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One Stillbirth Greatly Raises Odds for Another: Study

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Women who’ve had one stillbirth have a four times higher risk of having another stillbirth compared to women who’ve had a live birth, British researchers report.

The researchers defined stillbirth as a fetal death at more than 20 weeks gestation or a weight at time of death of at least 14 ounces (400 grams), according to the study. A death before 20 weeks is considered a miscarriage.

They noted that the overall risk of stillbirth is still low. The review included millions of pregnant women, and fewer than 1 percent had a stillbirth. In a subsequent pregnancy, only 2.5 percent of women who’d experienced a previous stillbirth had another stillbirth, the study found.

“Despite the higher risk of recurrence, most pregnancies following a stillbirth will progress normally and end in the birth of a healthy baby,” said lead researcher Dr. Sohinee Bhattacharya, a lecturer at the Institute of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

For the study, Bhattacharya and colleagues analyzed 16 studies that included almost 3.5 million pregnant women. All the women were from high-income countries, including Australia, Scotland, the United States, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Among the women, 99.3 percent had a previous live birth and 0.7 percent had a stillbirth in an initial pregnancy. Stillbirths occurred in the subsequent pregnancy for 2.5 percent of women who had a previous stillbirth and in 0.4 percent of women with no history of stillbirth, the researchers found.

Twelve of the studies included in the review looked specifically at the risk of a stillbirth after a first one. Those studies revealed a nearly five times increase in the risk of a second stillbirth, the researchers said.

What experts don’t always know is why stillbirths occur — whether it’s a first or later pregnancy, Bhattacharya said.

“We know very little about these unexplained stillbirths even today,” she said. “There are many systems that try to assign a cause of stillbirth, but with all of them, 10 percent to 40 percent remain unexplained.”

The report was published June 24 in the BMJ.

Dr. Victor Rosenberg, director of the Center for Thrombophilia and Adverse Outcomes in Pregnancy at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., said, “The first question a patient always asks me after experiencing a pregnancy loss is — ‘What are the chances of this happening again?'”

“The overall risk is still small, given that the baseline risk of stillbirth in the U.S. is only 6.2 per 1,000 pregnancies,” said Rosenberg, who was not involved with the study.

Dr. Alexander Heazell, a senior clinical lecturer in obstetrics at the University of Manchester in England and author of an accompanying journal editorial, said that pregnancies after a stillbirth need to be carefully monitored.

“We would do scans to make sure the baby is growing normally and identify problems before they happen,” he said. “The most common cause of stillbirth, the thing that doesn’t work normally, is something that doesn’t give the baby enough food and it wastes away,” Heazell said.

Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said, “A stillbirth is a catastrophic event for a family.”

More information is still needed on how best to improve outcomes, she said. “When a family experiences a stillbirth, recovering is a difficult and long process that is often greatly helped by a new healthy baby,” Wu said.

Bhattacharya said that cutting down on the risk of a stillbirth begins before pregnancy. “Mums-to-be can lead a healthy life, stop smoking and attain a healthy weight,” she said.

Once a woman becomes pregnant again after a stillbirth, she should consult her midwife or doctor early, be aware of any signs that the baby is not growing or moving adequately and see her doctor or midwife if she’s worried, Bhattacharya said.

More information

For more information on stillbirth, visit the March of Dimes.

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Fraxel skin  resurfacing – your complete guide

Suffer from pigmentation, discolouration or frown lines? Fraxel skin  resurfacing helps replace damaged cells.

What is fraxel skin  resurfacing?

Fraxel promises to smooth skin tone, soften scars and frown lines and reduce discolouration and pigmentation.

The resurfacing laser creates thousands of microscopic treatment zones, inducing the skin’s natural healing process and replacing damaged cells with fresh, youthful-looking skin.

What to expect?

You will feel a hot prickling sensation before the area is cooled to relieve the discomfort. After the treatment, you may experience redness and swelling, but this diminishes over the next couple of days.

The skin will naturally bronze over the next week or two before flaking like sunburn and revealing fresher-looking skin.

How many treatments do you need?

An average of three to five treatments, spaced about two to four weeks apart, will help the skin gradually improve over the next six months.

NEXT: Your guide to dermal fillers>>

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How Wearing High Heels Can Actually Be Good for You…Until It’s Not

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You’ve heard the statistics: Yep, high heels are notorious for causing pain in the lower leg, ankle, and foot along with a number of other foot-related injuries. But according to a new study, wearing them could also strengthen your ankle muscles—at least for the first few years you don them.

A new report published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice looked at young women who were studying to become airline attendants at the Hanseo University in South Korea. The group was instructed to wear heels to class—a wardrobe requirement should they get hired by a Korean airline.

Over four years, the researchers studied 10 women from each class, ranging from incoming freshmen to seniors. In a lab, they examined each woman’s balance and tested their ankle strength using a wobbly board and computerized exercising machines.

Surprisingly, the attendants’ legs seemed to get stronger the more they got used to high heels—at least at first. Compared to freshmen, sophomore and juniors exhibited a greater strength in muscles around their ankles, especially those on the inside and outside of the joint. However, the senior class women—who had been wearing heels the longest—showed weakening in those same muscles, and dramatically worse balance, even compared to the freshmen.

Jee Yong-Seok, PhD, a co-author of the study and a professor of exercise physiology at Hanseo University, told the New York Times that while “wearing high heeled shoes may at first lead to adaptation and increased strength,” the ratio of strength between the side and front and back muscles may eventually become unbalanced and unstable. Translation: those sexy stilettos are still not great for your body over time, even if you feel like you’ve gotten used to them.

Unwilling to completely forsake your favorite pair of heels? You can protect your feet by practicing moderation. The best advice is to stick with a heel that’s no higher than 3 inches, and vary your heel height as much as possible: high heels one day, comfy flats the next. And always give your feet a break if they hurt; carry sensible shoes with you so you can change if you need.

Yong-Seok also told the Times that women who wear high heels often should practice heel lifts and drops whenever possible to prevent injury to ankles and other leg muscles: Stand barefoot, then rise onto your toes repeatedly; then stand on the edge of a stair and slowly lower your heel over the edge. Doing both exercises regularly can help strengthen your ankle muscles.

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More Than 8,600 Cases of Ranch Dressing Recalled

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Thousands of cases of Wish-Bone Ranch Salad Dressing have been voluntarily recalled after a consumer found a bottle contained a different dressing than labeled, which includes an ingredient not declared on the bottle.

Pinnacle Foods Group LLC said in a statement, posted to the FDA’s website, that the bottle of ranch accidentally contained Wish-Bone Blue Cheese Dressing, which includes eggs and could pose a problem for people who have allergies. Pinnacle said it had not yet received reports of illnesses from the product.

A total of 8,678 cases of the 24 oz. dressings are involved in the recall; they were produced by a contract manufacturer in April with a Best Used date of Feb. 17, 2016. Customers who have bought the recalled product can return it for a full refund.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Could a Vitamin Play a Role in Acne Outbreaks?

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) — New research suggests that high levels of vitamin B12 may affect germ activity in certain people, boosting the odds that they’ll develop acne.

However, it’s too early to say if anyone should cut down on their vitamin B12 intake from food or vitamins to avoid getting pimples, researchers said.

“I don’t think we have studied enough to suggest that,” said study leader Huiying Li, assistant professor of molecular & medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Still, the research provides insight into not only vitamin B12 but also genetic activity that could prompt pimples.

“There are certain genes that could potentially influence whether people have acne breakouts or not,” she said. “These genes could be targets of future drug treatment.”

The study appears in the June 24 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

A deficiency in vitamin B12 can cause serious health problems, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Too little vitamin B12 has been implicated in anemia; digestive problems; and neurological problems, such as numbness and tingling in the extremities, vision problems and memory loss.

Vitamin B12 is found in animal products such as dairy and shellfish. Vegetarians and vegans are advised to take supplements or eat enriched foods to get this nutrient. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “many people over age 50 lose the ability to absorb vitamin B12 from foods,” and weight-loss surgery can cause the same problem.

The current study looked at what factors make people more vulnerable to acne. Li and her colleagues found signs that vitamin B12 may boost acne by disrupting a type of skin bacteria known as Propionibacterium acnes that’s related to acne.

After linking the vitamin to acne, the researchers then analyzed 10 people with clear skin who were told to begin taking vitamin B12 supplements. Their extra consumption of vitamins affected how genes in skin bacteria processed the vitamin, Li said, although only one person subsequently broke out with acne.

Li said this provides more evidence that vitamin B12 can affect the activity of skin bacteria. According to her, the affected germs — P. acnes — can contribute to inflammation, a crucial component of acne.

Researchers have linked vitamin B12 to acne in prior studies, Li said. But several questions remain unanswered.

While genes acted differently in the only person in the study who developed acne, it’s not clear how many people may share a similar vulnerability. However, the activity of these genes could be important for treatment in the future, she said.

Li also said it’s not clear what the study findings could mean for people with acne or those who want to avoid it.

To make things more complicated, “exactly how the bacteria on our skin contribute to acne remains to be completely understood,” said Dr. Whitney Bowe, clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

“For example, the bacteria P. acnes has long been thought to play a role in acne, but there are numerous people who have P. acnes on their skin and never develop acne,” said Bowe, who was not involved with the new study.

And simply killing the bacteria doesn’t work to cure acne, she said.

So now what? “It’s too soon to tell my patients to stop eating foods or taking vitamins that contain vitamin B12 based on this study,” Bowe said. “This study does suggest that high levels of B12 in the bloodstream might make acne worse in certain individuals. Further studies are needed to confirm this result and help us to understand the clinical relevance of these findings.”

And, again, it’s important to note that a deficiency of vitamin B12 can have serious consequences throughout the body and brain, according to the CDC.

More information

For more about acne, visit the American Academy of Dermatology.

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Channing Tatum’s Ab Advice Is Only Half-Right

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If you’re looking to get into killer shape, who better to go to for advice than Magic Mike himself, Channing Tatum? The actor, who is about to hit the big screen on July 1st in Magic Mike XXL, recently shared a bit of health advice in his Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit.

When asked about his tips and tricks for staying in shape, he responded: “If you eat it and it makes you happy you probably shouldn’t have it. And if you do it and it sucks you’re probably doing the right thing. But you can’t have one with out the other. A lot of people just work out and don’t actually diet and they wonder why they aren’t getting the results they want, and some people do the exact opposite and wonder the same thing. I really think you have to do both.”

Tatum is dead-on about the importance of both eating right and working out—though, says Craig Primack, MD, an obesity specialist at the Scottsdale Weight Loss Center in Arizona, you actually need to focus even more on the diet part of the equation. “Weight loss is 80 percent diet, 20 percent exercise,” he says.

But we’re not at all sold on Tatum’s claim that diet-friendly food has to “suck.” (How can that be true when you can make buttermilk mashed potatoes with only 125 calories per serving?)

But then again, maybe we just have different tastes. Later in the AMA, he describes one of his favorite snacks—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with a twist:

“Bread, white. Peanut butter, not crunchy, creamy. Grape jelly, double portion, more than you think should actually fit on a piece of white bread. Bread. And then some Cheetos shoved in there, and then you’re good to go.”

Additional reporting by Jessica Brown.

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A 4-Move Workout to Tone Your Thighs

The thigh gap is crap. You know that. But that doesn’t mean you should totally ignore your inner thigh muscles, which help support a stable core. You may already be doing squats, lunges and ab moves, but to prevent injury and muscle imbalances, it’s important to work your body from every angle.

With the inner thighs, it’s less about what you do and more about how you do it. The key? Lots of repetitions, multiple times per week. Complete 4 sets of each of these exercises, 2-3 times per week, and soon you’ll be standing strong.

Swiss Ball Hip Abduction

Sit on a chair and place an exercise ball between your calves. Hold your legs straight out in front of you and squeeze your knees together. Hold for 2 counts and release without allowing the ball to fall out. Repeat for 20-30 reps.

Photo: Jen Cohen

The “Jane Fonda”

Lie down on your right side with your right leg straight and your left leg bent with your left foot in front of your right knee. Lift your right leg up as high as you can. Hold for 2 counts and then lower to the ground. Repeat for 20-30 reps before switching to your left side.

Photo: Jen Cohen

Lying Leg Toners

Lie on your back with your head and feet on the ground. Place an exercise ball between your calves and secure it. Lift your legs off the ground to a 45 degree angle and squeeze your legs together into the ball. Hold for two counts and release, without dropping the ball. Repeat for 20-30 reps.

Photo: Jen Cohen

Sumo Squat Pulses

Stand with your legs a bit wider than shoulder width and your toes slightly flared out. Keep your chest out, shoulders back, and hands out in front of you. While keeping a tight core, squat down until you are parallel with the floor and then pulse up and down for a total of 30 reps.

Photo: Jen Cohen

Want a killer booty workout to go with this? Check out A 5 -Move Workout to Get Your Butt in Shape

Jennifer Cohen is a leading fitness authority, TV personality, best-selling author, and entrepreneur. With her signature, straight-talking approach to wellness, Jennifer was the featured trainer on The CW’s Shedding for the Wedding, mentoring the contestants’ to lose hundreds of pounds before their big day, and she appears regularly on NBC’s Today Show, Extra, The Doctors and Good Morning America. Connect with Jennifer on Facebook, Twitter, G+, and Pinterest.

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Exercise Benefits People With Parkinson’s Disease: Study

WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Parkinson’s disease patients who begin regular exercise earlier have a much slower decline in quality of life than those who start exercising later, a new study finds.

National Parkinson Foundation (NPF) researchers looked at information from nearly 3,000 patients. More than 1,300 reported doing little regular exercise before taking part in the study.

Over two years, 500 of the inactive patients began to exercise more than 2.5 hours a week. The researchers compared patients who exercised regularly for the entire two years to people who were inactive at the start of the study, but then began a regular exercise routine.

The study didn’t note the type of workouts, just the total amount of exercise.

After two years, scores on a questionnaire that measured the impact of Parkinson’s on daily life in a number of areas — including mood, movement and social interaction — worsened 1.4 points among those who began exercising earlier and 3.2 points among those who started exercising later.

This difference of nearly two points could be enough to make everyday activities feel harder for those not exercising, according to the authors of the study.

“This study makes it clear that everyone with Parkinson’s disease should be exercising. Patients suffer when they delay starting their exercise, and it doesn’t seem to matter what they do, they benefit from just getting up and moving,” Dr. Michael Okun, NPF’s national medical director, said in a foundation news release.

The study findings were presented recently at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders in San Diego. Research presented at meetings is generally viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about Parkinson’s disease.

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Blood Protein May Spot Pancreatic Cancer Early

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Researchers have discovered a protein that pancreatic tumors consistently shed into the blood, making a potentially significant advance toward a blood test that could catch the deadly cancer early.

Experts were cautiously optimistic about the findings, published online June 24 in the journal Nature.

More research is needed to make sure any blood test based on results is useful. And it’s expected that it would first be used to monitor patients who have been treated for pancreatic cancer, said senior researcher Dr. Raghu Kalluri.

But the hope is that it can eventually enable early diagnosis.

That’s the “holy grail” in pancreatic cancer research, said Kalluri, chair of cancer biology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Few people now survive pancreatic cancer because it’s rarely caught early, when it can be cured with surgery. The symptoms, which include weight loss and jaundice, usually arise only after the disease has spread, he said.

Of all Americans diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, only 7 percent are still alive five years later, the National Cancer Institute says.

Scientists have tried, without great success, to find markers, or indicators, for pancreatic cancer — proteins in the blood that consistently and specifically signal the presence of the disease.

The marker that Kalluri’s team found appears to be better than any others studied so far, said Dr. Kenneth Yu, an oncologist who was not involved in the research.

“This is really impressive,” said Yu, who treats and studies pancreatic cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “You rarely see something with 100 percent sensitivity and specificity.”

Yu was referring to the fact that all pancreatic tumors analyzed in the study, from almost 250 patients, secreted high amounts of the marker — a protein called GPC1. Just as important, the protein was not released at high levels from noncancerous cells.

For any blood test to be useful in the real world, Yu said, it has to reliably detect pancreatic tumors and also have a very low rate of “false positives.”

Kalluri said his team did not actually set out to find an indicator for pancreatic cancer. They were interested in exosomes, which are tiny capsules secreted by all cells — healthy and otherwise — that contain DNA and other genetic material.

The researchers wanted to see if they could distinguish exosomes released by cancer cells from those secreted by noncancerous cells. So they analyzed blood samples from about 250 pancreatic cancer patients and 32 breast cancer patients. For comparison, they used blood samples from healthy donors and small groups of people with other conditions, such as pancreatitis (chronic inflammation of the pancreas).

They found that exosomes from cancer cells, but not other cell types, harbored high levels of the GPC1 protein.

“Any time we identified GPC1-enriched exosomes, we could tell it was a cancer cell,” Kalluri said.

And while many breast tumors released high amounts of GPC1, all pancreatic tumors did — including early stage cancers.

For reasons that aren’t clear, Kalluri said, pancreatic tumors seem to be “really good” at secreting GPC1.

Still, the fact that other cancers also release high amounts of the protein presents a potential obstacle, Yu said.

“It’s not specific to pancreatic cancer,” he said. “So that needs to be figured out. Is there a way to refine this to detect pancreatic cancer?”

And if such a test becomes available, who would be screened?

“That’s a good question,” Yu said. One approach, he noted, could be to screen only people with a high risk of pancreatic cancer — such as families affected by an inherited form of the cancer.

But smokers and obese people also have a raised risk of pancreatic cancer, Kalluri noted.

He said those people could potentially be candidates for a GPC1 blood test. If it’s positive, they could have an MRI or CT scan to get images of the pancreas.

And even though pancreatic cancer is not that common, Yu said it’s possible that a blood test — if it’s good enough and cost-effective — could be used to screen the general population.

Kalluri said the technology needed to measure GPC1 is “pretty low-end,” and he did not expect it to be prohibitively expensive.

However, Yu noted, if genetic analysis were required to detect pancreatic cancer, specifically, that would be more complex and expensive.

More information

The American Cancer Society has a primer on pancreatic cancer.

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U.S. Dialysis Patients Increasingly Live in Poor Areas

WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2015 (HealthDay News) — More than one-third of kidney dialysis patients in the United States live in poor neighborhoods, a study finds.

Kidney dialysis rates in the United States are higher in poor neighborhoods, and they’re increasing in those areas, the 15-year analysis shows. Dialysis is used to treat people with kidney failure.

Researchers analyzed U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data to assess overall dialysis rates and those in poor areas, defined as having a a zip code where at least 20 percent of people live below the federal poverty line.

The results showed that 27.4 percent of adults who began dialysis between 1995 and 2004 lived in poor neighborhoods, compared with about 11 percent of adults in the general population.

Those percentages increased to 34 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively, between 2005 and 2010, said the researchers from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

The study was published recently in the journal Hemodialysis International.

The researchers said it’s not clear why kidney failure and dialysis rates are higher in poor neighborhoods. Possible reasons could be less access to health care, greater exposure to environmental toxins and lifestyle habits, they said.

Future studies of kidney failure rates should examine long-term trends in poverty at the individual level and in smaller geographic areas, said corresponding author Dr. Holly Kramer and colleagues.

“The collection of such data may help track national and local trends in poverty status and be used to develop policies for improving health outcomes and disease prevention,” they wrote.

More information

The National Kidney Foundation has more about dialysis.

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One Stillbirth Greatly Raises Odds for Another: Study