Disaster Aftereffects May Linger for Children

MONDAY, Sept. 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Natural and man-made disasters can put children’s health and development at risk for years to come, a new report from a leading group of pediatricians suggests.

“Disasters touch the lives of millions of children every year, and children are especially vulnerable to the aftereffects of these events,” said Dr. David Schonfeld, lead author of the report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

“As pediatricians, we are in an excellent position to detect and address a breadth of problems following a disaster, as well as to counsel families and communities on how to be prepared for a crisis situation,” he said in an academy news release. Schonfeld is director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at the University of Southern California School of Social Work.

Nearly 14 percent of children in the United States between the ages of 2 and 17 have been exposed to some type of disaster, the report showed. This includes natural disasters like earthquakes, fires, floods and disease outbreaks, as well as man-made disasters such as industrial accidents, war and terrorism acts.

Adjustment problems among children who’ve experienced a crisis or lived through a disaster are a significant public health issue, the academy cautioned.

But these kids often show no visible signs of trouble. Even those who develop post-traumatic stress disorder may not be diagnosed unless their doctor specifically asks about their symptoms, according to the report.

Trouble sleeping or getting up in the morning may be a red flag, the report found. Similarly, sudden difficulty concentrating could be a warning sign of emotional struggles.

Other behaviors parents should watch for after a disaster include:

• Changes in eating habits: Children may lose their appetite or eat more.
• Withdrawal: Kids may be less willing to engage in social activities with friends or adults. They may seem sad or even depressed.
• Anxiety: Children who’ve experienced one disaster may worry it will happen again. They may also develop unrelated fears, such as fear of the dark or separation anxiety.
• Unexplained symptoms: Some children coping with emotional or psychological stress will complain of unexplained physical symptoms — a condition called somatization.
• Regression: After a disaster, some kids may wet the bed, become more irritable or become disruptive.
• Risk-taking: Older kids and teens, in particular, may engage in more risky behaviors, including substance abuse and sexual activity.

Parents who notice these warning signs should discuss their concerns with their child’s pediatrician, says the report, published online Sept. 14 in Pediatrics.

Meanwhile, doctors should be aware that disasters are often followed by a string of negative events, such as financial worries, the loss of loved ones, domestic violence and problems with parents’ health or marriage, which could place added stress on children, the report showed.

Dr. Sandra Hassink, president of the AAP, said in the news release, “Especially as we mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which showed the medical profession to be underprepared for the rippling effects of disaster, it is crucial that we are fully ready to protect and heal children in the face of traumatic events.”

More information

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency provides more information on how to cope with disasters.

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Social Factors Affect Leukemia Survival

MONDAY, Sept. 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — For people diagnosed with a type of cancer called acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), social and economic factors can affect the odds of survival, a new study shows.

“As physicians, we often emphasize more of the biology of the cancer, especially with the recent focus on personalized medicine. But we need to pay the same attention to resources available to our patients, as this greatly impacts their chances to survive leukemia,” study senior author Dr. Luciano Jose Costa, an associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), said in a journal news release.

In conducting the study, researchers used a database of more than 5,500 people under the age of 65. They found that in addition to the patients’ age and the progression of their disease, socioeconomic factors not directly related to their medical care played a role in the outcome of their treatment.

Specifically, certain people were at much greater risk of dying early, including those who were single or divorced. People who were uninsured, on Medicaid or living in lower income areas were also more likely to die prematurely, the study found.

Results were published online Sept. 14 in the journal Cancer.

“We believe these three factors indicate lack of material and social support preventing young patients from successfully walking the long and difficult road towards a cure,” study lead author Dr. Uma Borate, an assistant professor at UAB, said in the news release.

“Factors that have nothing to do with quality of care need to be accounted for when comparing predicted with actual outcomes — otherwise we will create a disincentive for hospitals and doctors to care for less privileged patients,” Borate said.

Nearly 21,000 Americans will be diagnosed with AML in 2015, according to the study authors. About half of these patients will die from their disease, the researchers added.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute provides more information on leukemia.

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Home Pesticide Use Tied to Child Cancer Risk

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Sept. 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Children exposed to insecticides at home may have a slightly increased risk of developing leukemia or lymphoma, a new review finds.

The analysis, of 16 studies done since the 1990s, found that children exposed to indoor insecticides had an elevated risk of developing the blood cancers. There was also a weaker link between exposure to weed killers and the risk of leukemia.

The findings, reported online Sept. 14 and in the October print issue of Pediatrics, do not prove that chemical pesticides directly contribute to the cancers. And if they do, researchers said, several questions remain.

“We don’t know ‘how much’ exposure it takes, or if there’s a critical window in development,” said senior researcher Chensheng (Alex) Lu, an associate professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

“Is the window during pregnancy? Or even before pregnancy?” Lu said. “That will take a much deeper investigation.”

Despite the questions, Lu said he thinks it’s wise to act now, by limiting babies’ and children’s exposure to chemical pesticides — especially the indoor insect killers that this study linked to leukemia and lymphoma.

Childhood cancer is, fortunately, rare: In the United States, just under 10,400 children younger than 15 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer this year, the American Cancer Society estimates.

Leukemia and lymphoma — two types of blood cancer — are among the most common childhood cancers.

But unlike adult cancers, which arise after decades of lifestyle choices and environmental exposures, most childhood cancers “just happen,” said Dr. Ziad Khatib, a pediatric oncologist at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.

“We think most cancers in children are due to chance,” said Khatib, who was not involved in the study.

But as the new review shows, he said, a number of studies have found an association between pesticides and certain childhood cancers. Plus, it’s biologically plausible that the chemicals could contribute to cancer in certain vulnerable children, Khatib added.

“We should always be cautious about exposing young children to any toxic chemicals,” he said. “It just makes sense.”

For the study, Lu’s team pooled the results from 16 international studies done between 1993 and 2013. All the studies compared children with cancer to a healthy group of kids, and gauged past pesticide exposure through parent interviews.

Overall, children who’d been exposed to any indoor insecticides were 43 percent to 47 percent more likely to have leukemia or lymphoma, the findings showed. Outdoor insecticides were not linked to the cancers.

Kids exposed to weed killers, meanwhile, had a 26 percent higher risk of leukemia, the investigators found.

Those figures might sound alarming, but Khatib said it’s important to keep them in perspective. “That would mean that instead of one in 10,000 kids developing leukemia, you’d have about 1.5 in 10,000,” he pointed out.

“It’s a very small risk,” Khatib added. Still, he said, it’s a risk factor that can be avoided.

“I think it’s important to get this information out to parents, and let them use their own best judgment,” Lu said.

If indoor pests are a problem, he added, there are “nonchemical options” for controlling, like denying bugs any food sources and using baits or traps.

But children can also be exposed to pesticides outside of the home — in schools, parks or playgrounds, Lu pointed out. So it also makes sense to limit pesticide use in those places, too, he said.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more on childhood cancers.

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Football Fans May Overestimate Chances of Favorite NFL Team

SUNDAY, Sept. 13, 2015 (HealthDay News) — As the National Football League kicks off its 2015 season this weekend, fans across the country are certain that this is the year for their team.

But a new study shows that pro football fans and dedicated sports reporters often overestimate their team’s chances of going all the way.

“We should perhaps take the predictions of experts assigned to a single team with a pinch of salt as they may not appreciate the bigger picture,” study senior author Brad Love, a professor of psychology and language sciences at University College London, said in a university news release.

“Previous studies suggest that just following a team intensely can lead to bias, so that is also probably going on here. Fans and experts alike can get focused on improvements or changes for the team that they follow, and don’t realize that it’s an arms race with other teams who are also improving,” Love explained.

Football fans aren’t just overly optimistic about their own team’s prospects; they’re also extra pessimistic about a rival team’s chances, the study showed. Researchers said their findings can shed light on a concept known as “optimism bias.”

The “NFL is the perfect system to study optimism bias because it’s zero sum — one team winning means another team losing,” Love said.

More than 1,100 NFL fans were asked to predict how many games their favorite and most hated teams would win during the 2015 season. Since each team plays 16 games that produce only one winner, the overall average number of wins for each team is always eight. Yet, the average number of wins for the participants’ “favorite” teams was 9.59, suggesting every fan was overly optimistic about their team’s chances of winning.

The findings were published Sept. 9 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The researchers also examined ESPN data on 32 sports reporters who were each assigned to one NFL team. When asked to predict how many games their team would win, the reporters, like the NFL fans, were all overly optimistic, the study found.

The researchers found that the New England Patriots were the most liked team among the study participants. They were also the most hated in the NFL, the study found. Both fans and rivals of the Patriots assumed they would perform well in 2015, but the team’s fans expected one more win than the haters did.

The discrepancy between fan and rival predictions were only about one game for the Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks and Philadelphia Eagles. There were larger optimism gaps for the Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals, the study noted.

“It’s interesting that both fans and rivals of high-profile, successful teams are generally in agreement about their expected performance,” said Love. “By contrast, we see the largest optimism gap for lower-profile teams that receive little national media coverage, enabling fans and local media to construct their own optimistic narratives.”

The study’s authors advised fans who bet on games to consider their optimism bias before putting money on their favorite team since their expectations may not be realistic.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute provides more information on unrealistic expectations, or optimistic bias.

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Peer Pressure May Have a Silver Lining

SATURDAY, Sept. 12, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Peer pressure might not be the bad influence that parents fear it is.

So says a new study that found teens with close friends were more likely to be healthy later as young adults.

“These results indicate that remaining close to — as opposed to separating oneself — from the peer pack in adolescence has long-term implications for adult physical health,” wrote study co-author Joseph Allen, a researcher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

“In this study, it was a robust predictor of increased long-term physical health quality,” he wrote.

However, the study did not prove that having close friends in adolescence caused a person to be healthier as an adult.

The researchers followed 171 people who were in the seventh and eighth grades at the start. The quality of their friendships and their efforts to fit in with peers were evaluated between ages 13 and 17, while their physical health was assessed later at ages 25, 26 and 27.

Both high-quality friendships and a desire to fit in with peers during the teen years were associated with better health at age 27, even after the researchers accounted for other factors such as income, weight and drug use.

The findings suggest that the quality of teens’ relationships with other teens may influence their health in adulthood by affecting anxiety and stress levels, according to the authors of the study published recently in the journal Psychological Science.

Many teens put a lot of effort into forming and maintaining friendships and fitting in with peers, and this may be due to an instinctive recognition that these social links are associated with well-being, the researchers suggested.

“Peer relationships provide some of the most emotionally intense experiences in adolescents’ lives, and conformity to peer norms often occurs even when it brings significant costs to the individual,” they wrote.

“Cross-cultural research has found that an approach to social interactions that emphasizes placing the desires of one’s peers ahead of one’s own goals — much as adolescents do when they conform to peer norms — is linked to reduced life stress,” the researchers noted.

They said the findings suggest that the quality of teens’ social relationships, in addition to issues such as obesity and smoking, might be included in efforts to improve long-term health.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about teen health and well-being.

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California Lawmakers Pass Right-to-Die Measure

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News)– Lawmakers in California on Friday gave final approval to “right-to-die” legislation that would allow the terminally ill to legally end their lives.

State senators voted 23-14 to let doctors prescribe life-ending medications to patients expected to die within six months, the Associated Press reported. The California Assembly approved the bill on Wednesday in a 43-34 vote.

It was unclear Friday whether Gov. Jerry Brown will sign the bill into law. Brown is a former Jesuit seminarian, the AP reported.

Supporters believe that California’s approval of the measure could add momentum to the adoption of right-to-die laws across the country.

Opponents of the bill include religious groups such as the Catholic Church and advocates for the disabled.

California would become the fifth state in which people are allowed to legally end their lives. Oregon, Vermont and Washington already have passed laws allowing the practice, and Montana’s courts have authorized it.

“I think lawmakers will be more comfortable voting for aid-in-dying, knowing that a big jurisdiction like California has already done so,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, a national organization that supports the practice. “It’s hard for lawmakers sometimes to think about being the pioneers in a social change movement. It will be easier for them to feel that they are one more state coming along in the assimilation of a new medical practice.”

The California legislation is modeled after the Death With Dignity law passed by Oregon voters in 1994, which made that state the first in the nation to allow some terminally ill patients to choose the time of their own death.

The effort to pass the legislation in California was prompted, in part, by the death last year of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old California woman diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Maynard moved to Oregon so she could end her own life when the time was right, and became a prominent activist in the “death with dignity” movement through online videos and well-read news articles about her choice.

Under the Oregon law and the California bill, two physicians must see the patient, review the prognosis and agree that the person has an illness that will be fatal in six months, Coombs Lee said.

The doctors also must attest that the patient has no mental illness or mood disorder that impairs judgment, and that the person is not being coerced or forced into the decision, she said. The person must receive counseling about hospice and palliative care, and be told that they are under no obligation to either fill the prescription for the life-ending drugs or to take them.

“The control resides with the patient, from beginning to end,” Coombs Lee said.

The California legislation places additional safeguards on the Oregon model, including a statement that the patient must sign within 48 hours of their self-inflicted death indicating that they are still of sound mind and remain capable of taking the medication on their own, Coombs Lee said.

However, opponents believe the Oregon law is flawed and allows abuses that will also occur in California.

Marilyn Golden, a senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said that assisted suicide laws could potentially let insurance companies coerce vulnerable people into a cheap and quick death.

“If insurers deny or even delay a person’s life-sustaining treatment, they are being steered toward hastening their death,” she said. “Do we really think insurers will do the right thing or the cheapest thing?”

Golden also questioned whether the safeguards cited by Coombs Lee are truly effective, noting that people who are depressed or being pressured to take their own lives can “doctor shop” until they find a physician willing to sign off on their lethal prescription.

“It’s common knowledge in Oregon that if your doctor says no, you can call Compassion & Choices to find a doctor who says yes,” Golden said.

These are troubling concerns that have kept legislators in other states from acting on assisted suicide legislation, she said.

“No one pays attention to the fact that 12 other states this year have rejected the Oregon model,” Golden said. “As the legislators became aware of these problems, they chose not to move forward.”

Coombs Lee believes many other states will come around, encouraged by Maynard’s story and the example set by California.

“It takes a long time for lawmakers to educate themselves, and to start to feel comfortable voting yes,” Coombs Lee said. “It’s very unlikely a bill would pass a legislature the first time. California has been considering this in one way or another since 1991, when the first ballot initiative occurred.”

More information

For more on Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, visit the Oregon Health Authority.

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What I Learned From My Digital Detox

Photo: Getty Images

I’m willing to bet that wherever you are right now, there are at least two or more screens in the same room with you. First, you’re probably reading this on your phone,  and then there’s your laptop in the corner—Oh, and your tablet’s sitting right next to you.

The fact is our devices are now involved in nearly every part of our lives. We depend on our smartphones for everything from staying in touch with co-workers and friends to tracking our workouts to waking us up. (Admit it, you sleep with your phone, too.) And social media? There’s no denying it, we’re completely addicted.

Technology has its upsides (cute cat videos, having the whole of human knowledge in your pocket, etc.), but it also causes more stress. In fact, due to this constant connectedness, Americans are more stressed than ever. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, 48% of workers said they check e-mail outside of work “frequently,” and these people unsurprisingly reported more stress.

RELATED: 12 Signs You May Have an Anxiety Disorder

Like everyone else, I rely on technology for everything from driving directions, to e-mail, to taking photos of you know, literally everything for my Instagram. And to be honest, I’m not sure how it affects my mind and body. Certainly I am familiar with the wired feeling that’s a side effect of scrolling through Facebook for too long. But as a young person, I  don’t really remember what it was like before technology reigned.

In this age of digital addiction, I decided to do a detox because I wanted to test myself. I wanted to know: how reliant am I, really, on these screens? And would I feel better?

So I went “off the grid” for one whole weekend (as with any challenge, it’s important to have a realistic goal): I shut off all of my digital devices, dodged TVs, and even ran for the landline phone when it rang. From Friday evening to Monday morning I was 21^st century incommunicado—no Internet, no text messages, no nothing.

Here’s what I learned, sans Google and Kardashian headlines.

RELATED: 12 Ways to Fight Stress and Help Your Heart

I missed information the most

It wasn’t the missed texts, emails, or movies that I missed the most; it was the loss of the connection to limitless information. Three out of four times that I reached for my phone and stopped myself, I did it because I wanted to look something up. When Googling isn’t an option, you have to actually talk to someone. Instead of looking up the definition of a word in the book I was reading, I asked my roommate if she knew. And she did! This is a great reminder to communicate with the actual people around you. They might surprise you.

Sleeping was heavenly

And so was waking up. I went to bed when I told myself I would go to bed, not an hour of Instagram lurking later than I said I would, and I woke up refreshed. Instead of being roused by an angrily ringing alarm set on my iPhone, I woke up when my body told me to wake up. This, of course, is mostly a weekend luxury, but it also felt incredible to wake up and look out my window instead of immediately checking my e-mail and any overnight notifications.

I do have time to read!

Surprise, surprise. When I turned off my devices, I stopped wasting time aimlessly browsing through the Internet, giving me more time to relax with a good book.

I actually don’t care what everyone’s doing

To be perfectly honest, my biggest fear going into this was how much I would miss out on while unplugged. But I didn’t have much FOMO at all during the weekend. Going without devices forced me to plan out my weekend in advance, where I would meet my friends and at what time, and remind people to call me on my landline instead of my cell if they wanted to reach me. My days were totally uninterrupted by mobile alerts, and I enjoyed feeling totally present in every situation I was in.

RELATED: A Meditation to De-Stress

I have to admit that as soon as I picked up my phone when it was all over, the FOMO hit me hard. Just waiting for it to turn on gave me anxiety—I’m embarrassed to say my heart actually raced—about all the messages and news I missed. But this was fleeting once I realized none of it really mattered.

I’m not nearly as dependent on my devices as I thought I was

The biggest surprise was how little I missed my electronics. I definitely wasn’t constantly thinking about checking Instagram or my news apps. Sure, it wasn’t ideal going for a run without my Spotify playlists, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

All in all, this digital detox definitely put technology in perspective for me. It was liberating to not think about it, and so much fun to have longer, uninterrupted conversations with the people I was around.

The best part is this feeling bled into the rest of my week; my serene weekend allowed me to focus better when I went back to work. Not only was I more rested, but I also didn’t feel the need to constantly check my phone, thanks to what I learned.

While it’s totally unrealistic to quit technology completely, my experiment suggests that even a few days off the technology sauce can work wonders in terms of having a truly restorative weekend.

RELATED: 3 Stress-Busting Yoga Poses

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Death Rate for Extremely Premature Infants Largely Unchanged

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A discouraging new study finds that little progress had been made in bringing the death rate down for extremely preterm infants in the United States since 2000.

Extremely preterm infants are born after just 22 to 28 weeks of pregnancy. These infants are at high risk for complications and death, the researchers said.

National data showed that there was a significant drop in the risk of death for extremely preterm infants between 1990 and 2000. During that time, the death rate for babies born after 23 weeks of pregnancy fell from about 81 percent to 68 percent. The death rate for those born after 28 weeks dropped from 9.5 percent to 6 percent, the study found.

But, between 2000 and 2010, there was little to no decrease in the death rate, according to the study in the Journal of Perinatology.

The difference may be partly due to breakthroughs in preterm infant care made in the 1990s. Since that time, there have been some advances, but no major ones, said study author Dr. Michael Malloy, a neonatologist and professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

The findings can help both doctors and parents have realistic outlooks when it comes to extremely preterm infants.

Malloy said the study is an attempt to temper public expectations. “We just can’t work complete miracles. We have to accept the fact that there is a biology that we are running up against,” he said in a university news release.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about preterm birth.

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Could Red Wine Ingredient Affect Progression of Alzheimer’s?

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Sept. 11, 2015 (HealthDay News) — High doses of resveratrol, a compound found in red wine and berries, may have some activity against Alzheimer’s disease, a preliminary clinical trial suggests.

Resveratrol is an antioxidant that certain plants produce to shield against stress from the environment. People ingest small amounts when they eat red grapes, red wine, berries or dark chocolate.

Lab research has suggested that resveratrol might have some powers against the diseases of aging — including Alzheimer’s disease. But evidence from human studies has been lacking.

The new study, published Sept. 11 in Neurology, offers the first evidence that high-dose, “pharmaceutical-grade” resveratrol can get into the brains of people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s.

What’s more, it seems to stabilize levels of a protein that is linked to Alzheimer’s progression.

The study did not, however, show whether people’s symptoms actually stabilized, experts cautioned. The trial was primarily designed to see whether it’s even safe and feasible to give Alzheimer’s patients such high doses of resveratrol.

Larger, longer trials are still needed to see whether the treatment can slow Alzheimer’s progression, said senior researcher Dr. R. Scott Turner, director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

“It does appear to be safe, and we did find evidence that resveratrol can get into the brain,” Turner said.

However, he added, “we’re not ready to recommend it as a treatment for Alzheimer’s.”

That’s not only because the research is ongoing: The product used in the study — a synthetic, purified version of resveratrol — is not commercially available.

Resveratrol supplements have long been a staple at health food stores. But there’s no telling how much of the compound, if any, is actually in those products, Turner pointed out.

Nor will red wine do the job. “The doses we used were equivalent to what you’d get in about 1,000 bottles of red wine a day,” Turner noted.

James Hendrix, director of global science initiatives for the Alzheimer’s Association, said the findings are “encouraging” and warrant larger studies.

But he agreed that only time will tell if resveratrol can help slow the dementia process.

Scientists first became interested in resveratrol as an Alzheimer’s therapy based on “calorie restriction” research, Turner said. In animals, reduced-calorie diets seem to stall the effects of aging and increase longevity — at least partly because calorie restriction boosts activity in a gene called SIRT1.

It turns out that resveratrol also activates SIRT1. “So resveratrol essentially mimics calorie restriction,” Turner said.

But only small amounts of natural resveratrol from food actually become “bioavailable” in the human body.

So Turner’s team tested a pharmaceutical-grade version among 119 older adults with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s. All were already taking standard medications for slowing the disease’s progression. About half the patients were randomly assigned to add resveratrol capsules, while the rest were given placebo (inactive) capsules.

Over one year, the resveratrol group showed a stabilization in the level of a protein — called amyloid-beta 40 — in their spinal fluid. In contrast, those levels declined in the placebo group.

That’s important, Hendrix explained, because levels of amyloid-beta 40 in the spinal fluid normally decrease as Alzheimer’s worsens. The theory is that more of the protein is being deposited in the brain, where it contributes to the abnormal “plaques” that mark Alzheimer’s.

“So this may be an indicator that resveratrol slows disease progression,” Hendrix said.

“But,” he added, “this is an early finding, and larger, longer studies are still needed.”

As for safety, the most common symptoms included nausea and diarrhea, which affected 42 percent of resveratrol users and one-third of placebo users. Some resveratrol users also lost weight — an average of 2 pounds.

That’s potentially concerning, according to Turner. “You don’t like to see that,” he noted, “because Alzheimer’s disease itself also causes weight loss.”

A larger, advanced-stage trial of resveratrol is being planned. Until then, Hendrix recommended that Alzheimer’s patients stick with their treatment plans — and speak with their doctor before adding any kind of supplement.

As for preventing Alzheimer’s in the first place, Hendrix doubted that there’s any “magic pill,” resveratrol or otherwise.

But, he said, there is evidence that lifestyle choices can help prevent Alzheimer’s, or delay its onset. A healthy diet, regular exercise and staying mentally active could all help.

“What’s good for your heart,” Hendrix said, “is also good for your brain.”

More information

The Alzheimer’s Association has more on lowering Alzheimer’s risk.

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See a 9/11 Search and Rescue Dog’s Sweet 16 Birthday Celebration

A deserving pup named Bretagne just had a birthday to remember. BarkBox, a pet food and gifts subscription service, shared a video about a New York City celebration for the golden retriever that worked with Texas Task Force 1 and handler Denise Corliss to help search for victims trapped in the rubble of the fallen World Trade Center towers in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

Corliss and the canine — said to be one of the last surviving 9/11 search dogs — were recently treated to a suite at 1 Hotel Central Park, a vintage taxi ride through Times Square, a visit to the sprinklers at Hudson River Park and a Tiffany & Co. sterling silver bone, in addition to other colorful pet toys.

In recent years, Bretagne has still worked as a service dog, keeping elementary school students with special needs company as they learn to read.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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