Drug Overdose Fatalities Continue to Rise

Prescription Drugs Involved in More than Half the Overdose Deaths

For the 11th consecutive year, the number of deaths from drug overdose has increased, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In 2010, there were 38,329 drug overdoses, reports the Associated Press, up nearly 4 percent from 2009. While "drug overdose" may conjure images of rockstars dying young from heroin and cocaine addictions, the new report shows that prescription drugs were more often the culprit. Of the overdose fatalities in 2010, nearly 60 percent involved prescription drugs—up 6 percent from 2009. Opioid drugs, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, contributed to 3 of the 4 medication overdose fatalities, reports the AP. Anti-anxiety drugs like Valium were another common cause of medication-related deaths, among which 17 percent were suicides. Thomas Frieden, head of the CDC, told the AP: "The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly."

The Truth About Women's Heart Health

You know all about the pink ribbon and its derivatives. Each October, for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the effort to raise awareness, funds, and hope around a once-taboo topic has worked, with pink-cleated NFL players and a pink-lit White House all joining the cause. And for good reason: About 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and 1 in 36 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

You may, however, be less familiar with the red dress, and its arresting message: Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women. In fact, more women die from heart disease than from all cancers combined, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the American Heart Association.

And yet, this threat often goes unrecognized. Hence, the red dress icon, created in 2002 by the NHLBI as the emblem of its public education campaign, "The Heart Truth." "When women hear the term 'heart disease,' they may still think it's a 'man's disease,'" says Nakela Cook, a cardiologist and chief of staff to the NHLBI director. [Read more: The Truth About Women's Heart Health]

How to Serve Dinner for Breakfast

I love breakfast, writes U.S. News blogger Keri Gans. It calms my early-morning hunger and includes foods I adore, like oatmeal and eggs. But not everyone feels this way about breakfast foods. Over the years, many of my patients have complained that they simply don't like cereal, hate yogurt and cottage cheese, and have no love for eggs. My response to them has always been the same: OK, but that shouldn't stop you from eating breakfast!

Breakfast is defined as the day's first meal. In other words, you simply need to start the day with food, which certainly doesn't need to be typical breakfast foods if you don't like them. The key is to find foods that provide the important nutrients we should begin our days with—especially fiber and protein. You can find these nutrients in many foods, including those served at dinner.

Let's start with leftovers. These are a great choice for breakfast, as long as they were part of a healthy meal the night before. (You don't want to repeat a diet disaster.) For example, broiled chicken with brown rice and broccoli—why not? Grilled salmon, quinoa, and roasted brussel sprouts? Sure, that meal deserves an encore. If you had to cook this meal from scratch it might not be the best choice, since quick and easy are usually the key parameters for a breakfast meal, but go for it it's pre-made. [Read more: How to Serve Dinner for Breakfast]

Follow U.S. News Health on Twitter and find us on Facebook.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Is Pink Eye Rubbing You the Wrong Way?

Conjunctivitis, or "pink eye," is inflammation or infection of the lining of the eye, called the conjunctiva. It may be caused by one or several factors, including allergens, irritants, abrasions, bacteria, and viruses.

Most cases of pink eye will simply run their course, but a doctor should determine if you have a case of pink eye that needs treatment with prescription medicine. In rare situations, pink eye that is severe or left untreated can cause permanent vision loss or damage to the eye. Consider the three most common causes of pink eye and what you can do to help alleviate your symptoms:

Pink Eye Due to Allergies

Red, itchy eyes are a common complaint during allergy season. Seasonal conjunctivitis is usually due to ragweed, pollen, or other allergens that are around at certain times of year. Perennial conjunctivitis is due to contact with allergens that are around at all times of the year, such as mold spores, animal dander, dust mites, and feathers. It's worse in dry, warm weather and lessens with rain and cool temperatures.

You can often tell if conjunctivitis is due to allergies when it involves both eyes. Symptoms include watery eyes, itchiness, and mucous discharge. Dark circles under the eyes, or "allergic shiners," may be present. You may also experience sensitivity to light.

What You Can Do

Using saline irrigation and cold compresses can help alleviate symptoms. Avoid rubbing your eyes, as this only irritates them more.

Preservative-free artificial tears are a helpful way to flush out allergens. They also form a barrier to prevent allergens from coming into contact with the eye. One trick is keeping artificial tears in the refrigerator, so they provide cooling relief.

Although topical over-the-counter redness-reducing agents can be used, second-generation antihistamines are more effective. Try using ketotifen (Alaway, Zaditor). If your symptoms are severe, you may need to see a doctor, who will most likely prescribe a prescription eye drop for short-term use, such as a steroid.

[See A Survival Guide to Spring Allergy Season.]

Pink Eye Due to Viruses

Viral conjunctivitis is very common. Symptoms usually resolve within five to 14 days, but it's highly contagious. It spreads through direct contact with contaminated hands, pool water, and personal items.

This kind of pink eye can affect one or both eyes. You may have symptoms in one eye but then develop symptoms in the other eye as well. It often comes with an upper respiratory infection, and symptoms include red eyes, itchiness, and a watery or mucous discharge.

What You Can Do

Avoiding contact with others is important to prevent spreading viral conjunctivitis. Don't rub your eye, as this can cause the virus to spread into the other eye. Cold compresses and artificial tears typically alleviate symptoms. Viral conjunctivitis may require the attention of a doctor, and antibiotics may be necessary to prevent a bacterial infection.

[See Top Recommended Hand Sanitizers.]

Pink Eye Due to Bacteria

Bacterial conjunctivitis often looks like viral conjunctivitis, but it's less common. A typical complaint by people with bacterial conjunctivitis is awakening to a feeling that their eyes are "glued shut."

What You Can Do

Sometimes bacterial conjunctivitis can cause complications in children, particularly eye infections. Your doctor may prescribe an antibiotic eye drop, usually for five to seven days.

Pink eye from bacteria often comes from other infections in the ears, throat, or sinuses. If that's the case, you must get appropriate treatment for these other infections.

[See Top Recommended Antibacterial Soaps.]

Note: This article was originally published on May 24, 2012 on PharmacyTimes.com. It has been edited and republished by U.S. News .

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Does It Only Take 3 Weeks to Form a Habit?

I've heard it said hundreds of times. From patients, from colleagues, and sometimes from the media: "It takes three weeks to form a habit." But in my experience, both personally and professionally, the notion that true habits—behaviors that persist in the face of major life upheavals and adversities—can be forged in 21 days flies in the face of reality. So I decided to research the claim.

My readings took me to a self-help book written in 1960 by Maxwell Maltz, a cosmetic surgeon, who reported that it took 21 days for amputees to stop feeling phantom limb pain. Maltz then extrapolated that consciously cultivating a new behavior for just 15 minutes a day for 21 days could create a habit. This didn't strike me as particularly rigorous or convincing proof.

[See How to Conquer Food Cravings]

Looking to more modern research wasn't any more helpful. The most recent piece I could find was a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology that looked at the time it took for subjects to "automate" an eating, drinking or exercise behavior "carried out daily in the same context"—i.e., a habit. And with examples such as the time it took to automatically drink a glass of water after waking, or to do 50 sit-ups before breakfast, they concluded that it took participants between 18 and 254 days for these behaviors to happen "automatically."

That's one heck of a spread. Given that the study didn't control for the real-life upheavals that tend to get in the way of our very best intentions, and that the behaviors chosen are so minor in scope, I don't think the results are applicable to the real world, let alone to the prospect of cultivating an entirely new lifestyle, replete with perhaps dozens of new and more complex behaviors and choices.

[See Diets That Don't Work—And A Look At What Does]

Ex-smokers are a great group to chat with about how long it takes to make or break a habit. According to the National Institutes of Health, nicotine's physiologic withdrawal symptoms are usually over within a week. Yet, as any ex-smoker will tell you, the fight not to smoke (to break the habit of smoking and cultivate that of not smoking) lasts much longer.

[See Is It Possible to Be Smoke Free in 30 Days?]

I was a smoker once. I smoked a pack a day for nearly seven years, and I vividly remember how difficult it was to quit. As have many, I quit cold turkey and the first few weeks were truly miserable, with a nearly constant, conscious battle not to smoke.

As time went by, the battles became less frequent. However, astonishingly to me, even two to three years after quitting, there were still occasional moments or circumstances when I had to consciously fight the urge to light up. And while it's been more than 20 years since I've had a puff, and while I no longer have to consciously fight any urges, I've no doubt that if I started again, I'd be back to a pack a day in no time.

What I'm getting at is that changing behaviors and creating new habits takes an awfully long time. While you may well be able to establish a comfort level with a new behavior in just 21 days, my experiences have taught me that habit formation requires years of consciously reminding yourself of your new choices.

True, the longer you sustain a behavior, the less frequent the need for conscious reminder. But I can't help but wonder how many people's best intentions were lost because they believed they'd forged a habit, when really they just planted a new behavior.

[See This Year, Make a New Year's Resolution Resolution]

So whatever it is you're trying to accomplish, why not take advantage of the world that we live in and layer some conscious reminders into your life? Smartphones, computers, and even old-school sticky notes can be employed to take some of the pressure off of you constantly remembering. And while it may seem tedious to keep your new behaviors in regular focus, if you truly want to forge a new habit, a year or two of tedious reminding is a relatively small price to pay.

[See In Pictures: 11 Health Habits That Will Help You Live to 100]

Hungry for more? Write to eatandrun@usnews.com with your questions, concerns, and feedback.

Yoni Freedhoff, MD, is an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, where he's the founder and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute—dedicated to non-surgical weight management since 2004. Dr. Freedhoff sounds off daily on his award-winning blog, Weighty Matters, and is also easily reachable on Twitter. Dr. Freedhoff's latest book Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work will be published by Random House’s Crown/Harmony in 2014.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Is Domestic Violence Most Common on Super Bowl Sunday?

Urban myths rarely have a useful purpose other than to confound, outrage, and frighten people into passing them along. But there's a silver lining to this one—the idea that Super Bowl Sunday is linked to the highest incidences of domestic abuse in the country.

While experts in the field dismiss that theory, they value the increased attention paid to domestic violence on the occasion.

"The Super Bowl does not cause domestic violence, and it doesn't increase domestic violence, but it does increase the public's awareness of the issue, which will help victims learn about help and resources," says Cindy Southworth, vice president of development and innovation at the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

To explain the fallacy, Southworth says, "you have to sort of step back and think about what domestic violence is, and it's not an explosion and it's not out-of-control anger. Instead, it's a pattern of power and control." Victims of abuse face the greatest risk "when they try to break away from a controlling partner, and that can happen on any day of the year," she says.

Meanwhile, the issue has garnered headlines with the reintroduction of the Violence Against Women Act in the Senate, which is slated to vote on the bill next week. It was blocked last year by House Republicans, who balked at expanded assistance for gays and lesbians, Native Americans, and undocumented immigrants, and a related point of procedure.

The high-profile story of the Kansas City Chiefs' Jovan Belcher, who last month killed his girlfriend and then himself, has also fueled the conversation. Citing that incident and others, the Verizon Foundation and CBS Sportscaster James Brown are hosting a #YourVoiceCounts Twitter chat Thursday to "give participants an opportunity to talk with NFL insiders, celebrities, and advocates about domestic violence and sports, the role men, fathers, and coaches and mentors play in prevention and more."

[See Narcissism Epidemic: Why There Are So Many Narcissists Now]

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 3 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men say they have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking (or a combination of these things) by an intimate partner. Furthermore, these estimates are low, the CDC says, since many people don't report the problem to police, friends, or relatives.

Add emotional abuse to the mix of physical and sexual assault, and 1 in 4 women and 1 in 3 teen girls will experience domestic violence in their lives, says Katie Ray-Jones, president of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, an anonymous service that handles some 22,000 calls each month, mostly from women. (Domestic violence victims are overwhelmingly female. Southworth estimates male victims account for between 5 to 15 percent of victims, some of whom are involved in same-sex relationships.)

Part of the complexity of domestic violence has to do with the many forms it can take, and the fact that one kind bleeds into another.

"I don't know how I got here," callers will often say, Ray-Jones says. That's because the relationship didn't start out that way, she explains. "He wasn't telling you, 'I'm gonna kick the crap out of you in three years."

[See Could You Become a Victim of Dating Violence?]

So how does it start? Often, a man will want to get serious very soon, a behavior which can appear flattering, but in fact signals his desire to "wrap her up in a package and own her," says Lundy Bancroft, author of Why Does He Do That? and other books on domestic abuse. Jealousy and possessiveness as well as verbal abuse are "the two most outstanding predictors of physical abuse and severe control coming down the pike," says Bancroft, who has led workshops for abusers and holds healing retreats for women in recovery.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.