Sports Medicine Docs Offer Safety Tips for Young Athletes

SUNDAY, Sept. 6, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Kids are back to school and back to sports, which inevitably leads to bumps and scrapes and possibly even more serious sports-related injuries.

Doctors in the sports medicine division at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio say preparation is the key to reducing the risk of these injuries.

First, they recommend that children start exercising long before a sports season begins — at least four to six weeks earlier.

Children and teens should get used to hot weather workouts by gradually increasing their time outdoors in heat and humidity. This should take place over the first 10 days to two weeks of practice.

Young athletes need to drink plenty of fluids and take breaks every 10 to 15 minutes, the doctors said. They should wear light clothing and limit their exposure to the sun if they’re outside during the hottest time of the day. One way to stay cool is to apply towels soaked in ice cubes and water to the head and neck.

If a child appears to be suffering from heat illness, move the youngster into the shade or coolest area nearby. Cool them by exposing their skin to ice or cold water and cool, circulating air, the doctors advised.

The doctors recommended that children with asthma should use preventive inhalers 20-30 minutes before exercise, do a gradual warmup, and have an inhaler close by during practices and games or competitions.

Young athletes should wear all recommended protective gear and it should be properly fitted. The doctors said youngsters should be instructed to immediately tell the coach or trainer if they feel dizzy, foggy, have a memory lapse or have a headache after taking a blow to the head.

Children with these symptoms should not return to the same game, competition or practice and should be checked by a doctor before they return to their sport, the doctors advised.

Each year, about 3.5 million American children and teens 14 and younger suffer from sports or recreation injuries, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said. More than 775,000 are treated in emergency departments for sports-related injuries, according to the AAP.

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about sports injury prevention.

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With School Back in Session, Kids Need Refresher Course on Hand-Washing

SATURDAY, Sept. 5, 2015 (HealthDay News) — With the start of the new school year, parents need to remind their children about the importance of hand-washing and how to do it properly, an infectious-disease expert says.

Hand-washing is the best way to prevent many types of infections, and is especially important after using the bathroom and before eating, according to Dr. Beverly Connelly. She’s with the division of infectious diseases at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, in Ohio.

“Germs get left everywhere! Good hand hygiene practices help prevent catching colds and respiratory viral infections, stomach bugs and diarrhea, as well as MRSA [methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus] and other skin infections. Make hand hygiene a practice you and your family practice every day,” she said in a hospital news release.

Parents should explain to children why it’s important to wash their hands, and should set a good example by following a hand-washing routine at home. Tell children it’s especially important to wash their hands after using the bathroom, after sneezing or blowing their nose, and before eating.

Teach children to wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If they use hand sanitizer, they should rub it over all the surfaces of their hands and fingers until their hands are dry, Connelly said.

Parents should put individual packets of hand sanitizer wipes in their children’s lunches so they can clean their hands before eating, she said.

It’s also important for parents to learn about hand hygiene practices at school. They should ask or find out if school bathrooms have soap dispensers, whether classrooms have bottles of hand sanitizer, and whether teachers make sure children clean their hands before lunch or snack time, Connelly suggested.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about hand-washing.

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Psychopaths May Not Yawn Along With You

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — People with psychopathic traits are less likely to catch “contagious yawning” than those with higher levels of empathy, a new study suggests.

Psychopathic characteristics include being selfish, manipulative, impulsive, domineering and lacking in empathy, Baylor University researchers explained.

Contagious yawning refers to yawning when other people yawn, and it is associated with empathy and bonding. It occurs in many social animals, including people, chimpanzees and dogs, the study authors explained in a university news release.

The study included 135 college students, who all completed a lengthy written psychological evaluation. Lead researcher Brian Rundle, a doctoral student in psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, pointed out in the news release that the test doesn’t tell specifically whether or not someone is a psychopath.

“It’s not an ‘on/off’ of whether you’re a psychopath. It’s a spectrum,” Rundle said.

Next, the researchers had the students sit in a dimly lit room, and wear noise-cancelling headphones. They also had electrodes placed in several spots on their face to measure their expressions. They were shown brief video clips of people yawning, laughing or with a neutral face.

The researchers found that the less empathy a person has, based on the results of their psychological evaluation, the less likely he or she was to “catch” a yawn.

The study was published online recently in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

So, should you be worried if someone doesn’t yawn after you do?

“The take-home lesson is not that if you yawn and someone else doesn’t, the other person is a psychopath,” Rundle said. “A lot of people didn’t yawn, and we know that we’re not very likely to yawn in response to a stranger we don’t have empathetic connections with,” he explained.

“But what we found tells us there is a neurological connection — some overlap — between psychopathy and contagious yawning. This is a good starting point to ask more questions,” Rundle concluded.

More information

Neuroscience for Kids has more about yawning.

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Exercise Appears Safe, Helpful for Pulmonary Hypertension

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Exercise can be beneficial and safe for people with pulmonary hypertension, researchers report.

Pulmonary hypertension is a type of high blood pressure that affects the lungs and heart, causing breathing problems, fatigue and dizziness. Left untreated, it can lead to heart failure, according to background information from the study.

“Clinicians have traditionally been skeptical about prescribing exercise for patients with chronic pulmonary hypertension due to concerns that training might put further strain on the heart,” said study senior author Dr. Jarett Berry. He is an associate professor of internal medicine and clinical sciences at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

“Our analysis found those concerns may be misplaced. More importantly, exercise had a positive effect on several measures of heart function as well as overall quality of life,” Berry said in a university news release.

UT researchers analyzed studies that included more than 400 people with pulmonary hypertension. Their review found that exercise is safe and can reduce pressure in the arteries and boost patients’ ability to exercise.

However, people with pulmonary hypertension should not begin an exercise program without first consulting their doctor, Berry said.

He noted that most patients in the analysis were in supervised exercise programs that had lower levels of intensity than those typically prescribed for heart failure patients.

The findings were published recently in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about pulmonary hypertension.

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Go Ahead and Cry, You’ll Feel Better

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A good cry really can help you feel better, a new study says.

The function of crying is not well understood. Some experts believe crying is an appeal for support, comfort or help, while others think its main role is to release emotions.

In this study, 60 people watched two movies, both of them tearjerkers. Almost half the viewers cried during the films. All participants were asked how they felt immediately after the movies, and again 20 and 90 minutes later.

Right after seeing the movies, the mood of viewers who didn’t cry was unchanged, while the criers’ moods were lower. However, within 20 minutes the moods of the teary-eyed rebounded to previous levels, and within 90 minutes their moods were even better than before the movies.

This rebound was not linked with how often someone cried, according to the study recently published in the journal Motivation and Emotion.

The drop and subsequent return of emotions to previous levels might make you feel you’re in a much better mood after you shed your tears, said lead author Asmir Gracanin, of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands.

However, it does seem that criers experience a general improvement in mood, but only after a longer period of time.

“After the initial deterioration of mood following crying, it takes some time for the mood not only to recover but also to be lifted above the levels at which it had been before the emotional event,” Gracanin said in a journal news release.

More information

The American Psychological Association has more about why we cry.

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Antipsychotic Drugs Will Become More Affordable, Study Predicts

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Patent expirations on several leading antipsychotic drugs could save Medicaid billions of dollars a year as the medications become available in cheaper generic versions, a new study finds.

Patients covered by Medicaid — the publicly funded insurance program for the poor — account for 70 to 80 percent of all antipsychotic prescriptions in the United States, the researchers said.

The lower costs of “second-generation” antipsychotics, such as Abilify and Seroquel, could prompt Medicaid to lift restrictions on access to the drugs, the study authors predicted.

The drugs are used to treat mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

“Mental health medications are among the most prescribed drugs in Medicaid, and many of these medications have recently become available as generics or soon will be,” said Eric Slade, an economist and associate professor in the psychiatry department at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Our predictions suggest that this change will result in a substantial financial windfall to states and to the federal government,” he added.

In 2011, Medicaid spent more than $3.6 billion on so-called second-generation antipsychotic drugs, a category of drugs introduced in the 1990s. Five brand-name drugs — Abilify (aripiprazole), Seroquel (quetiapine), Zyprexa (olanzapine), Geodon (ziprasidone), and Invega (paliperidone) — accounted for 90 percent, or $3.3 billion, of that spending, the study found.

Using forecasting models, the research team estimated that Medicaid’s annual spending on antipsychotic drugs will fall by nearly 50 percent, or $1.8 billion, by 2016. Spending should drop another $2.8 billion by 2019, they predicted.

The study was recently published in the journal Psychiatric Services.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about mental health medications.

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Zaps From Electric Device May Prevent Motion Sickness

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Motion sickness is a miserable experience, with sufferers having nausea, dizziness and cold sweats from the rocking of a boat, the swaying of a car or the swooping of a roller coaster.

Now imagine a device that could prevent those symptoms and allow you to enjoy your sailing excursion or day at the amusement park.

British researchers say such a device may soon be at hand. They have shown that a mild electrical current applied to the scalp can fend off these symptoms, according to findings published online Sept. 4 in the journal Neurology.

The electrical current interrupts confusing signals from the inner ear that lead to motion sickness. And the researchers say tests involving a small group of people showed promise in preventing nausea.

Such a current could be supplied by a small device or even the headphone jack of a mobile phone, the researchers suggest. They predict this cure for motion sickness will be on the market within a decade.

“We are confident that within five to 10 years people will be able to walk into the [drug store] and buy an anti-seasickness device,” said lead author Qadeer Arshad, an honorary research associate studying motion and balance at Imperial College London.

Motion sickness is a common complaint that can affect anyone. But about three in 10 people experience significant symptoms on long bus trips, on ships or in small aircraft, according to background notes.

The cause of motion sickness remains a mystery, but researchers suspect it occurs when what we see with our eyes or feel in our bodies is unable to line up perfectly with the balance messages that our brains receive from our inner ears.

So researchers decided to see if they could prevent motion sickness by interrupting the conflicting signals sent from the inner ear.

“We thought that this may be highly effective, and it proved to be the case,” Arshad said.

In the study, 20 volunteers wore electrodes on their heads for about 10 minutes. They were then placed in a motorized chair that rotates and tilts, to simulate the motions that tend to make people sick on boats or roller coasters.

People who received electrical stimulation took about 207 seconds longer to develop moderate nausea, compared with when they received “sham” treatment, the researchers found. Further, these people appeared to recover faster from motion sickness.

“It looks from the data like the correct stimulation significantly reduced the severity, time of onset and duration of symptoms in those patients, and really shortened the time of recovery,” said Dr. Sujana Chandrasekhar, director of the Comprehensive Balance Center of the New York Head & Neck Institute of Northshore-LIJ Health System.

However, Chandrasekhar questioned whether the amount of time by which motion sickness was delayed — about three-and-a-half minutes — would produce a “meaningful benefit” for most people.

“People take the Staten Island Ferry to work. That’s a 10-minute ride. If you can delay the onset by three or four minutes, then you’re nearly done with your commute,” she said. “But for people facing longer exposure, this may not be helpful.”

It would be nice if people could zap themselves repeatedly as they begin to feel symptoms of motion sickness, Chandrasekhar said, but “we don’t know if that’s safe or feasible.”

Arshad responded that the effect noted in this study “is equivalent to the current gold standard drug (Scopolamine) developed by the U.S. Army” for motion sickness, but does not cause the drowsiness associated with most seasickness drugs.

Dr. Bernard Cohen, a professor of neurology with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, had a different concern. He worries that the electrical stimulation might cause seizures or significant effects on mental function in some people.

“They’re trying to change your perception of what these symptoms are, with the brief electrical stimulation of the cortex,” Cohen said. “I have to tell you, I have some reservations about that.”

But Arshad said that the electrical current is not harmful, and that in other studies his team has shown that stimulating the brain in this way can enhance attention and concentration.

“The currents involved are very small and there is no reason to expect any adverse effects from short-term use,” he said.

More information

For more on motion sickness, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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People Perceive Tall Men in 30s as Most Dominant

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Like beauty, dominance seems to be in the eye of the beholder, with new research suggesting that taller men in their mid-30s with masculine features are seen as highly dominant.

Why does that matter?

“Understanding what influences dominance perceptions is important since a dominant appearance in male faces is associated with a variety of social outcomes, ranging from high rank attainment of cadets in the military to high levels of sexual activity in teenage boys,” study leader Carlota Batres, from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, said in a journal news release.

“Dominant people are also favored as leaders during times of intergroup conflict and are more successful leaders in the business world,” Batres added.

And, if you’re an actor in Hollywood, the researchers pointed out a perception of dominance might increase your chances of landing a leading man role. They noted that currently popular actor Channing Tatum is a good example of someone perceived as dominant; he’s 6-foot-1 and 35 years old, the researchers said.

For the study, researchers made slight changes to computer images of a variety of men. They asked study participants what they thought of the men.

When 25-year-old men were made to look about 3 inches taller, up to a decade older or more masculine, the participants said the men looked more dominant. Tall, masculine-looking men at about age 35 were perceived as most dominant.

These “perceptions may also follow reality: taller men being more formidable opponents and strength increasing with age until a man gets to his mid-thirties,” David Perrett, head of the Perception Lab at the university, said in the news release.

The study was published recently in the journal Perception.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has information on men’s health.

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Seniors Getting Smarter, Research Shows

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Older adults are getting smarter, but their mental health and physical fitness levels are falling, new research from Germany suggests.

The study found that people from Germany scored increasingly better on tests of brain processing speed done between 2006 and 2012. But, during the same time, the mental health and physical abilities of the study participants declined. All of the study volunteers were over 50 years old.

Decreases in mental and physical health were greatest in men aged 50 to 64 with low levels of education, the findings showed.

Improvements in brain processing speed may be due to higher levels of education and increased use of technology in daily life, the study suggested.

The study was published in the Aug. 31 online edition of the journal PLoS One. It was conducted by Nadia Steiber, a World Population Program researcher from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.

In another study, IIASA investigators found that older people in England have also become smarter. Those findings were published in the September/October issue of the journal Intelligence.

“On average, test scores of people aged 50 and older today correspond to test scores from people four to eight years younger and tested six years earlier,” Valeria Bordone, a researcher at IIASA, said in an institute news release.

Changing lifestyles may explain why older adults are getting smarter but losing ground in terms of mental health and physical fitness, according to Steiber, author of the first study.

“Life has become cognitively [mentally] more demanding, with increasing use of communication and information technology also by older people, and people working longer in intellectually demanding jobs. At the same time, we are seeing a decline in physical activity and rising levels of obesity,” Steiber said in the news release.

More research is needed to see if these trends are happening in other countries, too, she added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about older adults and physical activity.

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Researchers Explore Memory Problems Related to Parkinson’s

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Many people with Parkinson’s disease have memory problems, researchers report.

The study included 40 people with early stage Parkinson’s disease and 40 healthy older adults. While the disease is generally viewed as a movement disorder, about half of the Parkinson’s patients had difficulty with some aspect of memory, such as learning and retaining information, or recalling spoken information, the investigators found.

“And then half of those participants, or nearly one-quarter of all participants with Parkinson’s, were really having a difficult time consistently with their memory, enough that it would be noticeable to other people,” said study author Jared Tanner. Tanner is an assistant research professor in the department of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Still, there was good news: Most of the Parkinson’s patients did not have significant memory problems, according to the authors of the study published online recently in the journal PLoS One.

Because of the study’s design, the researchers could only show an association between Parkinson’s disease and memory problems; they couldn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

“While a large proportion of people with Parkinson’s will experience slower thinking speed, which may make them less quick to speak or have difficulty doing two things at once, we now know that there are a subset of individuals with Parkinson’s disease who have memory problems,” senior study author Catherine Price, an associate professor in the clinical and health psychology department, said in a university news release.

“It is important to recognize which people have issues with learning and memory so we can improve diagnostic accuracy and determine if they would benefit from certain pharmaceutical or behavioral interventions,” she said.

Parkinson’s disease-related movement problems are caused by low levels of a brain chemical called dopamine. Some experts have suggested that thinking and memory problems in patients are also due to a shortage of dopamine.

But brain scans of the Parkinson’s patients in this study revealed changes in the brain’s gray and white matter that appear unrelated to dopamine loss. Also, these changes were only present in those with memory problems.

Tanner explained that it’s not only gray matter that’s important for memory. “In Parkinson’s disease, white matter connections between the temporal lobe and a region in the posterior portion of the brain called the retrosplenial cortex were particularly important in the recall of verbal information,” he said in the news release.

“People with Parkinson’s disease who had stronger connections between these areas of the brain did better at remembering information,” he said.

More information

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

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