Healthcare Concerns

Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Labour is to encourage NHS staff and patients to gather information on how coalition policies are affecting front-line care.

He went on to tell nurses that resources were already being taken from the front-line by the government's policies, causing "disruption and fragmentation".

He promised there would be no more "top-down reorganisation" if Labour won power at the next election.

Instead, he said they would seek to put an end to the damage the changes were causing by repealing the "free-market free-for-all".

However, it is not yet clear how Labour would achieve this now the legislation has been passed by parliament.

Labour said through its NHS Check system it wanted to hear about the concerns people have on everything from staffing levels and the quality of care to how the government's reorganisation is panning out.

The move comes amid claims that cuts are beginning to affect front line services.

The RCN has released two studies during its annual conference highlighting the pressures being felt in hospitals and across community services.

They included evidence that community-based support, such as district nursing and mental health care, was being swamped, and reports of patients being treated in hospital corridors because there were not enough beds.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley accepted times were difficult, but suggested there was too much focus on problems in the health service, when he addressed the conference on Monday.

Instead, he said it should "celebrate" its successes in areas such as improving access to dentistry, reducing hospital infections and tackling mixed-sex accommodation.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – What do you do when your tried and true workout routine stops working for you?

A fitness plateau can be your body’s signal that it’s time for a change, experts say, or a sign that you’ve been looking for progress in all the wrong places.

“A plateau is a period where you stop making progress,” said Marshall Roy, a New York City-based personal trainer at Equinox, the national chain of fitness centers. “It isn’t a death sentence and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s feedback from your body that what you’re doing has stopped working.”

The human body will adapt to become as strong or lean or resilient as you train it to be, Roy explained. So if you keep giving it exactly the same challenge it will not progress.

“Say you’re a woman who wants to lose body fat. You’ve been doing Pilates for a couple of months and experiencing the results you want. Then you stop seeing it,” he said. “It may be time to try strength training or swimming.”

Roy believes best way to avoid plateaus is to have a long- term, progressive, goal-oriented plan. He said people are generally too quick to abandon a solid routine to follow the latest craze or celebrity endorsement.

“We call it training A.D.D. (for Attention Deficit Disorder),” he said. “They hop around different styles. It doesn’t work. How would you know if you’re making progress if you’re always changing? Consistency is how you track your progress.”

Roy suggests giving a workout at least eight, and preferably 16, weeks to allow the body to adapt to it.

He also notes that in fitness, as in nature, everything happens in cycles.

“There is a time for progress and a time for recovery and maintenance,” he said. “If my client is an accountant, I’m not going to plan a brutal workout (at tax time) in April. Summer is a great time for a teacher to make strides.”

Sometimes, he said, the problem lies outside the gym.

“Ask yourself: have I changed my diet? Do my workouts lack vigor? Has my stress level increased?” he said. “Try to isolate the variable that led you to stall. Most of the time it’s a lifestyle factor that’s the reason.”

Shirley Archer, a fitness expert and spokesperson with the American Council on Exercise, said whether you’re doing aerobics, strength or flexibility training, fitness plateaus, while no fun, are inevitable if you always repeat the same workout.

“SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) is a tried and true training principle,” she said of the tenet that the body will adapt to the specific demands placed upon it. “It guides our training.”

Our bodies adapt to what we do and become more efficient over time, Archer explained, expending less energy to perform the same activities.

“Studies show that in as few as six workouts, our neuromuscular system has adjusted to a particular stimulus,” she said. “In other words, we’re no longer surprised and accept that activity as part of the new normal.”

Add variety, said Archer, who went on to quote what she calls her best rule of thumb: “If your mind is bored, your body is bored too. Mix it up.”

(Editing by Patricia Reaney)

Story By: by Nancy Shute

Children exposed to meth may have more problems with anxiety and depression.

Children who are exposed to methamphetamine before birth can have behavior problems as young as age 3, a new study finds. But those problems are manageable, the researchers say, especially if the children and their parents get help early on.

“These kids are not cracked and broken,” says Linda LaGasse, an associate professor of pediatrics and Brown University Medical School, and lead author of the study. “But they do have problems that are worthy of note.”

This first study to track the health of meth-exposed children brings up memories of the “crack baby” stories of the early 1990s.

Back then, the newspapers were full of horror stories predicting that the crack cocaine epidemic would produce a generation of severely damaged children. Since then, it’s become clear that while crack-exposed children do have differences in thinking and behavior, those differences are subtle in most cases.

This new study, researchers followed 166 children in the Midwest and West who had been exposed to the stimulant methamphetamine before birth. It then compared their behavior to that of similar children who hadn’t been exposed to drugs.

The meth-exposed children were more likely to be emotionally reactive, anxious, and depressed at age 3. And they were also more likely to show aggressive behavior and symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity at age 5. That was especially true in children whose mothers were heavy users. Both groups of children acted like that at age 3, but kids who hadn’t been exposed to drugs outgrew the behavior as they neared school age.

It’s the first and only long-term study of the effects of prenatal meth exposure, LaGasse says. It was published in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers tried hard to adjust for other issues in the family’s life, including poverty, psychological problems in the mother, family instability and the mother’s occupation. Those factors can have powerful effects on a child’s behavior.

“A lot of times families that are involved illicit drugs have many other issues,” LaGasse says. She also studies the effect of cocaine exposure on children. “These kids are vulnerable, and they get raised in vulnerable environments.” The drug exposure becomes just one of the many difficulties that can cause long-term problems for a child. “It’s important to recognize complexity,” LaGasse told Shots. “It would be easy not to. But you can’t do that here.”

That children were anxious and depressed so young worries her, she says, because those children don’t tend to get the attention of parents and teachers like the disruptive or impulsive children do. “These are the ones who are quiet. They may cry; they may be withdrawn.” But those children risk having problems forming friendships and getting along in school because of their emotional reactivity, she says.

Identifying meth-exposed children early on would be a big help, she says, because it’s much easier to correct behavior problems in preschoolers through parenting classes and other interventions than it is in older children. “This is a time when you can really make a difference in children’s lives.”

SILVER SPRING, Maryland (Reuters) – U.S. advisers backed a bladder drug from Astellas Pharma Inc on Thursday, boosting the company’s hopes of gaining approval for a second treatment for overactive bladder.

A panel of outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted 7 to 4, with one abstention, that the benefits of the once-daily tablet, called mirabegron, outweighed its possible risks to the heart and liver.

The FDA usually follows the recommendations of its expert panels and will make a final decision on mirabegron by June 29. The drug is already approved in Japan.

“I think the drug shows that it’s comparable to what we’re using today, for better or worse,” said panel member Dr. Christian Pavlovich, associate professor of urology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

However, panelists expressed concern the drug’s benefits may not make a huge difference for patients and there were uncertainties about its long-term safety.

Overactive bladder, whose symptoms include frequent urination and urgency to urinate, affects about 12 percent to 17 percent of adults in Europe and the United States and 30 percent to 40 percent of those 75 years and older, Astellas said.

Mirabegron, the first drug in its class, works by activating a protein receptor, a beta-3 adrenoceptor, in bladder muscles that help the bladder fill and store urine.

In clinical trials, a 50-milligram dose of the drug reduced the number of times a person went to the bathroom by about four times in a week, compared with placebo, and patients taking the drug had three fewer episodes of urine leakage, or incontinence, each week.

But some advisers said that may not greatly help people who often go to the bathroom at least eight times a day.

However, the FDA had said clinical trials for the drug only had to prove it was better than a placebo, prompting the majority of panelists to vote in favor of mirabegron.

“I would state that the bar was extremely low, that maybe the FDA needs to reconsider what it requires,” said panel member Dr. Antonio Tito Fojo, program director at the National Cancer Institute.

“It was low enough that you could trip over it and get to the other side,” he said.

FDA staff reviewers had been concerned about the drug’s safety, as it raised blood pressure and heart rate in some clinical trials. There were also rare instances of liver toxicity and tumors that developed in some patients taking the drug in trials. The panelists called for the company to do more trials if the drug is approved.

Astellas, Japan’s second-largest drugmaker, said mirabegron can provide another option to patients beyond current treatments for overactive bladder.

Many patients drop out of standard treatments after the first year because of side effects, such as dry mouth, or because the drug does not work for them, the company said.

Current treatments include the Astellas drug Vesicare, one of the company’s biggest products, which had global sales of 86.7 billion yen ($1.1 billion) in 2010.

With mirabegron, Astellas is hoping to cement its position in the overactive bladder market, the company said. Mirabegron is approved in Japan under the trade name Betanis.

Global sales of Vesicare and mirabegron should total over 155 billion yen ($1.9 billion) in the fiscal year ending in March 2015, the company said in its annual report.

(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Gary Hill, Andre Grenon and Tim Dobbyn)

Story By: Talk of the Nation

The film director James Cameron has just completed a dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth at nearly 36,000 feet under the sea. His manned descent is the first in 52 years, since the oceanographers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard explored the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste.

Story By: Tell Me More

The Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments about the Affordable Care Act today. Guest host Jacki Lyden takes a look at how Mississippi is implementing part of the federal law, despite strong opposition to the overall plan.

A survey by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) showed more than two thirds of its members reject the NHS reform bill in its current form.

However, they were split on how to proceed. Roughly equal numbers called for the bill to be scrapped as said the college should work with the government to improve the bill.

Nearly 8,900 of the RCP's 25,000 members responded to the survey.

The government said it was "disappointed" with the vote.

The Royal College of Physicians decided to survey members at an extraordinary general meeting discussing the changes to the health service in England.

Of those who responded, 69% rejected the bill in its current form with only 6% approving of the changes as they stand.

When asked how the college should proceed, 46% voted to "continue to engage critically" on improving the bill. Slightly more, 49%, wanted the organisation to "seek withdrawal of the bill".

RCP president Sir Richard Thompson said: "We believe that this is the single biggest survey among the medical royal colleges, with the highest turnout.

"The areas of most concern to RCP fellows and members are the areas on which we have been strongly lobbying government, MPs, peers and other stakeholders: training, education and research; use of the private sector; commissioning by clinical commissioning groups; and choice and competition"

"The quality of care that patients receive is clearly at the core of physicians' concerns and mirrors the key areas of the mission and objectives of the RCP."

Health minister Lord Howe said: "While it is disappointing that some members of the Royal College of Physicians have voted to reject the Bill, it is worth noting that only a third of the college's 25,000 members voted in this process, and under half of those members have asked for it to be withdrawn. This is just 17 per cent of the RCP membership.

"We have already strengthened the Health Bill following the listening exercise and have responded directly to the points raised by the Royal College of Physicians, including making clear that competition would only be used to benefit patients, never as an end in itself."

Suddenly, someone came outside to get Follett and brought him to the hospital. They told him to lie down on an operating table, and then the needle came out.

“First, they shot me with some kind of medicine. It was supposed to deaden the nerves,” he said. “Then the next thing I heard was snip, snip, and that was it.”

The doctors didn’t tell Follett what they were doing, but he knew anyway. Other boys at the Sonoma State Home had told him how much it hurt to have a vasectomy. Now it was his turn.

“When they did (my right side), it seemed like they were pulling my whole insides out,” said Follett, now 82 and living in Stockton.

California: Leader in forced sterilizations

Follett was one of 20,000 Californians forcibly sterilized by the state from 1909 to 1963.

The goal was to rid society of people thought to be undesirable: people labeled “feeble-minded” or “defectives.”

“It’s one of the most horrific and shameful chapters in California’s history,” said Los Angeles civil rights attorney Areva Martin.

Thirty-two states had eugenics programs, but California was in a league of its own.

The Golden State sterilized more than twice as many people as the next state, Virginia, which sterilized 8,300, according to Paul Lombardo, a professor at Georgia State University’s College of Law.

The law said that wards of the state like Follett had to be sterilized in order to be discharged from institutions like Sonoma, according to Christina Cogdell, a cultural historian at the University of California-Davis and author of “Eugenic Design.”

Men and women, boys and girls, were sent to state institutions for all sorts of reasons. Some had serious developmental disabilities. Follett ended up at Sonoma because his parents were alcoholics and couldn’t care for him.

In the mid-20th century, the country’s intellectual elite such as doctors, geneticists and Supreme Court justices supported forced sterilizations.

In California, the eugenics movement was led by figures such as William Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, and Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

In other states, the sterilization program would stop and start due to legal challenges, but California’s ran strong for more than half a century, Cogdell said.

“If you were deemed worthy of being sterilized by a doctor, there was no board where you could have a hearing to protest,” he said.

California’s movement was so effective that in the 1930s, members of the Nazi party asked California eugenicists for advice on how to run their own sterilization program.

“Germany used California’s program as its chief example that this was a working, successful policy,” Cogdell said. “They modeled their law on California’s law.”

“It kills my last name”

In 2003, then-Gov. Gray Davis apologized for the forced sterilizations, but Follett wants compensation for not be able to have children of his own.

“What really ticks me off is, it kills my last name,” Follett said. “If I should die tomorrow, everything’s died.”

Over the past few years, a friend of Follett’s has tried to help him seek justice. Rudy Banlasan, a nursing student, has written letters and e-mails on Follett’s behalf to Gov. Edmund “Jerry” Brown and other state politicians and officials.

He has not succeeded in getting any of them to speak with him. Banlasan keeps a file of the e-mails he’s sent to politicians and the form letters he’s received in return.

“I hate to sound so cynical, but I think they’re just waiting for the victims to die and forget this whole thing ever happened,” Banlasan said.

“There’s nothing more to add”

CNN’s attempts to contact politicians have been unsuccessful.

The governor’s office referred CNN to the state Department of Developmental Services, which sent a two-sentence statement: “The State of California deeply regrets the harm caused to victims of involuntary sterilization that occurred through the first half of the 1900s. This was a sad and painful period in California’s history, one that should never be repeated.”

When CNN asked Brown for his stance on reparations for sterilization victims, press secretary Gil Duran sent an e-mail referring to the statement. “There’s nothing more to add,” he wrote.

CNN also sent e-mails and made phone calls to the office of John Perez, speaker of the California Assembly. When no response was received, CNN visited his office in Sacramento. His spokesman, John Vigna, said the speaker was tied up in meetings.

“This is an issue I personally am just learning about and looking into,” Vigna said.

California’s response to victims stands in stark contrast to North Carolina’s.

North Carolina task force recommends $50,000 for sterilization victims

In that state, Gov. Bev Perdue has sought out victims and held hearings where she apologized personally and heard their stories.

She also set up a task force to help the victims and recommended that each receive $50,000 in reparations.

“That’s not happening in California,” said Martin, the civil rights attorney. “To think that we’re behind on this issue instead of leading on this issue is very troublesome.”

“California has not done right”

Art Torres is the former California state senator who wrote the 1979 legislation outlawing sterilization.

He said he’s not surprised politicians are reticent on the subject.

“I would venture to say most people in this legislature — and most people in California — aren’t even aware there was a eugenics movement in California,” Torres said.

Californians, he added, need to face their history and at least hold hearings and invite victims to tell their stories.

“California has not done right by these victims,” Torres said. “But I think California and Californians need to be aware of their history.”

A charity is urging the government to conduct a national campaign to raise awareness of suicide in men – the biggest killer of men under the age of 35 in the UK.

The number of male suicides in the UK has reduced over the last 10 years – but the figures are still substantially higher than the number of those killed in road accidents or through knife and gun crime.

Mr Appleby is adamant the government is employing the correct strategy.

"It took 25 years for the suicide rate in young men to double.

"It took 12 years for it to fall back again to the same level, so something very beneficial has happened in the last 12 years – and part of that has been the awareness of the front-line agencies that they are dealing with a very troubled, potentially high-risk, group of people," he says.

The novelist and comedian David Baddiel has spoken openly about his experiences with depression. He says he embraced feeling miserable as a teenager, thinking it was "cool", but in his 30s, a severe bout of depression changed his mind.

"What overcomes you is more like a type of extremely debilitating physical illness than a feeling of sadness or a kind of self-conscious acquirement of trying to be depressed," he says.

"It all blows it away into a desire not to want to move, really."

He rejects the idea that some men resort to suicide because they cannot convey their emotions.

"I think a lot of people, when they look at the statistics of suicide in young men, they think its because men can't talk about their feelings.

"That myth that a lot of men collude with, and women, needs to be broken down and a space needs to opened up so that men can do it," he says.

Story By: by Allison Aubrey

A woman holds an AeroShot inhalable caffeine device in Boston.

Since we introduced you to AeroShot, a product that delivers a blast of caffeine through an inhaler, a few months back, it seems a lot of folks — mostly around college campuses in New York and Boston — have tried the quick pick-me-up.

But now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has questions. And so does the American Academy of Pediatrics. Lots of them. The FDA says it will review the safety and legality of AeroShot.

Controversy can sometimes be good for sales. A spokesperson for the company says demand has shot up and the product is currently sold out — at least online.

AeroShot is the brainchild of Harvard professor David Edwards, and the company, called Breathable Foods, is led by Harvard College graduate Tom Hadfield. In a statement, Hadfield says he’s confident that the FDA review “will conclude that AeroShot is a safe, effective product that complies with FDA regulations.”

The FDA review comes after Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., raised concerns over AeroShot’s potential use as a “party enhancer.” “We need to make sure that AeroShot does not become the next Four Loko by facilitating dangerous levels of drinking among teenagers and college students,” Schumer wrote in a statement.

Another safety concern is whether the AeroShot particles could enter the lungs. According to the product’s website, the powder reaches the mouth where it is swallowed and ingested. But the American Academy of Pediatrics has questioned this claim.

“While your website claims that AeroShot absolutely does not enter the lungs, it is unlikely that none of the powder can enter the trachea and the large bronchi,” writes AAP President Robert Block, in a letter to Hadfield. “If some product does enter the lungs, the fast absorption of caffeine into the body could have serious potential health effects.”

The AAP also has concerns about the effect of the product on asthma. Block also questions what data Hadfield has to support the claim that AeroShot is safe for children ages 12 and above. (The AAP discourages the nonmedical use of caffeine by all adolescents and young adults.)

FDA spokesperson Tamara Ward tells The Salt that the review will determine whether a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act has occurred, and whether regulatory action is warranted.