This bicep curl shows a different overhand grip on a basic weight and is ideal for toning your forearms as well as bicep.
How to
Place your hand over the weight and engage your core.
Step back with one foot for strong posture and isolate your bicep as you curl the weight up to your shoulder and back down again.
Control and selecting the right weight for your level is key.
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TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Most hospitalized Americans aren’t asked if they take dietary supplements, such as multivitamins, a new study suggests.
“If clinicians are unaware of possible drug-[dietary supplement] reactions, they may unknowingly provide a treatment plan or prescribe medications that could have an adverse reaction or interactions with the dietary supplement,” said study author Dr. Paula Gardiner.
She is assistant director of Boston Medical Center’s program for integrative medicine and health care disparities.
“Dietary supplements also affect physiological processes in the body and could have an impact on medical procedures like surgery, chemotherapy, blood work and many other treatments or procedures,” she added in a medical center news release.
Nearly 18 percent of American adults (more than 40 million) take dietary supplements, according to the 2012 National Health Interview Survey.
The most commonly used dietary supplements are vitamins and minerals, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. But other supplements may include herbs, amino acids or other substances, the study authors pointed out.
The study, published recently in the journal Patient Education and Counseling, looked at 558 hospital patients, more than half of whom (60 percent) used dietary supplements.
Of those 333 patients, only 36 percent had use of supplements documented at admission to the hospital. Only 18 percent told a health care provider about their dietary supplement use, and only one in five were asked about dietary supplement use by a health care provider, the study found.
The ideal scenario is to be asked at admission about dietary supplement use, to disclose use of the products, and have their use documented in medical records. But all three criteria were met for only 6 percent of the supplement users, the researchers found.
Documentation of dietary supplement use on medical charts was lower among older patients and non-white patients, the researchers said.
“Research has shown that some of the reasons patients do not disclose [dietary supplement] use is because they either don’t know that physicians need the information, or sometimes there’s a fear of being judged by a clinician,” Gardiner said.
“Medical school faculty have the opportunity, and in fact the obligation, to educate tomorrow’s physicians about the importance of [dietary supplement] dialogue with patients of all ages and cultural backgrounds,” she said.
Doctors need to establish a formalized approach to documentation to help prevent adverse reactions from dietary supplement-prescription medication interactions, Gardiner concluded.
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about dietary supplements.
TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Long-term exposure to noise pollution from traffic may reduce life expectancy, a new study contends.
Living near busy roads may also increase the risk of stroke, particularly among older people, the researchers said.
“Road traffic noise has previously been associated with sleep problems and increased blood pressure, but our study is the first in the U.K. [United Kingdom] to show a link with deaths and strokes,” study author Jaana Halonen, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a university news release.
But, it’s important to note that the study only showed an association between road noise and these health outcomes, and not a cause-and-effect relationship.
“From this type of study, we can’t tell for certain what the risks of noise are to an individual, but these are likely to be small in comparison with known risk factors for circulatory diseases like diet, smoking, lack of exercise and medical conditions such as raised blood pressure and diabetes,” study co-author Dr. Anna Hansell, from the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment & Health at Imperial College London, said in the news release.
“However, our study does raise important questions about the potential health effects of noise in our cities that need further investigation,” she added.
The findings were published June 23 in the European Heart Journal.
The study looked at information from 8.6 million people living in London between 2003 and 2010. During this time, almost 450,000 adults died. About 290,000 of those adults were elderly. Just over 400,000 adults were admitted to the hospital for heart problems during the same time period. About 180,000 of these people were elderly, the study reported.
Researchers measured how much traffic noise these people were exposed to, day and night. They also looked at other risk factors, such as the participants’ age, sex and neighborhood characteristics, including smoking rates and air pollution.
Deaths were 4 percent more common in areas with daytime road traffic noise of more than 60 decibels (dB) compared to areas with noise levels less than 55 dB.
The World Health Organization says community noise levels above 55 dB are potentially harmful. As many as 1.6 million people in London live in areas with daytime traffic noise levels above 55 dB, the researchers noted.
The study authors suggested that chronic noise levels may cause troubling sleeping and stress, which might contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease.
Adults living in areas with the most daytime noise pollution were also 5 percent more likely to be treated for a stroke in the hospital than those living in areas with less noise. The risk of stroke was even higher for elderly people living in the noisiest daytime areas. These residents were 9 percent more likely to have a stroke. Elderly people exposed to noise pollution at night had a 5 percent higher stroke risk, the study said.
These findings add to a growing body of evidence that reductions in noise pollution could have health benefits, the researchers concluded.
More information
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provides more information on noise pollution.
Widely considered one of the most popular ads ever created, the Coca-Cola company’s “Hilltop” commercial first aired in 1971, and surfaced again recently as part of AMC’s Mad Men series finale. The famous minute-long spot opens with a blonde, blue-eyed all-American girl singing, “I’d like to buy the world a home, and furnish it with glee,” before panning out to reveal a diverse cast of characters from all over the world ready to join each other in song.
The key line in this display of world peace and togetherness being, of course: “I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company.”
Well, that was then. This is now: With more than two-thirds of Americans overweight or obese, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) released a scathing parody of that ad today—starring a somber cast of doctors and hospital patients who would “like to buy the world a drink that doesn’t cause disease.”
RELATED: How Drinking Diet Soda Could Increase Belly Fat
CSPI, a non-profit health advocacy group, has a simple point to get across in their new short film: Drink less soda. Sugary drinks are the single largest source of calories in the diets of American teens, and countless studies have linked soda and other sweet drinks to major health problems like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
“For the past 45 years, Coca-Cola and other makers of sugar drinks have used the most sophisticated and manipulative advertising techniques to convince children and adults alike that a disease-promoting drink will make them feel warm and fuzzy inside,” CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson said in a press release about the video. “It’s a multi-billion-dollar brainwashing campaign designed to distract us away from our diabetes with happy thoughts.”
The “Change the Tune” video, published on YouTube, features Denver-area physicians and real people suffering from ailments including obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and tooth decay. The camera captures one patient injecting himself with insulin, and another (a young adult) putting in dentures.
RELATED: 13 Ways to Quit Soda for Good
It’s a dramatic portrayal of what excess sugar can do to a person’s health: “If not for drinking soda pop,” the group sings, “my liver might not be enlarged, might have a few more teeth.” But is it over the top?
Not according to Rafael Perez-Escamilla, PhD, professor of epidemiology and public health at the Yale School of Public Health. “The ad is completely appropriate,” he says, “and I can tell you that every single statement it makes is scientifically correct and not at all exaggerated.”
Perez-Escamilla recently served on the 2015 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which recommended for the first time that people limit the amount of added sugar in their diets to no more than 10% of their daily calories.
RELATED: 10 Reasons to Give Up Diet Soda
That’s about 12 teaspoons a day, total. The panel noted that Americans currently consume 22 to 30 teaspoons total, half of which comes from soda and other sugary drinks. (A 12-ounce can of non-diet cola contains about 10 teaspoons.) It also recommended that sugary drinks be banned from schools, and backed a proposed change by the FDA that “added sugar” be included on food labels.
Of course, an occasional sugary drink won’t cause these ailments, at least not by itself. Perez-Escamilla says to think of soda as liquid candy: “It’s something that should be consumed sporadically and in small amounts, and there’s absolutely no need for it in your diet,” he says. “I would recommend that people try not to drink it regularly, not even on a weekly basis.”
Even if you exercise regularly and have room for the calories in your diet, he says, soda is bad for you in other ways besides just weight gain. CSPI’s ad touches on tooth decay, but oral health is just one example, says Perez-Escamilla. “It’s not as simple as brushing your teeth more—you’re also consuming the sugar into your body, and that affects many different organs.”
RELATED: 9 Ways to Quit Sugar for Good
Diet soda, which is sweetened with artificial sweetener instead of sugar (and which has been associated with its own list of health issues) was not addressed in the video or the accompanying press release.
CSPI hopes that the video will help spread its message to people of all ages across the country.
“I think it’s very clever, because CSPI doesn’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars that soda companies have to pay for advertising,” says Perez-Escamilla. “This is a good way to turn the tables on them, and hopefully let as many people as possible see what is likely to happen if you drink enough sugary drinks.”
Health reached out to Coca-Cola for comment, but has not yet received a response.
RELATED: 10 Easy Ways to Slash Sugar from Your Diet
TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Intensive physical therapy helps restore arm function in people who have survived a severe stroke, a new study finds.
University of Florida researchers followed 39 patients who underwent intense physical therapy for the arms five hours a day, five days a week, for 12 weeks.
For the study, the team “enrolled people who had a stroke a year or more prior to their study participation, and who were still severely impaired,” lead researcher Janis Daly, a professor of neurology in the College of Medicine, said in a university news release.
“The magnitude of recovery we observed in our study is higher than any other studies that have been published so far, which supports the promise of longer treatment and more intensive treatment after stroke, even for those who are more severely impaired,” she added.
Three rehabilitation methods were used. One was motor learning rehabilitation, in which patients concentrate on performing a movement as deliberately as possible and constantly repeat the movement.
Another method was electrical stimulation rehabilitation, in which electrodes stimulate the muscles on the forearm and cause the hand to lift. The third method was robotics-assisted rehabilitation, in which robotics software assists with arm movement.
One group of patients did five hours a day of motor learning alone, while the other patients did motor learning for 3.5 hours and either electrical stimulation or robotic-assisted therapy for 1.5 hours.
On average, patients in all three groups doubled or nearly doubled the ability to use their stroke-affected arm, according to the study.
“The recovery was meaningful to patients in terms of physical function. Each person’s recovery was somewhat unique,” said Daly, who is also director of the National Veterans Affairs Brain Rehabilitation Research Center of Excellence in Gainesville.
“Some had dramatic recovery, some had less,” Daly explained. “Some were able to perform functional tasks that they weren’t able to do before; some recovered the ability to move their arm so they could actually place the arm for functional tasks, for example into the sleeve of a sweater.”
A larger study is needed to confirm the findings, Daly noted.
The study was published in the June issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
When the researchers calculated the salaries of the therapists and the cost of rehab equipment, they estimated that treatment for each patient cost between $4,500 and $5,600.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about stroke rehabilitation.
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Could impotence drugs like Viagra, Cialis or Levitra raise a man’s odds for melanoma skin cancer?
A new review of data involving over 20,000 men does find a slightly higher risk of the disease in men who took erectile dysfunction drugs versus those who didn’t.
However, the researchers believe the bump in risk is tied to lifestyle factors that men who take impotence medications indulge in — such as tanning — rather than the pills themselves.
“The bottom-line is that we found no evidence of a causal relationship between any type of erectile dysfunction drug and an increased risk for either melanoma or basal cell carcinoma,” said study lead researcher Dr. Stacy Loeb, a urologist with NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.
The study, which received no funding from the pharmaceutical industry, is published in the June 23 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to Loeb, eyebrow-raising results from a study released in 2014 spurred the new research.
“Last year there was another study, done in the U.S., that got a lot of publicity after it suggested that there was a relationship between Viagra, specifically, and increased melanoma risk,” she explained.
“I just wasn’t convinced that this was a real relationship,” she added, noting that the earlier study involved 142 melanoma patients, and only 14 of them had used Viagra.
However, “because a lot of patients taking erectile dysfunction medications were starting to express concern, I thought the issue warranted a closer investigation,” Loeb said.
To do so, her team looked at federal data from Sweden on melanoma cases there, and on Swedes’ medication use. They specifically zeroed in on the records of more than 20,000 Swedish men, most of whom were white. Between 2006 and 2012, more than 4,000 of the men were diagnosed with melanoma, the records showed.
By cross-referencing the more than 2,000 men who had taken Viagra, Levitra or Cialis with the melanoma group, the team determined that 435 men who’d been treated with impotence meds also developed skin cancer.
Overall, men who took an erectile dysfunction drug did have a 21 percent higher risk for melanoma than those who did not, the study found.
But this type of study can’t prove cause-and-effect. And, digging deeper, Loeb’s team found no evidence that taking a higher dosage of any of these three drugs led to a higher risk for melanoma. Evidence of such a “dose-response” relationship would be key to confirming that the medications helped cause skin cancer, the researchers explained.
What’s more, the team also noted that among men taking impotence drugs, the risk for basal cell carcinoma — a type of skin cancer that develops very differently from melanoma — was almost exactly the same (19 percent) as it was for melanoma.
That observation also undermined the notion that the drugs themselves contributed to the men’s skin cancer risk, Loeb’s team said.
So what could account for the rise in skin cancer risk for men taking erectile dysfunction drugs? The answer, said Loeb, probably lies in lifestyle.
“We found that the men at greatest risk for melanoma generally had higher educational backgrounds and higher incomes,” she explained. Factors such as those tend to translate into having more available leisure time in general — and greater exposure to the sun.
Both of those factors “were strong predictors of getting skin cancer and taking erectile dysfunction drugs,” which tend to be relatively expensive medications, Loeb said.
So “while there is an association between using these medications and skin cancer risk, it does not appear to be a causal association,” she concluded.
Loeb believes that the take-home message from the study is an old and simple one for men worried about their skin cancer risk: Avoid tanning, and use sun protection when you go outside.
More information
There’s more on skin cancer risk factors at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Photo: Getty Images
Most Americans could afford to lose a few pounds, according to a new study that looked at overweight and obesity rates in the United States. What’s more, there are now more obese women in this country than overweight women.
Researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis looked at data from a nationally representative group of 15,208 people that were 25 or older between 2007 and 2012. They found that during this time, 40% of men in the group were overweight and 35% were obese. In women, 30% were overweight and 37% were obese.
The study defined “overweight” as having a body-mass index of over 25 and “obesity” as a body-mass index of over 30.
RELATED: The Best Way to Measure Fat
“Our estimates are very close to [the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s] estimates, and there is clearly not a trend of decline on the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States,” study co-author Lin Yang, a postdoc researcher at the Division of Public Health Sciences in the Department of Surgery told Time.
The study authors warn that overweight and obesity is associated with various chronic conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. As Yang told Time: It will take “individual, health professional, community, environment and policy engagement to address this epidemic as a whole.”
RELATED: 5 Tips to Restart Your Weight Loss
TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Although fewer American children are smoking cigarettes, the use of controversial e-cigarettes has more than doubled in just three years, a federal survey reports.
It’s something of a good news/bad news situation, Catherine Corey, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said in an agency news release.
“While we’re glad to see cigarette smoking decreasing in middle and high school youth, the increase in the use of e-cigarettes and hookahs [water pipes] undermines progress in reducing tobacco use among kids,” she said.
The 2014 National Youth Tobacco Survey found that 25 percent of high school students had used a tobacco product in the past month. The survey also found that one in 13 kids in middle school had admitted to using a tobacco product in the past month.
Between 2011 and 2014, the percentage of children smoking cigarettes fell significantly from 16 percent to 9 percent. During this same time period, however, hookah use among high school students doubled.
E-cigarettes were even more popular. Of the 4.6 million young people who admitted to using tobacco, 2.4 million used e-cigarettes. This is the first time e-cigarette use exceeded the use of every other tobacco product, the survey revealed.
Even more alarming, 2.2 million teens said they had used more than one tobacco product during the past month, the survey found.
“One thing the study confirms for us is that the tobacco product landscape has changed dramatically. Middle and high school kids are using novel products like e-cigarettes and hookahs in unprecedented numbers, and many are using more than one kind of tobacco product,” Benjamin Apelberg, branch chief of epidemiology at FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in the news release.
Nicotine in any form is dangerous and highly addictive for all children — regardless of their age. That includes e-cigarettes, hookahs, cigarettes or cigars, the researchers cautioned. Young brains are still developing, and the teenage years are a particularly critical time of development, the researchers added.
Exposure to nicotine early in life increases the risk for addiction. Tobacco use can also be harmful because of users’ exposure to an array of other toxic chemicals in these products, the researchers said.
“Youth should not use tobacco in any form,” Apelberg advised.
The FDA already has regulatory authority over cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco. It is working to expand its reach to include e-cigarettes, cigars and hookahs. An FDA proposal also recommends a minimum age of 18 years for buying tobacco products.
“These latest findings serve to strengthen existing scientific evidence that novel tobacco products like e-cigarettes and hookah have great appeal to youth, and that comprehensive youth prevention efforts that focus on reducing all forms of tobacco use are needed,” said Corey.
The survey findings were published recently in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
More information
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration provides more information on e-cigarettes.
TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The order in which obese people with type 2 diabetes eat their food can affect their blood sugar levels, a small study suggests.
The new research found that having protein and vegetables before carbohydrates was linked to lower blood sugar and insulin levels after the meal.
“We’re always looking for ways to help people with diabetes lower their blood sugar,” principal investigator Dr. Louis Aronne, a professor of metabolic research and of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, said in a university news release.
“We rely on medicine, but diet is an important part of this process, too. Unfortunately, we’ve found that it’s difficult to get people to change their eating habits,” Aronne added.
“Carbohydrates raise blood sugar, but if you tell someone not to eat them or to drastically cut back, it’s hard for them to comply. This study points to an easier way that patients might lower their blood sugar and insulin levels,” Aronne said.
Keeping blood sugar levels under control is critical for people with type 2 diabetes. If blood sugar levels often spike too high, this can lead to serious complications over time, including heart disease.
The current study involved 11 people who were obese and had type 2 diabetes. They were all on the oral diabetes drug metformin. The study participants were given a typical Western diet meal, consisting of a variety of vegetables, protein, carbohydrates and fat. The meal included chicken breast, steamed broccoli with butter, lettuce and tomato salad with low-fat dressing, ciabatta bread and orange juice. The study included two meals eaten one week apart.
For the first meal, the researchers recorded blood sugar levels in the morning before food. The study volunteers were instructed to eat carbohydrates first, followed by protein, vegetables and fat 15 minutes later. The researchers checked the participants’ blood sugar 30, 60 and 120 minutes after their meal.
A week later, the process was repeated. This time, however, the patients reversed the order in which they ate their food. Protein, vegetables and fat were eaten first. Carbohydrates were eaten 15 minutes later. And, again blood sugar levels were taken at three different times following the meal.
The study showed that after eating carbohydrates last, the participants’ blood sugar levels were about 29 percent lower after 30 minutes, 37 percent lower after 60 minutes and 17 percent lower after two hours.
Insulin levels were also much lower when people had protein and vegetables first, the study revealed.
“Based on this finding, instead of saying ‘Don’t eat that’ to their patients, clinicians might instead say, ‘Eat this before that,’ ” Aronne said. “While we need to do some follow-up work, based on this finding, patients with type 2 might be able to make a simple change to lower their blood sugar throughout the day, decrease how much insulin they need to take, and potentially have a long-lasting, positive impact on their health.”
The study was published June 23 in the journal Diabetes Care.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about diabetes and food.
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, June 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Fewer than one in 10 older heart attack survivors gets a potentially lifesaving implantable defibrillator, a new study finds.
This small, battery-powered device sits under the skin in the chest. If the heart starts beating abnormally or stops altogether, the defibrillator shocks the heart to restore a normal rhythm.
Heart doctors say many heart attack survivors — but not all — would benefit from such a device.
“We do not think that 100 percent of patients with weak hearts after heart attacks should be getting implanted defibrillators,” said study lead researcher Dr. Sean Pokorney, a cardiology fellow at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C.
However, he added, “sometimes heart function recovers, but this is uncommon and does not fully explain the very low implantation rates observed in our study.”
Even among those who would benefit most — patients with large amounts of heart damage and very weak hearts — the rate remained low, said Pokorney, who has received support in the past from Boston Scientific Inc., a maker of implantable defibrillators.
For the study, Pokorney’s team collected data on more than 10,300 heart attack patients, average age 78, with reduced heart function who were listed in a national cardiovascular data registry.
Those who got implantable defibrillators had a one-third lower risk of death after two years than those who didn’t get one, the researchers found.
Clinical trials for implanted defibrillators have included patients with an average age in the 60s, but the benefit of these devices has not been well-established in adults older than this, Pokorney noted.
“Our results are encouraging, since defibrillators in older patients were associated with the same amount of benefit as in younger patients in the clinical trials,” Pokorney said.
One barrier is the cost of the device, which can run from $25,000 to $30,000, according to a recent study. However, for Americans aged 65 and older the cost is covered by Medicare, Pokorney said.
Perhaps the biggest contributor to the low rate of defibrillator use is a lack of communication and coordination after hospital discharge, Pokorney said.
A 40-day waiting period is required between having a heart attack and eligibility for an implanted defibrillator. This is a critical time when care is transferred from the hospital to the outpatient clinic, he said.
“Close outpatient follow-up is critical for patients with weak hearts after heart attacks, and the health care system needs to continue to focus on improving communication between care providers in the hospital and in the outpatient clinic,” he said.
The new study was published in the June 23/30 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
More than 300,000 people in the United States die from sudden cardiac arrest, a sudden loss of heart function, each year. Previous studies have found that as many as 80 percent of these patients were eligible for but did not have a defibrillator, the researchers reported.
Dr. Robert Hauser, a senior consulting cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and author of an accompanying journal editorial, agreed that many older patients who could benefit from an implanted defibrillator aren’t getting one.
“Too few eligible elderly patients are receiving primary prevention implanted defibrillators to prevent sudden death after a heart attack,” he said. “We need strategies to identify elderly patients at risk so they may decide whether or not to undergo a defibrillator implantation.”
More information
For more on implantable defibrillators, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
