Osteoporosis Exercises for Hips

Shoes: A treatment for osteoarthritis in the knees?

Flip-flops and sneakers with flexible soles are easier on the knees than clogs or even special walking shoes, a study by Rush University Medical Center has found. And that's important, because loading on the knee joints is a key factor in the development of osteoarthritis.

The study has been published online in the journal Arthritis Care & Research.

"Traditionally, footwear has been engineered to provide maximum support and comfort for the foot, with little attention paid to the biomechanical effects on the rest of the leg," said Dr. Najia Shakoor, a rheumatologist at Rush and the primary author of the study. "But the shoes we wear have a substantial impact on the load on the knee joints, particularly when we walk."

"Our study demonstrated that flat, flexible footwear significantly reduces the load on the knee joints compared with supportive, stable shoes with less flexible soles."

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis and a significant source of disability and impaired quality of life. A higher-than-normal load on the knees during walking is a hallmark of the disease, associated with both the severity of osteoarthritis and its progression.

More on the ScienceBlog

Freedom vs. Greater Good of Society

In the United States, everyone is debating on how to reform the healthcare and it seems there are as many ways of reforming the broken healthcare system (that everyone agrees) as there are special interests and lobby groups such as the insurance companies and drug companies who are spending millions of dollars to win their side of the argument with the lawmakers.

Joining the debate bandwagon, an alliance made up of major health agencies, including the American Diabetes Association, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and two former surgeon generals, wants to reverse the obesity epidemic by investing more in health promotion and disease prevention, especially to kids. The alliance has urged the lawmakers to pass legislation and deal with this alarming health problem which is not only dangerous by enormously expensive.

The group says the American children are getting addicted to poor diets--loaded with salt, sugar and fat--and sedentary lifestyles, which leads to cancer, heart disease and diabetes later on, costing billions of dollars to the taxpayer. Obesity-related spending contributes $150 billion to healthcare spending each year. (Link. HealthDay)

Amid the media coverage of the often rowdy and sometimes abusive language against any form of national healthcare heard in the townhall meetings, it is stunning to read that America- the world's only superpower and the world's largest economy, is expanding a free health service meant to take modern medicine to the third world as reported on CBS.

"People from all around Los Angeles have been lining up around the clock since Monday - waiting, hoping to get free medical care.

Some 1,500 people a day - many working poor, almost all with little or no health insurance - file into L.A.'s cavernous Forum to see hundreds of doctors, dentists, and optometrists. All of these medical professionals are volunteers. All of these people are in need.

Larry Durst's disability check won't cover the glasses he needs. He says without this clinic he would suffer and go without.

Kenya Smith needs a checkup for two-week-old Zoe. Her insurance doesn't cover it.

"They wanted $1,500 for just to be seen by the doctor plus co-payments. That was a lot of money I thought," she said.

Anna Garcia got in line Tuesday for dental work. She works for Orange County, has five children, and her husband is out of work. The co-pay for three year old Aizza's root canal: $1,000.

"I couldn’t afford it and I didn’t want her to lose her teeth. So I once read about this program, and I had to take advantage of it, even if it meant missing a couple of days of work," she said.

The program is run by Remote Area Medical, a non-profit group established 24 years ago to take modern medicine to the third world. Today they do some 40 multi-day free clinics a year - 65 percent of them now in the U.S.

"There are about 49 million people who don’t have access to the care they need. They simply can’t afford it," says Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical."

The debate over healthcare reform in the United States centers around questions of a person's right to health care, access, fairness, sustainability, and quality purchased by the high sums spent by the taxpayers. The mixed public-private health care system in the United States is the most expensive in the world, with health care costing more per person than in any other industrialised nation. The U.S. is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system.

Just like the American tobacco industry and their lobbysts who spend vast sums of money to influence lawmakers and persuade people, particularly younger people, that smoking is an assertion of freedom and liberty- so too does the drug and insurance companies and the lobbysts of the private healthcare industry spend vast sums of money to kill off any legislation that will bring in a public option which can compete with the private healthcare.

The present healthcare debate has pitted two opposing ideologies against each other, and a proper balance between them needs to be found to satisfy the majority of the people.

President Obama, the democratic president considers health care a freedom issue: everyone should walk as equals under the same insurance umbrella. That people are left out in the rain is contrary to the American ethos.

Conversely, Republicans see it as a liberty issue. Obama's reform plan leads to some with the individual's power of choice. In large part, this choice is the choice of how to spend one's money, but there is no small amount of philosophical objection to government telling you what to do -- that's also contrary to the American ethos.

Read about the five freedoms Americans will likely loose if the public option of the healthcare reform bill intended to provide affordable healthcare to the poor and compete against the private insurance is enacted into law.

United States of America- the world's great bastion of freedom- is deeply skepical of any program such as the universal healthcare that gives power to their government to control any aspect of their lives.

Meditation

From the Excerpt of 'Broken Open' by Elizabeth Lesser.


Meditation

I have been a student and practitioner of meditation for thirty years. I still find it difficult—at times boring and at other times confrontational. And I still find it valuable—nourishing, expansive, and illuminating. Sometimes I meditate every day; sometimes I go months without ever sitting on my meditation cushion. I have taken short meditation courses and spent most of my time waiting for the evening or weekend to be over. And I have gone on long, solitary retreats and surrendered to the practice, emptying myself of worry, falseness, restlessness, and complaints. Without hesitation, I can say that meditation practice has made a remarkable difference in my life.

People are attracted to meditation for a variety reasons, including these:

•to relax, physically and mentally;

•to keep the heart open and soft;

•to accept life on its own terms;

•to feel more alive, connected, and content;

•to find inner peace; and

•to make contact with other realms of consciousness, what some call the divine or God.

Meditation can help us achieve any of these—but only over time, and with dedication and work. We come to meditation feeling that parts of our life are difficult and that perhaps a meditation practice will make them less so. We want relief now. But that is not how meditation works. The desire for peace and happiness is noble; the expectation of instant results is unreasonable.

Meditation is a matter of slow and steady experience. It is not a cure. It is not a set of moral values. It is not a religion. It is a way—a way to be fully present, a way to be genuinely who we are, a way to look deeply at the nature of things, a way to rediscover the peace we already possess. It does not aim to get rid of anything bad, or to create anything good. It is an attitude of openness. The term for this attitude is mindfulness.

Full Excerpt on Oprah

Battle of US Healthcare. It is US's excessive capitalism vs. UK's socialism

As the debate on healthcare reform gets heated up in the Capitol Hill of the United States, President Obama has urged leading Senate Democrats involved in drafting a healthcare bill, to include a public health plan which will create a government-run health insurance plan to compete with the private insurance companies of the healthcare system. President Obama believes that such a plan would help consumers and keep costs down.

Most republicans and critics of the public plan argue that such a plan will drive out private insurers and lower the quality of healthcare.

As the debate gets nasty across town hall meetings and rallies in the congressional districts, the universal healthcare system of the UK National Health Care(NHS) has come under attack from the radical right wing and conservate activists. Conservatives and Republican politicians believe that the free market can fix the healthcare and all other social problems and that the government should not get involved.

Professor Stephen Hawking who was in Washington to receive America's highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has defended UK's NHS after its severe criticism during the American political debate over health care reforms.

"The physicist spoke up for the NHS after the Republican Right claimed it was 'evil' and 'Orwellian' in a direct attack on Barack Obama's plans to overhaul health care in the U.S.

Critics of the president have said his plans would introduce a 'socialist' system like Britain's.

Prof Hawkin, who suffers from Lou Gehrig's disease, said: 'I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS.

'I have received a large amount of high quality treatment without which I would not have survived.'

Even UK's prime minister Gordon Brown who normally avoids American party politics has defended the NHS against what his ministers described as inaccurate slurs by opponents of president Obama's plan. Mr Brown and his wife posted messages on the social networking site Twitter.

On the No 10 Twitter site, Mr Brown said: “NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there.”

Writing in the Guardian Sahil Kapur states that a study by the "Health Affairs found last year that more than 100,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses – the highest of any industrialised country. The study also said they would probably be alive if they were living in France, where they wouldn't have been denied care. The US can prevent these deaths, and as other industrialised countries demonstrate, it is easily doable.

Embracing a system in which people die from neglect is morally indefensible, particularly in a country that guarantees the right to life and has the resources to carry out this promise."


The United States spends far more per capita (and as a percentage of GDP) on healthcare than the rest of the developed world, while every other industrialised country has much stronger government presence in healthcare. Along with lower costs, they also achieve universal coverage, and tend to enjoy higher satisfaction rates.

Alarming report on mental health

A government policy launched in the 1980s namely deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has been called a failed experiment by the British Columbia's Premier Gordon Campbell who was elected in 2001. The increasing problem of the mentally ill came out in an investigative report by the police that revealed a third of all police calls deal with the mentally ill.

The mayor of Vancouver says he's not surprised the police research report. But Mayor Sam Sullivan says he's still shocked by the actual number of such calls and the amount of resources Vancouver police have to devote to dealing with mentally ill people.

This is the result of a dysfunctional health system which refuses to treat mentally ill who aren't off drugs. The Mayor said that many of those the police encounter should be in institutions and not on the street. Due to the lack of institutional capacity, Vancouver's mentally ill are roaming the streets posing a danger to either themselves or others.

Lower grades among the sleep skippers

A survey of 120 students at St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in northern New York, found that students who have never pulled an all-nighter have average GPAs of 3.1, compared to 2.9 for those who have. The study, by assistant professor of psychology Pamela Thacher, is to be included in the January issue of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.

A second study by Thacher, a clinical psychologist, had "extremely similar" results showing lower grades among the sleep skippers.

Many college students, of course, have inadequate or irregular sleep, for reasons ranging from excessive caffeine to poor time management.

Dr. Howard Weiss, a physician at St. Peter's Sleep Center in Albany, said the study results make sense.

"Certainly that data is out there showing that short sleep duration absolutely interferes with concentration, interferes with performance on objective testing," he said.

Some night owls do get good grades, of course, which may be explained by circadian rhythms, Weiss said. Circadian rhythms can be tracked through body temperature and hormonal transmissions.

Some people have different 24-hour body clocks than others, and may do better depending on class and testing times, Weiss said.

US revamps Medicare

Starting next week in the United States, those eligible for Medicare can begin enrolling in the optional drug plan for 2008, with a dizzying array of choices — and potential premium increases for 74% of those who currently have a stand-alone drug plan.

About 1.6 million low-income enrollees will be switched from their current plans to other insurers because premiums rose above a government benchmark.

Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people over 65 that has been in existence for more than 40 years in the United States. Congress added a prescription drug benefit, known as Part D, two years ago.

Although Part D is subsidized by the federal government, it is run by private companies, many of which have aggressively marketed their products.

It’s that time of year again when seniors who want to switch their drug plans have to sift through the fine print of stacks of documents.

There are 55 Medicare prescription drug plans along with thousands of other Medicare supplement programs for sale, according to the state Office for the Aging. When those choices are added to the need to coordinate drug coverage, many Medicare beneficiaries are faced with what the office called "a complex maze of choices.''

Medicare officials say that people can avoid premium increases next year: "In every state, people will be able to find a plan that costs less than $20 a month," says Herb Kuhn of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Therefore it pays for seniors to shop around.

The average monthly premium for a Medicare prescription drug plan will increase to $25 next year, a 13 percent increase, according to the federal government. The plans were created in 2005 to offer more coverage to the country’s 43 million Medicare customers who rely on Medicare for their health care.

In general, United States is opposed to any "socialized programme", yet they do have some “socialized” programmes . Some examples include fire protection, police services, garbage pick up, roads, parks, schools etc. But health care is not one of them. This health care system is broken and serves only private interests. It seems in the US system, the insurance companies have far too much power over decisions regarding a patients health care needs. The United States has the highest per capita health care spending in the world, with comparatively disappointing results compared to European models of health care.

One of the fundamental problem that the US faces is that the ratio of workers paying Medicare taxes to retirees drawing benefits is shrinking at the same time that the price of health care services per person is increasing. Currently there are 3.9 workers paying taxes into Medicare for every older American receiving services. By 2030, as the baby boom generation retires, that is projected to drop to 2.4 workers for each beneficiary. Thus financing the medicare is going to be a huge task.

According to the Census Bureau's 2005 Current Population Survey (CPS), there were 45.8 million uninsured individuals in 2004, or 15.7% of the civilian non-institutionalized population. Since virtually all individuals over age 65 are covered by Medicare, the uninsured are primarily adults under age 65 and children who do not have medical insurance.

Threshold of clinical depression too low

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Prof Gordon Parker -senior psychiatrist said, depression had become a "catch-all" diagnosis, driven by clever marketing from pharmaceutical companies and leading to the burgeoning prescription of antidepressant drugs. Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when they are merely unhappy, he said.

He said the drugs were being marketed beyond their "true utility" in cases in which people were unhappy rather than clinically depressed.

The psychiatrist, of the University of New South Wales, Australia, said the "over-diagnosis" of depression began in the early 80s, when the diagnostic threshold for minor mood disorders was lowered.

His 15-year study of 242 teachers found that more than three-quarters met the current criteria for depression.

Qualifying symptoms included "feeling sad, blue or down in the dumps" for two weeks, or appetite change, sleep disturbance, drop in libido and tiredness.

The psychiatrist said these symptoms were so common that most people would have them at some point in their lives. Under the current diagnosis guidelines, around one in five adults is thought to suffer depression during their lifetime.

Polluting printers

This printer in a Brisbane, Australia, office building contributed to higher particulate matter concentrations indoors than those outside near a freeway.Photo:Lidia Morawska.


This study has appeared in the online edition of the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) journal, measured particulate output of 62 laser printers, including models from name brands such as Canon, Hewlett-Packard and Ricoh. Particle emissions, believed to be toner -- the finely-ground powder used to form images and characters on paper -- were measured in an open office floor plan, then ranked.

The research underscores the importance of printer emissions. Read more here.

Soft drinks are a health risk

Research has found that soft drinks is health risk- just one soft drink a day — whether diet or regular — may boost your risk of getting heart disease, the study shows.

That is because a soda habit increases the risk of developing a condition called metabolic syndrome, according to the new research, and that in turn boosts the chance of getting both heart disease and diabetes.

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of symptoms that includes excessive abdominal fat, high blood-glucose levels, high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides and low levels of high-density lipoprotein, the "good" cholesterol.

People with three or more of these symptoms have double the normal risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Anti-malaria mosquitoes emerge

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have created Genetically Modified or GM mosquitoes by giving them a gene that makes it impossible for them to pass on the plasmodium that causes malaria.

"What we did was a laboratory, proof-of-principle experiment; we're not anywhere close to releasing them into the wild right now," revealed Dr Jason Rasgon of Johns Hopkins University.

The research provides evidence that engineering mosquitoes to resist the parasite could help to control a disease that takes up to 2.7 million lives each year, chiefly in Africa. Malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people each year. Only HIV/ Aids causes more deaths from infectious disease.

The idea of the experiment is to release large numbers of GM mosquitoes where malaria is common, where they would interbreed with wild ones. Over several generations, resistance should spread through the mosquito population, so that fewer insects carry malaria.

Scientists are playing a deadly game with nature. In the past, killer bees were made in another such experiment and now they dominate in some parts of the world. Time will only tell whether the GM mosquitoe came out as result of a fool-hardy experiment.

Easing arthritis

Read the benefits of this yoga.

Rampant poverty in richest year

Forbes magazine has given out the head count, the number of billionaires has skyrocketed over the past year to 946 men and some women. There were 178 newcomers, including 19 Russians, 14 Indians, 13 Chinese and 10 Spaniards, as well as the first billionaires from Cyprus, Oman, Romania and Serbia.

Steve Forbes, the founder of the Fordes magazine has said that this is the richest year in human history. Forbes also said the best way to create wealth is to have free markets and free people, and more and more of the world is realising it.

JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author, has made it to the super rich club, making her the UK's sole female billionaire. Innovation will be the trend to develop ideas for future wealth creation.

In the 20 years since it began compiling the list, Forbes said, "old world powers like Japan and Germany - and the billionaires who dominate their businesses - have given way to the latest global hotspots such as booming China, India and Russia. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi was the world's richest person in our inaugural year, but the Japanese land baron fell off the list this year."

In a world of unprecedented wealth, a UNDP report shows almost 2 million children die each year for want of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation. More than 2.6 billion people do not have access to safe water.

According to a World Bank report, 1.1 billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day. This is the measurement for extreme poverty.

Why is poverty still so endemic inspite of the potential and the continued creation of the gigantic wealth? Is there more to it than just blaming the poor for their plight? When the rich are soaring upto the sky why are the poor languishing so far behind?

For these numbers to be relevant, there is something radically wrong with a system that continues to deprive such a large segment of humanity. There must be critical issues that needs to be addressed in the interest of global peace and a sustainable economic development.

Avoid hot baths to improve male fertility

A three-year pilot study of infertile men in the United States has shown that wallowing in hot baths or Jacuzzis may be part of the problem.

It has been believed for decades that wet heat exposure is bad for fertility, as an old wives’ tale, but now we have some proof.

Other research from the Brazilian Society of Urlology reports that heat from laptop use and wearing tight underwear can also reduce fertility.

Green Tea benefits continue to rise

Most other beverages like coffee seem to have their ups and downs in terms of their contradicting nutritional value always based on some latest research. It seems there is no sinful side for green tea- so far.

Latest research now shows that a major component in green tea may short-circuit the cancer process more extensively than scientists had earlier realized.

Researchers also find that green tea may actually help prevent Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative brain disorder that leads to dementia and eventual death.

Worldwide explosion of fake drugs

A BBC report quotes a United Nations warning that fake prescription medicines are swamping developing nations with sometimes deadly consequences.

The International Narcotics Control Board report says up to 50% of the medicines in these markets are fake and the abuse of prescription drugs is said overtake that of illegal narcotics worldwide soon.

The Vienna-based UN drugs watchdog has said prescription drug abuse had outstripped heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy in some parts of Europe, Africa and South Asia. Only cannabis was more abused than prescription drugs in the US, it said.

This is an alarming trend and urgent action is called for to combat the spread of this low quality or illegal medicines which poses deadly health risks. No effort should be spared to stop these drug runners making money in this lethal trade.

Why are children getting fatter?

Blame the fast foods. Blame the toys. Blame the age of electronica. Children from America to Australia and all across the developed world are getting fatter. Obesity has begun to sound off the alarn bells.

Rising rates of obesity and weight problems among children is now a major health issue as more than a million children under 16 in the UK are now classified as obese.

A report by the National Audit Office of UK , says that more and more British children each year are obese.The economic impact of obesity is starting to be felt in the UK. Estimates put the economic cost at $4 billion a year, while the National Health Service is reeling under an annual bill of $1.8 billion.

If children are becoming obese and overweight, when they come into adulthood they are much more likely to suffer from serious chronic diseases such as diabetes II, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Obese people also have a much higher risk of developing cancer. Obese cancer patients have a much higher death rate than non-obese cancer patients.

Nutritionally, developing countries are turning into little Americas. There are fast food centres everywhere, children are much less physically active then their parents were. With increasing affluency, the well-to-do children get chauffeured by the parents everywhere, while in the past they would walk, take a bus or cycle.

Rather than getting out to play on the field or park with friends, children opt to stay indoors and play video games or spend time in passive TV watching.

Choosing beef with cloned meat

How about ordering your beef steak from the meat of a cloned animal? Either beacuse of ethical or religious concerns or mistrust of the meat industry, the idea of cloned meat still elicits distaste even in many confirmed carnivores.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released a risk assessment asserting that food (including milk) from cloned cattle, swine and goats is "likely to be as safe as" that from non­cloned animals. So now it appears it is just a matter of time before we find that cloned meat has hit the super market shelves.

Scientists have succeeded in producing clones of cows, goats, and other animals—even cats and dogs—have been hailed as amazing advances in biotechnology.

The fact that the first cloned mammal, a sheep named Dolly died prematurely of a lung disease has shown that more research needs to be carried out before cloned animals will be widely as accepted as safe for human consumption, whatever the reasons for skepticism maybe.

Like in the United States, public opinion in other countries, including the European Union and Canada, is equally or even more strongly opposed to the idea of food from animal clones.

Major grocery food chains in Britain have already announced that they will refuse to sell the products. In the event that the sale of meat and milk from animal clones is actually permitted in the United States, other countries would be likely to refuse to import these products, especially in the absence of appropriate labeling.

One of the largest natural and organic grocery chains in the United States,'Whole Foods' says it will not sell meat or milk from cloned animals or their offspring.

Whole Foods believes any food derived from cloned animals should be required to be labeled as such to allow consumers to make informed decisions on the meat and milk that they buy.

Siestas good for the heart

Taking a midday nap helps to relieve stress as demonstrated by the working pair snoozing on their table.

People who take at least three daytime naps a week lasting 30 minutes or longer cut their risk of dying from a heart attack by 37 percent, according to a study by a team of U.S. and Greek researchers.

Regular siestas apparently lower stress, which is frequently associated with heart disease, the scientists report in Monday's edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal.

The study appears in the February 12, 2007 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine.