Study Questions Use of Physical Therapy for Early Parkinson’s

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Physical therapy might not benefit people with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s disease, a new study suggests.

Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder that interferes with the ability to do daily tasks. Typically, physical therapy is used in the later stages of the disease, but this study assessed its effectiveness in earlier stages.

Researchers randomly assigned 762 patients with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s to either physical therapy and occupational therapy, or a “control” group with no therapy. Over eight weeks, the patients in the therapy group did about four 58-minute sessions.

After three months, there was no difference between the therapy group and the control group in the ability to do daily tasks, the study found.

The results were published online Jan. 19 in the journal JAMA Neurology.

It’s possible that mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s disease may not respond to physical therapy, but that more advanced Parkinson’s may respond, “although this remains to be established,” Dr. Carl Clarke, of the University of Birmingham, England, and co-authors wrote in a journal news release.

These findings do not support use of physical therapy or occupational therapy in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, the study authors said. Future research should assess more structured and intensive physical therapy programs for patients in all stages of the disease, the researchers concluded.

But another expert pointed out the study’s limitations.

“These results should be interpreted with attention to the study details,” Dr. J. Eric Ahlskog of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., wrote in an accompanying editorial. Only patients with mild to moderate Parkinson’s disease were included, and the study excluded patients thought to need physical or occupational therapy, he said.

While the investigation suggests blanket referrals of all patients with earlier-stage Parkinson’s disease to physical therapy doesn’t appear to be cost-effective, Ahlskog said patients may benefit in other ways.

“Intuitively, certain Parkinson’s disease-related symptoms should benefit from routine physical therapy strategies, including problems such as gait freezing, imbalance/fall risk, or immobilized limbs,” Ahlskog wrote.

“Patients with Parkinson’s disease with shortened stride or reduced arm swing benefit from strategies for consciously increasing attenuated movements. Such circumscribed problems were not the focus of this investigation,” he added.

Ahlskog suggested that physical therapy referrals for patients with Parkinson’s should be for specific problems that are likely to benefit. Also, physical therapy practices should begin to incorporate aerobic exercise and fitness, he concluded.

More information

The Parkinson’s Disease Foundation has more about Parkinson’s disease.

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Slow Heart Rate Doesn’t Mean Early Death Risk: Study

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — People with a slow heart rate don’t have an increased risk for heart disease, a new study suggests.

A typical heart rate for an adult at rest is 60 to 100 beats a minute, but in some people it’s below 50 beats a minute, a condition called bradycardia, the researchers said.

Because the heart may not be pumping enough blood throughout the body, this slow heart rate can lead to light-headedness, shortness of breath, fainting or chest pain. However, it hasn’t been clear whether a slow pulse increases the risk of heart disease, according to the study authors.

“For a large majority of people with a heart rate in the 40s or 50s who have no symptoms, the prognosis is very good,” corresponding author Dr. Ajay Dharod, instructor in internal medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., said in a center news release.

“Our results should be reassuring for those diagnosed with asymptomatic bradycardia,” Dharod added.

In this study, researchers looked at data from more than 6,700 people. They were between the ages of 45 and 84, and living in the United States. None had heart disease when the study began. Their health was followed for more than 10 years.

People with a heart rate of less than 50 and no symptoms of heart trouble didn’t have a higher risk of heart disease than those with a normal heart rate, researchers said.

However, people with a low heart rate who were taking heart rate-modifying drugs such as beta blockers and calcium channel blockers had an increased risk of death, the study found.

But, the study wasn’t designed to find a cause-and-effect link between these factors, only that there is an association between them.

“Bradycardia may be problematic in people who are taking medications that also slow their heart rate,” Dharod noted. “Further research is needed to determine whether this association is causally linked to heart rate or to the use of these drugs.”

The findings were published online Jan. 19 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

More information

The American Heart Association has more about heart rate.

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Out-of-Shape Teens May Face High Blood Pressure Later

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Teenagers who are either overweight or have low fitness levels face a heightened risk of developing high blood pressure by middle age, a large new study finds.

People who were both heavy and out of shape in their teens showed the biggest risk, researchers reported Jan. 19 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

But even thin teens were at risk of future blood pressure problems if their fitness levels were low. And high blood pressure is serious, raising the risk of stroke, heart disease, kidney disease and premature death, the researchers noted.

Experts said the findings — based on more than 1.5 million Swedish men followed for 26 years — drive home a few major points. One is that physical activity matters, regardless of your weight.

And that goes beyond blood pressure, said Dr. Carl “Chip” Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at Ochsner Medical Center, in New Orleans.

“We know from many studies, including ones that my colleagues and I have published, that for major cardiovascular disease events and overall survival, fitness is even more important than fatness for predicting someone’s risk,” said Lavie, co-author of an editorial published with the study.

Dr. Casey Crump, the lead researcher on the work, agreed that fitness matters for everyone — and that thinness does not equal good health.

“Good aerobic fitness has important benefits, even if you have a normal BMI,” said Crump, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University Medical Center, in Stanford, Calif.

He said the same is true for people with a high BMI — a measure of weight in relation to height. So even if people do not drop as many pounds as they’d like through exercise, they are still doing something positive for their health, Crump said.

Still, he added, in this study, weight at age 18 was a stronger predictor of high blood pressure than fitness levels. So ideally, Crump said, young adults should be physically fit, eat well, and be at a healthy weight.

However, “we know that a lot of young people are not meeting physical activity guidelines,” Crump said.

U.S. government guidelines say kids ages 6 to 17 should get at least one hour of exercise each day — mainly from aerobic activities such as running, biking and dancing.

But less than 30 percent of high school students meet that goal, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Crump said the new findings underscore the importance of changing that trend.

“Excessive ‘screen time’ — from TV and computers — has made our whole society more sedentary, including children,” Crump said. “That probably accounts for a lot of the current obesity epidemic.”

The current findings are based on more than 1.5 million Swedish men who enlisted in the military between 1969 and 1997, and were followed for an average of 26 years.

During that time, 6 percent were diagnosed with high blood pressure, and the risk was related to both weight and fitness at age 18, the researchers concluded.

Men who were overweight or obese at 18 had more than double the risk, versus their normal-weight peers. And those whose fitness levels were in the bottom third had a 50 percent greater risk than those in the top third, the study found.

Worst off were young men who were both heavy and less fit. Their risk of eventually developing high blood pressure was 3.5 times higher, compared with normal-weight, fit young men.

Crump said that may partly reflect lifestyle. Young people with healthy habits often carry them into adulthood.

Lavie agreed, but added that some cardiovascular effects may take shape early in life.

“Some vascular changes already may be starting from the high BMI and/or low fitness very early in life — which could increase the long-term risk of vascular disease,” he said.

To Lavie, the common denominator is regular exercise, which can help maintain a healthy weight and boost fitness. “I personally feel that low physical activity may be the greatest threat to health in the 21st century,” he said.

For parents, Lavie stressed the importance of leading by example. Physical activity should be a part of the family’s daily routine, he said.

The study was funded by the U.S. and Swedish governments. Lavie has served as a lecturer for the Coca-Cola Company, on exercise, fitness and obesity.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on getting kids active.

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HIV Testing Rates Still Low Among Teens, Young Adults: CDC

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Only one in five sexually active high school students has been tested for HIV, and young adults aren’t doing much better at finding out their status, U.S. health officials report.

As a result, an estimated 50 percent of young Americans infected with the virus that causes AIDS don’t know they have it, the researchers found.

“We haven’t made the dent that we would like to have made,” said study author Michelle Van Handel, a health scientist with the division of HIV/AIDS prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, she said, the HIV testing rate is actually lower among those aged 18 to 24 than for older people in the United States.

Thanks to medical advances, HIV has evolved into a chronic disease instead of a fatal one. But those who are infected must take medications for their entire lives and face higher risk of various health problems as they age.

Young people — especially blacks — are particularly hard hit by HIV. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks accounted for about 57 percent (7,000) of all new HIV infections among youth in 2010, which are the latest figures available. Hispanic/Latino youth accounted for 20 percent (2,390) and white youth accounted for 20 percent (2,380).

Overall, young adults made up 17 percent of the U.S. population in 2010 but more than a quarter of all new HIV diagnoses, the CDC noted. Gay and bisexual young men are most likely to get infected, but 27 percent of new infections are in females and heterosexual males.

For the new study, researchers examined the results of two U.S. surveys — one of high school students and one of adults aged 18 to 24.

Among high school students, the researchers found that 22 percent of those who’d had sex reported being tested for HIV. The survey for this age group, which looked at an average of 14,500 students a year from 2005-2013, didn’t find any change in testing rates over that time.

Among high school students, males (17 percent) were less likely to have been tested than females (27 percent).

The rates were a little higher among those aged 18 to 24. To gauge testing in that age group, the study authors looked at surveys from 2011-2013 with an average of 19,600 participants a year. The researchers found that 27 percent of males had been tested and 40 percent of females had been tested. Young adult black females had an especially high testing rate, at 60 percent in 2013.

Why are the testing rates low? Van Handel said potential reasons include lack of access to health care and too few health professionals who know about — and follow — HIV-testing guidelines. Those guidelines recommend testing for those aged 13 to 64.

“Research has shown that adolescents are more likely to get tested if their physician recommends it,” she said.

High school students may also be wary of getting tested because they fear their parents will find out through their health insurer, she said. Another hurdle, Handel said, is that blood tests aren’t necessarily routine for people of high school age.

Lisa Metsch, chair of the department of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, said creative strategies are needed to boost testing rates among teens and young adults. Her research group, for example, has explored HIV testing at dental offices. High schools and other places where teens congregate are other potential venues for testing, she said.

Gregory Phillips II, a research assistant professor with the department of medical social sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, agreed with Metsch.

“Incorporating HIV testing activities into school activities — like having a mobile unit available for HIV testing outside the school on a regular basis — will normalize the activity and hopefully remove some of the stigma that remains around seeking a test,” Phillips said.

The new study findings were published online Jan. 19 in the journal Pediatrics.

More information

For more about HIV testing, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Families Say Hospice Better Than Hospital for Dying Cancer Patients

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Families of patients dying of cancer felt their loved one had better care and quality of life when they died in a hospice rather than in a hospital’s intensive care unit, a new study reveals.

Relatives reported a better end-of-life experience more often when their loved one received hospice care for more than three days (59 percent) than those who received hospice care for three or fewer days (43 percent). Moreover, only 45 percent of families reported excellent care when the patient was admitted to a hospital intensive care unit (ICU) within 30 days of dying, the researchers found.

“Our findings are a powerful argument for the importance of advance care planning,” said lead researcher Dr. Alexi Wright, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

How and where people die strongly shapes patients’ dying experience and how family members remember it, she said.

“In this study we found that patients’ preferences influenced the care that they received. Now we need to ensure that patients and their family members have the information they need to make choices about their end-of-life experiences and plan for it,” Wright said.

The report was published Jan. 19 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a special themed issue on end-of-life care.

For the study, Wright and her colleagues collected data on more than 1,100 cancer patients. The investigators used data from interviews with family members of Medicare patients with advanced lung or colon cancer from a study of patients who died by the end of 2011.

The researchers also found that only 42 percent of families of patients who died in the hospital said their loved one had excellent end-of-life care, compared with 57 percent of families whose loved ones died at home or in a hospice.

In addition, family members of patients who did not receive hospice care or received three or fewer days of hospice care were less likely to report the patient died in their preferred location (40 percent) than those who received hospice care for more than three days (73 percent).

“Efforts to increase earlier hospice enrollment and avoid ICU admissions and hospital deaths are important areas to focus on to improve the quality of end-of-life care,” Wright said.

Dr. R. Sean Morrison is president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and director of the National Palliative Care Research Center. He suggested that “patients who have access to hospice care have a better quality of death and a more peaceful death than patients in hospitals.”

One reason is that hospice care takes into account patients’ values and goals and matches treatment accordingly, explained Morrison, who is also vice chair of research in the Brookdale department of geriatrics and palliative medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. “Hospice also provides an added layer of support to the family,” he said.

In addition, hospice provides home care for patients who prefer to die at home, Morrison said.

That so many family members report a poor quality of death for their loved ones “should be a wake-up call,” he said.

“If 50 percent of Americans said they were unhappy with their hip replacement, that would be a national outrage,” Morrison added. “The same should be said of the care of people at the end of life — we have to be able to do better.”

Hospice care is available to most patients and most hospitals have palliative care teams, said Dr. Joan Teno, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“Now we have to focus on changing physician behavior to improve quality of care,” she said. At the end of life, doctors need to take patients’ values and goals into account, Teno said.

In her recent study, Teno found that only one in five family members of someone who died in an ICU said that care was consistent with their preferences. “Care that is not consistent with your preferences is a sign that the health care system is breaking down. We really have to align care with preferences,” she said.

Moreover, hospice care needs to start earlier, not just in the last three days before dying, Teno said.

“We have to start paying doctors not for procedures in the ICU, but for quality,” Teno said. “The key is — were patients informed about their prognosis, their treatment options, and was the care consistent with their goals and values?”

More information

Visit the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization for more on end-of-life care.

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Doctors Choose Less Aggressive Care at End of Life, Studies Reveal

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Doctors facing death are less likely to demand aggressive care that might squeeze out a bit more extra time of life, two new studies show.

One study found that doctors facing the end of their lives are less likely than the general public to undergo surgery, be treated in an intensive care unit or die in a hospital.

“It seems to confirm the idea that physicians understand the limits of modern medicine at the end of life,” said lead author Joel Weissman. He is deputy director and chief scientific officer of the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

“When faced with that kind of decision, they choose to have more peaceful and less aggressive care at end of life,” Weissman added.

Those findings were backed up by the second study, which found that physicians and people with higher education are less likely to die in a hospital than people in the general population.

“This suggests that being well-educated has an influence on how we experience death,” said study author Dr. Saul Blecker, an assistant professor of population health at New York University School of Medicine.

However, Dr. Joseph Rotella, chief medical officer for the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, said neither study showed extremely large differences between doctors and other people when it comes to dying.

“Although there were differences that were statistically significant, they were pretty small differences. I want to guard against over-interpreting what was actually seen in this study,” Rotella said.

Most people would like to die at home rather than in a hospital or care facility, according to prior surveys cited as background information. Despite this, most deaths continue to occur in a hospital or nursing home.

In the first study, Weissman and his colleagues reviewed data on Medicare beneficiaries aged 66 or older who died between 2004 and 2011 in Massachusetts, Michigan, Utah and Vermont. The researchers focused on these states because they offered electronic death records that could be linked to Medicare data.

The researchers assessed five measures of end-of-life care intensity during the last six months of the people’s lives. These included surgery, hospice care, ICU admission, death in the hospital, and the cost of care.

Compared with the general population, physicians were less likely to die in a hospital (28 percent versus 32 percent), less likely to have surgery (25 percent versus 27 percent), and less likely to be admitted to the ICU (26 percent versus 28 percent), the findings showed.

For the second study, Blecker and his colleagues used data from a national mortality survey to compare the location of death for physicians with that of other health care professionals, people with higher education and the general population.

The researchers found that physicians were slightly less likely to die in a hospital than the general population (38 percent versus 40 percent), but equally as likely to die in a hospital as others in health care professions or with similar levels of education.

In addition, physicians were the least likely group to die at any sort of care facility: 63 percent for physicians, 65 percent for other health professionals, 66 percent for others with higher education, and 72 percent for all others.

These numbers show a need for doctors to have better conversations with patients about what to realistically expect from end-of-life care, Weissman said.

“Patients need to have the discussion with their doctor,” he said. “It’s hard to say what is a good death, but ultimately the goal is to care for patients in a way that’s consistent with their own choices and goals.”

Both studies were published in the Jan. 19 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a themed issue that focused on end-of-life topics.

However, even doctors have a difficult time dying well, despite their hands-on knowledge, Rotella said.

In the first study, the percentage of doctors who received hospice care was about the same as that of the general population, Rotella pointed out. In the second study, nearly two-thirds of the doctors wound up dying in a medical facility.

“It’s important to recognize the large-scale forces that drive decisions at the end of life seem to affect doctors, too,” he said.

Those forces might include restrictions on who can receive hospice care, denial by the patient or their family that death is near, or the desire by the patient to continue receiving treatment that might cure them, Rotella said.

More information

For more on hospice care, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Stillbirths Still Too Common Worldwide

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Despite a decline in the rate of stillbirths, more than 2.6 million stillbirths still occur worldwide each year — approximately 7,200 deaths daily, British researchers report.

A stillbirth is the death of a baby in the womb after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The researchers found that half of stillbirths occur during the birth process. Most (98 percent) of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.

The Jan. 18 issue of the journal The Lancet includes a series of articles aimed at highlighting the issue of stillbirths.

“The number of stillbirths remains alarmingly high: 2.6 million stillbirths annually, with little reduction this past decade. But the truly horrific figure is 1.3 million intrapartum [during the birth process] stillbirths,” wrote The Lancet editors Richard Horton and Udani Samarasekera in a related commentary.

“The idea of a child being alive at the beginning of labor and dying for entirely preventable reasons during the next few hours should be a health scandal of international proportions. Yet it is not,” they wrote.

The research wasn’t all bad news, however. The rate of maternal deaths dropped 3 percent. Newborn deaths declined 3.1 percent. And the rate of deaths among children younger than 5 declined 4.5 percent from 2000 to 2015, according to the team led by Joy Lawn at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Many causes of stillbirth are preventable, the study authors said.

For example, about 8 percent of stillbirths were caused by malaria infections, while almost another 8 percent were caused by syphilis infections. Maternal nutrition accounted for another 10 percent of stillbirths, the researchers said.

The study found wide variety in the rates of stillbirths based on region. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest stillbirth rates, and the slowest rates of progress worldwide, according to the researchers.

Stillbirths remain a problem in some developed nations, particularly those with a wide gap between the rich and the poor, such as Iceland and Ukraine. In these countries, a woman living under poor socioeconomic conditions has roughly double the risk of having a stillborn child than more financially secure women, the researchers said.

Some high-income countries have made progress in reducing stillbirths. The most dramatic decrease was seen in the Netherlands, with almost a 7 percent drop between 2000 and 2015, the study showed.

Among low- and middle-income countries, Cambodia had the most significant decrease in stillbirths, with an almost 4 percent decline. Bangladesh followed with a 3.4 percent drop. The rate of stillbirths also fell nearly 3 percent in Rwanda, the researchers found.

Stillbirth rates for women of south Asian and African origin giving birth in Europe or Australia are also up to three times higher than white women, according to a second study team led by Dr. Vicki Flenady, at the Mater Research Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia. These study authors said this disparity could be addressed through education, better access to health care, improvements in maternal care and alleviating poverty.

The researchers noted that poor care plays a role in up to 30 percent of stillbirths in high-income nations.

A systematic approach to identifying the causes of stillbirth is needed, the study’s authors said. Increasing the number of pregnant women with a healthy body weight is critical to improve pregnancy outcomes and long-term health, they added.

The effects that stillbirth has on parents and families is often discounted, said a research team led by Dr. Alexander Heazell, from St. Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, England. Parents report being discouraged from speaking about their experiences to avoid making others feel uncomfortable.

Researchers found, however, that up to 70 percent of grieving mothers in high-income countries have clinically significant symptoms following their baby’s death. Grief, they noted, can persist for at least four years.

The study authors noted a stigma is often associated with stillbirth in many low- and middle-income countries.

Another study led by Dr. Luc de Bernis, of the U.N. Population Fund in Geneva, Switzerland, found the estimated 7,200 stillbirths that occur daily remain a hidden problem. Nearly half of deaths that occur during delivery are highly preventable with improvements in the quality of care and the early identification of high-risk pregnancies.

More information

The March of Dimes provides more information on stillbirth.

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Screen Nursing Home Residents for B12 Deficiency: Researchers

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Vitamin B12 deficiency is common among seniors in long-term care, but easily remedied with screening, according to a new Canadian study.

Too little vitamin B12 is linked with depression, dementia and anemia, a condition marked by too few red blood cells. Often, older adults become B12 deficient as a result of medications that interfere with the vitamin’s absorption, the researchers said.

The study included residents of eight long-term care facilities in the province of Ontario. At the time of admission, 14 percent were B12 deficient and another one-third had lower than optimal levels of the vitamin, the researchers found.

In the year after admission, 4 percent of the residents developed B12 deficiency, while those who received treatment had improvements in their levels of the vitamin, the study authors said.

The findings are the first step in getting an accurate estimate of B12-deficiency rates among seniors in long-term care facilities, said the researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging.

Giving residents a simple screening blood test each year could help solve the problem, the researchers added.

The study was published Jan. 19 in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.

“The negative effects of a B12 deficiency for an at-risk community such as elderly adults in long-term care should be a vital concern … and warrants consideration of mandatory B12 screening at admission,” Heather Keller, research chair of nutrition and aging at the University of Waterloo, said in a journal news release.

This is of particular importance in the context of an aging population needing more long-term care, she added.

More information

For about vitamin B12, go to the Office of Dietary Supplements, U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Average U.S. Home Harbors About 100 Types of Insects, Other Critters

TUESDAY, Jan. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Even if you think you live alone, you may not: A new study finds that the average American shares his or her home with over 100 different species of insects and other “arthropods.”

Arthropods are invertebrates with exoskeletons — segmented bodies and jointed limbs, and include insects, spiders, centipedes and mites.

A team led by Matt Bertone, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, went room-to-room in 50 freestanding houses within 30 miles of Raleigh, N.C.

The researchers found that, overall, nearly 600 different kinds of arthropods were found across the various homes.

On average, any one home had about 100 different types of arthropods, the researchers said, and only five of the 554 rooms sampled contained no arthropods.

“We think our homes are sterile environments, but they’re not,” Bertone said in a university news release. “We share our space with many different species, most of which are benign. The fact that you don’t know they’re there only highlights how little we interact with them.”

The most common groups of arthropods in the homes were flies, spiders, beetles, ants and book lice, according to the study published Jan. 19 in the journal PeerJ.

Not all of the species found “are actually living in everyone’s homes” on an ongoing basis, Bertone noted. Many “had clearly wandered in from outdoors, been brought in on cut flowers or were otherwise accidentally introduced,” he said. “Because [these species are] not equipped to live in our homes, they usually die pretty quickly.”

So, should people worry about all these tiny housemates? Probably not, Bertone said.

“The vast majority of the arthropods we found in homes were not pest species,” he said. “They were either peaceful cohabitants — like the cobweb spiders (Theridiidae) found in 65 percent of all rooms sampled — or accidental visitors, like midges and leafhoppers (Cicadellidae).”

The next step is to look more closely at the arthropods found in homes.

“Do they provide important services that we don’t know about in the ecosystems of our homes? Do any host microbial organisms affect our health, for good or bad?” wondered study co-author Michelle Trautwein, who is chair of dipterology — the study of flies, gnats and other insects — at the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco.

“We can also begin to explore their traits to see if they share evolutionary characteristics that have made them better suited to live with humans,” she said.

Bertone said his team also plans “to assess how a home’s structure, its outdoor environment, and the behavior of its human residents influences the biodiversity of arthropods in the home.”

More information

The University of California Museum of Paleontology has more about arthropods.

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7 running tips to improve your stride

 

There’s more to running than just hitting the pavement. Reduce your risk of injury with these head to toe running tips.

Head: the way you hold your head when you run will determine your posture. Look ahead to where you are running, not down at your feet.

Shoulders: Your shoulders need to stay relaxed; think about dropping them away from your ears. While running you may find they start to creep up towards your ears again and you may start to feel tense. Relax them and shake them out. Your shoulders should remain level and not drop from one side to the other.

Arms: Your hands control the tension in your upper body while your arms and the way they swing work together with your leg stride to drive you forward. Keep your hands unclenched. Your arms should swing forwards and back, not across your body, and between waist and lower chest level. Your elbows should be bent at about 90 degrees.

Torso: The position of your torso is affected by your head and shoulders. If your head and shoulders are in the correct position, your torso and back will naturally straighten to allow you to run in an efficient, upright position that will promote lung capacity and stride length.

Hips: Your hips are your centre of gravity, and are key to good running posture. If you have the right torso position, your hips will follow. They should be pointing straight ahead.

Ankles/Feet: To run well, you need to push off the ground with maximum force. With each step, your foot should hit the ground lightly and land between your heel and mid-foot. Keep your ankle flexed as your foot rolls forward to create more force as you push-off again. As you roll onto your toes, try to spring off the ground. You should feel your calf muscles propelling you forward on each step.

For more training tips check out workouts section and be on your way to a better you.

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