4 Things You Should Know About A High Alkaline Diet

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It’s no secret that Kelly Ripa is serious about her healthy lifestyle, but now the Live! With Kelly and Michael host is sharing a well, interesting, method that she says changed her life. On a recent episode of the show, the 44-year-old credited a high-alkaline cleanse with alleviating post-injury problems she’s been in physical therapy to treat. It’s “responsible for me not being in pain,” she said.

Ripa isn’t the only alkaline supporter. Celebs like Victoria Beckham, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jennifer Aniston have all admitted that they are fans. The theory behind high-alkaline eating is that it can optimize your body’s pH balance by swapping out foods high in acidity—like meat, dairy, sweets, caffeine, alcohol, and artificial and processed products—for a diet rich in fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

RELATED: I Tried a Detox Diet!

But is it just another crazy Hollywood fad—or could it actually improve your health and well-being? Here are four facts you should know before trying it.

The research is limited

Despite the celeb support, many doctors are skeptical of this diet’s restorative powers. “Many health professionals dismiss an alkaline diet as completely unnecessary, because our bodies are inherently designed to maintain pH balance,” Health‘s contributing nutrition editor Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD notes in a previous post for Health. “The key benefits of this approach seem to stem from guidelines you’ve already heard a million times: eat more fruits, veggies, and plants; cut back or cut out sugar and processed foods; and slash your sodium intake.”

In other words, eating more “alkaline” foods can’t hurt, but the benefits of the diet likely have little to do with your body’s pH.

There is no one specific alkaline regime

The “alkaline diet” is more of a theory rather than a specific plan, which can make it a little confusing to follow. It can refer to anything from a short-term, highly-restrictive juicing cleanse to simply adding more foods with higher alkaline content to your long-term eating plan, Sass writes. Advocates also disagree on what the exact ratio of alkaline foods to acidic ones in your diet should be. Generally, 80/20 is the most popular.

RELATED: 10 ‘Powerhouse’ Vegetables to Add to Your Cart

Acidic foods aren’t necessarily bad

Making things more difficult is the fact that proponents of the plan disagree over which foods are considered alkaline and which are acidic. And many foods that tend to fall under the acid-forming category, like cranberries, pomegranates, chickpeas, walnuts, and tea, actually offer great health benefits. “While these foods aren’t entirely off limits [in alkaline diets], I question the need to ration them,” Sass writes.

Watch your protein intake if you partake

Because a high-alkaline diet reduces your intake of meat and dairy products, it is really important to sub in protein-rich foods that are generally considered to be alkaline, like almonds, chestnuts, and tofu. As Sass told Health in an interview this week: “It all comes back to balancing.”

RELATED: 14 Best Vegan and Vegetarian Protein Sources

 

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Leaky Pipes May Mean Tainted Tap Water: Study

MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — It’s long been thought that leaks in water pipes wouldn’t pose a health threat to the water supply. But a new study suggests otherwise.

As explained by the British researchers, the pressure in water mains typically forces water out through any leak — preventing any contaminants from getting in. However, their study finds that if the damage leads to a significant pressure drop in a pipe, dirty water surrounding the pipe can then get sucked in through breaks.

It was believed that only clean water from the leak would be sucked into a broken pipe, and that even if contaminants were also sucked in, they would be expelled once water pressure in the pipe returned to normal.

However, a team led by engineer Joby Boxall of the University of Sheffield discovered that groundwater from around the pipe — which is often contaminated — can be sucked into and remain in the pipe. It then travels through the water supply network, they said.

“Previous studies have shown that material around water pipes contains harmful contaminants, including viruses and bacteria from feces, so anything sucked into the network through a leak is going to include things we don’t want to be drinking,” Boxall said in a university news release.

“Many of us will have had [an upset] tummy in the past that we couldn’t quite explain, often putting it down to something we’d eaten,” he said. “It now seems possible that some of these illnesses could have been caused not by food, but by water.”

Study co-author Richard Collins said that the new “research shows that contaminants that enter through a leaking pipe could be reaching consumers’ taps, and although this will be at very low concentrations, it would fail the safety tests if detected.”

In addition, Collins added in the news release, “We also believe that microorganisms, including pathogens, which enter the network in this way could attach to the inner surface of the pipe and multiply. If they are later dislodged by another change in flow, they could then reach our taps in higher concentrations.”

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about drinking water.

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7 Reasons to Never Miss a Monday Workout

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If you spent your whole weekend on the couch, waking up for a Monday morning workout might be extra tough. But the start of the week is actually a great time to recommit to staying fit. (No offense, New Year’s resolutions.) Research shows that people think about and act on healthy activities more on Mondays than any other day of the week. A study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine revealed that there are more searches related to health topics at the beginning of the week, no matter the time of year, and more folks start exercise routines on Monday than any other day of the week, too.

RELATED: 19 Ways to Trick Yourself Into Becoming a Morning Person

Check Twitter or Instagram and you’ll see thousands of posts tagged with #nevermissamonday. But Monday motivation is sometimes hard to come by. When the snooze button is calling your name, it’s easy to think of a million and one excuses not to lace up your sneakers and sweat it out at the start of the week. But by fitting in a workout, you’ll be rewarded in more ways than one. You’ve got 52 opportunities to make it happen this year. Here’s why it will be worth it.

7 Reasons to Never Miss a Monday Workout

1. You’re more likely to work out the rest of the week.
Hello, clean slate. Exercising on Mondays can get the ball rolling for your workout routine. “There’s something about starting on a Monday that makes you feel like you’re off to the right start,” says Gretchen Rubin, author of New York Times bestseller Better Than Before, which advises on how to master daily habits. “This idea of ‘don’t break the chain’ is really powerful.” This philosophy, she says, can motivate you to exercise on Tuesday, Wednesday or whenever you pencil in your next workout

2. You’ll smile more.
Got a case of the Mondays? You’re not alone. Research shows that the average office worker doesn’t crack a smile until 11:16 a.m. But exercise could help you beat those Monday blues. One common benefit of physical exercise is that it releases endorphins, the hormones that make you feel happier. Nothing feels as great as a finished workout, right? And science backs us up. According to researchers, children and young people had improved self-esteem after exercising. Plus, if you’re running or playing outside in the sunshine, you’ll get an extra dose of happiness. One study published in Environmental Health and Technology found that a simple five-minute walk outdoors helped improve mood and perceived well-being.

RELATED: Want to Live Longer? Walking 2 Extra Minutes an Hour Can Help

3. You’ll quell anxious thoughts.
Dreading that mountain of paperwork gathering dust on your desk over the weekend? It’s not uncommon to feel apprehensive about heading in to work. But don’t go hiding back under the covers just yet — you may want to hop on the treadmill for a few miles instead. Studies show that aerobic exercise can lessen general anxiety. Plus, high-intensity exercise has been shown to reduce anxiety sensitivity, or the fear of anxiety that is often a precursor to panic attacks.

4. You’ll kickstart good self-control.
It may take some willpower to lace up those sneakers, but exercise is actually a great way to harness more discipline for other areas of your life. Moving around for as little as 15 minutes has been shown to help people manage cigarette cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Why? Exercise releases GABA, a neurotransmitter that helps keep you in control of impulses and can quiet anxious brain activity.

5. You’ll catch better zzz’s.
Sleep-deprived office drones, take heart. Resistance exercise can help reboot your circadian rhythm, the internal body clock that controls your sleep cycle. And in case you needed extra motivation to keep sweating it out during the week: One study revealed that four months of consistent exercise helped chronic insomniacs sleep 45 minutes more per night.

RELATED: Can’t Sleep? Your Guide to A Better Night’s Rest

6. You’ll boost brainpower.
Need to ace a presentation this week? Hitting the gym could be your secret to success. Physical exercise has the potential to increase levels of BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor), which is shown to help build healthier nerve cells. One study showed that strenuous exercise helped participants perform better on a memory test. Scheduling a sweat session before you put your nose to the grindstone could help you absorb new concepts faster, too. Another study revealed that participants could learn vocabulary 20 percent faster after intense physical exercise, compared to the control group.

7. You might make more money.
Lifting weights may not lead to an immediate promotion, but it can’t hurt your chances at some extra cash. One study found an association between gym habits and higher pay. Employees who exercised regularly earned nine percent more than their couch potato peers. Cha-ching!

More from Life by DailyBurn:

What Happens to Your Body When You Skip the Gym?

4 Science-Backed Ways to Motivate Yourself to Work Out

Short on Time? Your 6-Minute Ab Workout

Life by DailyBurn is dedicated to helping you live a healthier, happier and more active lifestyle. Whether your goal is to lose weight, gain strength or de-stress, a better you is well within reach. Get more health and fitness tips at Life by DailyBurn.

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World’s Population Is Getting Sicker, Study Shows

MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A new global tally of health finds that only about 4 percent of people worldwide had no health problems in 2013, while a third — about 2.3 billion people — had more than five health problems.

And the situation is getting worse, not better: Worldwide, the proportion of years of healthy life people lost because of illness (rather than simply dying earlier) rose from 21 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2013, according to the Global Burden of Disease study.

The growing number of elderly people also means that the number of people who will be living with health problems will rise rapidly over coming decades, the researchers warned.

The study involves data from 188 countries and looks at more than 300 illnesses and injuries, according to a news release from The Lancet, which published the findings June 8. The study is the largest analysis of trends in health around the world for the years 1990 to 2013, the journal said.

In both 1990 and 2013, the leading causes of ill health worldwide were: Low back pain, depression, iron-deficiency anemia, neck pain and age-related hearing loss. In 2013, two conditions — musculoskeletal problems (mainly conditions such as low back pain, neck pain and arthritis) and mental health/substance abuse disorders (mainly depression, anxiety, and drug and alcohol abuse) — accounted for nearly half of all loss of healthy years of life, the report’s authors said.

According to the study, one of every 10 people in the world in 2013 suffered from at least one of the following disorders: tooth decay, tension headaches, iron-deficiency anemia, age-linked hearing loss, genital herpes, migraines, intestinal roundworm, and a genetic blood disorder called glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency trait.

The study also found a “startling” rise in ill health between 1990 and 2013 due to diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis.

They noted that societies seem to be doing better at tackling death rates than they are at lowering rates of disability. For example, global diabetes cases actually rose by 43 percent over the past 23 years, while deaths from diabetes only rose by 9 percent, the study found.

“Large, preventable causes of health loss, particularly serious musculoskeletal disorders and mental and behavioral disorders, have not received the attention that they deserve,” study author Theo Vos said in a journal news release. He is professor of global health at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“Addressing these issues will require a shift in health priorities around the world, not just to keep people alive into old age, but also to keep them healthy,” he said.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians outlines what you can do to maintain your health.

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Statins Pose No Greater Harm to Memory, Study Suggests

MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Even though some early research suggested that people who take statin drugs might experience short-term memory loss, a large new study finds they are no worse for recall than other cholesterol-lowering medications.

According to researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Pennsylvania, prior, limited research and anecdotal information from patients had hinted that statins might cause memory problems — leading some patients to stop taking the drugs.

Statins include widely used medications such as Crestor, Lipitor and Zocor.

To investigate the issue, a team led by Brian Strom, chancellor of Biomedical and Health Sciences at Rutgers, analyzed data from nearly 1 million patients. The researchers compared memory changes in three groups: Patients who recently started taking statins, those taking other cholesterol-lowering drugs, and people not taking any cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Compared to nonusers, more patients taking statins reported memory loss in the 30 days after first taking the drugs, Strom’s team found. However, the same was true of patients who took other cholesterol-lowering drugs. An “observational” study like this one also can’t prove cause and effect, experts note.

In a Rutgers news release, Strom said that the new finding could mean “that anything that lowers cholesterol has the same effect on short-term memory.” However, he believes that theory is “not scientifically credible,” because of the wide differences in the chemical structures of various cholesterol-lowering medications.

The more likely explanation is “detection bias,” which means that patients taking a new drug visit their doctors more often and are therefore paying closer attention to their health, Strom said.

“When patients are put on statins or any new drug, they’re seen more often by their doctor, or they themselves are paying attention to whether anything is wrong,” he explained. “So if they have a memory problem, they’re going to notice it.

“Even if it has nothing to do with the drug, they’re going to blame it on the drug,” Strom added.

The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and was published June 8 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

Previous studies have actually shown that statins might improve long-term memory, Strom noted.

The bottom line: “You shouldn’t worry about short-term memory problems from any statins and, long-term, we know they improve memory,” he said.

Statins are a “very effective therapy” and “very safe,” Strom said. “No drug is completely safe. But it has an opportunity to dramatically reduce heart disease in the country. People shouldn’t steer away from the drug because of false fear of memory problems.”

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more about statins.

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Gun Violence Takes Toll on Kids’ Mental Health, Study Finds

By Carrie Myers
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — More than one in four children in the United States is exposed to weapon-related violence — as a victim or witness — which ups their risk for mental health problems, a new study says.

Using 2011 data from a national survey of children and parents, researchers also estimated that one in 33 kids has been assaulted in incidents where lethal weapons — guns and knives — were used.

Such lethal weapons exposure makes it more likely they will arm themselves, or associate with people carrying weapons. They are also more likely to suffer long-term psychiatric consequences, the study authors said.

“Exposure to violence involving highly lethal weapons is associated with higher trauma symptoms, over and above exposure to all other types of violence, making it a strong contributor to adolescent depression, anxiety and aggression,” said study co-author Kimberly Mitchell, a research assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

“These are problems pediatricians encounter often in their practices,” she added.

Kids exposed to weapons-related violence are also more likely than others to experience seven or more types of victimization in the prior year, the researchers found.

The study, published online June 8 in the journal Pediatrics, focused on more than 4,100 children from 2 to 17 years old who participated in a telephone survey. (Parents or caregivers answered questions for those younger than 10.)

Based on the responses, researchers estimated that more than 17.5 million children in the United States have experienced violence involving weapons such as guns, knives, rocks and sticks.

But exposure to lethal weapons had the strongest consequences, the researchers found.

Moreover, witnessing an incident involving a lethal weapon is as traumatic as being the victim, the researchers said.

“Our data — not just in this paper but the whole National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence research program — shows that witnessing violence has just as many traumatic psychological consequences for kids,” said study co-author Sherry Hamby, a research professor of psychology from Sewanee: University of the South.

“After all, just because the gun was pulled on someone else doesn’t mean the witnesses aren’t in danger, too,” she said. “And sometimes what someone might describe as ‘witnessing’ involves actual physical danger or injury to kids as well.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, said Mitchell, “We found youth living in what we’re calling a ‘weaponized environment’ are more likely to report victimization with a weapon.”

Specifically, kids exposed to gangs are twice as likely to report being a victim of violence involving a weapon, the study found. “The same was true for personal weapon-carrying,” she said.

Ideally, Mitchell said, children would avoid environments where weapons are found. “Yet this might be difficult for some youth living in high-crime communities,” she said.

“This points to the importance of a public health approach to this problem and looking for community- and policy-level solutions,” Mitchell added.

Can these results be translated to children who “witness” violence with weapons in video games and movies? Not according to this particular survey, said the study authors, since the questions related to “real life” incidents, not television or video games.

The study results do not suggest that simply being exposed to guns and knives increases a child’s risk of being traumatized. It is being exposed to violence using guns and knives that causes mental health trauma. The study states, “Positive firearm experiences for some youth may moderate or buffer the effects of victimization exposure.”

One injury expert said the study results should prompt additional efforts to protect children from the harms of violence.

Dr. Patrick Carter, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan Injury Center, said measures are needed by individuals and communities “that decrease the exposure of children to firearm and other weapon-related violence and aid in preventing the negative long-term health-related consequences of such violence.”

Hamby concluded: “The collateral damage from gun and knife violence extends well beyond the ‘target’ victim. Screening for weapon exposure should be standard practice for children receiving services for victimization.”

More information

Crimes Against Children Research Center offers resources for victims.

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Scoring System May Predict Patient’s Risk of Death in Next Year

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A fairly simple scoring system appears to accurately estimate patients’ risk of dying within a year of hospitalization, a new study finds.

Researchers said the tool could be useful in comparing hospitals’ quality of care in a more accurate way. But it’s not clear if it can be used on a personal level, to help manage a patient’s end-of-life care.

“My hunch is, this could be developed to use on the front lines, in routine practice,” said lead researcher Dr. Carl van Walraven, of the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada.

However, he added, that hasn’t been proven yet.

In theory, having an objective way to estimate a patient’s prognosis could aid a discussion about where to go next with treatment. And the new tool could potentially be used that way, agreed Dr. Robert Arnold, medical director of the Palliative and Supportive Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“The prognostic information is an important step,” said Arnold, who was not involved in the study. “The next step is, how do we best move from the statistical information to the conversation?”

Doctors aren’t very good at estimating prognosis, “and we don’t like to talk about it,” he added.

One option for seriously ill patients is palliative care. This refers to therapy focused on easing physical or psychological symptoms, rather than curing a disease.

However, studies in the United States show that many Americans who could benefit from palliative care don’t get it.

To develop the new scoring system, van Walraven’s team used administrative data that is routinely recorded when patients land in the hospital — including age, chronic medical conditions, any ER visits in the past year, and whether they live independently at home or need care.

The researchers assigned points to each piece of information and ended up with a system that estimated a patient’s risk of dying in the next year. A score of 21, for example, translated to a 1 percent risk, while a score of 55 meant a 90 percent risk.

Then they tested the score’s accuracy using records from more than 3 million patients at hospitals in Boston, Ontario and Alberta, Canada.

It turned out their scoring system was a reliable measure, the researchers reported June 8 in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). There was only a minor difference between the score’s predictions and the actual percentage of patients at each hospital who died within a year.

Its performance was “about as good as you’re going to get,” said Dr. Robert Palmer, a professor of geriatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va.

It could prove “very useful” in comparing hospitals’ quality of care, said Palmer, who is also a member of the American Geriatrics Society. A hospital’s post-discharge death rate could look high on the surface, he noted, but what matters is whether it’s higher than would be expected based on the patients the hospital sees.

But Palmer questioned whether the scoring system could be translated into everyday care. “As a doctor, I want to look at all the clinical information available to me,” he said. “Would this (score) tell us anything beyond what we already know clinically?”

Van Walraven agreed that for everyday practice, the scoring system would need to be altered — using patients’ more-detailed medical information, not only administrative records. It would also need to be tested in a long-term study, he said.

A broader question, Palmer said, is whether any such scoring system will affect patients’ care and well-being near the end of life.

He pointed to a famous 20-year-old study, known as SUPPORT. It found that giving doctors’ prognostic estimates made no difference in how they managed seriously ill patients’ care.

Still, Arnold said nowadays more patients and their doctors are thinking about the quality of the time they have left, and making treatment decisions based on that.

“If you know you have limited time left, what’s most important to you?” he said. “And can we figure out a way to best address your values?”

More information

The Center to Advance Palliative Care has resources for finding palliative care.

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The Gross Mistake You’re Making With Your Contact Lenses

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If you’re a regular wearer of contact lenses, you’ve probably been warned about the health hazards of leaving them in too long and washing them improperly (or infrequently). But a new study from NYU Langone Medical Center’s a gross reminder about why it really is a bad idea to use unwashed fingers to pop them out or sleep in them  (as tempting as that may be when you’re sooo tired): It found people who wear contacts have different types of bacteria in their eyes than non-users—including one kind often connected with eye ulcers. (Ouch.)

For this small study, researchers swabbed the eyes of 20 subjects—9 contacts-wearers and 11 non-users—to examine the types of bacteria there. Those who wear contacts had a higher number of four species: Lactobacillus, Acinetobacter, Methylobacterium, and Pseudomonas, the last of which is commonly linked to corneal ulcers.

RELATED: 5 Ways You’re Using Contact Lenses Wrong

“There has been an increase in the prevalence of corneal ulcers following the introduction of soft contact lenses in the 1970s,” study co-author Jack Dodick, MD, and professor of ophthalmology at NYU Langone noted in a press release. “Because the offending organisms seem to emanate from the skin, greater attention should be directed to eyelid and hand hygiene.”

So what can you do to keep your eyes infection-free? We asked Steven Shanbom, MD, an opthamologist in Berkeley, Michigan, for a quick primer:

RELATED: Easy Ways to Protect Your Eyes at Any Age

Clean your hands, then the lenses

Be sure to wash your hands with soap before you handle your contacts. Then rid the lenses of harmful dirt and bacteria by putting them in the (now spotless) palm of your hand, followed by some cleaning solution, then gently rubbing the solution into the lens. (Note: Even if your solution bottle says “No Rub” on it, you’ll get much more sanitary lens if you do.)

Consider different contacts

Dr. Shanbom sees daily disposable soft lenses as a good way to avoid these issues. “There’s only so much gunk and bacteria that can get into the eye when you’re using a new set of contacts every day,” he says. And if you’re less than diligent about cleaning your contacts, what could be easier than never having to do it ever again?

Give ’em a rest

The best way to avoid a bout of pink eye or something more severe, however, is wear glasses when you can to limit your eye’s exposure to lenses. Dr. Shanbom advises wearing your contacts only during the work day, and sticking to glasses at home and on the weekends, limiting your lenses to 12-14 hours a day at the most. (And never swim with your contacts in, since pool water’s teeming with infectious bacteria just waiting to glom onto them. Ew.) The upside: With the recent resurgence of glasses as a cool accessory, you’ll be right on trend.

RELATED: Should You See An Eye Doctor?

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Here’s the Difference Between MERS and Ebola

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The news sounds familiar: a virus with no treatment or cure is spreading abroad. But while Ebola dominated the infectious disease news over the last year, the latest infection making headlines is the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which has most recently hit South Korea, infecting 87 there and killing 6.

Could the two viruses cause similar damage?

Currently, MERS doesn’t appear to be able to spread like Ebola can. Though it’s in the same family of viruses as SARS and the common cold—both highly contagious—MERS appears to be less transmittable. While Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, MERS doesn’t spread easily from person to person, and though it spreads through the respiratory tract, very close contact is needed, which is why the risk is higher for health care workers.

Both diseases have high fatality rates (around 3 to 4 of every 10 patients reported with MERS have died) and like Ebola, there is no vaccine or cure for MERS. But right now, MERS is more of a mystery to the medical community.

“Ebola has been around for 40 years so we have a pretty good sense of how it functions and its genome has been pretty stable,” says Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “MERS emerged in 2012 and we are still learning about it, and it may still be learning about us and evolving. It’s believed that when SARS spent more time circulating among humans, it evolved and became more transmissible.” Frieden says they haven’t yet seen that in MERS, but they’re watching: the CDC is currently sequencing the genome of the virus to understand how it might be changing, and to track its course.

The chance that MERS could change to become more transmittable worries experts. “Personally, I am more concerned about MERS following the course of SARS than I ever will be regarding Ebola becoming widespread outside of certain regions of Africa,” says Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh.

Source: Courtest of WHO/Time.com

MORE: What Is MERS? Here’s What You Need To Know

MERS has yet to take that course, Frieden says, but hospitals can be hotbeds for the infection. Through intensive investigations in affected countries, the CDC has determined that more than 90% of the cases could be traced health care exposures. So far there hasn’t been evidence of sustained community spreading. “Hospitals can become amplification points,” says Frieden. “It’s the case in measles, it’s the case for drug-resistant tuberculosis, it’s the case for MERS and SARS and Ebola. That’s where sick people go and that’s where vulnerable people are. It really emphasizes the importance of good infection control in the health care system.”

In May of 2014, the U.S. experienced two cases of MERS. In both instances, the patients were health care providers who lived and worked in the Middle East. Health departments around the U.S. have the ability to test for the virus, and the U.S. has already tested around 550 people in 45 states as a precaution since the disease first emerged in 2012.

MERS and Ebola share an important similarity: a lack of treatments or vaccinations. There’s currently no vaccine. “If there were a vaccine, it’s the kind of thing that might be useful in the camel population, but that’s very theoretical for the future,” Frieden says.

Only 20% of countries are currently able to rapidly detect, respond to or prevent global health threats from emerging infections, like MERS and Ebola, according to CDC data. Countries around the world and official health emergency responders like the World Health Organization have vowed to increase their ability to act during outbreaks that public health experts say are undeniably in our future. Frieden says the CDC in partnership with other countries is accelerating its Global Health Security program, which will increase preparedness worldwide. The CDC is making visits to eight countries in the next six weeks to move the program forward.

“Bottom line, both Ebola and MERS are emerging infections that show us why it’s so important for every country in the world to be prepared to find and stop health threats when and where they emerge,” Frieden says. “We do think the South Korea outbreak will well grow, but there’s no reason to think it can’t be controlled as other outbreaks have been controlled.”

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Poor Sleep? Eating Less at Night May Make Next Day Easier

MONDAY, June 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Concentration and attention problems caused by sleep deprivation might be eased by eating less late at night, according to a new study.

The research included 44 volunteers, aged 21 to 50. For three days, they were given unlimited access to food and drink during the day. But they were only allowed to sleep four hours a night.

“Adults consume approximately 500 additional calories during late-night hours when they are sleep-restricted,” senior author David Dinges, director of the unit for experimental psychiatry and chief of the division of sleep and chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said in a university news release.

On the fourth night, about half of the participants continued to have unlimited access to food and drink. The other half were restricted to water from 10 p.m. until they went to sleep at 4 a.m.

At 2 a.m. on each of the four nights, the participants underwent tests to measure their memory, thinking skills, sleepiness, stress level and mood.

On the fourth night of sleep restriction, those who fasted had better reaction times and fewer attention lapses than those who ate, the findings showed.

Also on the fourth night, those who ate had much slower reaction times and more attention lapses compared to the first three nights. The people who fasted didn’t show a decrease in performance, the investigators found.

The study was scheduled to be presented this week at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Seattle. Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

In another study to be presented at the meeting, the same team of researchers found that adults with chronic lack of sleep have a reduced metabolism. The researchers suggested that people may need to compensate for this loss of calorie-burning power by increasing their physical activity levels or reducing their calorie intake to prevent weight gain after sleep deprivation.

This study included 36 healthy adults aged 21 to 50. Their resting metabolic rates — how much energy their bodies use when relaxed — was measured after normal nights of sleep, and after five nights of sleeping just four hours a night.

Resting metabolism decreased after sleep deprivation, the study found. The good news is that it returned to normal after a night of recovery sleep, according to the study.

“Short sleep duration is a significant risk factor for weight gain and obesity, particularly in African Americans and men,” study senior author Namni Goel, a research associate professor of psychology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, said in the news release.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about sleep deprivation.

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