Health Tip – Audio Version - Lonely
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Loneliness Boosts Blood Pressure in Older Adults (healthfinder® – Department of Health & Human Services)

Loneliness is not just a bad feeling. It may be bad for many people’s health. Researchers say middle aged and older people are more likely to have high blood pressure if they’re lonely.

The researchers looked at blood pressure and what 229 Chicago-area people were feeling. Louise Hawkley of the University of Chicago says that, the more lonely people were, the higher their blood pressure was. At the extremes:

“If you compared the least lonely with the most lonely, you could have as much as a 30-millimeter difference in blood pressure – which is a lot.”

Enough that loneliness sometimes could explain why someone had high blood pressure.

She says we are social animals, so it’s worth getting out to be with people we like.

Hawkley’s study in Pschology and Aging was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - Sticks and stones
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Adventures in Parenting (National Institute of Child Health & Human Development)

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” That’s the conventional wisdom for kids – but it’s now being challenged when those names come from parents.

A study says verbally abused children are twice as likely to develop mood or anxiety disorders. They also showed 60 percent more symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Natalie Sachs-Ericsson of Florida State University:

“People who were verbally abused were more self-critical, and the self-criticism predicted the depression. It was because people were being self-critical that there was a relationship.”

She says parents should avoid calling their children names like “bad” or “stupid.” Instead, focus on certain behavior as bad. Praise and encouragement are also important when the child shows good behavior.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - Playing around with kids
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Healthy Eating & Physical Activity Across Your Lifespan: Helping Your Child (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases)

Kids love online games. Food companies love to sell food. What happens when the two are put together?

A Kaiser Family Foundation report calls it “advergames” – Internet games that amount to product placements. Researcher Elizabeth Moore of Notre Dame examined games that, for instance, let kids bowl with candies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Bill Dietz took part in a seminar as the report was released. Dietz says parents should realize the games could make the kids ask for the foods – whether or not parents want kids to have them.

Dietz also says playing a video game is not the same as playing. He studied this, looking at metabolic rates – the rates at which people burn calories.

“The metabolic rate while playing a video game is probably the metabolic rate associated with vigorous fidgeting.”

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - Memory and Alzheimer’s
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Understanding Memory Loss (National Institute on Aging)

Medicine has its own language. That’s great for medical people, who use it to be very precise. But medical language isn’t like what the rest of us speak. Where can we go for facts in words we can understand?

The National Institute on Aging had that in mind when it developed new easy-to-understand booklets on memory loss and on Alzheimer’s disease.

Mild memory loss is like forgetting where you left the car keys. Severe forms such as Alzheimer’s are like wandering away from home. The booklets tell about what memory loss and Alzheimer’s are, treatment, and what people can do.

The NIA’s Patricia Lynch:

“It will be of interest, I think, to families and to people who just generally would like to know more about memory loss.”

You can get the booklets free from the NIA.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - Check your levels
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: How You Can Lower Your Cholesterol Level (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)

Do you remember your cholesterol levels from your last check-up? Where they good or bad? What about other blood tests?

Getting regular medical screenings can help keep you healthy, but only if you follow-up on lab tests and talk to your doctor about their meaning.

Director of HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Dr. Carolyn Clancy:

“An abnormal test result, in some instances, can mean that the disease is making itself known before you otherwise have symptoms. So, those results can be a pretty important wake-up call.”

The wake-up call means take action! You may need to make changes to your diet or lifestyle, such as exercise more often. Or your clinician may prescribe medications.

Taking an active interest in your lab tests will allow you to work with your health care provider to reduce your risks and improve your overall health.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: September, 20 2007

Health Tip – Audio Version - Parents smoke, kids sneeze
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Children are Hurt by Secondhand Smoke (Office of the Surgeon General)

Would you give your toddler a cigarette? Some people do. They just don’t do it directly. They smoke, and their kids breathe in the smoke. And the kids’ bodies apparently don’t like it. A study suggests the smoke aggravates hay fever.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati looked at data on one-year-olds in at least pack-a-day households. Jocelyn Biagini tells what they found:

“Infants that were exposed to this level of environmental tobacco smoke were almost three times more likely to develop hay fever than those that were not exposed.”

The study in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Biagini suspects the kids had a tendency toward hay fever – runny noses, sneezes and the like – and the smoke aggravated the allergic reaction. She recommends parents not smoke around their kids.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Too young to smoke

Health Tip – Audio Version - Too young to smoke
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General (Office of the Surgeon General)

A statistical look at the health of America’s children shows smoke is a smaller part of their lives. This year’s “America’s Children” report says, among other things, that there’s been a drop in smoking and in breathing secondhand smoke.

At the National Institutes of Health, the director of child health and human development, Dr. Duane Alexander:

“Ten years ago, 88 percent of children had a marker in their blood called cotinine that indicates exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. That’s gone down from 88 percent to 59 percent – still too high, but a major improvement.”

Alexander says the drop in cotinine also shows smoking itself is less common among young people. He says avoiding smoke is one of the best things a person can do to protect his or her health.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - The third who don’t know
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: About Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes (National Institutes of Health)

The fact that they have diabetes would be a surprise to a lot of people.

Researchers for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compared surveys from 1988 to 1994 with those from 1999 to 2002. They found signs of trouble – such as no change in undiagnosed cases.

CDC researcher Ed Gregg:

“About 9 percent of adults have diabetes. About 30 percent of those people who have diabetes don’t know they have the condition, however.”

And more than a quarter of Americans have prediabetes – meaning they could develop diabetes within 10 years.

So many people need to get checked for prediabetes or diabetes.

Losing a modest amount of weight by cutting calories or being more active can reduce the risk that pre-diabetes will develop into diabetes.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - Love and hate
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Things You Can Do Right Away–Every Day–to Raise Your Self-esteem (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)

Why does the main person in your life put you through changes?

Margaret Clark of Yale and Steven Graham of Carnegie Mellon suggest self-esteem is crucial.

They find low self-esteem people have trouble thinking of partner strengths and weaknesses together. They switch between seeing partners as all good or all bad.

Clark thinks that in good times, people with low-self esteem idealize partners, making partners more approachable. But when they feel threatened, they villainize partners out of fear of being hurt.

“Insight into why they do this might be helpful to such people in attempting to maintain more balanced views of their partners. Partners may also find such insight to be useful in coping with their partners’ changing views of them.”

The studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology were supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: August, 15 2006

Health Tip – Audio Version - Safe as mother’s milk
Health Tip – Healthy Next Step: Breastfeeding
(The National Women’s Health Information Center)

We humans are basically highly complex carbon compounds. But sometimes other things get mixed in there industrial chemicals that are a part of our modern world. We wonder if they’re harmful. And beastfeeding moms might wonder if the chemicals are OK to pass along to a baby in breast milk.

An international panel looked at that. And Dr. Cheston Berlin of Penn State University School of Medicine, who led the panel, reported on it at a conference sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration:

“There had been very, very few reports of environmental chemicals being hazardous to infants, and they usually involve episodes where the mother has a very large exposure such as an industrial accident.”

Berlin also says breast milk is the gold standard for feeding babies.

Health Tip courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Last revised: October 31, 2005