Therapist Unlimited Blog

According to a recent medical study the Hispanic population groups have higher incidence rates of certain cancers and worse cancer outcomes if they live in the United States, than they do if they live in their homelands.
Paulo S. Pinheiro, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the University Of Miami Miller School Of Medicine said Hispanics are not all the same with regard to their cancer experience.
Pinheiro, who is also the study’s lead researcher, added targeted interventions for cancer prevention and control should take into account the specificity of each Hispanic
subgroup: Cubans, Puerto Ricans or Mexicans.
Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H. director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research, and co-associate director of the Cancer Prevention and Population Studies research program at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio for her part said Hispanics are really heterogeneous from cultural and socioeconomic perspectives and represent several population groups.
Ramirez said the Hispanic population in the United States is increasing nearly one in every three people will be Hispanic by 2050.
She said it is important to conduct studies like this to better understand these differences and learn what predisposes different population groups to certain types of cancer, in order to improve health outcomes.
To get the data they are searching for, Pinheiro and colleagues evaluated the kinds of cancers occurring in each Hispanic population group and compared their risk after moving to the United States.

Studies have shown that Hispanics are probe to suffer from cancer in the United States.

They conducted the study in Florida, which has a diverse Hispanic community composed of Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Central and South Americans.
The results indicated that these population groups showed different patterns of cancer once they moved to the United States; Mexicans had the lowest rates of cancer overall and Puerto Ricans had the highest rates of cancer. Cubans’ risk of cancer most closely resembles that of non-Hispanic whites. Similar to the U.S. non-Hispanic white population, Cubans and Puerto Ricans seemed to acquire higher risk for diet-related cancers relatively quickly.
Furthermore, Cuban males had higher incidence of tobacco-related cancers; Puerto Rican men had high incidence of liver cancer; and Mexican women had a higher incidence of cervical cancer. For all cancers combined, risk for most cancers was higher (at least 40 percent) among Hispanics living in the United States compared with those who live in their countries of origin.
The researchers also discovered that colorectal cancer risk among Cubans and Mexicans who moved to the United States was more than double that in Cuba and Mexico.
The same was said for lung cancer among Mexican and Puerto Rican Floridian women compared to those in Mexico or Puerto Rico.
Pinheiro explained this suggests that changes in their environment and lifestyles make them more prone to develop cancer.
He said it is puzzling that the groups, for which integration in mainstream American society is easier, including access to health care, are also those with higher cancer rates even after accounting for the increased detection of certain cancers in the United States.
Furthermore, the researchers said the results present important opportunities for United States and international collaborations in the prevention, treatment and research of cancer.
Ramirez said while physicians may not have to change the care they provide they should be more aware of the diversity and differences in cancer prevalence among this population.
She said physicians should probe Hispanic patients more on their background and family history to identify any problematic behaviors that could contribute to health problems.
The researchers said patients should become better informed of some of the positive aspects of their original lifestyles and should be strongly discouraged from adopting unfavorable lifestyles that may be more common in the United States, such as unhealthy diets, smoking and alcohol use.

The financial crisis happening around the world is not affecting the global economy but the health of the people as well.
A recent research has shown that levels of debt have been associated with an increased risk of being fat.
According to the research the high price of healthy food and a tendency for people worried by debt to comfort eat.
To get the data, Eva Munster, from the University of Mainz, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study more than 9000 people.
Based on the study they found out that 25% of the 949 people in debt were medically obese, compared to only 11% of the remaining 8318 participants.
Munster explained the recent credit crunch will have health implications for private households.
Munster added while income, education and occupational status are frequently used in definitions of socioeconomic status, levels of debt are not usually considered.
She said their study has shown that debt can be associated with the probability of being overweight or obese, independent of these factors.

Aside from the hardships it offers, the financial crisis can also make people fat.
 

She revealed a person’s ability to pick and choose the food they eat often depends on the financial resources they have available.
Munster said energy-dense foods such as sweets or fatty snacks are often less expensive compared to food with lower energy density such as fruit or vegetables.
Moreover, the researchers explain that debt can affect a series of risk factors for chronic diseases, for example by limiting leisure time activities and participation in social events.
The researchers said the quality of an individual’s diet can also be negatively affected.

According to a latest medical study those who are poor with low intelligence quotient are at higher chances of suffering from cardiovascular disease.
Dr. David Batty, a Welcome Trust Research Fellow at the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, and colleagues discovered that people on low incomes, in jobs with low prestige and with limited education had a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and other causes than people of a higher
socioeconomic status.
Batty said based on their study they also found out that IQ accounted for 23 per cent of the difference between the death rates among people from poorer and more advantage socioeconomic backgrounds, once age and classic known risk factors for heart disease such as smoking and obesity were taken into account.
He said previous studies have shown that people from poor socioeconomic backgrounds have worse health and tend to die earlier from conditions such as heart disease, cancer and accidents.
He added environmental exposure and health-related behaviors, such as smoking, diet and physical activity, can explain some of this difference, but not all of it.

Those poor people who have low IQ have strong chances of suffering from a cardiovascular disease.

The medical expert revealed this raises the possibility that, as yet, unmeasured psychological factors need to be considered and one of these is intelligence or cognitive function: a person’s ability to reason and problem-solve.
The medical expert added IQ is strongly related to socioeconomic status.
Furthermore, Batty said IQ alone explained 23 per cent of the differences in mortality between the higher and lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, in addition to the other, known risk factors.
Batty and his team, speculate that this might be because intelligence leads to better knowledge about how to pursue healthy behaviors, or owing to the link between intelligence and socioeconomic position (more intelligence leads to more education, income, and more prestigious jobs).
He said it also provides further evidence that efforts to tackle socioeconomic inequalities could have far-reaching benefits on health.
Batty explained initiatives aimed at raising living standards and education of the most disadvantaged families with children could potentially make a difference to those children’s health and wellbeing in later life.

Those persons who wish to avoid getting inflicted with any form of cardiovascular disease better practice healthy lifestyle now.
This developed after a recent study has confirmed earlier observations that a healthy lifestyle lowers risk of cardiovascular diseases.
According to the research those persons who follow a healthy lifestyle were protected against cardiovascular disease: one found it linked to lower risk of heart failure in men and the other found it linked to lower risk of high blood pressure in women.
The researchers said to those people who wish to avoid any form of cardiovascular disease should follow these six healthy lifestyle tips: maintaining a normal body weight, never smoking, taking regular exercise, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, eating plenty of cereals, and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Keep a healthy lifestyle if you wish to avoid any form of cardiovascular disease.

The researchers also found that the healthier lifestyle choices the men followed, the lower their lifetime risk of heart failure.
According to the researchers a heart-healthy diet was described as eating lots of fruits, nuts, legumes and other vegetables, whole grains, low fat dairy products, low sodium intake, and not consuming much red or processed meat or sugary drinks.
Moreover the researchers revealed to avoid any form or cardiovascular disease especially heart failure and high blood pressure, patients need to avoid and do these three things: Smoking, Exercise for at least 30 minutes every day and use calorie control and exercise to keep your BMI in the normal range.
BMI stands for Body Mass Index: it is the ratio of your weight in kilos to the square of your height in meters.
A normal BMI is between 20 and 25. Thus a person who weighs 80 kilos (176 pounds) and stands 183 cm tall (6 feet) has a BMI of 23.9 which is in the normal range.

Parents should do their best to keep their children away from air pollution and family problems to protect them from strong chances of suffering from asthma.
Recent studies have shown that children constantly exposed to air pollution and family stress makes them susceptible to asthma.
Based on the study conducted by the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) it was learned that the risk of asthma associated with traffic-related pollution was significantly higher for children of parents reporting high levels of stress. Stress, as well as low parental education, was also associated with larger effects of
exposure to tobacco smoke during pregnancy.
Principal investigator Rob McConnell, M.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and Deputy Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at USC revealed they found out that it was the children who were exposed to the combination of air pollution and life in a stressful environment who were at highest risk of developing asthma.
It was learned that asthma is the most common chronic childhood illness in developed countries and has been linked to environmental factors.
The study drew upon data from the USC Children’s Health Study, a longitudinal study of respiratory health among children in 13 southern California communities.
To get the data, researchers followed 2,497 children with no history of respiratory problems over three years, tracking whether they developed asthma starting in kindergarten or first grade.
The researchers also measured parental stress and parental education as an indicator of socioeconomic status using a questionnaire, and collected information on exposure to traffic-related pollution and whether the children had been exposed to tobacco smoke in utero.

Children should keep away from air pollution and family stress to avoid getting inflicted with asthma.

It was learned in the study that the results showed that parental stress alone did not increase the risk that children would develop asthma.
However, when children had a combination of parents with stressful lives and also lived near high levels of traffic-related pollution, their risk of asthma increased compared with children only exposed to pollution.
McConnell explained air pollution can promote inflammatory responses in the airways of the lung, which is a central feature of asthma.
McConnell added stress may also have pro-inflammatory effects and this may help explain why the two exposures together were important.
Moreover, McConnell said children whose parents perceived their lives as unpredictable, uncontrollable, or overwhelming were susceptible to the effects of pollution.
He said stress associated with poverty may help explain why asthma rates are often higher in lower socioeconomic status communities.
He added childhood asthma is a complex disease that probably has many contributing causes.
The medical expert said further study of effects of exposure to air pollution in combination with stressful environments associated with poverty and other social factors could contribute to our understanding of why the disease develops.

Those men who are too focus on their physical appearance better be careful since they are at high risk of suffering from eating disorders.
In a recent study he conducted, Dr. John Morgan, a consultant psychiatrist and director of the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders in Leeds revealed a growing numbers of young men are increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies.
Morgan said because of their dislike to their body, a number of young boys engage in unhealthy eating habits, just to be thin and sexy.
However, it is a sad note that due to these unhealthy eating habits these young men eventually suffer from eating disorders.
He added some men who showed signs of eating disorders even refused to undergo treatment since they are afraid to be stigmatized as the only man in the clinic.

Those men who are too conscious on their body better be careful since they are prone to eating disorders.

Moreover, Morgan explained the definition of sexy body as beautiful by the society drove many men to engage in unhealthy eating habits, which would later result in a disaster among them.
Morgan said this medical finding should serve as eye opener to men around the world that a healthy well-being is far more important than their physical image.

Those women, who survived cancer during their childhood, need to closely monitored since recent medical studies has shown that they are at higher risk of birth complications.
Dr. Sharon Lie Fong, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Erasmus MC University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands and her colleagues get the data after studying the pregnancies of 40 women who had been treated for cancer during their childhood, the majority of them for leukaemia, but also for solid tumours.
Fong said from their subjects, six had had radiation treatment directly to the abdomen.
She said the data they gathered were compared with those from a control group of more than 9,000 women who had not had cancer treatment.
She added all data were obtained from The Netherlands Prenatal Register, a nationwide database of pregnancy outcomes.
The medical expert said data were matched for age at pregnancy, year and month of delivery, and the number of times the woman had given birth.
The medical expert added the team did not investigate overall fertility and miscarriage rates, but they believe that it is possible that the fertility of all the cancer survivors will be compromised.
Fong said the ovarian reserve or capacity of the ovary to provide eggs capable of fertilisation, is established in the foetus and decreases during a woman’s reproductive lifetime.

Women who survived cancer during their childhood need to be careful since they are at higher risk of birth complications.

Fong added women with a poor ovarian reserve are less likely to conceive, even with assisted reproduction therapies, than those with a normal number of eggs.
She said women might also have an earlier menopause, as their stock of eggs is exhausted at a younger age.
She revealed long-term, multi-disciplinary follow-up for female child cancer survivors is mandatory.
Furthermore, the researchers said although at the start of treatment, future fertility may not be of great concern to care providers; it is to the patient’s parents.
The researchers added during follow-up, survivors should be made aware of the possible late effects of their treatment.
They said in addition to the deleterious effects of abdominal radiotherapy on reproductive function, radiotherapy to the head can also cause problems by causing the hypothalamus to reduce the production of follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone, both important in promoting ovulation.
The team believe that it is particularly important for all female children who are treated for cancer, and their parents, to be made aware of this risk.
They said their research has also shown how important it is that, if they do become pregnant, childhood cancer survivors should be closely monitored throughout their pregnancy and that they are delivered in a clinical setting, rather than at home.
The researchers concluded that even if at first fertility seems normal for childhood cancer survivors, there may be problems later in life.
 

Medical experts revealed older adults are at higher risk of health problems if they do not take the proper precautions to protect themselves from the sweltering heat.

Based on a latest medical study it was discovered that some 200 Americans die of health problems caused by high heat and humidity every year, most of them are 50 or older.
The experts explained due to some of the physical changes that happen as we age, that older adults cannot cool down as easily as others can.
To avoid medical complications for senior citizens when temperatures are high here are safety tips they can follow.

A. Use air conditioning in the home or go where it’s air-conditioned — a shopping mall, grocery store, senior center, movie theatre, museum or library, for example. (Fans are not effective enough to adequately cool down the body during intense heat waves.)

B. Drink a lot of water and other clear beverages that do not contain alcohol or caffeine. A good way to measure if enough fluids are being ingested is to check urine color. If urine is a light yellow color, enough water is being taken into the body. If it is darker yellow, the body needs more water.

C. Take cool showers, baths, or sponge baths.

D.  Wear lightweight, light-colored, loose-fitting clothing and hats.

E. Avoid extended periods of sun exposure.

F. Avoid walking long distances, lifting heavy objects, or other strenuous activities.

G. Avoid below are the most common health problems caused by heat:

H.  Avoid dehydration: Weakness, headache, muscle cramps, dizziness, confusion and passing out.

I.  Avoid heat stroke: A body temperature of or above 103 degrees; red, hot and dry skin; a fast pulse; headache, dizziness, nausea or vomiting, confusion and passing out.

J.  Avoid heat exhaustion: Heavy sweating or no sweating, muscle cramps, tiredness, weakness, paleness, cold or clammy skin, dizziness, headache, nausea or vomiting and fainting.

Older adults need to cool down during the hot days to avoid any form of health concerns.

Pregnant women around the world better be careful since their babies would most likely suffer autism if they experience some complications during pregnancy.
Based on the study conducted by trusted researchers they discovered six pregnancy-related factors that could lead to autism on their children.
The researchers found that the factors most strongly associated with an increased autism risk are:
- Being born to an older mother or father.
- Having a mother who was born abroad.
- Having a mother who experienced bleeding during pregnancy.
- Having a mother who experienced gestational diabetes.
- Having a mother who used medication during pregnancy.
- Being the first born - or later born in families where there are three or more children.
The researchers explained increased maternal age might be associated with autism because of a higher risk of chromosomal abnormalities in eggs.
On the other hand, mothers who are born in another country may not have natural resistance to infections in the country where they give birth, which may increase the risk for autism.

Pregnant women should take precautions to avoid complications during pregnancy to avoid chances that their babies will suffer from autism.

Moving to another country may also put women under stress, which could increase their chances of having a child who develops autism.
Bleeding during pregnancy, gestational diabetes and medication use are also associated with increased autism risk. Bleeding can cause foetal hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain of an unborn child). Women who develop diabetes during pregnancy experience hormonal and metabolic changes, which may affect their baby’s health and development. Foetal development may also be affected by some medications, which can cross the placenta during pregnancy.
Furthermore, the researchers said the association between birth order and autism risk is unclear.
However, children with autism are more likely to be the first-born in families with only two children. In larger families with three or more children, they are more likely to be born later.
 It is possible that parents decide not to have more children after one has developed autism.
The researchers said there was "insufficient evidence" to point to any one prenatal factor as being particularly significant.
However, they said there is some evidence to suggest that exposure to pregnancy complications in general may increase the risk of autism.

Children as early as seven years old who are obese are also most likely to suffer from heart disease and stroke later in their lives.
This was the result of a study, conducted by researchers at Nemours Children’s Clinic and Dr. Charles DelGiorno, an Endocrine trainee from the Mayo Clinic of Jacksonville, Fla., which demonstrates that the unhealthy consequences of excess body fat start very early.
Principal investigator and senior author Nelly Mauras, MD, Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology at Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida explained obesity alone, the study shows, is linked to certain abnormalities in the blood that can predispose individuals to developing cardiovascular disease early in adulthood.
Mauras said their study finding suggests that there is a need for more aggressive interventions for weight control in obese children, even those who do not have the co-morbidities of the metabolic syndrome.
He said the metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors that raise the risk of developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
He added it is increasingly being diagnosed in children as overweight becomes a greater problem.
The lead researcher said that although debate exists as to its exact definition, to receive a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome, in general you must have at least three of the following: increased waist
circumference (abdominal fat), low HDL ("good") cholesterol, high triglycerides (fats in the blood), high blood pressure and high blood glucose (blood sugar).
To get the data they are looking for the team screened more than 300 individuals ages 7 to 18 years and included just those without features of the metabolic syndrome.
The researchers even included 202 subjects in the study: 115 obese children and 87 lean children as controls - half were prepubertal and half-in late puberty. Obese children had a body mass index (a measure of body fat) above the 95th percentile for their sex, age and height.
To be eligible to participate in the study, the children and adolescents had to have normal fasting blood sugar levels, normal blood pressure and normal cholesterol and triglycerides.
Lean controls also could not have a close relative with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure or obesity.
The latter group proved very difficult to find.

 
Obese children need to careful since their condition could lead to a heart disease later in their lives.

All study participants underwent blood testing for known markers for predicting the development of cardiovascular disease.
These included elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation, and abnormally high fibrinogen, a clotting factor, among others.
Obese children had a 10 fold higher CRP and significantly higher fibrinogen concentrations, compared with age- and sex-matched lean children, the authors reported.
These abnormalities occurred in obese children as young as 7-year-olds, long before the onset of puberty.
Moreover, based on their study, the lead researcher said the results were striking since the children were entirely healthy otherwise.
She said that although it is not yet known whether early therapeutic interventions can reverse high CRP and fibrinogen, she said it would be prudent for health care providers to advise more aggressive interventions to limit calories and increase activity in "healthy" overweight children, even before the onset of puberty.