Health | 100 Tips

Jackknife

Try this exercise to tone and strenthen your core:

1. Lie flat on your back with your arms extended straight back behind your head and your legs extended.

2. Bend at the waist while simultaneously raising your legs and arms to meet in a jackknife position. Pause, then lower your arms and legs back to the starting position.

3. Repeat for the desired amount of reps.

Words and workout by Nichelle Laus, model: Shannon Prasarn, photography by Dave Laus

NEXT: Check out our collection of amazing ab workouts
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4 breathing techniques to reduce stress

Feeling stressed? Simple tweaks to breathing can immeasurably boost wellbeing and reduce stress. Here's how to audit and upgrade your breath for better physical and mental health.

Step 1: Breathe from your abdomen
To get the most out of each breath, you need to breathe from your belly, says Ros Ben-Moshe, director of Laughlife Wellbeing Programs.
"Optimal breathing stems from the abdomen, where a richer inhalation of oxygen and exhalation of carbon dioxide occurs, slowing the heart rate and easing anxiety." She says breathing deeper in this way stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which induces feelings of "peace and calm".
"Interestingly, we begin our lives breathing well, which can be seen watching babies breathing, as they take deep breaths in and out with their abdomen rising and falling, not their chest," Ben-Moshe notes. Somewhere along the way we lose this vital skill of breathing through our tummies, and rely on shallow breathing instead.

Plus d'infos »

Chest press with resistance band

The standing chest press strengthens the chest muscles, the pectoralis major and minor, as well as the front fibres of the deltoid shoulder muscle.

How to

1. Attach the centre of the band to a stationary object and hold one end in each hand

2. Stand with your back to the attachment, elbows bent and shoulders abducted to 90 degrees (upper arm level with shoulder) so that your hands are next to your chest.

3. Push forwards and straighten your arms out in front of you.

4. Slowly return to the starting position.

Why use resistance bands?
They are super affordable and the ideal fitness multi-tasker. Just choose the right band based on your weight – it's all written on either the packaging, online or ask in store. As you get stronger you'll need to lower the assistance to account for your new strength.

For example, a robust general tension band combined with a heavy band offers roughly the same amount of resistance as a power band, but the combination gives you three different levels of assistance (one with the heavy band, one with robust, and one with both bands). Colours denote the different band strengths and vary between brands.

NEXT: Lunge with chest press

Words and workout by Nikki Fogden-Moore

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FDA Advisers Recommend Approval of First of 2 New Cholesterol Drugs

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 9, 2015 (HealthDay News) — U.S. health experts voted on Tuesday to recommend approval of the first of two drugs in a new class of cholesterol medications that sharply cut “bad” LDL cholesterol in people who don’t fare well on statins.

In a 13-3 vote, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers gave their blessing to the drug alirocumab (Praluent), the New York Times reported. On Wednesday, the panel will decide whether to recommend the same for a similar medication known as evolocumab (Repatha). Both medications belong to a class of drugs called PCSK9 inhibitors.

While the FDA isn’t compelled to follow the recommendations of its advisory committees, it usually does so.

A recent review of 24 clinical trials — published April 28 in the Annals of Internal Medicine — found that PCSK9 inhibitors lowered people’s LDL cholesterol by about 47 percent, on average.

More importantly, the drugs seemed to cut the risk of heart attack or death from heart disease, according to the researchers.

Experts did urge some caution, however: The trials so far have been short-term, and it’s not clear whether the new cholesterol drugs really do extend people’s lives, according to Dr. Seth Martin, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“Still, the early data are exciting, and we’re cautiously optimistic,” Martin, who co-wrote an editorial published with the study, told HealthDay.

Until large clinical trials are completed in 2017, experts won’t have definitive proof of whether the new drugs actually reduce the risk of heart attacks and death, the Times reported.

Statins have long been the go-to treatment for lowering LDL cholesterol. Studies have proven they can help prevent heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular complications.

But for some people, statins cause intolerable muscle pain. “Those people would be obvious candidates for PCSK9 inhibitors,” Martin said.

For others, statins just don’t do the job — including people with an inherited condition called familial hypercholesterolemia, which causes very high LDL levels and heart attacks at an early age. That’s another group that could benefit from the new drugs, Martin said.

“Familial hypercholesterolemia is not rare,” he noted. “It affects about one in 300 to 500 people.”

Of the trials in the Annals review, half involved people with familial hypercholesterolemia. Some of the others focused on people who’d dropped statins because of side effects.

PCSK9 inhibitors work by blocking a protein in the liver that helps regulate LDL cholesterol, according to the study. The new drugs don’t appear to cause the muscle woes that statins can.

However, that doesn’t mean they’re completely safe. Martin said the main concern that has arisen in trials is the potential for “neurocognitive effects.” For example, some study patients have reported problems such as confusion and trouble paying attention. But, Martin said, it’s not clear yet whether the PCSK9 inhibitors are actually the cause.

For the review, researchers led by Dr. Eliano Navarese, of Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf, Germany, pooled the results of 24 clinical trials involving over 10,000 patients. Some compared a PCSK9 inhibitor to a placebo (inactive treatment), while others used the cholesterol drug ezetimibe (Zetia) for comparison.

Overall, the researchers found, the new drugs cut LDL to a greater degree. They also lowered patients’ risk of heart attack or death by about half.

The caveat, Martin stressed, is that the studies were short, and few people suffered complications. He said longer-term studies are needed to prove that the drugs prevent heart attacks and extend people’s lives — without serious side effects.

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a preventive cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, agreed that the results so far are encouraging.

“For all those patients unable to take statins, finally there might be an option that can change (their) outcomes,” said Steinbaum, who was not involved in the recent review.

But, she added, “we need to patiently wait for the next phase of trials to see whether the clinical outcomes are as promising as the initial studies suggest.”

If PCSK9 inhibitors are approved, some real-world obstacles remain.

For one, the drugs have to be self-injected, which might put some people off. On the other hand, Martin said, the injections are done only once a month or every couple of weeks.

“Some people may prefer that to taking a pill every day,” he said.

And then there’s the cost. PCSK9 inhibitors are specialty drugs known as monoclonal antibodies, which are lab-altered versions of human antibodies. And they are not cheap.

The cholesterol drugs could cost up to $12,000 a year per patient, according to a recent estimate by CVS Health, one of nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers.

Since so many Americans take cholesterol drugs — for years or even decades — CVS warned that the cost to the health care system could be sky-high.

More information

The American Heart Association has more on treating high cholesterol.

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Brains of Teens With Bipolar Disorder Develop Differently: Study

TUESDAY, June 9, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Teens with bipolar disorder seem to have abnormal development in areas of the brain that help regulate emotions, researchers report.

“In adolescence, the brain is very plastic so the hope is that one day we can develop interventions to prevent the development of bipolar disorder,” senior study author Hilary Blumberg, a professor of psychiatry, diagnostic radiology, and of psychiatric neuroscience at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn., said in a university news release.

Bipolar disorder typically appears in the teens and causes severe swings in mood, energy and activity levels. Problems with impulse control are common among people with bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder are also at high risk for substance abuse and suicide, the researchers said.

Over two years, the Yale School of Medicine team conducted a series of MRI scans on 37 teens with bipolar disorder and a control group of 35 teens without the condition.

In normal development, teens tend to lose gray matter (neurons) and add white matter connections. But compared to the control group, teens with bipolar disorder lost more gray matter and had no increase in white matter connections. These differences were seen in two areas of the brain.

The findings suggest that brain circuits that regulate emotions develop differently in teens with bipolar disorder, according to the authors of the study.

The study was published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about bipolar disorder.

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FDA Advisers Weigh 2 New Cholesterol Drugs

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 9, 2015 (HealthDay News) — U.S. health experts are weighing whether to endorse two drugs from a new class of cholesterol medications that seem to sharply cut “bad” LDL cholesterol in people who don’t fare well on the commonly used drugs called statins.

The new drugs are known as PCSK9 inhibitors. U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss and possibly recommend approval of the drugs alirocumab (Praluent) and evolocumab (Repatha).

While the FDA isn’t compelled to follow the recommendations of its advisory committees, it usually does so.

A recent review of 24 clinical trials — published April 28 in the Annals of Internal Medicine — found that PCSK9 inhibitors lowered people’s LDL cholesterol by about 47 percent, on average.

More important, the drugs seemed to cut the risk of heart attack or death from heart disease, according to the researchers.

“Still, the early data are exciting, and we’re cautiously optimistic,” Martin, who co-wrote an editorial published with the study, told HealthDay.

Statin drugs have long been the go-to treatment for lowering LDL cholesterol, according to background information in the study. Studies have proven they can help prevent heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular complications.

But for some people, statins cause intolerable muscle pain. “Those people would be obvious candidates for PCSK9 inhibitors,” Martin said.

“Familial hypercholesterolemia is not rare,” he noted. “It affects about one in 300 to 500 people.”

Of the trials in the current review, half involved people with familial hypercholesterolemia. Some of the others focused on people who’d dropped statins because of side effects.