the case," said Sandon. "It's important to get this information out there to help make parents aware that they may not be making the best choices for their kids."

Parents also face several challenges in packing healthful lunches for their children, she said. The parents may be time-crunched and need to pack food that does not require refrigeration or reheating, perhaps accounting for the high proportion of prepackaged foods.

"Convenience of preparation and convenience of nonperishable items are largely what they're thinking when they put things together," Sandon said.

Yet there are still ways to swap a high-calorie, less-nutritious food for a healthier option.

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Burnout Common Among Transplant Surgeons, Study Reveals

By Mary Beth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Transplant surgeons often feel emotionally drained and overextended, which are red flags for burnout, a new study suggests.

Nearly half of the transplant surgeons in the study reported having a low sense of personal accomplishment and four out of 10 admitted to feeling emotionally exhausted, researchers found.

"Burnout is common in medicine, especially in high-pressure specialties like transplantation," study co-author Dr. Marwan Abouljoud, director of the Henry Ford Transplant Institute, said in a Henry Ford Health System news release.

The study involved 218 transplant surgeons; almost 87 percent were men and they ranged in age from 31 to 79.

The investigators found 46.5 percent felt a low level of personal accomplishment and 40 percent were emotionally exhausted.

Aside from emotional exhaustion, burnout is also associated with depersonalization. Surgeons suffering from burnout may feel distant from their patients. The study found, however, only 17 percent of the surgeons felt emotionally disconnected or distant from their patients.

"This combination suggests that transplant surgeons are extremely invested in and engaged with their patients, but they are frustrated by the process," study co-author Michelle Jesse, a Henry Ford senior staff psychologist, said in the news release.

The fact that transplant patients are often critically ill and may die waiting for an organ can take a toll on surgeon's feelings of personal accomplishment, the researchers noted.

The surgeons who felt disconnected from their patients and emotionally exhausted also reported having less support from their co-workers. Meanwhile, they said they faced more psychological demands and more trouble interacting with their patients.

"Difficult patient interactions -- like patients and families angry or crying while discussing end-of-life decisions -- are not uncommon for transplant surgeons," Jesse explained. "Those are hard conversations to have with patients who are sick. Our data suggests that those who are more comfortable with those conversations may be at less risk for aspects of burnout."

The researchers said they plan to investigate ways to address burnout among transplant surgeons.

"It's about creating a culture that allows them to thrive and supports them," Jesse concluded. "First we have to understand what contributes to the development of burnout, and then tailor interventions to their needs."

The findings were presented this week at the World Transplant Congress in San Francisco. Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

More information

The American College of Surgeons has more about doctor personalities and burnout.

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Some Jobs Harder on the Heart Than Others, Report Finds

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Stress at work may raise your risk of heart attack and stroke, particularly if you work in the service industry or have a blue-collar job, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

But being unemployed might be just as unhealthy, they added.

"Workplace factors that increase risk include job stress, exposure to air pollution -- like dust and secondhand smoke -- and noise," explained lead researcher Dr. Sara Luckhaupt, from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"These workers would benefit from health programs that combine reducing occupational risk factors like job stress with health promotion activities like smoking cessation," she said.

Some workers may already have other risk factors for stroke and heart attack, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, which can be made worse by workplace stresses, Luckhaupt explained. In fact, the researchers found that 1.9 percent of workers under 55 reported a history of heart disease and stroke.

"It's probably a combination of personal and work factors," she said.

"Don't forget the job factors," Luckhaupt said. "The noise, the air pollution and job stress could be contributing to the personal risk factors, like difficulty quitting smoking."

Unemployed workers, however, weren't spared, she noted. Among unemployed people looking for work, the rate of heart attack and stroke was also high -- 2.5 percent.

"It may be that the stress of unemployment and the lack of access to health care may be contributing to their health problems," she said.

However, whether these workers have health problems because they are unemployed or if they are unemployed because of health problems isn't known, Luckhaupt said. While the report found an association between employment stress and heart health, it did not prove a cause-and-effect link.

For the study, published in the Aug 1 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the researchers compiled data from the 2008-2012 National Health Interview Survey.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, "There is increasing interest in workplace-based disease prevention, health promotion and wellness programs as a means of improving health."

As heart disease and stroke remain the leading causes of death in men and women in the United States, prevention strategies and workplace health programs are essential, he said.

"Health professionals, employers and workers should take proactive steps to improve their heart health, implement and take advantage of comprehensive workplace wellness programs and better utilize effective interventions to prevent heart disease and stroke," he said.

More information

Visit the American Heart Association for more on stress and heart health.

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Preschoolers With Special Needs May Gain From 'Inclusion' Classrooms

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Preschoolers with special needs benefit from going to school with children who have strong language skills, according to a new study.

Classmates with higher-level language abilities promote language growth in children with disabilities, researchers found. On the other hand, development of language could be delayed if their classmates have weak language skills, they said.

"We were surprised to see the striking differences among children's language skills at the end of the school year when considering those with less-skilled peers and highly skilled peers," said the study's lead author, Laura Justice, psychological scientist with the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy at Ohio State University in Columbus. "In particular, children with disabilities seemed to be very negatively affected by having classmates who were less skilled."

The researchers said the findings, published July 28 in Psychological Science, support the concept of inclusion -- including children of varying abilities in a classroom.

The study involved 670 preschoolers. More than 50 percent of the children were diagnosed with a disability, such as autism spectrum disorder, language impairment or Down syndrome.

At the beginning of the school year, teachers assessed the children's language skills. Their development was reassessed at the end of the year to determine how much their abilities improved. The researchers also compared each child's end-of-year score with the classroom average.

Preschoolers with special needs were more affected by their classmates' language skills than the kids who did not have a disability, the study revealed. By the end of the school year, the special needs children in class with other children with weak language skills lagged well behind their normally developing peers.

In contrast, the preschoolers who had weak language skills when the school year began had greater improvements throughout the year if their classmates had strong language skills. The researchers pointed out these kids had scores similar to highly skilled students who had less-skilled peers.

When kids are in a classroom together, they naturally imitate each other's behavior, the researchers explained. This encourages the development of language skills, such as waiting to speak, communicating needs and storytelling.

"If peer effects operate as our work suggests they do, it is very important to consider how to organize children in classrooms so that their opportunities to learn from one another is maximized and so that young children with disabilities are not segregated into classrooms serving only those with special needs," Justice said in a journal news release.

Since the language skills of normally developing children continue to improve regardless of the abilities of their classmates, the researchers concluded school officials should strive to fill classrooms with students of various skill levels.

More information

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry provides more information on educating kids with special needs.

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1 in 4 U.S. Kids Underestimate Their Weight, Study Finds

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Many obese and overweight kids don't see themselves that way, which makes achieving a healthy weight almost impossible, researchers report.

In a new study, 27 percent of children and teens underestimated their weight. Fewer than 3 percent overestimated it. About 25 percent of parents underestimated their child's weight and just 1 percent overestimated it, according to the study.

"Efforts to prevent childhood obesity should incorporate education for both children and parents regarding the proper identification and interpretation of actual body weight," said lead researcher Han-Yang Chen, from the department of quantitative health sciences at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass.

"Interventions for appropriate weight loss should target children directly because one of the major driving forces to lose weight comes from the child's perception of their weight," he said.

The report was published July 31 in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Dr. William Muinos, director of the weight management program at Miami Children's Hospital, said, "I see weight misperception all the time."

Parents don't understand why their child is overweight or obese, he said. Parents think their child has a glandular problem or they will outgrow obesity. "That's nonsense, because obese kids are likely to stay obese," Muinos said.

Children can misperceive their weight if all the people they see are obese or overweight, he said. "If everyone you're around in your family and your social world is obese or overweight, then you are one big happy family. And you see that in our country," Muinos explained.

For the study, Chen's team used data from the 2007 to 2008 and 2009 to 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess weight perceptions. The surveys included more than 2,500 kids aged 8 to 15 years.

The researchers found that the odds of trying to lose weight was nearly 10 times higher among participants who overestimated their weight than among those who perceived their weight accurately. Those who underestimated their weight were the least likely to attempt to lose weight, according to the study.

Parental misperception of weight was not associated with attempts to lose weight among children and teens who were overweight or obese, the investigators found.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, takes a broader view of the problems of weight perception.

"Above all, this study highlights the perils of a societal preoccupation with weight, rather than a focus on health and the lifestyle factors that support it," he said.

Eating well and being active are important regardless of weight because they promote health, he said. "Weight is merely one among many measures that suggest something about overall health, albeit an important one," Katz said.

The high rate of dieting among children who overestimated their weight is of real concern, he noted. "This behavioral pattern suggests impaired body image perception and vulnerability to eating disorders," Katz said.

The more common problem of underestimating weight and its effect on lowering the likelihood of weight control efforts is also concerning, he added.

"These opposing problems are really two sides of the same coin -- the fixation on weight rather than health. In general, dieting is ill advised, both for overweight children and those misperceiving their weight as high when it isn't," Katz said.

Eating well and being active are recommended for both groups and all other children, he said. "We do need to raise awareness about the importance of childhood obesity, but we need to emphasize that what really matters is health," Katz explained.

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There's No Ebola Cure, But Early Intensive Treatment Boosts Survival

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The Ebola virus currently raging in West Africa has a well-earned reputation as one of the world's most deadly illnesses. But experts stress that early and intense medical care can greatly improve a person's chances of survival.

There's no cure or vaccine for Ebola, which wreaks life-threatening havoc within the body by attacking multiple organ systems at the same time.

Instead, doctors must fall back on the basics of "good meticulous intensive care," supporting the patient and targeting treatment toward the organs that are under attack by the virus, explained Dr. Lee Norman, chief medical officer for the University of Kansas Hospital and an expert on the disease.

"You treat the things that are failing," Norman said. "If a person is dehydrated, you treat them with IV fluid support. If a person has respiratory failure, you put them on a ventilator."

Such medical care has so far helped two American aid workers currently fighting for their lives in Liberia. Each became infected with Ebola while helping stricken patients in the West African nation.

The condition of the two American patients changes day to day. Earlier this week both Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were reported by the Associated Press to have improved "slightly." But an update Thursday from Samaritan's Purse said that Brantly's condition has "taken a slight turn for the worse overnight," ABC News reported.

Brantly, 33, is a family physician from Texas who serves as medical director of the Samaritan's Purse treatment center in Liberia's capital city, Monrovia. Writebol is a hygienist who works for a group allied with Samaritan's Purse.

Ebola currently is raging through the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. As of July 29, the virus had killed 729 people and infected a total 1,323, according to the World Health Organization.

The virus is particularly tough to combat because "once it gets into the human body, it attacks so many different tissues," explained Dr. Bruce Hirsch, an infectious diseases specialist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

In contrast, most viruses tend to target one specific organ, Hirsch and Norman said. For example, influenza goes after the respiratory system.

But Ebola attacks every organ system, including the heart, lungs, brain, liver and kidneys, Norman said. The virus even attacks a person's blood, thinning it and causing Ebola's trademark bleeding from multiple orifices.

And the impact in terms of overall illness is "additive," Norman said. "Every time you add another organ system that's failing, a person's chance of survival goes down exponentially."

The human body responds to this multiple-pronged attack by initiating a massive and intense inflammatory response -- which actually adds to the damage being done, Hirsch noted.

"It's a combination of the viral destruction and the inflammation that takes place in response that's so life threatening to us," he said.

Ebola's ravages are such that even young, healthy patients, who usually can fight off most serious illnesses, have a high death rate, Hirsch said.

Pumping fluids into patients remains the best front-line treatment for Ebola, to limit the damage caused by inflammation, Hirsch explained.

Beyond that, doctors must pay close attention to the patient and be ready to treat whatever organs are on the verge of failure, Hirsch and Norman said.

It doesn't sound like much, but this basic care can dramatically enhance chances of survival.

"If you look at the overall statistics, the mortality rate is around 50 to 60 percent, but if you get out into remote areas the mortality rate increases to around 90 percent," Norman said. "I think that reflects the fact that if more care is given and care is given early, the more survival improves."

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Teen 'Growing Pains' May Persist For Years

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Many teens never outgrow their "growing pains," according to new research.

Knee pain can persist for years, affecting teens' participation in sports and other activities, a Danish study found. If left untreated, so-called growing pains can become chronic, the researchers cautioned.

"We can see from the study that one in three young people between the ages of 12 and 19 experience problems with pain in their knees," said Michael Skovdal Rathleff, a physiotherapist from Aarhus University. "Seven percent of the adolescents experience daily knee pain in the front of the knee. More than half still have problems after two years, so it is not something they necessarily grow out of."

The study involving 3,000 teens revealed knee pain is a more significant problem than previously thought. Young people with knee pain may stop playing sports because of their discomfort. Without treatment, their quality of life may suffer, the researchers cautioned.

"If knee pain is not treated there is a high risk of the pain becoming chronic. And this clearly has a big consequence for the individual's everyday life and opportunities," Rathleff noted in a university news release. "Our findings show that these adolescents have as much pain symptoms and reduced quality of life as adolescents on a waiting list for a cruciate knee ligament reconstruction, or as a 75-year-old six months after receiving a new knee."

Previous research has shown that about 25 percent of patients who've undergone a knee replacement because of osteoarthritis of the kneecap also had knee pain since they were teenagers. Osteoarthritis of the kneecap, the researchers concluded, may sometimes begin early in life. They added, however, that earlier treatment and proper training could help.

Pain resolves with the right training in up to half of the young people with knee pain, according to the study published recently in BMC Pediatrics. But following through on treatment may be a challenge for many teens, the researchers noted.

"It is worrying that the pain only disappears in the case of half of the young people who actually do the training," said Rathleff. "The indications are that we should start the treatment somewhat earlier where it is easier to cure the pain."

This doesn't mean all teens with bad knees must visit a physical therapist, he added. Closer cooperation between physical therapists and general practitioners about how to best help these young people could also be a solution, he said.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics provides more information on growing pains.

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Civilian Life, Not Combat, May Drive Many Veterans to Drink

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Difficulties in civilian life, rather than war experiences, are a source of drinking problems among U.S. National Guard soldiers back at home, a new study suggests.

Setbacks such as job loss, divorce and financial problems -- all common for returning vets -- may make as many as 13 percent of vets turn to drink, researchers found.

"Exposure to combat-related traumatic events has an important effect on mental health in the short term, but what defines long-term mental health problems among Guardsmen is having to deal with a lot of daily life difficulties that arise in the aftermath of deployment when soldiers come home," said lead researcher Magdalena Cerda, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

These difficulties don't just aggravate existing drinking problems; "they may lead to new cases of alcohol use disorder," Cerda said. "To prevent the problem of alcohol abuse in the military from growing, we need to help Guardsmen who return home to find jobs, rebuild their marriages and their families, and reintegrate into their communities."

Nearly 7 percent of Americans have drinking problems, but the rate of alcohol abuse is twice that for reserve soldiers returning from deployment, according to background information in the study.

Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York City, agreed more attention should be paid to reservists after deployment.

"We need to make sure that we support veterans through homecoming and readjustment to civilian life, because it seems like those are the stressors that might contribute to alcohol abuse," she said.

"The findings also remind us that even though our soldiers put themselves in harm's way and are exposed to multiple life-threatening events and losses during deployment, the military environment may offer a type of social support that is protective against self-damaging behaviors," Yehuda added.

For the study, published online July 31 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers collected data on about 1,000 Ohio National Guard soldiers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009.

Over three years, the soldiers were interviewed three times and asked about their alcohol use. They also were asked about exposure to traumatic events, such as land mines, vehicle crashes, enemy fire and the deaths of fellow soldiers. They answered questions about their own injuries and about stressors in their lives since returning.

Among these veterans, six out of 10 had experienced combat-related trauma, 36 percent had experienced problems since returning, and 17 percent said they were sexually harassed during their most recent deployment.

In addition, 13 percent reported alcohol abuse or dependence during their first interview, 7 percent at the second interview and 5 percent during the third interview, the researchers said.

Cerda found that having at least one civilian stressor or an incident of sexual harassment during deployment increased the odds for alcohol problems among those who hadn't abused alcohol before. Combat-related events, however, were not strongly associated with alcohol problems.

Mark Kaplan, a professor of social welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, said re-entering civilian life after deployment can be "quite tough."

"Perhaps we have stressed mental health problems too much and what we need more of is an emphasis on the psychosocial circumstances," he said.

Kaplan said having social workers or professionals work with military families could help veterans readjust to life back home.

"Many are not prepared for departure to combat and many are not prepared to cope once they return," he said.

More information

For more on alcohol abuse, visit the American Academy of Family Physicians.

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How to Sleep Well in College – Even With Night Owl Roommates

Making new friends! Enjoying more freedom! Learning new things! Getting plenty of sleep!

OK, there's a lot for incoming college students to get excited about, and maybe sleep isn't too high on the list. But in order to handle these life changes while staying healthy and feeling your best, you've got to try to get seven to eight hours of quality sleep most nights. And that may be easier said than done. Between night owl roommates, more social and extracurricular activities, extra studying and loads of freedom to stay up as late as you'd like, sleep may fall to the bottom of your priority list.

It's not easy to work in regular sleep, but it's probably more manageable than writing that 10-page term paper or resisting the dining halls' bottomless ice cream, so we're sure you can manage. Here's how to enjoy a well-rested college experience:

Talk openly with your roommate. It's 3 a.m. You're trying to sleep, and your roommate is mid-"Game of Thrones" binging. Or he's fooling around with someone 20 feet from you. Or he's actually sleeping – and snoring deafeningly. What do you do? One route would be to not say anything for fear of creating an awkward situation, all while becoming grumpy and more sleep deprived, and thus grumpier. Here's the problem: "Silence is often viewed as consent in roommate situations," says Harlan Cohen, best-selling author of "The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College." "It’s easy to blame your roommate, but it all starts with you."

Cohen preaches the "uncomfortable rule," which is a pact between roommates dictating that if either of you feels uncomfortable with something the other roommate is doing, you have to tell him or her within 24 to 48 hours. "If you set that precedent early, you have the freedom to be honest," he says. And once you speak up, chances are, you'll find simple solutions. Explain that you have 8 a.m. class, and could he please wear headphones while watching TV after 11? Maybe create a "no hookups while I'm here" rule. Or simply ask if you can flip, wake or throw something at the roommate when he snores.

If, after giving it a few tries, you and your roommate can't work out a system that allows you to get some shut-eye, consider requesting a new room (and roommate).

[Read: How to Be Healthy in College.]

Adjust your environment. You probably won't be able to create a Ritz-Carlton suite from your shoebox dorm room and twin mattress, but do what you can to create a dark, cool, comfortable sleeping environment. If your bed is near the door, where you can hear the hustle and bustle from the hallway, move it to somewhere else in the room, Cohen says. Try hanging curtains around your bed to add privacy and block light, and consider adding white noise, he adds. You can buy white noise generators online and in big-box stores, or you can check out free websites like simplynoise.com. If the room is still too loud – perhaps it's near a high-traffic part of the floor – talk to your resident assistant about possibly changing rooms. Many campuses also have dorm buildings with quiet hours, which you may want to consider.

Set personal boundaries. "We’ve all been sabotaged by one more movie, one more show, one more drink, one more kiss, one more cuddle," Cohen says. And there will be no parents around to question the midnight parties, pizza runs or video game tournaments. You're your own "sleep boss," as Cohen puts it. Sure, it's good to be the boss, but the job comes with some responsibility. If you've got, say, an early morning final, you've got to decide an appropriate bedtime and stick to it. If you want to stay up late – one of the perks of being your own boss! – figure out which nights you can go out and which nights you ought to stay in, Cohen suggests. Do you have an 8 a.m. mandatory-attendance English class every Thursday? Maybe resign to a no-keg-stand policy for Wednesday nights this semester.

[Read: Your Brain on Booze.]

Steal naps when you can. If you're not getting much sleep at night, supplement with naps while your roommate isn't around, Cohen says. But note that while some naps work wonders to recharge your battery, long or poorly timed naps can make you feel groggy afterward or affect your sleep quality come bedtime. So nap wisely. While everyone's sweet spot is different, as a general guideline, the Mayo Clinic suggests shooting for midafternoon naps of about 10 to 30 minutes long.

Beware of overextending. Maybe you went a little crazy picking up pamphlets at the student involvement fair, or you were too ambitious while signing up for classes. So by the time you go to eight hours of classes, and then eat, and then audition for the play, and then play your rec softball game, and then go to French club and then (maybe) study, you're crawling into bed at 2 a.m. And then you have to wake up for class in five hours! Whew.

"This is the first time in your life where you’re the one who sets your own limits and creates your own boundaries," Cohen says. "And most of us suck at it." Prioritize your interests and needs – sleep should be pretty high on the list, by the way – and consider dropping whatever activity is left at the bottom.

Remember sleep hygiene basics. A lot of your old routine will be different in college. Your workload may increase. Your friend group may change. Your interests may shift. But the formula for good sleep hygiene will stay the same: appropriate, consistent bedtimes and less caffeine, alcohol, exercise and screen time as you approach those times. Getting that routine right will go a long way to helping you calmly navigate the changes college brings. "When you’re sleep deprived, you’re impatient, you can’t think clearly, and everything is bigger," Cohen says. "College is big enough. Take care of yourself."

[Read: How to Fall Asleep When It's 4 a.m. And You're Wide Awake.]

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Cholesterol Drugs May Speed Healing After Surgery

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Recovery time after surgery may be reduced for patients taking the cholesterol-lowering medications known as statins, according to a new study.

The study's Irish researchers suspect that the drugs may affect the body's inflammatory response, reducing the amount of time surgical patients' wounds need to heal. And that seemed to be particularly true among people who tend to have healing complications.

"Statins have become one of the most widely prescribed medications in the world. While they are typically used to manage high cholesterol levels, a number of researchers have been investigating the benefits of statins in other conditions, such as severe infections or following organ transplantation," said the study's lead author, Dr. Gerard Fitzmaurice, from Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, in a news release from the Society for Thoracic Surgeons.

In conducting the study, the researchers analyzed existing data on statins, most of which was from lab-based studies involving animals. They found that statins reduced the amount of time needed to recover after surgery from about 19 days to 13 days, according to the study.

Statins could improve wound healing in patients who've underdone any type of procedure, including heart surgery, the researchers concluded. This could result in smaller scars, they pointed out.

"Normal wound healing involves a series of phases that ultimately leads to a scar. Many things can affect this process and it's difficult to determine exactly how statins might improve wound healing, but it would appear that they influence a number of factors in the inflammatory response," noted Fitzmaurice. "Our analysis also shows that some statins are better at it than others."

Although the overall rate of chest wound infections is low -- only about 1 percent -- faster healing times might reduce this rate even further, especially for people with slow-healing wounds due to underlying health issues, such as diabetes.

"Based on the encouraging results in the systematic review, we would recommend consideration of an appropriately conducted, randomized-controlled, double-blind clinical trial to comprehensively assess the potential role of topical statins in the promotion of postoperative wound healing," concluded Fitzmaurice.

More information

The U.S. National Institutes of Health provides more information on statins.

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Big Jump in Doctor's Office Visits for Young Adults With Diabetes

By E.J. Mundell, HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A new report finds that by 2010, one in every 10 visits Americans made to their doctor's office involved diabetes, with the greatest rise among those aged 25 to 44.

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the number of office visits for patients with diabetes in this age group jumped by 34 percent between 2005 and 2010.

Almost 29 million Americans have diabetes, the CDC said, and managing the blood sugar disease costs almost $245 billion each year. Diabetes falls into two categories: Type 1, which is typically inherited and comprises about 5 percent of cases, and type 2, which is closely tied to obesity and makes up 95 percent of cases.

Overall, the new report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) found that office-based visits for diabetes patients rose by 20 percent -- from 94.4 million in 2005 to 113.3 million in 2010.

Since diabetes is linked to other conditions such as heart disease, vision trouble and stroke, many of these visits involved treatment for multiple problems, the report found.

One expert wasn't surprised.

"Eighty-seven percent of visits to physicians by patients with diabetes were made by patients with multiple chronic conditions," said Dr. Jeffrey Powell, chief of the division of endocrinology at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, N.Y.

"Approximately 35 percent of visits made by patients age 45 and over were by patients with four or more chronic conditions," he added. "This means that in addition to addressing diabetes, physicians have to consider multiple other medical conditions that the patients have as well. This becomes difficult to do in one office visit."

The CDC report, published July 31 in the NCHS Data Brief, also found that treatment got more complicated as people aged.

"Five or more drugs were continued or prescribed at 60 percent of the visits by patients with diabetes age 65 and over," Powell said. "This suggests that as people with diabetes get older, they have to take multiple medications. There is a significant financial burden to patients, plus this 'polypharmacy' can increase the chance that all of the medications will not be taken exactly as prescribed."

Another expert was alarmed by the findings in the young adult age group.

The new report "demonstrates that diabetes is no longer a disease of older patients," said Dr. Alyson Myers, an endocrinologist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

Type 2 diabetes has "become prevalent in adolescence with the ongoing obesity epidemic," she noted.

Myers also said it was "unsurprising to note that older patients have the greatest volume of visits," since they often have multiple chronic conditions. These may include high blood pressure, kidney trouble, high cholesterol levels and heart disease.

More information

Learn more about diabetes at the American Diabetes Association.

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No TV or Obesity, But Ancient People Still Had Heart Disease

By Amy Norton

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, July 31, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- They may not have had fast food, TVs or cigarettes, but people of ancient times commonly developed clogged heart arteries -- and a new research review speculates on some reasons why.

Using CT scans of mummified remains from ancient Egypt, Peru, the Aleutian Islands and the American Southwest, researchers have found evidence of widespread atherosclerosis -- the hardening of heart arteries from fatty substances that build up, eventually leading to heart attack or stroke.

That's despite the fact that those ancient groups were largely free of today's perilous lifestyle factors, such as sugar- and fat-laden diets, inactivity, smoking and widespread obesity.

"Our team has evaluated mummies from five different continents. We have yet to find a culture that didn't have atherosclerosis," said cardiologist Dr. Gregory Thomas, the lead author of a review published in the current issue of the journal Global Heart.

So, what does that mean for modern times? "These days, we blame ourselves when we or someone in our family develops heart disease," said Thomas, medical director of the Memorial Care Heart & Vascular Institute at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in California.

"We say, 'Well, if you'd just exercised more, you wouldn't have needed that heart surgery,'" Thomas said. "I think people can stop blaming themselves so much."

But before you hang up your running shoes and settle down with a bag of chips, Thomas also said that lifestyle still matters. "This doesn't mean we should stop trying to control risk factors [for heart disease]," he stressed.

Just don't expect to remain free of heart trouble simply because you jog every day or eat a healthier diet, Thomas said.

Based on what he and an international research team have seen, slightly more than a third of 76 Egyptian mummies had atherosclerosis -- and so did a similar percentage of mummies from Peru, the U.S. Southwest and the Aleutian Islands, in the Northern Pacific.

They typically died in what would be considered middle-age today. "It seems like they developed atherosclerosis around the same time that we get it today," Thomas said. So part of the explanation, he noted, may be age: If you live long enough, fatty deposits will start to build up in the arteries.

Genes are another major factor. "Genetics may account for about half of the risk of heart disease," Thomas said. "We all have some genetic predisposition to atherosclerosis, regardless of culture or lifestyle."

But the researchers also speculate about some environmental causes during ancient times. One is exposure to household smoke from cooking fires. Another is the host of infections people were constantly battling -- from short-lived bacterial and viral infections, to lifelong parasitic ones.

Thomas explained that even when people managed to survive those ills, the body would be in a continual state of low-grade inflammation, which is part of the immune system's response to invaders.

And that's in line with what scientists today suspect: Chronic inflammation contributes to atherosclerosis.

It's just that today, the primary causes of that inflammation may be different, said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of Women's Heart Health at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

Modern factors may include diet and sleep loss -- but there could be a range of yet unknown contributors, according to Steinbaum, who was not involved in the new research.

"This study reminds us that we need to keep looking at aspects of modern life that could be contributing to inflammation," Steinbaum said.

Thomas acknowledged that in Egypt, mummification was an elaborate and expensive process. So those remains would represent the upper class at the time -- people who might have enjoyed indulgent diets and ample lounging time.

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Health Tip: If You Get Lost on a Hiking Trail

Benefits of E-Cigarettes May Outweigh Harms, Study Finds

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Strict regulation of electronic cigarettes isn't warranted based on current evidence, a team of researchers says.

On the contrary, allowing e-cigarettes to compete with regular cigarettes might cut tobacco-related deaths and illness, the researchers concluded after reviewing 81 prior studies on the use and safety of the nicotine-emitting devices.

"Current evidence suggests that there is a potential for smokers to reduce their health risks if electronic cigarettes are used in place of tobacco cigarettes and are considered a step toward ending all tobacco and nicotine use," said study researcher Thomas Eissenberg, co-director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

The study, partly funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was published July 30 in the journal Addiction.

Whether e-cigarettes should be regulated, and how strictly, is being debated by regulatory agencies around the world. Several medical organizations have called for restrictions on use of the increasingly popular devices.

Although long-term risks of e-cigarettes remain unknown, the new study concluded the benefits of e-cigarettes as a no-smoking aid outweigh potential harms.

"If there are any risks, these will be many times lower than the risks of smoking tobacco," said senior author Dr. Hayden McRobbie, from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine at Queen Mary University of London.

"We need to think carefully about how these products are regulated," he said. "What we found is that there is no evidence that these products should be regulated as strictly as tobacco, or even more strictly than tobacco."

No evidence has shown that the vapor produced by e-cigarettes is harmful to users or bystanders in contrast to cigarette smoke, he added. It's not the nicotine in cigarettes that kills people, he said. (Nicotine is the addictive agent in cigarettes).

"Use of e-cigarettes by people who don't smoke is very rare," McRobbie said. Furthermore, there is no evidence to support arguments that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking tobacco, he added.

"There is evidence that e-cigarettes enable some users to quit smoking or reduce their consumption," McRobbie said. "If there is evidence that e-cigarettes reduce smoking-related harm, then they need to be easily obtainable and not regulated more strongly than tobacco products."

Dr. Norman Edelman, a senior medical consultant for the American Lung Association, disagrees. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should have authority over all tobacco products and e-cigarettes, said Edelman, a professor of medicine and physiology and biophysics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

"It is imperative that the FDA finalize proposed e-cigarette regulations by the end of 2014," he said. "The FDA needs to crack down on quit-smoking and other health claims that e-cigarette companies are making," Edelman said.

Edelman said it's too soon to know if e-cigarettes will cause long-term damage. "So far there hasn't been very much chronic use of e-cigarettes. So it's not possible to say there will be no harm," he said.

"Since we are talking about a recreational drug -- it's not essential to life, it doesn't cure any illness -- it would only make sense to regulate it rigorously until we find out whether it's good or bad," Edelman said.

Earlier this month, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies, which includes more than 70,000 members worldwide, urged governments to ban or limit e-cigarettes until more is known about their health effects.

And this month, the American Medical Association requested tighter restrictions on the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes.

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Tip-Over Furniture Can Kill Kids

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- It can happen in an instant: A small child pulls up on a television, dresser or computer monitor and gets critically injured when the furniture tips over.

"Every parent or guardian of a young child should look around their homes and imagine what could tip over, fall off walls and injure a child. Imagining it is better than it becoming a reality," Dr. Alex Rosenau, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said in a college news release.

Between 2009 and 2011, roughly 43,000 people ended up in a U.S. emergency room after an object or piece of furniture fell over on them. Young people were involved in 60 percent of these accidents. And nearly 300 kids ranging from 1 month to 8 years old died of their injuries, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

There are steps parents and guardians can take to prevent serious and fatal "tip over" injuries. The emergency physicians recommend the following precautions:

• Secure furniture to the wall. If you aren't sure how to do this, home improvement stores and child retail stores should be able to offer advice. It's also a good idea to replace any top-heavy furniture that can't be secured. This is particularly important for furniture with shelves, drawers and doors.


• Make sure that all computer monitors are also safely secured so they can't tip over.


• Store television and computer equipment close to the ground. Other heavy and commonly used objects should also be stored low to the ground.


• Don't put objects on top of TVs.


• Large wall art or sculptures that could fall and hurt a child should be secured or removed.


• Appliances, such as refrigerators, ovens and microwaves, should also be firmly in place.


• Mounted TVs should be well out of reach of young children.

Use safety gates to keep children out of rooms that aren't childproof, the emergency physicians advised. "Telling a child not to touch or climb on something is not enough," said Rosenau. "You must take the first steps to prevent tragedy from happening in your home by childproofing each room they are in."

More information

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission provides more tips to prevent furniture "tip-over" injuries.

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Early Stem Cell Transplant Vital in 'Bubble Boy' Disease

By Amy Norton

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Babies born with so-called "bubble boy" disease can often be cured with a stem cell transplant, regardless of the donor -- but early treatment is critical, a new study finds.

Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), as the condition is medically known, actually refers to a group of rare genetic disorders that all but eliminate the immune system. That leaves children at high risk of severe infections.

The term "bubble boy" became popular after a Texas boy with SCID lived in a plastic bubble to ward off infections. The boy, David Vetter, died in 1984 at the age of 12, after an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant -- an attempt to give him a functioning immune system.

Today, children with SCID have a high chance of survival if they receive an early stem cell transplant, researchers report in the July 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the best-case scenario, a child would get stem cells -- the blood-forming cells within bone marrow -- from a sibling who is a perfect match for certain immune-system genes.

But that's not always an option, partly because kids with SCID are often their parents' first child, said Dr. John Cunningham, director of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital. He was not involved in the study.

In those cases, doctors typically turn to a parent -- who is usually a "half" match, but whose stem cells can be purified to improve the odds of success. Sometimes, stem cells from an unrelated, genetically matched donor can be used.

The good news: Regardless of the donor, children with SCID can frequently be cured, according to the new findings. But early detection and treatment is vital.

"These findings show that if you do these transplants early -- before [the age of] 3.5 months, in a child without infection -- the results are really quite comparable to what you have with a matched sibling," said lead researcher Dr. Richard O'Reilly, chief of the pediatric bone marrow transplant service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

O'Reilly and his colleagues reviewed the cases of 240 infants treated for SCID at 25 U.S. centers between 2000 and 2009. They found that the babies had the best chance of survival if they received a transplant within the first few months of life.

When that happened, 94 percent of children were alive five years later. And survival rates were high -- 77 percent to 93 percent in children without active infections -- even if the donor was not a matched sibling.

If that early time window was missed, infants still had good survival odds if their transplant was done before they developed any infections: Overall, 90 percent were alive five years later, the investigators found.

In contrast, the poorest survival was seen among babies who were older than 3.5 months and had an active infection at the time of their transplant, the study authors noted. Of those 91 children, half died.

"Early diagnosis really makes for the best outcomes," O'Reilly said. "If we focus on that, we might get close to eradicating this."

Early diagnosis is becoming more common because there is now a newborn screening test. In 2010, U.S. health officials recommended that states include SCID in their newborn screening panels. So far, 21 states and the District of Columbia have done so, according to the Immune Deficiency Foundation, a nonprofit that is tracking the trend.

SCID is rare: In the United States, an estimated 40 to 100 babies are born with the condition each year, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

O'Reilly noted that some have questioned whether newborn screening is "worth it."

"I'd say that it is," he said.

Cunningham agreed. "Every state should institute newborn screening, because the outcomes are so good with early transplants," he said.

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Malaria Growing Resistant to Drugs Used to Fight It

By Randy Dotinga

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The parasite that causes malaria is growing increasingly resistant to the drugs commonly used to fight it, according to new surveillance reports. But several new drugs are in development, and at least one in early clinical trials may offer new hope against this global killer.

"Although there has been considerable progress in malaria control in the past decade, the battle against malaria is far from won, and there is still much more to do," said Dr. Brian Greenwood, professor of tropical medicine at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who wrote a commentary accompanying the new research.

Especially worrisome is the growing power of malaria parasites to survive the drugs that are designed to kill them, Greenwood said. One study reported widespread resistance to the drug artemisinin across mainland Southeast Asia. A second study found resistance to a drug combination -- dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine -- in Cambodia. Resistance to this drug is particularly concerning because this combination is often used in the most difficult-to-treat malaria infections.

Fortunately, even those who show resistance may get well when given longer courses of medication. "Many of these patients will get better eventually if they are treated for many days or treated with an additional effective drug," Greenwood said.

All of the new research, along with Greenwood's editorial, appears in the July 31 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Malaria is an infection caused by the parasite plasmodium, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes.

It's estimated that more than 200 million cases of malaria occur every year, according to the WHO. The annual death toll from malaria around the world has fallen from 1 million 20 years ago to about 650,000, mostly children in Africa, according to Greenwood.

The decline, he said, is due to better funding for treatment and prevention from international donors and national governments in malaria-stricken areas.

Greenwood said researchers are still trying to figure out if the same type of resistance seen in Southeast Asia is happening in India and Africa. The surveillance study on artemisinin resistance did include several sites in India and Africa, but Greenwood pointed out in his editorial that there just wasn't enough sampling from those areas to definitively say whether or not resistance is developing.

"There is a major concern that artemisinin-resistant parasites will spread to or emerge in sub-Saharan Africa, where the main burden of malaria is found," he said. "This would be a major catastrophe, but this could be curtailed if alternative drugs can be found."

One potential alternative medication is known as KAE609, from a class of drugs known as spiroindolones. In another new report, this one funded by the drug company Novartis, scientists report that they successfully treated malaria in 21 patients from Thailand with the medication.

The drug "appears to rapidly clear the blood of the two most common species of the malaria parasite," said study co-author Thierry Diagana, head of the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases in Singapore. It may also prevent transmission of malaria, Diagana said.

However, it's still too early to know if the drug is a success. The study represents the second phase of three stages of research required of new drugs.

The study was too small to determine if there are any significant side effects, according to Diagana. It's also too early to know the potential cost of the drug. More studies are needed in the second phase of research for the new drug, Diagana noted.

Greenwood said that the focus must remain on controlling the spread of malaria, treating those who are sick with existing medications, and developing new drugs to control the disease.

More information

For more about malaria, go to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Scientists Shed Light on Link Between Depression, Dementia

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Older people with depression are more likely to develop dementia, but researchers have been unable to explain the exact nature of the relationship between the two.

Specifically, they haven't been able to figure out the direction in which the relationship works -- does depression help bring on dementia, or does dementia cause people to become depressed?

A new study published online July 30 in the journal Neurology sheds more light on the mystery.

Depression is a risk factor for dementia, researchers report, and people with more symptoms of depression tend to suffer a more rapid decline in thinking and memory skills. While the study found an association between the two, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Depression accounted for about 4.4 percent of the difference in mental decline that could not be attributed to dementia-related damage found in the brain, the researchers said.

"This is a risk factor we should take seriously," said lead author Robert Wilson, senior neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center at Rush University. "Treating depression can reduce the risk of dementia in older people."

The study involved over 1,700 people, with an average age of 77, who had no thinking or memory problems at the start of the study.

Participants were screened every year for symptoms of depression, such as loneliness and lack of appetite, and took tests on their thinking and memory skills for an average of eight years.

During the study, about half of the participants developed mild problems with memory and thinking abilities that often appear as a precursor to Alzheimer's disease. A total of 315 people, or 18 percent, developed dementia.

A total of 680 people died during the study, and autopsies were performed on 582 of them to look for the plaques and tangles in the brain that are the signs of dementia and other signs of damage in the brain.

The investigators found that high levels of depression prior to a diagnosis of dementia are linked to a more drastic decrease in thinking and memory skills later on.

On the other hand, onset of dementia did not seem to be associated with an increase in depression. In fact, the opposite appeared to be true.

"We found that people who are developing dementia did not become more depressed as they developed dementia, they actually became less depressed," Wilson said.

"As people lose their thinking and memory skills, it becomes harder to become depressed and stay depressed," he continued. "Depression depends on a certain continuity of experience that becomes disrupted as you develop dementia. It's left to the rest of us to feel depressed as we watch our loved ones slip into dementia."

However, the researchers found no relationship between depression and dementia-related damage in the brain.

That could mean that treating depression will only stave off a portion of the thinking and memory decline that occurs with age, said Dr. Alan Manevitz, a clinical psychiatrist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

"Clearly, attending to depression during one's life, just like exercise or eating right, will lead to at least deferring some of the mental decline that comes with aging," Manevitz said. "Also, if you treat depressive symptoms, you may be able to reverse some part of the decline that's related to the depression."

Future research now should pivot to determining exactly how depression influences the risk of dementia, Wilson said.

"We must try to identify structures and functions in the brain that are linked to depression in old age and could help explain depression's link to dementia," he said. "That gives us a better chance of knowing how we should best treat depression in a way that will move the bar and reduce risk of dementia."

More information

For more information on depression, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Make Kids' Weight Loss a Family Affair, Study Suggests

By Alan Mozes

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Parents who want to help their preschooler shed excess pounds may want to team up with their child, new research suggests.

Youngsters whose parents joined them in a supervised behavioral modification program gained less weight than their peers who were enrolled in a traditional child-only program (an average difference of about four pounds over two years). Their parent partners also benefited, losing almost 15 pounds over two years, according to the study.

"In a nutshell, we found that with supervised expert guidance in a primary care setting, it's possible to help preschoolers gain weight at a healthier pace as they grow, and at the same time also help parents lose, too," explained study lead author Dr. Teresa Quattrin, a professor at the University at Buffalo, and pediatrician-in-chief at the Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y.

"But when the focus is on children alone you see less of a benefit for them," she added. "And obviously no benefit for the parents. So this family approach is a win-win."

Quattrin and her colleagues published their findings in the August issue of Pediatrics.

Weight problems often start at a young age. Nearly one-quarter of U.S. preschoolers are heavier than they should be, according to background information in the study. But, excess weight this early in childhood is a relatively new problem, so experts don't yet know the best way to treat overweight in this young group of kids.

To explore a potential treatment option, the study authors enlisted almost 100 children in the Buffalo area who were between the ages of 2 and 5 years.

All were either overweight or obese, and all had at least one parent who was also struggling with excess weight.

For one year, half the parents attended 13 one-hour group sessions in a primary care setting. During that time, all were given standard weight-loss information solely aimed at helping their child shed weight.

The remaining parents received the same general advice. But in addition, all were given hands-on guidance -- in person and by phone -- from "practice enhancement assistants" with training in psychology, nutrition and exercise science.

The goal: to change the whole family's behavior regarding food consumption and physical activity.

For example, practice enhancement assistants discussed the need for appropriate food portions and caloric content, alongside the dangers of consuming foods loaded up with too much sugar, fat, or artificial sweeteners.

Parents in the child-parent team group were also instructed to keep food diaries and progress graphs for themselves and their children, and were given weekly weight loss goals for all concerned.

The result: after tracking all participants for one year following treatment completion, investigators found that the preschoolers enrolled in the family-based program gained an average of 12 pounds over a two-year period. This compared with a gain of about 16 pounds among those enrolled in the traditional child-only program.

What's more, parents who participated in the family-based program themselves lost an average of 14 pounds in the same timeframe, compared with basically no weight loss whatsoever among parents in the child-only program.

Quattrin stressed that there's no reason to think similar programs wouldn't work equally well in helping families with older kids.

But what about parents who might be interested in a do-it-yourself family effort, one that doesn't rely on expert guidance?

"I don't know if we have the research yet to show whether or not families who try this on their own outside of a specialized weight management environment can be as successful in the long run," Quattrin noted. "It's very helpful to have this kind of guidance, so that the dietary and exercise information that is out there is not misinterpreted," she added.

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Different Areas of Brain Affected in Autism, Sensory Disorders

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Although the vast majority of kids with autism have abnormal sensory behaviors, their brains are still wired very differently from children who have trouble processing sensory stimuli, researchers report.

Children with sensory processing disorders (SPD) can be overly sensitive to sound, sight and touch. They can also have poor motor skills and show a lack of concentration.

Complicating matters, some kids with SPD have more severe symptoms than others. Some have trouble tolerating loud noises, like a vacuum. Others can't hold a pencil or control their emotions. Symptoms can also vary from one day to the next. This had led to a debate about whether SPD should be considered a separate disorder, the researchers pointed out.

These kids "often don't get supportive services at school or in the community because SPD is not yet a recognized condition," study corresponding author Dr. Elysa Marco, a cognitive and behavioral child neurologist at Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), said in a university news release. "We are starting to catch up with what parents already knew; sensory challenges are real and can be measured both in the lab and the real world."

"With more than 1 percent of children in the United States diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, and reports of 5 to 16 percent of children having sensory processing difficulties, it's essential we define the neural underpinnings of these conditions, and identify the areas they overlap and where they are very distinct," study senior author Dr. Pratik Mukherjee, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and bioengineering at UCSF, said in a university news release.

In conducting the study, published online July 30 in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers compared the brains of 16 boys with SPD and 15 boys with autism. All of the boys were between the ages of 8 and 12. These patients were compared to 23 boys who were developing normally.

Using an advanced form of MRI, the researchers were able to examine white matter, the "wiring" that links different areas of the brain.

The boys with SPD and autism had reduced connectivity in certain areas of the brain involved in basic sensory information. However, only the boys with autism had impairment in specific parts of the brain essential for social-emotional processing.

"One of the classic features of autism is decreased eye-to-eye gaze, and the decreased ability to read facial emotions," noted Marco. "The impairment in this specific brain connectivity not only differentiates the autism group from the SPD group but reflects the difficulties patients with autism have in the real world. In our work, the more these regions are disconnected, the more challenge they are having with social skills."

Meanwhile, children with SPD had less connectivity in the tracts of the brain involved in sensory processing.

"One of the most striking new findings is that the children with SPD show even greater brain disconnection than the kids with a full autism diagnosis in some sensory-based tracts," noted Marco. "If we can start by measuring a child's brain connectivity and seeing how it is playing out in a child's functional ability, we can then use that measure as a metric for success in our interventions and see if the connectivities are changing based on our clinical interventions."

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke provides more information on autism.

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Gene Mutation May Make Food More Tempting

By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 30, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Some obese people have a genetic mutation that seems to ramp up the reward centers in their brains when they see food, researchers report.

Gaining a better understanding of how this mutation triggers feelings of pleasure and gratification at the sight of high-calorie foods like chocolate could help improve strategies designed to prevent overeating, the scientists suggested.

More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese. Obesity is typically caused by a combination of overeating, a lack of physical activity and genetics. The most common genetic cause of obesity is a mutation in the melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) gene, the British researchers explained.

In conducting their study, published July 30 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, the scientists compared eight people who were obese and had the MC4R gene mutation with 10 people who were overweight or obese who did not have the gene mutation, and eight people who were a normal weight.

Using functional MRI scans, the study authors observed how pictures of tempting foods, such as chocolate cake, activated the reward centers of the participants' brains. Their response to photos of appetizing foods was then compared to the effect of pictures of bland foods, such as rice or broccoli, and objects like staplers.

Surprisingly, participants who were the same age and weight had different responses to pictures of appetizing foods, the researchers found. The brain scans revealed that obese people with the genetic mutation and participants who were a normal weight had similar heightened activity in the reward centers of their brain. Meanwhile, the reward centers in the obese and overweight people who did not have the genetic mutation were underactive.

"The brain's reward centers light up when people with the mutation and normal weight people viewed pictures of appetizing foods. But overweight people without the mutation did not have the same level of response," lead researcher Dr. Agatha van der Klaauw, of the Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England, said in an Endocrine Society news release.

"For the first time, we are seeing that the MC4R pathway is involved in the brain's response to food cues and its underactivity in some overweight people. Understanding this pathway may help in developing interventions to limit the overconsumption of highly palatable foods that can lead to weight gain," she explained.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about eating to maintain a healthy weight.

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Keeping Your Cholesterol in Check

Dave Romaine, 74, was the guy in charge at the Cleveland-area pig roast, cooking the succulent meat and cutting up the loins. But he didn’t take a single bite – or even lick his fingers. Romaine had recently completed an intensive program to lower his cholesterol, and roast pork was definitely off the menu. Once a dedicated meat eater, he no longer eats meat or meat products. As a “ modified vegan,” he says passing on the main course at the pig roast “didn’t faze me. It’s a mind-over-matter thing.”

[See: 'Healthy' Foods You Shouldn't Be Eating.]

Getting Clear on Cholesterol

Cholesterol – a waxy fat made in your body and also found in food – is complicated. While it’s notorious for raising heart attack and stroke risk, you need cholesterol to live. You can have too much bad cholesterol in your blood, or too little good cholesterol. Exercise and eating right alone can stave off high cholesterol – sometimes. Middle-aged men are at greatest risk, but women are affected too, and high levels have been measured in teens and kids.

There’s more than one type of cholesterol: Low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol is the bad guy. High-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol is the hero, removing bad LDL from the blood and sending it to the liver, where it’s treated as waste. Triglyceride is a related type of unhealthy fat. One goal in controlling cholesterol is keeping LDL and triglyceride levels low, while making sure HDL levels stay high enough.

Your body – mostly the liver – produces cholesterol to help coat cells, make bile acid to digest food and enable the body to make vitamin D and hormones such as testosterone and estrogen. The problem is that while you already make enough cholesterol, many common foods pump more into the bloodstream. Excess cholesterol can lead to atherosclerosis – plaque buildup in the lining of the arteries.

Most people know about heart attack and stroke, but that's only part of the risk cholesterol poses. Plaque buildup can occur "in any of the plumbing systems anywhere in the body," says Reena Pande, a cardiologist with Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. “That could be the heart, where people develop coronary artery disease and have, out of consequence of that, heart attacks or heart failure. It could be in the blood vessels that supply the brain, the carotid arteries, where the consequences of that could be stroke."

In your lower extremities, Pande says, plaque can lead to peripheral artery disease, blocking the blood vessels that supply the leg muscles, and people can have “discomfort in the blood vessels when they walk, or don’t get enough blood flow to their legs, so they can develop gangrene or ulcers of the toes and feet."

[See: 10 Ways to Lower Your Risk of Stroke. ]

Lifestyle Trial

So you’ve had that fasting blood draw, and it turns out you have high cholesterol. What happens next?

After determining patients have high cholesterol – and considering their overall health status as well – Pande often suggests a trial period of several months when they just make lifestyle changes. "Sometimes it’s as simple as getting fit, exercising more, losing weight, eating better to get their cholesterol down – it’s worth a try," she says.

Certain diets – notably the TLC Diet and Mediterranean Diet – have been shown to reduce cholesterol levels.

While diet isn't the only factor, what you eat has a huge effect on controlling cholesterol and keeping it down, says Kristin Kirkpatrick, manager of Wellness Nutrition Services at Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute. The patients she works with through the institute’s 12-week Cardiac Lifestyle Intervention Program “go pretty much fat free of any oils – no animal products,” she says. “We’ve actually seen some amazing results in their numbers for cholesterol."

Romaine, who went in with a cardiac condition, high cholesterol and a weight he says he "couldn’t get seem to get a hold of,” completed the CLIP program in January. Today, the former steak-and-hamburger man eats a lot of tofu, greens, beans, peas, lentils, kimwa – "things I’d never heard of before,” he admits.

In terms of dairy products, he says, the program allows nonfat items such as yogurt or skim milk, although he prefers soy milk. And he’ll have Egg Beaters once in a while.

[See: The Facts on Heart Disease .]

Does Your Food Have a Mother?

For people with health issues, Pande and Kirkpatrick stress that it's important to look at the whole patient and their entire range of lifestyle, medical and family risk factors when coming up with a cholesterol-lowering plan. If you're just trying to figure what to eat, Kirkpatrick offers some dietary advice. "No. 1: Any animal product has cholesterol," she says. "That’s a really easy way to decipher what has cholesterol and what doesn’t." Egg yolks, red meats and dark-meat chicken all contain cholesterol.

But you don't have to eliminate eggs completely from your diet. "From the sole standpoint of cholesterol, it’s perfectly fine to have egg whites every day," she says. Poaching and hard-boiling are good ways to prepare eggs, and if you prefer scrambled, she suggests that instead of cooking with butter, use a little olive oil, which has been shown to reduce cholesterol.

Despite popular belief, cutting out cholesterol-containing foods alone is not enough. Foods high in saturated fats or trans fats – such as cookies, cakes and muffins – can also boost cholesterol, Kirkpatrick says. And studies suggest that sugar may boost triglyceride levels. But it’s also not about never eating fat again. "It’s the type of fat you choose that has the most impact," she says. Walnuts, for instance, are a good source of healthy omega-3 fatty acids, and fish such as tuna or salmon help decrease LDL cholesterol. Olive and canola oil also help, as does soy.

“Understand that ‘plant’ doesn’t just mean a piece of spinach," Kirkpatrick says. "Olive oil is a plant-based food. The soluble fiber you get in oatmeal – that’s a plant-based food. So if something doesn’t have a mother, it’s probably a good thing for you to help reduce your cholesterol."

Exercise has been shown to reduce triglyceride levels, while raising levels of good HDL cholesterol. As part of CLIP, Romaine worked out an hour on a stationary bike or treadmill every day, although he admits slacking off at the gym since then. "But I do try to get in as much walking as I can,” he says.

[See: 7 Mind-Blowing Benefits of Exercise .]

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