Health Tip: Give Your Kitchen a Daily Cleaning

(HealthDay News) -- Any kitchen can be a breeding ground for germs, so it's important to give yours a thorough cleaning every day.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics offers this advice:

Using hot, soapy water, thoroughly clean the counter and other work surfaces each day to clean spills and food particles.Keep non-food items such as mail, lunch bags and purses away from the kitchen counter.Thoroughly wash the counter before preparing food.Make sure all dishes and cookware are thoroughly cleaned in hot, soapy water and rinsed well.Frequently swap dish towels and rags for clean ones. Wash these items in the hot cycle of your washing machine and thoroughly dry them.Wash sponges in a water/bleach solution or throw them away.Regularly clean appliances, including the inside of the microwave.

-- Diana Kohnle
Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

View the original article here

Daily Sunscreen Helps Middle-Aged Skin Stay Young: Study

By Alan Mozes

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, June 3 (HealthDay News) -- In the never-ending search for the fountain of youth, scientists have looked everywhere under the sun. But a group of Australian researchers now report that the answer lies out of the sun.

Regular daily use of sunscreen appears to significantly slow the process of skin aging among middle-aged men and women, they say.

The finding stems from 4.5 years spent tracking sunscreen use and its ultimate impact on skin quality among more than 900 men and women under the age of 55.

"This has been one of those beauty tips you often hear quoted, but for the first time we can back it with science," said study co-author Adele Green, lab head and senior research fellow with the Queensland Institute of Medical Research at Royal Brisbane Hospital. "Protecting yourself from skin cancer by using sunscreen regularly has the added bonus of keeping you looking younger."

"And the study has shown that up to middle age, it's not too late to make a difference," added Green, who also suggested that sunscreen use is likely to similarly benefit those over 55, though her team did not specifically assess a potential benefit among older users.

The findings appear in the June 4 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Perhaps surprisingly, the authors point out that, to their knowledge, their current effort is the first rigorous scientific exploration of the potential protective effect of sunscreen on skin aging in people.

Green and her team looked at data collected in a study on skin cancer prevention conducted between 1992 and 1996 in Nambour, Australia.

The authors focused on 903 mostly fair-skinned men and women who were under the age of 55, under the assumption that skin aging in that age category would be brought on primarily by so-called "photoaging," as opposed to simply growing older.

Roughly half the participants worked primarily outdoors, while about four in 10 were regular smokers.

All the participants had been randomly assigned to two sunscreen groups. The first was specifically directed to use SPF 15 sunscreen on a daily basis, applying it to their head, neck, arms and hands every morning, and reapplying after bathing, heavy sweating or spending a few hours outside.

The second group was not told to avoid sunscreen, but rather to use it as they wished.

The study also assessed the potential impact of dietary antioxidants on skin quality. Each group of participants was further divided into half, in which one sub-group was given 30 milligrams of beta-carotene to take on a daily basis, while the other was given a sugar pill (placebo).

Using a process called "microtopography," the team then analyzed skin changes such as shifts in texture and roughness, by looking at the status of each participant's left hand.

View the original article here

Daily Gene Rhythms May Be Off in Depressed People

Study found 'clock' in brain was disrupted in autopsies of those who suffered mental disorder at time of death

By Amy Norton

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, May 13 (HealthDay News) -- Just like you, the genes in your brain follow a daily routine. But that natural rhythm may be thrown off in people with depression, a new study suggests.

Researchers say the findings shed new light on what goes wrong in the brain when depression strikes. And they hope the results, published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could spur new therapies down the road.

It has long been known that your body processes follow daily circadian rhythms, and that the "master clock" orchestrating it all exists in the brain. That clock mainly responds to light and darkness in your surroundings.

Scientists have also thought that gene activity in animals' brains follows a daily ebb and flow. But seeing whether that's true in the human brain is a lot tougher, said researcher Huda Akil.

If you want to look for daily rhythms in hormone activity, Akil said, you can take multiple blood samples from the same people over the course of 24 hours. You cannot, however, investigate the brain that way.

To get around the problem, Akil's team studied autopsied brain tissue from 89 people who had died at different times of day. That way, they could look at each person's gene activity at the time of death and search for differences from one individual to the next.

"Hundreds of genes emerged as having a rhythm based on the time of day," said Akil, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

That rhythm was clear in brain tissue from the 55 people with no history of psychiatric disorders. Akil said her team was able to look at an individual's gene activity and correctly guess that person's time of death within an hour.

They could not, however, do that for the 34 individuals who were suffering from major depression at the time of death. Their gene activity patterns were too varied.

"This is very clear evidence that the 'clock' in the brain is disrupted in depression," Akil said.

That makes sense, since doctors and researchers have long seen signs of a disturbed circadian rhythm in people with depression, said Eva Redei, a professor of psychiatry at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Those signs, Redei said, include sleep problems -- like sleeping too much or too little -- and abnormal activity in the "stress hormone" cortisol, which follows a daily rhythm. There also is a form of depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in which people suffer symptoms during the short days of winter but feel better during the sunnier seasons.

Experts do not know the precise cause of SAD, but Redei said it involves problems with the circadian rhythms.

View the original article here

Daily Aspirin Linked to Lower Risk for Deadly Skin Cancer in Women

Title: Daily Aspirin Linked to Lower Risk for Deadly Skin Cancer in Women
Category: Health News
Created: 3/11/2013 10:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 3/11/2013 12:00:00 AM

View the original article here

Daily Aspirin Linked to Lower Risk for Deadly Skin Cancer in Women

Large study found up to 30 percent reduced odds of developing melanoma

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News) -- Older women who take an aspirin regularly may be lowering their risk of developing the deadly skin cancer melanoma, a new study suggests.

And the longer postmenopausal women take aspirin, the more melanoma risk appears to diminish.

The effect is only seen with aspirin, not with other pain relievers such as acetaminophen (Tylenol), the researchers noted.

For the study, the research team collected data on nearly 60,000 white women who were part of the Women's Health Initiative, a long-term national study. The women, aged between 50 and 79, were asked about what medications they took and other lifestyle preferences.

Over 12 years of follow-up, the investigators found that women who took aspirin had a 21 percent lower risk of developing melanoma compared to women who didn't take aspirin.

But it's too soon to make firm conclusions, a researcher cautioned.

"Aspirin could be potentially used to prevent melanoma, but a clinical trial is needed," said lead author Dr. Jean Tang, an assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif.

This type of population-based study can only show an association between aspirin and the reduced risk for melanoma, not that aspirin actually helps prevent it.

Tang doesn't believe women should start taking aspirin solely to try to prevent melanoma. "It's too early to say this," she said.

It is possible that aspirin's anti-inflammatory properties might be responsible for lowering the risk of melanoma, Tang suggested. "Aspirin may also promote cell death of melanoma cells," she added.

Whether a protective effect also occurs in men is not known, said Tang, who plans to look at that in her next study.

The new report was published in the March 11 online edition of Cancer.

The study found that women who took aspirin for at least five years had their melanoma risk drop by 30 percent, compared to women who didn't take aspirin.

To try to isolate the effect of aspirin on melanoma, Tang's group accounted for other factors such as skin tone, tanning and use of sunscreen.

Each year in the United States there are nearly 77,000 new cases of melanoma and more than 9,000 deaths from it, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

One expert doesn't see any problem taking aspirin to prevent melanoma, especially for people with a family history of the disease.

Prolonged use of aspirin is not without risks, including stomach bleeding, but the benefits of preventing melanoma outweigh the risk for vulnerable people, said Dr. Michele Green, a dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She praised the new research.

"I think it's fantastic. It's really a remarkable study," Green said.

"If you have a family history of melanoma, I don't see any downside of taking aspirin for this," she said. "I would urge my patients who have a family history of melanoma to take aspirin based on this study."

View the original article here

Daily Dialysis Has Risks, Benefits for Kidney Disease Patients

Title: Daily Dialysis Has Risks, Benefits for Kidney Disease Patients
Category: Health News
Created: 2/7/2013 6:36:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/8/2013 12:00:00 AM

View the original article here

Jennifer Lopez at the Daily Show studios

Jennifer Lopez wears a red and black check coat, jeans and white snow boots at the Daily Show studios - vote on celebrity fashion, style and red carpet looks in GLAMOUR.COM’s Dos and Don’ts

Continue reading...

View the original article here