Health | 100 Tips

What to Do When Sex Makes You Itch

Photo: Getty Images

Sex is suddenly making me itch. Could I be allergic to my partner?

Vaginal itching is very common and is often the result of easily treatable issues. For starters, if you’re using spermicidal or latex condoms, you could be allergic to one of those substances. In that case, the fix is simple: Switch to nonlatex condoms (like those made of polyurethane) that don’t contain spermicide and see if your symptoms go away.

Other possibilities: You may have a yeast infection or a sexually transmitted infection, both of which can be exacerbated by sex. Treating the infection should ease the itch. Are you using a new scented soap, lotion, or detergent? That could also be a culprit, as could douching. (Remember: You don’t need to douche, ever.) If you’re over 40, itchy intercourse may even be a sign of perimenopause, since a decrease in estrogen can lead to the thinning of vaginal tissue.

Your symptoms are probably not the result of a semen allergy, which is very rare. But if you can’t rule out another issue, visit an allergist, who can help you determine if you’re in the small minority of people who have this allergy.

Health’s medical editor, Roshini Rajapaksa, MD, is associate professor of medicine at the NYU School of Medicine and co-founder of Tula Skincare.

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‘Tweeners’ Who Think Pot Is Cool More Likely to Drink and Drive Later: Study

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Oct. 5, 2015 (HealthDay News) — “Tweeners” who think marijuana is acceptable may be more likely to drive drunk or ride with a drunk driver when they reach high school, a new study suggests.

The researchers followed nearly 1,200 U.S. middle school students from 2009 to 2013. The kids were assessed at ages 12, 14 and 16. The scientists found that positive beliefs about marijuana and confidence in their ability to not use marijuana when the kids were 12 were significant predictors of later driving drunk or riding with a drinking driver when they were 16.

“It is crucial to intervene early to help prevent DUI or riding with a drinking driver in high school,” said lead researcher Brett Ewing, a statistical project associate at RAND Corp in Santa Monica, Calif.

“We need to target youth in middle school, and start the discussion with youth on how to make healthy choices,” she said.

“We need to intervene in early adolescence at multiple levels to reduce high school DUI and riding with a drinking driver,” Ewing said. “For example, focusing on not only the individual teen, but also on peer and family influences.”

The report was published online Oct. 5 in the journal Pediatrics.

Ewing added that, for 14-year-olds, drinking, having positive beliefs about marijuana, having friends who drink or family members who use marijuana were all strong predictors of driving while drunk in high school.

However, the study only found an association between attitudes about marijuana and later drinking and driving. A cause-and-effect link was not established.

Colleen Sheehey-Church, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), said, “This study validates what we have seen for a while.”

Sheehey-Church said that parents need to start talking to their children about alcohol and drugs early. “They need to start talking to younger kids more often and really put a plan in place to change some of these beliefs,” she said.

The same needs to be done by schools and communities, she added.

Starrla Penick, national program director at MADD, added, “Teens who do not start drinking until they are 21 are 85 percent less likely to be in a car crash than those who start drinking before age 14.”

Kids who start drinking early are more likely to drive drunk later in life and get into a car with a driver who has been drinking, Penick said.

Penick said parents have an essential role in fighting peer pressure. Parents need to start talking specifically about alcohol and drugs like marijuana when their children are young and continue the discussion throughout their teens, she said.

In addition, parents need to have children understand that just because they haven’t been caught yet doesn’t mean they won’t be caught, Penick said.

Parents need to help their children stand up to peer pressure. Changing perceptions about alcohol and drugs is also important, she said.

So when kids say, “Everyone is doing it,” parents need to tell them, “No, everyone isn’t drinking or smoking marijuana,” Penick said.

Sheehey-Church, who lost her own teen son in a car driven by a drunk driver, said, “I can’t say enough about how important it is that kids have their beliefs about alcohol and marijuana changed and how they need to protect themselves and their friends.”

More information

For more information on drinking and driving, visit MADD.

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Zip Line Injuries on the Rise

MONDAY, Oct. 5, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Zip lining has become a popular way to experience a little adventure, but serious injuries can be an unintended consequence of that momentary thrill, researchers report.

“Though the rate of injuries while zip lining is relatively low, when injuries do occur they can be quite serious,” said study co-author Tracy Mehan, manager of translational research for the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

“The high rate of hospitalization is consistent with what we see for adventure sports, and reflects the severity of the injuries associated with this activity,” Mehan said in a hospital news release.

An estimated 16,850 nonfatal zip line injuries were treated in U.S. emergency departments between 1997 and 2012, and nearly 70 percent of those injuries occurred during the last four years of that span.

In 2012 alone, more than 3,600 zip line-related injuries were treated in ERs, which is nearly 10 per day. More than 90 percent of injuries occurred from April through October, with the peak in July, the researchers found.

The leading causes of injuries were falls (77 percent) and collisions (13 percent), including those with trees and other structures used to anchor zip lines.

The most common types of injuries were broken bones (46 percent), bruises (15 percent), strains/sprains (15 percent) and concussions/closed head injuries (7 percent). Eleven percent of patients with zip line injuries were admitted to the hospital, according to the study published Oct. 5 in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

A zip line is a pulley attached to a cable that’s usually made of stainless steel. The cable is suspended above an incline that allows the user to use gravity to slide from the top of the cable to the bottom.

The number of commercial zip lines in the United States grew from 10 in 2001 to more than 200 in 2012, and there are more than 13,000 amateur zip lines in outdoor education programs, camps and backyards, according to the study.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about sports injuries.

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Expert Offers Car Seat Safety Tips

SATURDAY, Oct. 3, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Although it can sometimes be a challenge to get a cranky, wriggling toddler into a child car seat, those safety devices can protect youngsters from serious injuries in an accident.

But only when they’re used properly, an expert advised.

“We know from our work with thousands of families across the country over the past decade that car seats can be frustrating. In fact, an alarming three out of four are not installed properly,” Gloria del Castillo, child passenger safety expert at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said in a hospital news release.

One common misconception is that used child car seats are always safe. However, car seats have expiration dates or may have been damaged in a crash, Additionally, the plastic can degrade over time, said del Castillo, who’s also a program manager for a national education program called Buckle Up for Life.

If you’re considering a used car seat, check the expiration date, typically located on a sticker on the seat and on the seat’s registration card, del Castillo said.

Expensive car seats aren’t safer than less costly seats. All have to meet the same U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standards. Some seats are more expensive due to components such as fabric, padding and other added features.

Many people think a 1-year-old can ride in a forward-facing car seat, but children should remain in rear-facing seats until age 2 years, or until they exceed the height or weight limit for the seat, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends.

Some parents believe that when their children outgrow their car seats or booster seats, the child can ride in the front seat. But all children younger than 13 are safest in the back seat, said del Castillo.

She added that children shorter than 4 feet 9 should sit in booster seats so that seat belts can offer them proper protection. A seat belt that rides up around a child’s waist or neck can cause injuries during a crash.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about children and car safety.

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Study Links Early Infections to Celiac Risk

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Children who have a lot of infections in the first 18 months of life may have an increased risk for celiac disease, a new study from Norway suggests.

The study found that children with 10 or more respiratory and gastrointestinal infections during the first 18 months of life were 30 percent more likely to develop celiac disease than kids who had fewer than five infections. The researchers also found that youngsters with repeated respiratory infections were at greater risk than those with repeated gastrointestinal infections.

“We think there are many pieces to the puzzle that must fit together for someone to develop celiac disease, where heredity, gluten intake and possibly many other environmental factors are important,” study first author Dr. Karl Marild, from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, said in an institute news release.

“Perhaps having frequent infections in early life influences the immune system so that it is subsequently more likely to react to gluten,” Marild said.

The study’s findings were published recently in The American Journal of Gastroenterology.

However, while the study linked a greater number of infections with an increased risk of celiac disease, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. It’s possible that children who had more infections were more likely to be diagnosed with celiac simply because they spent much more time in the health care system, the researchers said.

“We cannot rule out that the association found may somewhat have been influenced by increased health care surveillance, including diagnostic workup for celiac disease, among the children with high infection frequency,” Marild said.

People with celiac disease can’t eat gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. If someone with celiac eats gluten, it triggers a damaging immune-system response in their bodies, the researchers explained.

For the study, the researchers analyzed information from nearly 73,000 children born in Norway. The children were born between 2000 and 2009, and the average follow-up time was 8.5 years. Just under 1 percent of the children eventually developed celiac disease, the study found.

Previous research has also suggested that infections may boost the risk of celiac disease, the study authors added.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about celiac disease.

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Higher-Volume Rehab Centers Better for Hip Fracture Recovery: Study

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Seniors who break a hip receive the best care in skilled nursing facilities with the most experience handling such fractures, a new study suggests.

Twenty-five cases a year was the magic number, according to lead author Pedro Gozalo, associate professor of health services, policy and practice at the School of Public Health at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and colleagues.

“Even adjusting for a long list of patient risk factors and for important facility characteristics, facilities that had cared for more than two dozen hip fracture patients in the last 12 months were more than twice as likely to successfully discharge patients in a timely manner compared to facilities that had three or less hip fracture admissions,” Gozalo said in a university news release.

The researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 512,000 patients with broken hips, aged 75 and older, who received rehabilitation care at more than 15,400 skilled nursing facilities in the United States between 2000 and 2007.

About 31 percent of the patients were able to return home within a month, but there was wide variation among facilities. Rates were nearly 44 percent at facilities that handled more than 24 cases a year, compared with about 19 percent at facilities that handled one to six cases a year, the findings showed.

The study was published online Oct. 1 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

“While volume is not a direct measure of post-acute care quality, it appears that it is a good proxy that captures hard-to-measure aspects of quality, like the expertise of the staff, that are clearly associated with an outcome that patients care about: returning home soon and in a condition that allows them to remain at home without further institutionalization in a hospital or a nursing home,” Gozalo explained.

He and his colleagues also found that more than 70 percent of patients who went to a lower-volume skilled nursing facility could have been cared for at a nearby higher-volume facility.

That suggests that patients and their families don’t have enough access to information about the quality of these facilities, Gozalo said.

“Based on our results, it would seem that in addition to any other sources of information and recommendations the family can get, they should definitely ask each facility they are considering what was the number of hip fractures they cared for in the last year,” Gozalo said.

“It’s a basic but very informative predictor of how well their loved one may fare at that facility,” he concluded.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about skilled nursing facilities.

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FDA Approves New Treatment for Lung Cancer

FRIDAY, Oct. 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved an immunotherapy drug for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

Keytruda (pembrolizumab) can be used to treat advanced non-small cell lung cancer in patients whose disease has progressed after previous treatments and who have tumors that express a protein called PD-L1, the agency said.

“Today’s approval of Keytruda gives physicians the ability to target specific patients who may be most likely to benefit from this drug,” Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release.

The Merck & Co. drug was approved for use with a companion diagnostic test that is the first designed to detect PD-L1 expression in non-small cell lung tumors, the FDA said in the news release.

By blocking what is called the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway, Keytruda may help the immune system fight lung cancer cells. In 2014, the FDA approved Keytruda to treat patients with advanced melanoma following treatment with Yervoy (ipilimumab), another type of immunotherapy.

The Keytruda approval is based on clinical trials that showed tumors shrank in 41 percent of patients, and the effect lasted between two and nine months.

The most common side effects of Keytruda included fatigue, decreased appetite, shortness of breath or impaired breathing, and cough. The drug also has the potential to cause severe immune system-related side effects involving the lungs, colon, hormone-producing glands, nervous system, as well as rash and blood vessel inflammation, the FDA said.

Pregnant or breast-feeding women should not take the drug because it may harm the fetus or baby, the agency noted.

Earlier this year, the FDA approved the Bristol-Myers Squibb drug Opdivo (nivolumab) — which also targets the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway — to treat squamous non-small cell lung cancer.

“Our growing understanding of underlying molecular pathways and how our immune system interacts with cancer is leading to important advances in medicine,” Pazdur said.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with about 221,000 new cases and 158,000 deaths in 2015, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about non-small cell lung cancer.

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A Fat-Burning Green Smoothie Recipe to Kickstart Your Morning

Photo: Getty Images

It’s a rare day when a pic of some sort of green drink doesn’t show up in my Instagram feed—and for good reason. Green smoothies are the perfect way to slip in veggies before noon. Here’s my version, with a boost of pea protein powder to rev your metabolism and keep you feeling full longer.

Ingredients

1 small very ripe green Anjou pear
2 Tbsp. minced green bell pepper
1/4 cup minced peeled cucumber
1 cup loose baby spinach leaves
1/4 ripe Hass avocado
1 cup vanilla almond milk
1 scoop plain, unsweetened pea protein powder (about 1/4 cup)
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger root
1 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice

Directions

Toss all ingredients in a blender, whip until smooth and pour in a glass. (Note: The smoothie is even better when it has been chilled in the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes.)

Pin the recipe

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Move of the Week: Plyometric Side Lunge

Not everyone owns a home gym, so it can be difficult to get in cardio without leaving the house. If you don’t have a treadmill or elliptical machine, try plyometrics (or jump training) to blast fat and rev up your heart rate at home, no equipment needed.

Watch Health‘s contributing fitness editor Kristin McGee demonstrate an exercise that will get you in shape anywhere.

RELATED: The 8 Best Fat-Blasters

Here’s how to do it: Stand with your feet about twice as wide as your shoulders, then jump your left leg to the left and bend your knee to come into a side lunge. At the same time, bring your right hand down to touch the floor in front of your body. Drive with your left foot to hop up, landing in a side lunge on your right side with your left hand touching the floor. Do this for 30-60 seconds.

Trainer tip: Remember to keep your chest high while you do this move, especially when you bring your hand to touch the ground in front of you.

Try the full workout: 4 Fat-Blasting Jumping Exercises

RELATED: Stationary Lunge with Pulse

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12 Hospitals That Might Make You Sicker

Photo: Getty Images

On an average day, about 1 in every 25 hospital patients gets sick from the hospital itself. How? By contracting what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls a healthcare-associated infection (HAI).

When a patient is already sick, one of these infections can be disastrous for their prognosis, and in 2011, 75,000 of the 722,000 patients who developed an HAI died during their hospital stay. To call attention to this problem, Consumer Reports ranked hospitals across the United States based on the frequency of MRSA and C. diff, the two most common and deadly HAIs, along with three other bugs.

They came up with a list of 12 hospitals from coast to coast with the highest rates of infection for all five types of infections they looked at—based on data all hospitals are required to report to the CDC and other agencies—between October 2013 and September 2014. “Getting a low score across all five infection categories is a red flag that the hospital is not focusing proper resources on infection control,” Doris Peter, PhD, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center explained in a release.

Florida had the most hospitals on the list, with three: St. Petersburg General Hospital in St. Petersburg; UF Health Jacksonville, in Jacksonville; and Venice Regional Bayfront Health, in Venice.

Many of the hospitals on the list responded with explanations of why their infection rates were so high during that period, and what they’re doing to fix the problem. Consumer Reports is posting the hospitals’ responses on the Safe Patient Project, a website from the magazine intended to make healthcare better for everyone.

The full list of hospitals is below in alphabetical order. Is yours on the list? (Each of the linked report cards are behind a paywall, but you can still view the hospital’s response, if there is one, without a subscription).

RELATED: Should You Go to the ER?

Brooklyn Hospital Center, Brooklyn, N.Y. (The hospital’s response.)

Decatur Memorial Hospital, Decatur, Ill.

Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services, New Albany, Ind. (The hospital’s response.)

Fremont-Rideout Health Group, Marysville, Calif. (The hospital’s response.)

Little Company of Mary Hospital and Health Care Centers., Evergreen Park, Ill.
(The hospital’s response.)

Mercy St. Anne Hospital, Toledo, Ohio

Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank, N.J.

Rockdale Medical Center, Conyers, Ga. (The hospital’s response)

St. Petersburg General Hospital, Saint Petersburg, Fla. (The hospital’s response)

The Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, Torrington, Conn.

UF Health Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Fla. (The hospital’s response)